Last weekend, Nicole Cronen opened a storefront for her home and body care business, Ageless Agape, in Corydon, Indiana. It means the highest form of love. Five years ago, she was standing in the breezeway of her home, ready to take her life when her husband stopped her.
“That moment in my breezeway when my husband saved my life truly was an agape moment,” Cronen said.
Ageless Agape was born out of the lowest point of Cronen’s life. She was dealing with postpartum depression; her hair was falling out and her skin felt disgusting. She needed a solution. After trials and errors, she discovered the recipe for what is now her original agape cream, a tallow-based lotion. Cronen makes the tallow herself by rendering beef fat sourced from J&A Cattle Company, a local Corydon farm.
After seeing how much the lotion helped her own skin, Cronen researched if it was safe for babies, then tried it on her daughter’s diaper rash.
“It was like watching the Wolverine heal,” Cronen said. “Her pores started minimizing; her bleeding stopped. She was instantly soothed.”
When she first started making the cream, there was more than Cronen’s family or herself could use alone, so she started passing it out to the moms of her daughter’s T-ball team. They couldn’t get enough. Not long after, Cronen decided she wanted to take her family’s entire savings account, which wasn’t much, and put it towards turning the cream into a business.
One day when her husband came home from work, Cronen knew it was time to tell him what she wanted. She was sure he would object; he’s the kind of man to question every unnecessary purchase. She prepared a notebook full of arguments and scripture, ready to fight for what she felt God was telling her to do, but her husband just said OK.
“He was like, ‘No I see it and I support you in this,’” she said.
Since then, Cronen has developed dry shampoo, lip balms, candles, even brought on a cosmetic chemist who created an entire makeup line and opened a brick-and-mortar store.
Ageless Agape’s online sales kept doing well, the products in local stores brought good business and the tallow industry started to grow. Cronen knew it was time to open a physical store. Tallow-based products have started to grow in popularity.
According to Grand View Research, the global tallow market was valued at $9.02 billion in 2024 and is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 7.3%, predicting the market value will be worth $13.61 billion by 2030.
“We need to bite this bullet,” she said. “We need to open up a storefront before somebody else does and we lose our tallow customer base.”
In 2025, Cronen was vending at the Harrison County Popcorn Festival when a realtor approached her, asking if she had considered opening a storefront. Cronen had somewhat been looking for the past two years, but hadn’t found anything. In early March 2026, the same realtor showed her a place in Corydon, Indiana, Cronen’s hometown. By the end of the month, she signed the lease.
The grand opening was May 8. New and old customers alike visited the store. Cronen found herself overcome with emotion by the outpouring of community support and how far she has come. She went to the store’s backroom to cry several times.
“It was incredible,” Cronen said. “Honestly more than I could have even imagined.”
The store is not just a place to sell the products. It has a living room-style space with couches, so employees can sit down and talk with customers one-on-one to help them find exactly what they need. Customers can also see that the products are handled in a clean, controlled environment. In the front of the shop, the products are packaged and labeled.
“We’re not just doing it in our homes where we have cats running across the counter,” Cronen said. “We’re not just doing experiments in the back with people’s skin and stuff.”
Her goal is to one day make it so customers can see the entire process of making the products, but she’ll need a bigger space for that. Cronen also hopes the store will help improve and grow Corydon by bringing in more foot traffic and, therefore, more funds to the town.
“That money goes into public schools,” Cronen said. “Those small businesses that are local, those are the ones that are donating to your kids’ sports functions.”
Cronen has four kids of her own that she homeschools. In the back of the store, there’s a room where they can do their homeschooling while Cronen works. Being immersed in the business, the kids have been able to see what running a business is like, the good and the bad. Cronen hopes they have learned a lot watching her become an entrepreneur and overcome obstacles.
“I feel like they’ve gotten to see a whole new mom out of me,” she said.
Ageless Agape is not done growing, but they will continue to make all their products by hand. 12 new products are in the works now, including both home and body care. More than anything, Cronen wants to relinquish some control and feel comfortable leaving the store to take a beach vacation with her family. She also wants to open more Ageless Agape stores in the future, but for now, she’s going to focus on the one she just opened.