Hi Beaux! Welcome to SMF. I can guarantee that others will chime in but allow me to be one of the first.
First things first.
1. You should have at least a year of soap making under your belt before you even consider selling. Most of us who sell have been making soap for more than a few years. At this stage, you have no idea how your soaps will behave over time. Make soap, watch your soap, test your soap, take notes, make more soap, firm up a good recipe or two, make more notes, make more soap. Read the Beginners Forum; read it again.
2. Hot process can actually take longer to cure than cold process. There's a big difference between saponification and cure. There are many threads here about the differences between the two processes.
3. Insurance isn't optional. If you're selling, you need insurance. If you sell at a market, they will usually require you to have it, and prove you have it.
4. There are labelling guidelines you must follow, whether you have insurance or not. It will depend on where you live. Here, in Canada, we have to label as well as submit our recipes to Health Canada.
5. Weight of your soap should be as consistent as possible. When I label, I weigh each bar and put the lowest weight on the label. Be aware that as your soap cures, it loses weight (evaporation of the liquid used in the manufacturing process - HP uses more liquid than CP, generally speaking).
6. As for planing/cutting your soap, that's personal preference. I generally don't but I know others do.
7. Food themed soap is, again, up to you. Personally, I don't like food themed soap and avoid it like the plague. Soap is meant to be used to wash your hands and/or body, not to sit on a shelf looking like something you eat. I'm always afraid that someone WILL try to take a bite out of it, warning or not. Generally speaking, small children can't read and, if it looks like food, they'll try to eat it.
8. For pricing your soap, you need to know the cost of your soap. What's the cost of the ingredients you're using, per batch? What's your labour cost? Once you know your cost per batch, you can figure out your cost per bar. Once you know that, generally speaking, wholesale is twice the cost of your cost per bar; retail is twice the cost of your wholesale.
9. Finally, since you're new, please take the time to introduce yourself in the intro thread.
Don't be scared off by the above. You asked questions, you will get answers; they might not be the ones you want to hear but, believe me, we all want you to succeed in your soap making endeavours. There are years and years of experience in this forum and a lot of knowledge, too. If you're willing to learn, you'll find many teachers here.
. However I've had some questions on my mind and figured that my first post on here should probably be questions to get to a handle on what I should know about selling things if anyone does answer.
