Cost v/s Quality

[gurmeet]

Hi all. I'm back again after making my second batch of lavender soap using EO for the first time. Was quite a good experience seeing acceleration of trace after putting EO. After I made my batch just went across amazon website to buy few more things and came across this lists of lavender soaps costing Rs. 180 for a pack of 3 .Was quite confused looking at the cost ?? My single soap of 100g costing came to be around more than their pack of 3. How come the people are selling lavender handmade soaps such cheap? Is it that they are compromising at the quality or is it that they are buying EO or other oils at a much cheaper price from some dealer. Even if that is the case still I don't think that you can make it that cheaper since EO itself is more than double the price of what they are selling? Or is it that they are just using a cheaper soap base and using melt and pour process and selling it? . Just thinking what exactly is present in the market and what are we using ??

I really felt either I am new to this soap making or uneducated regarding the sources to be sought??

 

[ScentimentallyYours]

Hi all. I'm back again after making my second batch of lavender soap using EO for the first time. Was quite a good experience seeing acceleration of trace after putting EO. After I made my batch just went across amazon website to buy few more things and came across this lists of lavender soaps costing Rs. 180 for a pack of 3 .Was quite confused looking at the cost ?? My single soap of 100g costing came to be around more than their pack of 3. How come the people are selling lavender handmade soaps such cheap? Is it that they are compromising at the quality or is it that they are buying EO or other oils at a much cheaper price from some dealer. Even if that is the case still I don't think that you can make it that cheaper since EO itself is more than double the price of what they are selling? Or is it that they are just using a cheaper soap base and using melt and pour process and selling it? . Just thinking what exactly is present in the market and what are we using ??

I really felt either I am new to this soap making or uneducated regarding the sources to be sought??

There is a tremendous range of costs involved based on the type of ingredients used and the quantity you can purchase at one time. Did the package of three soaps include ingredients? Did it list Lavender essential oil, or did it list fragrance? Could you tell if it was a cold process soap? Or was it manufactured with milled soap? Were you curious enough to purchase the set of 3 so you could test it against the soap that you make? Those are questions to make sure you aren’t comparing apples and oranges. After that you get into the questions about differences in quality of ingredients.

A friend brought me triple milled soap, a set of three, back from India when she visited. One of them was sandalwood, that didn’t smell like the sandalwood soap I make, or the essential oil I still have, but will not using soap. Another was rose, but it didn’t smell like the rose soap I make or the fragrance oils I like, or the rose absolute that I have and won’t use in soap. The third was Jasmine, and again it didn’t smell like the jasmine soap I have made or the jasmine absolute from Coimbatore. They are beautiful French milled soaps, but very different from the cold process soap most of us make.

 

[gurmeet]

Yeah you are right, there are a lot of questions to ponder as you specified. Just got bit surprised when I saw the price. After reading and the forum I realized it's all what you want : Quality or Quantity??

 

[AliOop]

I noticed that your second recipe has both coconut oil (CO) and palm kernel oil (PKO). Those are almost identical; both are very bubbly and therefore very cleansing. That means they will be drying to the skin.

My guess is the you intended to use palm oil, sometimes called palm fruit oil. That is quite different from palm kernel oil and makes very different soap.

A good resource for learning about oil properties is can be found at Soapcalc numbers | Soapy Stuff

 

[gurmeet]

Okay . Yeah, maybe it will be . Haven't used it, still in the curing process. But definitely can be harsh because both contain Lauric acid. You are right. Had I used palm oil, being oleic in nature would had helped.Being an engineer I did most of my calculations mathematically for both of my batches.

But recently came across Ellen's video of using soap calc too.

And thanx for the above resource. I will definitely use soap calc for my next recipe.