Finding MY professional soaping identity

[Guest]

Okay, I am officially deciding that making soap will be a part of my retirement plan.

My soaps are really really primative looking. Although I have an art background, I am not at all good at conventional design. Right now I couldn't make a pretty swirly soap if my life depended on it.

I do feel I have nailed a basic understanding of ingrediants and oils (I started in April, this year)...so I am a super newbie. I think I have a basic understanding of my local offline market.

I have at least 25 recipes I've tried. Lard is my favorite medium. I will be ordering tallow. I love the orange of unrefined palm and citrus eo. My all veggie recipe base extremely limited. My coloring, cutting and molds experience are still in the toddler stage. Limited success with td and micas, never tried anything else, I have one rippled soap cutter, and my favorite mold is a pyrex casserole dish and a DTV recorder box.

I will be ordering at least 4 bulk oils, some fo's...but I'm still too cheap to buy a loaf mold yet....

what do you guys see in my future? What should I be doing next? what should I attempt to master that will put be on the road to more professionalism as a soap maker?

 

[Dixie]

Keep in mind that you never stop learning or improving.

 

[Guest]

Keep in mind that you never stop learning or improving.

Dixie, I'll tell ya something funny. more "soap makers" are at the flea market now...and I looked at this one couple's soap...and I felt bad, theirs looked so nice...nice professional labels. So I brought a bar home.

It's a **** bar a soap from www.naturalsoapwholesale.com...they even had the nerve to look down on my lard soap...and claim they whipped their shea butter for 6 hours, so no perservatives or emulsifiers were needed.

I want to step up my game, so that my real stuff looks even better than the "cheaters"

 

[Guest]

So I figure to create a good solid inventory I need

A Lard or animal fat Line and a All vegatable Line
A moisturizing bar A mositurizing bar
A cleansing bar A cleansing bar
A mild simple bar (for kids)

 

[Guest]

Ditto what Dixie said
I learn something every time I make a batch of soap or read the forums. The sky is the limit , your product would knock the socks off the phony rebranded soap. Make a great bar of soap and the soap sells itself.
Soap is my retirement plan too , so I have a few years to make it the best I can . Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get and it's pretty much free.
I gave the neighbor across the street a bar of gardeners soap yesterday, she tried it and came back to ask if I sell my soap. I don't yet but I will barter with her for plants for the garden. I have had this experience more than once . It leads me to believe that my retirement will be fantastic , doing something I love to do.

HTH

Kitn

 

[xraygrl]

If you are going to "up your game", IMHO you really need to get some molds to make a more uniform looking product.

Consider these:

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid ... Categories

Unfortunately Ikea has discontinued these and you can only find them on Ebay, but I know that some people use the drawers for molds. They have 9 drawers, and that makes 9 log molds for $19.99 plus shipping. Can't beat that! Also the ones with the longer drawers can be used for a slab mold for doing those pretty swirls.

 

[Guest]

I don't think you necessarily need to buy a mold, but a box the perfect size for 12 or 18 bars . I made my own slab mold for $7.00 .

Kitn

 

[Guest]

If you are going to "up your game", IMHO you really need to get some molds to make a more uniform looking product.

Consider these:

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid ... Categories

Unfortunately Ikea has discontinued these and you can only find them on Ebay, but I know that some people use the drawers for molds. They have 9 drawers, and that makes 9 log molds for $19.99 plus shipping. Can't beat that! Also the ones with the longer drawers can be used for a slab mold for doing those pretty swirls.

excellent ideal...I ordered my bulk oils...ordered my favorite scents...looking at my budget for color and molds

 

[kaseencook]

Maybe your next step could be to write a business plan to focus your ideas and niche market. There's many free templates on the web. It may seem like a futile exercise to begin with, but there comes a lot of clarity and direction with a business plan that can mean the difference between fishing around in the dark and seeing the path to your goals. It's almost sub-conscience.

This way you can also formulate ideas about the kind of soap making you want to specialize in and the kind of persona you want the life of the business to possess. Having a specialist area (niche market) can really give you an edge, some examples have been things like goats milk soap, medicinal soaps, vegetarian soaps, "all natural" soaps, artistic soaps, luxury soaps, hotel soaps, olive oils soaps, wholesale, custom soaps, ect... with some creativity and good long thinking I'm sure there are other untaped soap markets out there as well.

From my experience, I would say that the fewer types of soap you start with (maybe like five feature soaps), the better, from a stress point of view, and keep things simple so you can grow slowly. There is nothing more stressful than trying to start big with a huge line of products and then being overwhelmed and loosing direction.... I also find that some people don't like being overwhelmed by choice, especially when they are ordering off the internet and can't experience the soap, I think a lot of people just have to guess what they would like (unless they have shopped there before) and would likely prefer to choose from a small selection of soaps that they can assume are the best of the best because that's why the soap maker chose to make a compact set of their best recipes.

These are just some things that come to mind, but I'm no expert and you live and learn as you go, I hope you have fun planning everything and making your soap and that you don't get too stressed!

 

[Guest]

Kaseen thanks for the great advice I will follow it esp the suggestion about 5 good soaps (recipes) 2-animal fat (one cleansing, one moisturizing) and 2 all vegatable (one cleansing, one moisturizing) and one extra mild all veggie

Then I will have some "base scents"...
so far what has either been popular or a personal favorite

orange scents
almond/vanilla cookie
pucker berry/street oil mix

I just really need to define my niche market

 

[carebear]

soaps don't moisturize
soaps remove oils
it's the nature of soap

 

[Guest]

soaps don't moisturize
soaps remove oils
it's the nature of soap

I think your incorrect about whether soaps "moisturize" or not...perhaps soapcalc calls it conditioning, but I definately think if certain soaps leave certain people dry and itchy...and other soaps can leave that same person's moisture level intact, whereas they are NOT dry and itchy...then a formula can indeed be moisturizing.

I guess the question is whether it's the person's own moisture left intact or is the soap adding something.

 

[carebear]

I think we are in agreement - doesn't matter what the term is but soaps don't moisturize: some are just more stripping than others.

 

[carebear]

...and other soaps can leave that same person's moisture level intact, whereas they are NOT dry and itchy...then a formula can indeed be moisturizing.

so you are saying that leaving moisture levels intact (i.e., not stripping the oils) is the same as moisturizing?

 

[cdwinsby]

What should you be doing next?

I always say....practice, practice and then practice some more! Read so much that you have a really great understanding of your ingredients and the process and not just a basic one.

Pretend you're the customer and ask yourself some questions. Any question about the ingredients or the process. If you can answer them easily and knowledgably, then your customer will realize that you know what you're talking about and that you know what you are doing. Makes the customer very happy to purhcase from you.

Professionalism is knowing your business inside and out and being willing to learn every day.

I've been making soap for 10 years now and I'm always learning something new....I think that's why I find it so much fun.

As for 'primative looking'....uneven, chunky soaps are beautiful too! As long as the soap makes your skin feel 'oh, so goooood' then you've got it nailed.

 

[Guest]

...and other soaps can leave that same person's moisture level intact, whereas they are NOT dry and itchy...then a formula can indeed be moisturizing.

so you are saying that leaving moisture levels intact (i.e., not stripping the oils) is the same as moisturizing?

i dunno, u tell me....and then explain the purpose of super fatting, which I'm assuming leaves some of the fat or oils unsaponified....

 

[Guest]

What should you be doing next?

I always say....practice, practice and then practice some more! Read so much that you have a really great understanding of your ingredients and the process and not just a basic one.

Pretend you're the customer and ask yourself some questions. Any question about the ingredients or the process. If you can answer them easily and knowledgably, then your customer will realize that you know what you're talking about and that you know what you are doing. Makes the customer very happy to purhcase from you.

Professionalism is knowing your business inside and out and being willing to learn every day.

I've been making soap for 10 years now and I'm always learning something new....I think that's why I find it so much fun.

As for 'primative looking'....uneven, chunky soaps are beautiful too! As long as the soap makes your skin feel 'oh, so goooood' then you've got it nailed.

thanks for the advice

 

[oldragbagger]

Hey Phillysoaps,
I disagree wholeheartedly that soaps are not moisturizing. I have extremely dry skin. If I can get INTO the shower with ashy looking dry skin, shower with a superfatted, butter rich soap and then get out feeling silky smooth and no more ashy look, you can call it what you want, but as far as I am concerned I've been moisturized.

 

[Guest]

Hey Phillysoaps,
I disagree wholeheartedly that soaps are not moisturizing. I have extremely dry skin. If I can get INTO the shower with ashy looking dry skin, shower with a superfatted, butter rich soap and then get out feeling silky smooth and no more ashy look, you can call it what you want, but as far as I am concerned I've been moisturized.

I agree with you 100% 8)

 

[kaseencook]

soaps don't moisturize
soaps remove oils
it's the nature of soap

It is my belief that super fatted soap leaves an oil residue on the hands, which can be seen as a moisturizing effect when washing in water.

Although soap forms micelles around oils and other particles on the skins surface and they are carried away by the flow of water, some of the extra oils on the soap are attracted (lipophilic = lipid loving) to the lipids in the skin in the aquatic (polar) environment. Oil is more attracted to skin than is it to water, as water is polar and skin is lipophilic, so when washing your hands the super fatted oils will be attracted to you skin, even though soap can carry some of this oil away, I believe that a nice layer remains. To me this is like dipping your hand in oil and then washing your hands with detergent, generally after a normal wash there is still a layer of oil left on your hands and it takes a lot of washing and physical scrubbing/force to get it all off. I would think that the natural oils on your hands are very very thin and mixed with other particles, making them easy to dislodge with soap, where some the thicker and more numerous oils in a supper fatted soap will come in and easily coat the skin in an aquatic environment replacing some/all/more of the removed natural skin oils.

I don't think that soap is so straight forward that it is a simple matter of differing degrees of removing natural oils from the skin, or else there would be no point to supperfatting and our hands would always feel drier after washing (which is not the case with lovely supper fatted soap), so there must be oils added back onto the surface of the skin from the supper fatted soap to produce the improved moisturizing feel we get after using our super fatted soaps!