Starting Back with Soaping

[PreciousSoaps]

After a few years of being unable to make my own CP soap, I thought I would come by and ask a few questions...and hopefully get started again.

As I have been out of the soap making business for quite some time, I was wondering what are the popular soap scents? When I was working at farmers markets my best sellers were the lemongrass and lavender.

I also have 3 cloth bags full of previously made soap bars. I would like to use them, but I'm not sure how. I want to keep them as "soap bars" somehow, but can't think of what to do with them. I've thought of slicing them and putting them into my cp soaps, but then when I run out, so does that style of soap.

I would also like to get started back on Etsy or Artfire...are those sites still good places to sell soaps or have others shown up on the web?

Any advice on how to get started back up again would be appreciated! Thank you in advance!

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

As a good start I'd read back through the business threads for a few pages - the advice given will give an indication of the market. Also, in Canada, if you go to that soap guild event I bet there will be tons of information about the current state of affairs to get you going again.

 

[lsg]

There is a lot of competition on etsy and artfire. Vanilla, chocolate, coffee, marine-type scents etc. seem to be popular.

 

[shunt2011]

I agree with the volume of sellers on Etsy and Artfire....I chose not to join either. Too much work to maintain too many sites.

 

[PreciousSoaps]

Thank you for all your input. I guess I will start reading the business section and see how far I get with that. But I wonder...if Artfire and Etsy are over saturated with soap sellers, how do you market your soaps? I mean having a website and all is great, but what about payment processing, marketing on the web and all that fun stuff?