I agree that presentation is important -- the overall display and the soap packaging doesn't need to be elaborate or costly, but it does need to attract the eye from a distance so people are encouraged to come closer. As a customer, I want to get a sense that the seller has put a reasonable amount of time and effort into producing a good product and takes pride in her or his product.
I once went to a farmer's market and walked by a bare table piled with naked soap bars encrusted with soap crumbs obvious from 10 feet away. There were no price, no name, no ingredients list, and not even a table cloth. The seller looked rumpled and not friendly, like she had just rolled out of the wrong side of the bed. Utterly unappealing.
Once at a seller's booth, it's been my experience that most customers buy mainly on smell and then on appearance of the soap. Sometimes unusual ingredients will attract a customer -- egg, beer, lanolin, pine tar, etc. -- although that interest doesn't necessarily result in a sale, unless the scent is also appealing. I think markets with more of a "crunchy" focus are likely to have a larger percentage of buyers with more interest in unscented or vegetarian soaps. In my area, that would be the farmer's markets in our nearby college town. In the outlying smaller towns, the crowd is much more conventional.
Nowadays, I sell only at one gift shop in a nearby river town that has a strong tourist trade. I package my soap using a farm country and river town theme with the goal of attracting customers looking for an inexpensive memento of their trip. I want my soaps to be nicely packaged, have interesting designs, and be distinctively scented so a bar can make a pretty little gift. There is another soap maker who sells in the same shop. Her soaps are smaller but also less expensive, sold naked with no ingredients label, have soft natural colors, and are lightly scented with EOs. Her products appeal to a different set of customers than my soap does, and we both do okay.
I once went to a farmer's market and walked by a bare table piled with naked soap bars encrusted with soap crumbs obvious from 10 feet away. There were no price, no name, no ingredients list, and not even a table cloth. The seller looked rumpled and not friendly, like she had just rolled out of the wrong side of the bed. Utterly unappealing.
Once at a seller's booth, it's been my experience that most customers buy mainly on smell and then on appearance of the soap. Sometimes unusual ingredients will attract a customer -- egg, beer, lanolin, pine tar, etc. -- although that interest doesn't necessarily result in a sale, unless the scent is also appealing. I think markets with more of a "crunchy" focus are likely to have a larger percentage of buyers with more interest in unscented or vegetarian soaps. In my area, that would be the farmer's markets in our nearby college town. In the outlying smaller towns, the crowd is much more conventional.
Nowadays, I sell only at one gift shop in a nearby river town that has a strong tourist trade. I package my soap using a farm country and river town theme with the goal of attracting customers looking for an inexpensive memento of their trip. I want my soaps to be nicely packaged, have interesting designs, and be distinctively scented so a bar can make a pretty little gift. There is another soap maker who sells in the same shop. Her soaps are smaller but also less expensive, sold naked with no ingredients label, have soft natural colors, and are lightly scented with EOs. Her products appeal to a different set of customers than my soap does, and we both do okay.
