Category Archives: Commentary

Your Next Best-Selling Handmade Natural Soap

Looking for your next best-selling soap? Want an up-and-coming “hot seller”? Looking for some fresh new ideas? We’re letting you in on a few of our secrets! 

Customers who are looking for a handmade soap want a natural soap alternative to the chemicals that are typically found in store-bought soap. For that reason, natural and uncomplicated continues to be a strong trend with our customers. Beyond our unscented soap, which continues to be popular, we have several others that fit the natural and uncomplicated bill. Another top priority for our customers is self-care and they are keeping that in mind when they are choosing scents and products. In terms of scents specifically, we are also seeing a large upswing in requests for unisex soap. This is a hot trend that is expected to be around for a while. Finally, those in the know are predicting an upcoming trend in the category of vintage, nostalgic, or yesteryear. Here’s what we’re seeing.

Natural

Natural and uncomplicated, or simple soaps include florals which connect us back to earth. Think of your grandmother’s garden and how connected she was with the simplicity of life and the beauty of her garden. Tried and true florals that remain popular with our customers are Lavender, Honeysuckle, Moonlight & Roses, and Plumeria. A trending floral soap scent to add to your shop this year is Sandalwood Verbena which offers a little bit of earthiness along with floral for a natural combination.

Self-Care

Soaking in a tub has long been a favorite way to add a little self-care in your life. Soaps used in self-care rituals generally contain deep, rich earthy fragrances as well as soothing fragrances. A perfect combination of earthy and soothing is our Lavender Patchouli. This scent continues to be a customer favorite and for good reason, we’ve added hints of sweet florals and exotic fruits to this one. Other tried and true customer favorites are our Dead Sea Mud Scrub, Oatmeal, Milk & Honey, and Cherry Almond. Trending soaps that fall into this category are Eucalyptus Aloe and Blue Sea from our Goat’s Milk line of soaps.

Unisex

Shoppers want to have the choice to be less traditional with the scent selections. Soap scents that appeal across-the-board to all folks are a strong trend as well. Some of our tried and true fluid unisex scents that are very popular with our customer base are Black Soap, Gobi Gold, Mountain Air, Cool Water and Kashmir. Trending unisex soaps that are taking off are Charcoal Aloe and Cedarwood Tea Tree. Add some of these hot sellers to the line of soaps you carry. Unisex is a must have category especially for the upcoming year!

Vintage

Think of yesteryear. There is a sort of timeless quality to the vintage pieces that we’re drawn to. Vintage pieces are familiar as something that once was yet elegant enough to still enjoy today. Sometimes they invoke a type of nostalgia and can bring a type of retro fun to our lives. Our Sweet Pea, Egyptian Musk, and Bondi Breeze scents all promote an elegant vintage combination while our Pink Lemonade brings more of a nostalgic feel. A trending soap that falls into the vintage category is Far Out, which is a strong, deep and elegant fragrance. Do not miss this one!

Not only are we starting a new year, we’re starting a new decade, so let’s get this thing kicked off right! We have over 200 scents to choose from and there’s sure to be something for everyone but if you’re looking for that next big seller, take a page out of our book. Our best market research comes from our very own customers. This is because we know that they will only reorder what’s already selling in their own shops. To get a list of our top 20 best sellers contact us today and we’ll take the guesswork out of it for you!

Should You Join a Soap Trade Association?

No person is an island. While your online soap shop can be doing well and making money, expansion is something that can be difficult to do by yourself. You may want to consider joining an industry trade association in order to expand and have a network to bounce off of.

What are the benefits of joining a soap trade association? Well, while you likely have to pay an annual or monthly fee, you’ll be able to learn more about how others ply their soap craft and get some ideas you can emulate. You can also be given additional training in other methods to make soap. Some might even offer liability insurance and additional listings for your soap shop, too. For more information about soap trade associations, click here:: Top Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Trade Associations and Why You Should Join

Edit Your Soap Photos for Free

One of the best selling points for your soap shop is making sure that the photos of your soap products are top-notch. One way to enhance the look of your soap on your website is to take great photos and make them greater with photo editing software. This can sound expensive, but you can find quality photo editing software FOR FREE!

Many crafters find and download photo editing programs such as PicMonkey or Gimp in order to touch up pictures. There are even less known programs such as Ribbet and Photoscape that you can try if you don’t care for the others. Many of them are easy to use and you can always look for tutorials on YouTube if there are specific tasks you need to learn to make your photos look better. For a full list of free photo editing programs, please click here:: The Best Free Photo Editing Programs for Crafters

Using Plastic Molds for Soap

While many soap makers use silicone or wooden molds for their soaps, there are plastic molds that can be used to shape cold process soap as well. However, the unmolding process is different for plastic than its wooden or silicone counterparts. What’s the trick?

When using a plastic mold for cold process soap, be sure that no air is touching the soap inside. This prevents imperfect shapes. Also, soap in a plastic mold takes longer to harden, taking up to 2 weeks before it is hard enough to maintain its shape and design. Keeping this in mind can help you create some great soap molded into a fun pattern. For a more detailed tutorial and tips, click here:: Unmolding Cold Process Soap from Plastic Molds

Adjust Soap Prices Without Losing a Profit

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“Supply and demand” is the hallmark of any enterprise and craft soaps are no different. You may make a quality soap but your soap sales might be limited due to the price you are asking for them. How can you adjust your soap prices without sacrificing too much profit?

First, take a look at your price and ask yourself if you are charging a reasonable rate for your labor. Would you pay an employee that rate? If not, then changes might have to be made. You should also ask yourself if certain ingredients in some soaps can be replaced with cheaper substitutes without sacrificing the quality. That way each soap can be cheaper to make and thus cheaper to price. For more on how to readjust your soap prices while still making money, click here:: How to Adjust Your Prices While Maintaining a Profit

A Polished Soap Pricing Primer

You have created a lovely soap that is sure to sell, but the question remains: what price should you charge for it? There are a number of factors to consider including the cost of ingredients, shipping, and the labor it took to make it. However, there are some pricing strategies that you can easily implement.

You can charge your soap at premium pricing in order to get the maximum amount of money, which can be profitable but will lower your sales overall. You can also go the other direction and keep your prices lower than other soap shops in order to compete, but that could be costly if you aren’t careful. You could always fit in with the crowd by charging a similar rate as other online soap shops, but you’d have to find a way to stand out in order to draw more customer attention. There are pros and cons to any pricing scenario. For more details on this topic, click here:: 3 Pricing Strategies for Small Business

Making Cheap Yet Effective Soap Content Marketing

Making and perfecting soaps is the primary goal for a successful online soap shop, however engaging with customers online helps keep them coming back to shop for more. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great ways to interact with prospective buyers, but many customers can find out you and your character through a blog. What’s a good way to create cheap-yet-quality blog content that’ll keep them coming back?

Perhaps shoot a tutorial video on your smartphone on how to make one of your soaps so customers can get a behind the scenes look. If you are involved in a network with other crafters and soap makers, maybe interview them for your blog and offer to link their website, too. There are a number of ways to make great content that will keep customers coming back to read and to buy. For more suggestions on how to create cheap blogging content, click here:: 3 Steps to Performing Content Marketing on a Shoestring Budget

How to Make Soaps More Giftable

Many of your soap shop customers are buying items for themselves, but there are a great number of potential customers looking to buy a soap gift for their friend. There are ways to plant the gift idea into potential customer’s heads in order to increase your sales. What are some ways to make soap appeal as a gift to others?

Well, you can make casual mentions in an item’s description to make a soap “giftable” such as “makes a great stocking stuffer” or “perfect as a Valentine’s Day gift” or whatever the soap can be applied. You can also make an option for free or cheap wrapping with a note to further encourage gift purchases. For more tips on how to make your soap more “giftable,” click here:: How to Make Your Products More Giftable

Serve Soap Shop Customers Quickly!

After making the soap, selling the soap, and shipping the soap for your online soap shop, there is one more thing you have to do: customer service. Even the best soap shops have to answer customer emails and fulfill requests, but it can be very time consuming. Slow customer service can prevent buyers from coming back for more.

So what can you do to speed up customer service? You can let customers know when you’ll be able to contact them (“Your call/email will have a response within 24 hours”). You can add an FAQ to your website that can spell out return policies and answer common questions to save you the time. This can ease the size of your shop’s inbox so you can address other issues. For more tips on how to quicken your customer service, click here:: 6 Ideas to Speed Up Your Customer Service

Tips to Add Lye to Milk-Based Soap

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Milk soaps replaces all the water in a cold process recipe with milk. This can help make a soap extra smooth with a creamier lather. However, using milk in a cold process soap recipe makes it trickier to add lye.

Lye is necessary to make soap its soapiest, but when added at the wrong time with milk soap recipes can scorch the milk. This can make the milk soap smell bad. A solution to this problem is to freeze the milk ahead of time and add lye flakes slowly while stirring. This can keep the temperature low enough to prevent scorching. For a full tutorial on cold process milk soap, click here:: How to Add Lye to Milk