Soap Business Ideas And Tips

Building a soap business takes some time, but not very much. It's a matter of doing what most needs doing and focusing where the focus belongs and the results just follow. Here are the main steps to get a soap making venture off the ground so it starts generating some profits. It's quite an adventure and here's how to get started.

Handmade Soap Making First

Starting a soap making business results almost naturally after one learns how to make natural soap. How so?

What else are you going to do with hundreds of bars of soap? Giving it away works but does little to deal with the costs of the soap. Why not try to profit from the hobby is often the thought.

To successfully market soap though requires more than just the simplest of natural soap bars. See, there are tons of soap makers who also would like to trade handmade soap for cash or valuable prizes. To make that happen requires some product development as well as some manufacturing thought as well. Here's what you do...

How would you describe professional soap?

For me, I see it as soap that works a certain way at the very least. High quality soap must lather well but it must clean well also. It should have a luxury feel and be consistent from bar to bar. It's about performance but also about feel too. It's a little bit of an intangible quality but you know it when you see it, or feel it and maybe even smell it.

Preferably the pro soap maker will offer special soap for special purposes. That might include soap for oily skin, dry skin, itchy skin as well as soap for acne or other skin conditions. There is really no limit to the special purposes you could get at with soap...

Building a handmade soap business means producing top quality soap with no excuses. The product quality come first. It's a must...

That in no way means that you cannot start a soap making business if you do not currently make soap. See, you can learn. And what's more learning soap making does not take years of study or practice. The basics are quite simple and can be mastered with just some basic instruction and a bit of practice. Just about anybody can do it and in a fairly short time.

There's more too.

Not Just Any Natural Soap Will Do Though

See, there is so much handmade soap already that one needs an angle to produce something worthy of attention. Fortunately, that's quite easy to do, though most budding soap marketers clearly give it much effort.

Unique products sell. Look, one can buy soap cheap just about anywhere. You can buy it cheaper than you can make it too. And by now many, many people know why natural soaps beat the other kind. So the burden is not really convincing anybody why natural soap is better.

The task is to demonstrate why yours is attractive, more so than what somebody else has.

Make soap different to sell it in quantity. Make it so it has no direct substitute. That can be done by using unique ingredients. It can be accomplished by making it using "different" methods.

There are numerous ways to make somewhat unique soap. It's a matter of giving it some thought and maybe getting some perspectives from others.

In either case, unique handmade soap sells. Bland handmade crafts of any sort just sit there.

How can you get yours to disappear? What's the secret?

Marketing Soap -- Finding Customers

Spend the time and effort to build world-class products and do it with minimum cost and you still face the never-ending battle faced by all small business start-ups.

How do you find somebody who might want what you have to offer?

That's not so difficult with soap products, as already many potential buyers already want premium products like olive oil soaps. They just don't know where they are or they are on a quest to locate the perfect bar of soap and just can't locate it... yet!!!

Your most obvious market is the people you know. Get the word out and friends and family will help you out. But then, after all, your family only needs so much. But if you build it properly, word will slowly leak out and sales will come in from friends of friends, but soap will probably disappear slower than you might hope and in smaller qualities as well.

What's more, sales made a few at a time often cost you in time and energy and you get little to show for it.

For example selling soap door to door would work to move some soap. But not very much, and you only make a little on each bar. The time and energy required to sell one bar at a time takes it's toll, just as it does on any direct sales person.

Hearing "No" in large quantities wears just about anybody down, given time.

It's a terrible grind.

So what's the answer? There are many potential answers. Some try gift shops and that's a way but it may be at a discount price and you best be good at knowing your cost.

The Internet sounds like a grand idea. And grand it may be but there are pitfalls there too. "Build it and they will come" was just a saying in a movie. On the Internet it's usually build it and they will NOT come.

Pros move products on the Internet and you can become one, but not right away...

So what's the answer?

It's getting in front of crowds of people that want what you have and telling them what you have. Funny as is seems, that's not really hard to do at all. It's just a matter of finding the crowds and arranging to be there and reaping the result of being in the right place at the right time.

Then what???

The Easiest Part of the Soap Business

Get a customer and the hard part is behind you. How's that???

It's the classic marketing approach. Find a customer and make them happy, even enthusiastic, and several things happen. Firstly, they tell others and that's good. More importantly, give them a chance and they buy replacement products.

See, soap gets used up!!!!!

What's more, if they trust you, which they do if your unique natural soap works great, they buy more and more. Not just what they bought to start with either. They buy other stuff now.

That's because people who like handcrafted soaps also like ________________.

Fill in the blank.

That's what you offer.

And how do you stay in touch? It's so easy...

It may be that website you wanted or just a brochure, a friendly reminder in the mail or one of many other ways.

Do you know what percentage of previous buyers of quality soap will respond to a cheap mailing about your products? It's a huge percentage. You wouldn't belive what our experience was. And all that without venturing anywhere or talking to one more person about what's better about your particular soap.

Starting a soap business takes just a little money and not that much time either. It does take putting effort into making somewhat unique products and then getting your offerings in front of some potential customers. Then the easy part is staying in touch with those happy, hopefully, enthusiastic customers.

Getting the volume of sales depends on how well you market which we cover in our material about starting a soap making business.