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Marketability of animal oils versus all-veggie soap


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I was going to post this in the "Soap experiment" thread, but I don't want to pull it off-topic.

 

If you sell your soap, I think there can be a marketing issue with using animal fats. Your particular customers may not mind, but if we look at how tastes have evolved in general, it seems easier to market soaps that are made with all veggie oils. People are interested in what goes into the soap these days, and there's an "ew" factor for some of them because they can't help but imagine that they're smearing animal oils on their bodies even though they really aren't.

 

Does anyone else have thoughts or experiences to share about how easy it is to sell animal versus all-veggie?

By the way, I agree with the comments in the other thread about the usefulness of tallow. That might be my favorite oil if I felt I could use it. You could describe it as maybe the best-balanced oil for soaping, in terms of its fatty acid profile. That's all I look at now to formulate soap and adjust its properties. While it's possible to design soap with tallow that's not great, it does make it so much easier to design top notch soap that can be made economically. I think beef tallow is the cheapest oil you can get from Columbus!

When I decided that I had to more or less replicate some of my best work using only vegetable oils, it was much harder to figure out the oils and proportions to get the balance I wanted. I could only do it by including a tropical butter and using more of it than I would have liked. The veggie soap is considerably more expensive to make, but at least no "ew" factor.

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I used goat's milk in all my soaps right from the beginning, no other animal fats, and sold with no problems.  But, a couple stores had many, many requests for all veggie bars, so I switched out my goat's milk for hemp milk and others with coconut milk without changing the rest of my recipes.  My sales have gone up and no complaints from my goat's milk lovers either.  So, for me switching my animal fat was a win-win for everyone!

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I list tallow as "tallowate" and customers haven't made the animal fat conection, so far. Nothing looks sweeter than pearly white fresh beef tallow in the bucket. Premium tallow is odorless, pure white and creamy. The veggie game only gets more complex as many people are now anti-palm and ask for organic only ingredients (oxymoron)that have heavy price tags. Upper scale customers may be able to afford the costlier ingredients but are often the worst cheapskates when it comes to fair price. Hand crafters are partially responsible as a result of marketing an "all natural, organic, no artificial sweeteners" approach to customers. Lye is an equal opportunity employer in the business of saponification and makes no distinction between the cheap or expensive ingredients. I do have all veggie formulas for babies and cancer patients. Harsh palmitic and lauric qualities can't be tolerated by sensitive baby skin or chemo sensitive skin(no fragrance either). Viva la tallow!

Steve

Edited by chuck_35550
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My very first year of selling soap I made all of them with lard for the entire year! After a full year of selling these soaps I had one customer ask me about. Just one!

 

That was a while back. Now about 75% of my soaps are all vegetable and some are vegan recipes. The others have animal fats. I still do my lard soap, and soaps with tallow and even lanolin for my specialty soaps. So far I have only had that single customer say anything about animal fat and that was the one from my first year re the lard soap. BTW-- they bought the lard soap and came back for more!

 

I don't see a problem at all with animal fat soaps. I also think that you have to consider how you market them and the quality of your ingredients and recipe. Of course there is also the seller. I sell my own soap and have turned into a pretty good salesman.

 

I sell the dickens out of my lard soap because I market it as a facial bar and I just show my enthusiasm and knowledge about my soaps and the ingredients I use.

 

My tallow soaps are my OMH, Beer, and shaving soaps. Every single one is a big seller and I think its a combination of the quality of your product, how you produce it, and how well you market your soap.

 

The other factor would be your local. It hasn't effected me and I do have a lot of educated customers especially at one particular market I do. They ask very pointed questions about ingredients, how they are produced, quality, purity, harvesting, etc. Sometimes they can educate me. But they love my soap. I think another aspect is I now do pretty much all specialty soaps. I do sets of specialty soaps featuring one or more specific ingredients. People like that they can select an oatmeal, clay, sea salt, shampoo, shaving, beer, exfoliation, mud bar, or other.

 

I think as long as your customer can choose if they want an animal fat or vegetable fat soap you should be okay. Oops-- what I meant was if you have both veggie and animal fat soaps so they can make a selection between one or the other.

 

Frankly the biggest concern that some of my customers have expressed is if I have an unscented soap. Nobody asks about animal fats in soap. My labels clearly list all my ingredients and most of my customers read my labels. I know because I watch them and those are the ones that ask questions about particular ingredients. Most people want a gentle soap that is moisturizing. 98% of the time that is what they ask for!

Edited by Candybee
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I don't cater to the fringes. Out of the gate, like most, i thought i wanted to go all natural (whatever that even means). I learned that the customer in that narrow range is fickle.

Now i make what I like: colorful, uniquely scented products that make me feel good to make and to use. I have a few people ask here and there about various things Dr. oz recommends or that they read on some fly by night blog, but for the most part people attracted to my displays are not that high maintenance of a crowd. We magpies tend to flock together.

I make veggie soap because it is what I like. I won't pander to the anti-palm crowd. My palm is sourced through the RSPO members. I have used tallow in bar soap, but now use it in only in a specialized shaving soap. I have used lard. I have even rendered tallow, lard and deer, but just don't care for them in my soap personally. Nothing wrong with them, i just found my personal choice blend and stick with it. I don't cater to the vegan crowd, but where i am it would be silly for me to omit that customer pool. It all works out in the end.

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I live in rural farm area and that's where most of my shows and markets are, and honestly it's almost as if they expect it. My soaps are all veggie oils, and I always get asked "Why don't you use lard?" 

So it really depends on where you are, what your market will bear, and how you approach it. I know in a certain town up north, I probably couldn't GIVE a lard/tallow soap away because 90% of the population there are vegans and Wiccans. So... Like everything else, it's one of those "it depends" type of things and how your market what you sell. 

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I always have those customers that ask 'do you have any lye soap?'. What they are actually asking for is a lard soap like their grandma or mother used to make. So I point them to my lard soap. Doesn't matter if you try to explain that soap is made with lye they know they want the soap made with lard. Most of them are old timers but I get a few young people that remember their grandmothers lard soap. Anyway in this area a 'lye soap' is a lard soap and many want a lard soap specifically.

 

So a way to market a lard soap is to call it a back to basics soap, old fashioned soap, or retro soap.  Just a couple ideas if you are looking for some ways to market lard soap. I call mine pure & natural, that's the name I use, and market it as a back to basics face and body bar. I sell a lot of it.

Edited by Candybee
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I live in the opposite world of JC, I live in Minneapolis and I sell vegan soap. (I do make a couple of goatsmilk or honey soaps but they are well labeled.) The only people who would do tallow or lard soap are the paleo people.

 

Also a large part of my business is the high class natural crowd. I do get asked about GMO's and such. The fat is mostly supplied by cargill (or a different cargill type company), I could with some great deal of effort, get organic and or small farmer fat. I am aware that not everything can be perfect and that I probably use GMO or cargill (as an example) products, but I do try not too.

 

THIS IS NOT ABOUT WHAT ANYONE ELSE DOES, THIS IS ABOUT WHAT I WISH TO DO.

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As others have said, it depends on your locale and customer base. Even if attitudes as a whole move in a certain direction, it doesn't mean everyone and everywhere.

A new friend showed me what she's been using. It's nice to see that she's into artisanal CP soaps. She's been getting them from a small operation that is probably pretty representative of urban northeastern sensibilities:

 

http://www.copasoaps.com

I have no connection with them. I tried one of their bars and it's well-formulated. Talking to my friend and checking out what she bought inspired me to finally delve into scenting soaps with EO.

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