keniasoapboutique

Thx everyone for the responses. I'm also trying to look at this like a consumer. They're not used to blocks! You tell them it's natural and handmade and you get a little head nod as if that's a good bonus. But remember, most people grew up on ivory, dial, irish spring, et. They're used to seeing rounded, curved edges. And that's also my personal preference because of the way I bathe. Rolling around a sharp-edged soap brick in my hand isn't exactly how I want to start the morning. Now, personal preferences aside, are you telling me that there is NO WAY it can be done?

There . . . I said it. Now that I've got that off my chest, let me start by saying that I'm not the soap maker, Kenia is. Me? I'm just a guy who knows what he likes. I'm typically the voice of reason between the two of us and my voice is telling me that there has to be a better way. I understand how the process works, and no matter how anyone tries to dress it up, ridge cut, embeds, swirly colors and thingamajigs, blocks are still ugly. The 3D molds that we use for melt & pour look so much more impressive than manually cut up, square, blocky bricks of soap. I can't be the first person to care about the aesthetics. There MUST be a way to make natural soap in an attractive 3D type mold. Any help/suggestions? Or am I fighting a losing battle?

My partner called me a couple of weeks ago talking about these things. I had no idea what they were, so I had her explain the concept to me. She says that she saw them somewhere, bought a few, melted the candles (paraffin), removed the wicks, and then placed them in some of our Soy candles (EcoSoya PureCB). Now, she's telling me all of this on the phone and in the background I can actually hear the crackling and popping of the wick. I can see lighting one of these on a cold Winters night, but I myself like to create an 'atmosphere' with our candles. I'll light several at a time. 10 of these things snap crackling and popping constantly would definitely kill any kind of mood I was trying to set. But, Kenia was undeterred. We purchased some from WholeSaleSP and she made some of our candles with them. When I finally got around to checking them out, the look was completely unexpected. I was expecting something more 'pencil-like'. What I got was 2 popsicle sticks stuck together. Not aesthetically pleasing. All that aside, the most important part is the fact that I could not get the thing to stay lit. And even if I had, I'm not sure where the advantage is to wood wicking? It's certainly not cheaper than traditional wicks, and the soot/residue factor would negate one of the biggest advantages of Soy wax: Clean Burning! Needles to say, it was an experiment that failed for us. We don't hear our customers clamoring for them, so we're probably not going to pursue it any further.

Actually, I do this all of the time. Not this exactly. There's no flame involved, but a warmer/container combo really does benefit from 're-scenting' after a wax has lost it's oomph. You've got all of this warmed wax that's no longer throwing like it used to, what do you do with it? Put in a drop of this and a drop of that to experiment with diff scent combos.

Quick note, we tried some of the wood wicks from WSP recently and I personally was not impressed. They look like two popsicle sticks stuck together and the things would not stay lit for the life of me. I just don't see a real advantage to using the things? Our whole 'spiel' is that our soy candles are safe and burn without soot and residue. Using these things would negate that advantage.

Yeah, we started out with disc tops, but our lotions are so thick that about halfway through a bottle, you'd have to store it upside down in order to get any out. So we had an option of thinning out the base or just being consistent with a quality pump top. They both hold a tiny bit more than 8 oz. I never thought about the size perception thing. We're trying to stick with just one style for both products. In the near future, we'd like to get into body wash as well. Our liquid soap base is good, but it doesn't really lather as well a true body wash should. The labels were done by me. (I'm Daniel, Kenia does the REAL work) Just standard 2x4 address labels I whipped up in my graphics program. The images I was able to find freely on the net. They stick very well, but I wouldn't call them 'weatherproof'.

Here is a picture of our lotion/liquid soap products in 2 different bottle types. The vertical/Boston PET bottles in the rear are from SKS-Bottle. The ones' in front are our newer 'Bell' style, and they're from Freund Container. Personally, I prefer the bell style. They're stable and less apt to tip over. The horizontal label looks much better and is easier to apply (even easier to design).

We've ordered from them. Boucle sacks, wooden soap dishes, and loofah sponges. All pretty good HQ stuff and very nicely priced.

Selling a few items on eBay is different than opening an eBay 'Store'. The Store isn't cheap, and no, I don't see a real advantage to it. For the price you pay eBay for the store and the percentage you pay them for final auction values, you could have a webhosting service and a complete storefront.

I noticed that if you add something to the shopping cart, it does discount your purchase by 25%.

The ribbons, thankfully we were able to find them locally Nashville Wraps. And the jars are the clear Tuscany style that we got from Wholesale Supplies Plus. They're listed at 8.3 oz., but we can comfortably get 10.5 oz of salt scrub in each. We use a plastic inner liner to keep the seal during shipping.

If you don't know HTML or PHP, you will definitely be paying someone to do your work for you. Unfortunately, that cost might be prohibitive. We were lucky enough to get a storefront included with our hosting service, so it was pushbutton simple for us to get started. I've made all of the customizations and changes to our site myself and I'm proud of that. It's still not perfect. Looks a bit too stock, but I know what it takes to get to the next step. I know enough about scripting languages to be dangerous, but I've picked up enough PHP along the way that I can make site changes myself and not worry about paying one of my extremeties to an outside coder. Your best bet is to see a website that you like, study the layout, the shopping cart, the graphics, etc and then do your best to model your new site after that one without being a direct duplicate. If there are templates out there, you should investigate those too. It would definitely save you time and money over starting from scratch.

I'm an Application Developer by trade. More specifically, a Database Programmer. That means I see things in rows and columns constantly. Everything must be categorized, numeralized, and has it's place. I was wondering if there was a retail (or even custom made) PC program that can track supplier prices and tie them to your product pricing. We have 'recipes' for each of our products. EX: One 4.75 oz bar of soap is made up of this much lye, this much essential oil, this much fragrance, etc. Then we add packaging, ribbons, and any printing that we do and we come up with an aggregate of what it costs us to make ONE bar of soap. We use that number to do our final pricing for retail and wholesale. Each of those components, everything from the main ingredients to the packaging, has an individual price. These prices are different from supplier to supplier. Tracking all of the suppliers, and their current prices for each product would be a bit time consuming, but if it saves a few or even a few hundred dollars on a potentially large order, I think it's worth it. Currently, we're part Excel spreadsheet and part calculator to do this. We haven't outpriced ourselves on anything yet, but that's my fear, that we'll end up not calculating correctly and then selling something for a lot less than we should. I'd love to write something that tracks these things, but I simply don't have the time. My question is, how does everyone else do it? How do you keep track of your ingredient prices and tie them to your product prices? Do you even do that? If you find an easier or cheaper way to produce your items, do you pass those savings on to your consumers? Currently, we do it for wholesale buyers, but constantly fluxing retail prices don't look good.

Could it be because the bulk of their sales have shifted from the brick and mortar shops to on-line? Even selling to re-sellers would negate the need for a store in every mall. Just a few large distrib centers to get the product out and that's all.

We use netfirms.com for our domain and our hosting. They have built-in tools like php forums, and oscommerce storefronts. There's a buttload of 3rd party support and tools to customize things to your liking. I'm currently working on the look and feel of our forums, but our website was pretty much hassle free to set up and admin.

Ummmm . . . nope. No insurance. I guess that's something else I have to get working on. We just LLC'ed last week. Getting that worked out had been priority. Maybe we just assumed that with the limited liability, why would we need expensive insurance? Yes, I know what assuming does. It can kill a small business.

We're a small shop, and I'm glad that we are. We get to listen to individual customers and get feedback and ideas directly from them. When they want something new, we know it immediately. Our latest endeavor, body lotion. These are some test units we whipped up. Our mix (multi-base: Aloe Vera from KangarooBlue.com) is incredibly silky and works great. We're impressed with how well it holds the scent and how easy it was to make. It is thick, which we like as well, but getting the lotion out is kinda like those old ketchup commercials. Turn the bottle upside down and shake vigorously. Because of that we're going to forego the flipcaps and go with pump tops, but other than that, we're very happy with our results.

Those are 20 oz!?!?!? Wow. I was thinking they were small. Very small.

What size are those? I'm guessing in the 5 to 6 oz. range? We're always up for different containers. Especially if they're reasonably priced.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Those are 5oz. (yes, we trim the wicks down a bit before sale) We currently also offer 16oz, but we're contemplating changing our glasses for those. And CandleMan, thanks for the tip on the ribbons. We didn't even consider that possibility. Toasted Coconut (16oz. and 5oz.)

We jumped into this bath and body thing with both feet and did most of our learning along the way. It's been an interesting few months, to say the least. We're still not settled on if we'll stick with these tumblers or go to full lidded containers, but for now . . .