BLSoaps

They were by the cigarette register. If your Walmart is set up like mine, they carry different, and very often weird, items by the register that sells the cigarettes than they do on the other aisles. That's where it was in ours. All those 'As seen on TV' items tend to make it there. Although this is also where I bought my dryer balls, and I LOVE those things. If only I could get my kids to stop stealing them.... On Topic.... have you looked into Pendergrass? At one point, ages and ages ago, I had the wholesale password. But I'm sure someone has it, since it's passed around like crazy on groups like this. http://www.pendergrassinc.com/

Buy one get one half off is a pretty big savings for the customer. As long as you know you've got a VERY good mark up on your products, go for it. More typically you'll see things like Buy one for $5, 5 for $20 (or whatever numbers work for your product). Or Buy five get one free.

You could get these.... they're exfoliating gloves.... Okay, so they might be a little harsh for your skin.... (they're really freaky looking gloves. Saw them in Walmart last week! You're supposed to be able to peel a potato just by rubbing it with these gloves) (Sorry, I couldn't resist. I saw the title exfoliating gloves, and this was the first thing that popped into my head!)

LOL! Thank you! I've been doing this a long time, and have really come a long way with my websites. I'm still doing all of it myself, including my photos. My webhost honestly has to take most of the credit for how the site looks overall. HCMPro. If you know PrairieAnnie on here, that's the company she and her husband Frank run. And they're amazing! But I host both my sites through them.

I read the post you told me to find. I don't know why she said that, unless she had misinterpreted something written somewhere else. But some of the most popular soap colorants out there for CP Soap (Peacock, LabColor, Select Shades) are water based. Basically the D&C and FD&C colorants come in powdered form, and are then reconstituted with water to make them much more manageable to use. I buy my colorants powdered and mix my own, as opposed to paying for the water. I'm including a link to some photos of various soaps I've made over the years with water based colorants. As you can see, water based colorants certainly can work VERY well in CP soaps. It's a good thing, since they're my favorite type of soap colorant! LOL! http://picasaweb.google.com/blsoaps/SheaButterSoapsFragranceOils

I'm guessing the 2nd 9.8 Olive was meant to be your lye. That's how it came out in the caculator I plugged it into... You've got a high percentage of castor, which makes a softer soap. The water looks high to me as well, as did the EO blend. I've never soaped with Canola, but i've heard it makes a softer soap. Olive Oil makes a hard bar, but only with time and a long cure. Your hard oils are on the lighter side as well, only about 34%. Mine is usually around 50%. Put all together, that could give you a softer soap. Hopefully it'll harden up. I've never heard of citrus EOs slowing curing. My experience is they will often slow trace, but that's different.

Where did you read that? Most of my soaps are made with liquid FD&C and D&C dyes, and they're water based. They can sometimes morph because of the pH of the soap, but as long as you know the morphing (like blue #1 turns purple in CP) you can easily work with it.

I personally wouldn't do only one scent each. There are minimums in wholesale for a reason. I'd consider giving her 30% for a bulk purchase, but not 50%. If she's trying to see what sells, honestly, even only 1 of each, I don't see the logic in that, but I'm not awake enough to figure out how to explain it. 3 of each and one scent sells out first, then it will most likely a good seller. But one only, once that one sells, future customers won't even know the scent is offered, and they're limited to what's left. Eh, that's the best I can do at the moment.... it's there in my mind, just not coming out in words. If she still wants to start with one of each, then give her 30% off, and let her know she can get the full 50% off when she orders next time with your minimums per scent. Also, don't do it without full information from her about the store, the state (why in the world would she hide either unless she has something to hide, most people are proud of their businesses). Very simply, tell her you need all this information (including her tax id number for this business) to be able to sell to her. And you do need this info. If you're not comfortable, don't do it. But don't write it off simply because you're a little suspicious. If you haven't nailed down your wholesale terms, PM me, and I'll send you what I do. It should give you a good guideline of the various things you should include. And doing it private label could get it a little more complicated as well. Private label can be very lucrative though, just make sure it's being done properly. BTW, is this candles, B&B, soap, all the above.... it can make a difference in the labeling. But congratulations on the opportunity!

I had a supplier once meet me at a park close to her place for pick ups. This was down in Phoenix, and she was in the process of building a warehouse, I believe, but in the meantime, was working from her home (a large storage unit on the back of her property). She got busy enough that she started setting several times weekly for these drop offs (always joked about dealing drugs out of the back of her car in the park! LOL!), because her customers had her running at all kinds of hours down there. She laid out the times, said pick one, let me know, or pay for shipping. I honestly think that's very reasonable. I've had a few locals pick things up from me, but I've done similar to the above, and met them outside my home. I've always liked the park aspect, because I'd let me kids go play on the playground, which allowed me to chat with my customer without too much kid interruption, and it also kept my home private. Edited to add, I usually added a local pick up fee of about $2.00 or so. I haven't done this in a while, so it's not on any of my sites at the moment. If I have to drive to get to the meeting place, they're paying for my gas and time! Both are way too expensive and valuable these days! LOL!

Is it something like this that you're looking for? These are intended to sit on countertops or by registers. The Box holds the product and also stores it, then you sell the items individually out of the box. or.... If so, these are from boxcoop.com. If this isn't what you're looking for then we really need more details on what kind of box, cuz we're obviously all confused.

Technically Rice Powder and Rice Flour are the same thing. Both have been sold under both names. There are definitely different grades of the powder though. When used in a body powder, it needs to be a very very fine ground. If you rub a little between your fingers and it feels a little gritty, it won't work well for a body powder. If it feels silky smooth, then celebrate by making a body powder!

I hope it works for you! I tried it two halloween's in a row and it didn't really do anything. Although one year, I had a lady pass out her home party invitations while trick or treating the weekend BEFORE her party. Worked like a CHARM! That was my best home party sales ever! LOL! This year I'm just going to be happy to go out with my kids and enjoy a night off work! LOL!

LOL! Thanks Ronnie! Since I spent several years researching B&B stuff (ingredients, recipes, etc), I spend more time nowadays researching things like marketing, advertising, etc. I've learned a lot. And when I get going, I really get going. So it was long, but honestly, I barely even touched the tip of the iceberg... Scary, isn't it???

This was my first thought as well. Sales were slow, and she's trying to come up with some excuse to get her money back on them. Do NOT consider a refund unless you get all the candles back. Even then, honestly... I don't know. Five months, especially when you're unlikely to even retain her as a customer. I think I'd tell her no. I've always had the policy that we will exchange or refund for defective product only. As others have stated (since I don't make candles), nothing is actually WRONG with the candles. And even with defective product, I have a time limit. Personally, I'd say no refund. PS - Even the more lenient big box places don't allow returns after 90 days. Five months is absolutely ridiculous. But you do need to do what you think is best, and what will sit with you and your conscience.

You've answered your question partly right there. You have not seen any sales or even hits really coming from this advertising venue. So for this company, you may as well just be throwing $20 in the trash. It sounds like it's doing you about that much good. As for figuring out how much to spend on a specific line of advertising, it's all about ROI, or Return On Investment. Your ROI must be worth it. To be able to calculate this, you also have to know your profit on your products, your average order size, and your conversion rate. So let's say your average web order is $30.00, and $15.00 of that is profit. I'm also going to assume your conversion rate is 1% (2% and up is optimal and very good). If you don't know what a conversion rate is, holler, and I'll start SEO 101. My example is going to use pay-per-click methods, because it's easier to explain. But you should be able to see how that applies to any type of paid advertising on your site. Testing is key. As you mentioned, the company you're currently working with isn't bringing in results. That should tell you right there it's not worth $20 a month. 1 person out of 100 visitors is placing an order on your site. If you're paying 10 cents per click (Pay Per Click = PPC) for customers to come to your website, then 100 visitors is costing you $10.00. So it's costing you $10 to get you one $30 sale. With your profit margin of $15, you end up with $5 profit from the sale. Is this worth it? Only you can decide. If your conversion rate is 2%, two people out of 100 are buying stuff. You still only have paid $10 for the click throughs, but you've sold $60 instead of $30, and have $30 worth of profit. Now you have $20 profit after the PPC has been paid. Is that worth it? Again, only you can decide, but you can see how tiny changes can make a big difference. Simply by converting one more visitor you've tripled your profit. Now with conversion rates (I'm going to discuss it a little here, simply because if I go on, and you don't know what it means, you'll be lost), 2% is very good. Even the top selling websites usually don't consistently get more than 3%. They'll have spikes above those percentages, but 2% is very good. Even 1% is good. It could be better, but it's decent, especially if you didn't know what conversion rates were, and haven't been working at them. Anyway, you've got people visiting your site, browsing, then leaving. That person was not converted. At least not yet! If you get 1 person out of every 100 buying stuff from you, your conversion rate is 1%. So how can you make your paid advertising work better for you? STEP ONE: Improve your conversion rate. You can have all the traffic in the world coming through your site, but if your site is not converting the visitors into buyers, then your site isn't doing it's job. So before you work on getting MORE traffic, work on converting the traffic you currently have into buyers. STEP TWO: Increase your order size. If your current average order size is $30, work on increasing that to $40. If you were getting $40 per order, then in the earlier examples, your final profits after your PPCs would have been $15 and $40. That's a good sized difference. STEP THREE: Test, test, test. As you've already noticed, this current venue isn't working for you. I'm glad you actually KNOW that. A lot of people unfortunately do stuff, think it's helping their website, increasing traffic, increasing sales, but honestly, they don't know because they don't know how to check. If you don't know how to check the stats on your website, find out now. If you don't have a tracking program built in, get one. (speaking of which, I really need to check mine) If changes improve traffic or improve sales, or conversion rates, keep it. If it doesn't, ditch it. Okay, I've got to go get some work done. I hope this helped (and made sense ). I'll try to keep an eye on the thread as things progress, and answer questions as they come up. Have a great weekend in the mean time! Edited to add this little tidbit.... If you are spending more on PPCs than you're getting back in profit, it obviously ISN'T worth it, and you're losing money. PPCs can cost all different kinds of amounts. The only way to know what your products can handle is knowing your ROI index. If it's $15 (based on the original example), then you can pay up to 15 cents per click and with your conversion rate at 1%, you'll break even. If you need more help on calculating this, holler, and I'll go see if I can dig up the calculation for it...

Ah, now this is something that had not come up in any of the research that I had done so far. I admit I haven't researched it tons, but I hate websites that don't mention things like this. (one of my major pet peeves is the sites that recommend all the citrus EOs in lip balms but never mention the increased sensitivity to sun) I'll definitely research it further. Thanks for the heads up!

That was our first stop actually! It gave us some ideas, some of which we're trying out. I just didn't have a whole lot of details on how the BP soaped.

I'm not shipping full sized samples. She asked for lotion samples. I use 1/2 sample containers at the most, which I get for dirt cheap. And it will easily ship first class. So yeah, I don't make anything off it, not really, but it's enough to weed out the true freebie seekers. Usually it's enough to make them go look elsewhere. This is honestly the first time I've ever had someone come back and say 'sure, I'll take it'. Since I'm 'refunding' the sample cost anyway on their first order, I'm not too worried about. It's there mainly as a weeding process for me. After this experience, if I decide $1.00 wasn't enough, then I'll change it. I'm still just shocked I actually had a bite. These guys almost never do. I keep meaning to create an actual SAMPLE PACK and put it on my website (I've got one on my supply site, but not my retail site... all this is regarding my retail site), but time... I don't have nearly enough of it. And I haven't decided how I want to set it up either. That's what has been holding me up more than anything honestly. I don't always have soap samples to send, but I can easily make up lotion samples.

I got an e-mail yesterday requesting samples, claims she wants to purchase items for gift baskets for co-workers and family members. I totally figured it was a scam looking for free samples. But I answered politely, and friendly. I said we charge $1 per sample to offset the cost of packaging and shipping. And asked her what products and what scents she'd like to sample. And I mentioned that we'd send her a GC for the cost of the samples that she could put towards her first purchase. I just got an e-mail with the scent & product requests. And asking how she should send me the money for them. My jaw hit the floor. I totally expected this to be a scam looking for freebies. Looks like it may not be. I still won't send anything out until I get her money in my hot little hand (she asked about sending it through the mail, which with my business paypal fees, might be better! LOL! Darn fees!). So I'm glad I replied politely. Yeah, there are way too many scammers out there, but not every person that requests samples is a scammer.

We're toying with Cedarwood, and I'm going to be making a small test batch with it. We're trying to stay away from anything sensitizing, like black pepper, otherwise I'd have gone with small amounts of cinnamon and clove (I make a wonderful Gingered Orange Spice Soap, but it's got clove and cinnamon EOs in it. I haven't had any one experience issues with it, but I've always forewarned that the soap was not intended for sensitive skin. We need a blend that is pretty unisex, and well rounded enough for pretty much any skin type. So as much as I'd like to play with a little cinnamon or clove, or even black pepper (I love blending vanilla with black pepper.... I haven't done that in a while.... hmmmm.... I just got more Olive Oil yesterday.... ), we need to keep sensitizers out of the blend mix. So frustrating, but necessary. Thank you for the suggestions though!

Thanks Suds! This is exactly what I was looking for info wise. I just added an ounce onto an order that was already being placed, so it wasn't a big deal. But I can see this EO becoming an addiction, which may not be a good thing. The notes about discoloring to brown are good to know. I thought it might, but I'll admit I was hoping otherwise. The scent sticking is EXCELLENT news though. I'm going to play around with it in some blends tomorrow. I just have a very top note heavy blend, and need something to round out the bottom end of the blend. And it needs to be something that won't drive me nuts, since I'll be making lots and lots of this soap once we nail down the scent formula. (a lot of EOs give me headaches because of how strong they are) Carebear, it's a woodsy vanilla like smell. Subtle and rich and I think it will add some awesome depth to our blend.

That's all I found either on the SRB. Blends, but no notes on how they worked, how they stuck. Which is why I came here... hoping to find someone with personal experience with the stuff. If all else fails, I'll make a small test batch. Thanks though!

I'm working on a custom EO blend for a customer. It's mostly citrus scents, and we're looking to anchor it with some other scents, and trying some different alternatives. We're doing testers with Ginger (doing well so far), Patchouli (not my favorite, but it seems to work). They asked me to try Peppermint and Rosemary with the citrus (my brain is gagging already, but I know citrus mint is big right now... don't get it, but I know the trend is there). I just received a small bottle of Balsam Peru EO in. I've been eyeballing this EO for quite a while, but the price tag kept turning me off. It's not totally outrageous, but pricey for soaps if it doesn't stick. Since it's going into a blend, I'm good with using it as part of the blend (btw, OOB it smells fabulous! I love EOs and their properties, but I don't always like how they smell). But before I toss money down the drain, has anyone soaped this EO? Any info would be appreciated. I tried searching the Scent Review Board, but I think my search was too broad, since this EO can be purchased from any number of sources. I know the main thing I'm looking for is does it stick. After that, the normal A&D notes. If it doesn't work in soap, then it'll still be gorgeous in lotions at least!

As for soap, I would never recommend exceeding 1 oz per pound of oils. Assuming that the scent of the soap (not the scent remaining on the skin) is soft, then the oil is most likely not a good one to use in soap making. Soap making is a nasty harsh environment, and if the FO doesn't survive, then the manufacturer goes back, tweaks different elements of the FO, and hope that the new results work better in soap. And a note to Carrie, as for making scents stronger in your soaps, you really should be asking your soap maker, not us. She may be using less than 1 oz, and can up it. Since we don't have access to her exact recipes, we can't know that. Talk to her, see if she can help you out. With the FBB and lotion, don't go above the recommended usage rates for the FOs. They're there for a reason, so make sure you abide by them. And I can sympathize. I'm working on a deal right now with an exclusive scent blend for a customer in soap. He wants the scent to stay on his skin after his shower. So he wants me to make it stronger than it already is (which is absolutely overwhelming to me, as well as pretty much everyone but him). I really can't go above what I'm adding already.

The FO usage rates are based more on the FO supplier. Most recommend up to 3%. I use a max of 1%, simply because the FOs I purchase are high quality, and don't need to be used at higher usage rates (at least not without knocking you out! LOL!). My average usage rate is 1 oz per gallon, which comes out to 0.78%. Softer FOs I'll sometimes up to a full 1%. Many FOs I drop down to 0.5%, if they're really strong. But whatever you add to it, it'll take it. I really need to start working on my FAQ page.... and make sure this info is on there! LOL! I need a button for FAQ made up first. Oh Sharon.... LOL!