How would you "market" these

[rebeccajo99]

Ok, after testing a bunch of different recipes and having my neighbor try them too we determined which ones are the best. We both absolutly love my honey one and we both just love the one that is almost just like the honey one, but without the honey and shea butter.

How would you "market" them since we can't make claims. The honey one makes our skin feel "soft" and the other makes our skin feel "moisturized" (hope you understand what I'm saying, I'm having a hard time explaining it)

I would normally just offer 1 type/recipe, but I just love the color the honey turns the soap and think trying to swirl that color and still look nice is going to be very difficult. So, the other I was going to have the color swirls/additives.

I know people are going to ask what the difference is so I'm trying to prepare myself. I want people to know that there is a difference so they don't buy both kinds expecting them to feel the same, but we can't say "this one makes your skin feel soft while this one makes you feel moisturized"

I hope I make sense in this because I am having a hard time putting down what I'm trying to say.

P.s. down the road I would like to offer a shaving soap and a exfoliating soap. We can say Shaving and Exfoliating right or no?

[Scented]

I would market them as soap w/ or w/o honey and leave it at that. The thing is if you don't want it to be classified a cosmetic, then that's all it is ... soap. Period. Give them samples and let them determine what the soap does for them.

Edited September 13, 2010 by Scented

[Kitn]

What scented said. I have seen written" honey is added for the humectant properties it is said to have".

[Kitn]

Meant to say too, I agree with how nice honey leaves your skin.Have you ever tried cream in your soap? It is wonderful too.

[Scented]

What scented said. I have seen written" honey is added for the humectant properties it is said to have".

I've been taught even that is a no. I would just stick with soap w/ honey on a label.

[rebeccajo99]

I've been taught even that is a no. I would just stick with soap w/ honey on a label.

Thanks Scented. I was going to say w/ honey on the label. I like your little sample idea. Could cut up little cubes of unscented of each and package them together for those that want to try before buying. What I really need to figure out is how I can get them to try it before leaving my booth instead of sending them to the nearest restroom. That way I'm just not giving them samples and wonder if they will ever come back.

[katshe]

Thanks Scented. I was going to say w/ honey on the label. I like your little sample idea. Could cut up little cubes of unscented of each and package them together for those that want to try before buying. What I really need to figure out is how I can get them to try it before leaving my booth instead of sending them to the nearest restroom. That way I'm just not giving them samples and wonder if they will ever come back.

Ok Rececca I noticed your thread on 9-3-2010 that you made your first batch of cphp and I am concerned that you are already thinking of selling to the public. Correct me if I am wrong.

Your soap hasn't even cured three weeks yet...is that right?

I have been making soap for more that 6 years and I know that soap...even hp needs time to cure. It gets milder with curing and also firms up considerably over the course of 4- 6 weeks

You also need to be sure that its going to be just as good when cured with no dos, see if the scent lasts or morphs etc....I speak from experience...these thinks have happened to a few of my batches.

Believe me I have had many failed batches and still do on ocassion .

Now to the marketing thing...My opinion most people don't care what it does for them besides smell good...and this is from surveys I sent out to customers.. Some people do appreciate natural ingredients and the like but for the most part soap is soap.

I put honey in all my soap after the cook and also in my one m&p base...customers are drawn to it cause of the honey and what they already know about it...I did make a base without it for a while but I always sell out of the ones with honey and the others are bought when the honey is unavailable.

I think the words on the label are enough and have been for my sales. HTH

[rebeccajo99]

Ok Rececca I noticed your thread on 9-3-2010 that you made your first batch of cphp and I am concerned that you are already thinking of selling to the public. Correct me if I am wrong.

Your soap hasn't even cured three weeks yet...is that right?

I have been making soap for more that 6 years and I know that soap...even hp needs time to cure. It gets milder with curing and also firms up considerably over the course of 4- 6 weeks

You also need to be sure that its going to be just as good when cured with no dos, see if the scent lasts or morphs etc....I speak from experience...these thinks have happened to a few of my batches.

Believe me I have had many failed batches and still do on ocassion .

Now to the marketing thing...My opinion most people don't care what it does for them besides smell good...and this is from surveys I sent out to customers.. Some people do appreciate natural ingredients and the like but for the most part soap is soap.

I put honey in all my soap after the cook and also in my one m&p base...customers are drawn to it cause of the honey and what they already know about it...I did make a base without it for a while but I always sell out of the ones with honey and the others are bought when the honey is unavailable.

I think the words on the label are enough and have been for my sales. HTH

Katshe

Thanks for your concern and no, I'm not thinking about boxing these up and selling them this weekend. I tried a new recipe just about every day. I counted the ones on my curing racks and I have 7 different recipes all curing right now. My neighbor and I have our favorites and are waiting for them to be fully cured to see if they feel the same or better than what they did when we first tried them and no undesirable things happen (dos, fo/eo smell how we want, colors are good and so forth). I just like to sit and research/plan things out while I'm waiting for things to cure up. So I figured at the aboslute earlist I would be taking these to any market is in 4 to 6 weeks when the ones that I make with scents are finished curing and they turn out the way that I want. (without all of the undesirables) I'm still debating on waiting until the unscented ones we like are done curing before trying with scents or doing the scents now. Depends on how optimistic I'm being that day or not

I agree that there are people out there that only want them to smell good, but with my m&p recipe... I get people asking what is good/benefit of such and such ingredient and I only offer 1 recipe. So for those people is what I'm trying to figure out what to do.

Hope that makes sense and I comforted you some. If not, please feel free to PM me and we can talk some more

[katshe]

Ok again rebececca i did research and found that you only started making cphp soap last month and i am not sure you should start selling so soon

Others chime in here .

It took quite a while for me to feel confident after some batches in the beginning loosing scent , dos, scent morphing and turning the whole batch into a stinky mess. ... I would suggest waiting to sell to the public and see how your soap ages etc.

when doing hp you can use your soap sooner but you will notice that it is much milder after 3 weeks than the first day and. In my opinion I would want my customers to have a milder soap than one that is fresh out of the oven....It needs to cure to become more mild and it will also have better bubbles/lather after curing and harden up a bit.

I have had dos show up two months later.

I hope you don't take offense...I am just speaking from my experience and trying to give some helpful advise

Edited September 14, 2010 by katshe

[rebeccajo99]

You are not offending, I guess I'm just getting confused now. I'm not planning on taking any batches fresh out of the "oven." I just said that I'm waiting for my unscented ones to finish curing so I can see how they feel after the cure. Even when I start scenting them I plan on letting them cure before boxing and bringing them to the market. I also plan on testing a piece from each batch after a full cure to make sure I did the recipe correctly before boxing (just like I do now with my m&p recipe)

I keep reading your posts and I guess I just don’t see what I’m missing. Maybe you can spell it out more for me. If I let them fully cure and the cured product is something that is good and I am proud of. Why can’t I take that fully cured soap to the market? Please help clear up this now very confused mind.

[katshe]

sorry to have confused you ...you can take a cured soap and sell it.

You said 4 - 6 weeks you want to go to the market and you just started a month ago...sometimes soap behaves differently after a few months that I have found with some batches and I guess if a customer say, buys a few bars ...some of those bars will sit around for a while...I use a bar in like 3 weeks. So I am hoping that down the line that all is well with your soap. I mean ...that customers bar that he/she may just get to use in like 3 months from the time they purchased i

i guess i may be a bit on the cautious side.

Edited September 14, 2010 by katshe

[rebeccajo99]

No... I was just saying 4 to 6 weeks if everything went absolutly perfect, but since I have not made a scented batch yet and I don't know if my unscented ones will cure the way I want... I really don't know when it would be. I was just saying that would be the absolutly minimum time between now and market. I'm not even sure if the soap I like will be fully cured in 4 to 6 weeks, I just know that is usually the average for hp soap.

I am normally more cautious too, but I also tend to like how things feel compared to smell, so I wasn't even thinking about smell. When you mentioned fading and morphing fo's and that your customers tend to like smell more. I started doing more research (since nothing I have read in books mentions that ) My top 2 selling FO for my m&p recipe is in the sticky CP rockin' thread... so those will be my first 2 I put in my hp recipe to start curing. I need to figure out how long I'm going to cure new fo's to find out about fading. I can't let them sit 6 months to a year just to see if the fo fades. 1, i don't have the room for that and 2, my husband will kill me:) Maybe put a note on the box. "Scent will fade over time, for strongest scent, please use within such amount of time from purchase":laugh2:More things to think about while I'm waiting for them to cure:)

Quick question, if the scent doesn't fade in M&P, do you think it will be fine in my HP (and my CP once I start doing that too) or are M&P and HP/CP 2 completly different things when it comes to FO?

I hate this waiting game, I just want it to be done now:). Which is why I chose HP to do. I could test my recipe right away and tweek it until I got what I want (plus I got to try it a bunch of times without feeling like I'm playing a blind guessing game).

[katshe]

I know its hard to be patient...most scents in m&p act well for me but fading is a given with most scents ...with m&p you can shrink wrap them to keep them from loosing scent.

Hp is my other soap and i add scent after the cook and then whip with mixer. then Mold

This way the lye is gone and the scent will not get eaten up bu the lye..you could probably find that methond I posted somwhere on the soapmaking board...i think I called it whipped rebatch method.

I still find scent will fade over time but i have put them in sterlite containers, after the 3-6 wk cure, with a loose fitting lid and that has helped.

My one concern is that some scents will totally morph and turn soap ugly and stinky...one I had trouble with was NGs Austrian bamboo grass...I made hp with this and soap was well recieved and sold out fast to family but second batch and every one after that the scent totally morphs and smells rank....I love this scent as it is a fresh scent like soapy not a food scent.

I have had some soaps for a year and they still smell good...Almond (premium grade) from wellington fragrance is the best and that never fails me. My best seller too.

I think for me the creamy scents work well with my hp recipe.

First you should settle on a recipe then find a good scent and wait to see how it behaves in a few months...really.

I know it is hard to wait but in the long run it is better to test test test. to get the best.

I have never tried a soap unscented as I don't like the smell of the hp soap at all...to me it smells like cooked oil and not soap.

I don't believe that scents will act the same in hp as they have for your in m&p...different animal yes.

Edited September 14, 2010 by katshe

[rebeccajo99]

Thank-you for your informative response. Your recipe is the second one I tried and the one I tweeked off from. I really really really liked your recipe, but didn't feel right using it excatly for my soap since I planned on selling. Felt like I was stealing:)

I was leaning towards a few months for new fo's to see how it goes. I'm sure there will be a time where it will still morph/fade like you had with that one FO, but there just has to be a point where you draw the line. I think if we are too cautious, we will never walk out that door with a bar to sell it.

I'm taking all your information to heart and thinking about everything you said to find that happy/medium between being too cautious and being too quick. Hopefully with the holiday season upon us, the waiting won't be as unbarable since I will be busy making the things that I know work (my m&p recipe and wax melts). I just need to get a least a few scents made up and start curing so it isn't Jan. before I sit down and do that. Then I really will be impatient because I will have a lot of time on my hands:laugh2:

[katshe]

I have only sold to family and friends all this time through my experimenting etc and the recipe I use for hp is the only one i was happy with. Thank you for considering me when using my recipe.

I am now after 6 years or more can't remember...going to start selling outside my family friends and feeling confident.

I think maybe I could have started about 2 years ago selling to others i mean but it has been too crazy here ...I have time now and am going to start having home parties to get my products seen and used and hopefully well received.

I am just about ready with all my samples...so sxciting to see what you"ve accomplished and then to be able to have others like it too...

Keep me posted on how the scenting goes and I can help you with any questions you may have ...you can pm me...i would be more than happy to help.

[Scented]

Thanks Scented. I was going to say w/ honey on the label. I like your little sample idea. Could cut up little cubes of unscented of each and package them together for those that want to try before buying. What I really need to figure out is how I can get them to try it before leaving my booth instead of sending them to the nearest restroom. That way I'm just not giving them samples and wonder if they will ever come back.

Run a wash basin in your booth, but have it apart from your product. Be sure to bring plenty of paper towels too.

Don't cut cubes ... strips. It is easiest to use. Cubes aren't. You can do very think slivers of your soap.

[chuck_35550]

I don't know, my bands say this is hand made soap. Each soap has a title that indicates what it is meant to accomplish: salt bars, shampoo bars, deep cleansing bars, garden bars ect. People have no idea what to do with a hand made bar of soap. The best way to help customers is by giving them tips on keeping their bars dry and how best to use them so they will last. You may even think about offering your unscented soaps to those who have allergies to fragrance just don't call it a non-or-hypo-allergenic soap. Hand made is claim enough in my opinion. HTH.

Steve

[Scented]

So you're a cosmetic soaper? I guess I'm confused about your post Steve. You're bands cannot do what your mouth or fingers or toes are not supposed to do, if you get what I'm saying.

You cannot call soap anything other than soap, otherwise you're marketing and selling a cosmetic that the FDA is going to want a lot of information on.

Deep cleansing ... cosmetic. You're making a claim that it will reach down into the pits of my skin and remove dirt and unclog pores etc. that chemically-based acne soaps do. Just the association I make with deep-cleansing or cleaning.

I don't see a problem with saying salt bar, but maybe one exists there. I don't see a problem with saying a soap contains honey or dead sea mud or emu or essential oils etc. Shampoo, now I've heard arguments that borderline on shampoo is considered a drug, but I've heard that argument extended to if any dandruff-control claims are made, big trouble with FDA.

Just saying ...

[rebeccajo99]

Scented

so can you not say shaving soap? Down the road I want to create a bar of soap that has the nice thick lather for shaving. When that time comes, just want to make sure I don't cross that cosmetic line:)

[Scented]

Invest in a book called Soap & Cosmetic Labeling How to follow the rules and regs explained in plain English by Marie Gale ... if you sell, you should own it.

The FDA's description of soap is "a product in which the non-volatile portion consists principally of an alkali salt of fatty acids."

Which basically means a mix of lye with fatty acids (animal or veggie etc.)

You can add color, scent, things that enhance the foaming abilities, stabilizers, fillers and other ingredients to a soap and it will fit in the definition of soap.

The Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act exempts soap as long as it is called just soap. No nothing behind it, no additional claims that it "cleanses" or "cleans."

It becomes a cosmetic when words like moisturizing, deodorizing, skin sofening etc. are used. When you start defining your soap as doing something other being just soap, then you have to obey by cosmetic labeling requirements for it. If the FDA or a consumer "comes away with the idea that the product will have cosmetic benefits, then it is a cosmetic."

To define cosmetic ... A product, except soap, intended to be applied to the human body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness or altering the appearance. Basically if a product cleanses the body, it's a cosmetic except if it is just soap. You can do the cosmetic stuff, but you can't sell the stuff if it becomes considered a drug.

A drug is defined as "A product that is intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease and articles intended to affect the structure or any functio nof the body."

If you make claims, promote claims from consumers etc. on your website or in literature or by talking about your product then your product better be following the cosmetic labeling requirements. This is where the book I mentioned will inform you on how to label correctly.

In case you decide to go the direction of using Bug off or making bug off sprays etc. ... note that your product must be approved by the EPA before it is marketed, although some biological products made using only ingredients from preapproved lists may be sold without pre-approval. What those are, you'll have to find out.

If you call your product soap (we're back on soap now) and say that it cleans then it is a consumer commodity and not a cosmetic. A consumer commodity is something that is bought retail, used in daily life and generally used up at some point.

If you list any cosmetic qualities for your soap other than that it cleanses, it is a cosmetic. If the product is intended to clean, beautify, promote attractiveness or alter appearance, it's a cosmetic.

To answer your question about shaving soap ... it is a cosmetic and you will need to meet labeling requirements set forth by the governing agency and meet FDA regulation.

So really I should be saying, you can make cosmetics, but to your benefit, make sure you meet the FDA regulations and labeling requirements if you're selling.

http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm074201.htm

http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ActsRulesRegulations/default.htm

http://www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm074162.htm

Just some links to go through.

[chuck_35550]

Point well taken.

Thanks,

Steve

[rebeccajo99]

Thanks Scented. I havn't heard of that book before, so I will check it out. I had the FDA website on labeling saved in my favorites and keep reading that and practicing it with my soaps. I also saved the links you gave and will read those as well.

I've been trying to be careful with all my labeling on my soaps and how I word things when customers ask about them. I don't want to get in trouble.

Sorry about all the questions with this. I want to add to my line with other products, so I'm trying to learn all the requirments.

[Scented]

Don't apologize for asking questions. Actually, never apologize for it. We've all been in a spot where we need to learn something and should be learning something daily. To get there means ask questions. I'm like the preschooler in a perfume swap, because I don't get it ... so see, we all end up in the same spot or a beginner's spot or a place where we need to know something. If someone never has to ask a question then I want to meet that person and ask why.