subject: Starting A Soap Business The Natural Way [print this page] Starting A Soap Business The Natural Way Starting A Soap Business The Natural Way
Is starting a soap business appealing to you? Natural soap surely does sell well and you surely can turn a soap making hobby into a money maker very fast compared to many other home scale small business ideas. Many folks give it a try since it does cost so little to get started. Here are a few real world tips for starting and running a soap making and marketing venture. Do you really want to deal with a business? Often turning a hobby into a business ruins the hobby and never makes any money either. Do you like dealing with people and selling and marketing? How would you like to make lots of soap instead of a little soap? How would you like to move from making dozens of bars of soap to tens of thousands of bars? It may turn into a lot of work. You learn about work if you make a few hundred bars of soap in a short period of time. Some folks act as if licenses and insurance are show stoppers. That's often the first topic of discussion.. Get real... There are very few regulations about making soap. That's not the case for lotions. The lack of soap regulations is a real plus. Now licenses are something you should look into, but be realistic. At first what you have is a hobby after all. Don't let the need for licenses stop you from getting started. Get what you need, but don't be paralyzed into inaction. Products are key and here's why that is. Lots of people make soap. Why should anybody buy yours? Can you answer that easily? What you need is a product that truly is different, something that's unique to you. That's quite an easy accomplishment with soap and it's just a matter of learning. Marketing can be relatively easy if you get started a particular way. Making soap is one thing. Selling is quite another thing. The plan must include a way to get people to try the products you have. There are ways, you know. Then the easy part is following up with customers to get repeat sales. Often soap makers put little effort into repeat sales and thus fail not because of product or even selling, just from lack of follow-up. Is there money in selling soap? Possibly... That's because there is a good potential profit in a bar of soap. The material cost is quite a bit less than the price a bar of soap brings. You must control cost and you must produce efficiently. Both are possible if you know what to do... We learned about starting a soap business by experience. Moving about 35,000 bars of handmade soap is a way to learn. Starting a handcrafted soap business must be one of the easiest to start manufacturing businesses there is. However, you have a lot of competition so you have to get started right or you'll probably at least waste time and maybe money as well...
