A seasoned soap-maker shares how to start a homemade soap business and avoid slip-ups when turning your hobby into a business.
Most people find that when they reveal the news of their soap-making endeavor, it sparks enthusiasm from friends, family, and would-be customers. People can’t wait to try your bars! You make piles of soap during your practice runs, tempting you to give them away freely just to keep from being overwhelmed. But eventually, the costs grow larger – so you think about selling. Consider these factors before you do.
During 20 years of making and selling soap, I’ve developed opinions based upon firsthand experiences and conferring with other professionals. When my experience differs from that of my soap-making colleagues, I search out additional perspectives. I want to share the best of my research. May these lessons help you in your journey toward running your own soap-selling business.
How to Start a Homemade Soap Business
Take the time to learn your craft before you sell. A loyal following happens when customers are consistently satisfied – and that only happens when your products are consistently good. Mastery takes hands-on, trial-and-error experimentation. Various oils and how they interact with fragrances, botanicals, techniques (such as swirling), and colors (micas, oxides, or ultramarines) will all introduce layers of complexity. Through it all, you’ll need to achieve the texture and appearance your customers expect every time.
Progress Gradually
Only explore the possibility of selling your soap to the public after you’ve developed recipes you’re happy with and yield consistent results whenever you make them. When you experiment with additives – herbs and spices, clays, essential and fragrance oils, and natural or lab-standardized cosmetic colorants – practice one new element at a time so you fully understand how each behaves.
Repeat this process for each new type of product you want to make, waiting to sell until you’ve mastered each. Be patient with yourself and enjoy the process.
Learn to Hot-Process
The hot-process method is similar to cold-processing for the first half of most soap recipes: mix lye, mix oils, pour the lye mixture into the oil mixture, and agitate to move along the chain reactions. However, when hot-processing, after the mixture reaches medium trace, it sits in a slow cooker set to “low” for a few hours to finish processing. The cooked soap completely finishes its saponification before you mix in fragrances or colors and pour the soap into a mold.
You need about half as much fragrance for hot-processing compared with cold-processing soap, and you don’t need to worry about misbehavior, such as ricing, separating, or seizing soap batter. The soap is usable as soon as it cools and hardens into sliceable pieces. When you run into a fragrance that does misbehave, you can throw it into a slow cooker, cook it, and end up with a soap that’s perfectly usable, if not aesthetically flawless.
Stock a Variety Including Unscented Soap
Some people love a creamy, unscented bar of handmade soap. For others, essential oil fragrances, intense colors of micas, or lovely flecks of botanicals lure them. You can drive yourself crazy trying to have something for everyone; on the other hand, you can miss sales by appealing to one group.
If you produce bright colors and creative scents, keep one or two unscented, uncolored varieties in stock for those who prefer them. You can grab a few more sales, and the plain soaps get better with age. If you primarily offer all-natural bars, include several lovely, pastel shades of natural colorants. They’re beautiful and appeal to many.
Learn Fragrance Oils
When searching for fragrance oils, look for suppliers that specialize in phthalate-free, cosmetic-grade oil concentrates. Forgo diluted perfume oils; they smell good in the bottle but can’t stand up to the raw soap environment. Nor will you want fragrance oils that contain alcohol, which can cause curdling and seizing in your soap recipe. Avoid candle or lotion scents unless they’ve been tested as safe for cold-process soap recipes. Only use fragrance oils designed for the purpose, and always read reviews. Even if the supplier does its own soap testing and posts results, check if things work out the same for everyone using the product.
It takes a lot of fragrance for a soap recipe. Expect to use approximately 2 ounces of fragrance for the average 32-ounce soap recipe (enough to fill a 46-ounce mold, after adding water and lye weight). If you use essential oils, look up resources to determine which oils are skin-safe and their proper dilution rate for homemade soap. Every essential oil has a different concentration rate, and each one will require using a distinct amount to yield a lasting scent.
Understanding a bit about perfumery will help you to create a blend that’ll last in the harsh raw-soap environment and not fade away in the finished soap. Minimally, learn whether an essential oil is a top, middle (heart), or base note – and how to blend them to create a complex scent profile that won’t fade.
When to Say ‘No’ – Or ‘Yes’
Everyone will offer opinions about what you should make. The pressure to feed their desires can be overwhelming. Listen to yourself over the din of other voices. Is a certain product line or soap style really the direction you want your business to go? Practice saying, “Thanks for the input! I’ll think about it,” so you can avoid the pressure of an immediate response.
While practicing the art of saying “no,” don’t forget when to say “yes.” Offers of help can be invaluable with a little time devoted to teaching and fitting the right task to the right person. Especially when you’re just getting started, friends and family will often eagerly volunteer their services. Take them up on it, especially when these trainees have the capacity to continue working with you for some time.
Feel Out Your Limits
After two years of running a brick-and-mortar shop, an online retail store, and a thriving wholesale business, I realized I had painted myself into a corner. Saying yes to too many good ideas too fast had resulted in 11 products – each available in 15 different scents! I remained cloistered in the back, working more than 70 hours per week producing thousands of products by myself, while my helpers held down the storefront. Such a situation isn’t sustainable.
If you can’t be gone for a short time without everything falling apart, make hard decisions to cut back on products that eat too much time or money or yield too few sales.
Consider Soap Maker’s Insurance
Whether gifting or selling, carefully and completely label the packaging with all ingredients in order of dominance. This is the only way your customers can protect themselves from known allergies and sensitivities. It’s critical that the label on every bar of soap is accurate and complete. Include your contact information on the packaging in case anyone has questions about the contents. As an added precaution (but a smart one), the Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild, a nonprofit trade association for small businesses handcrafting soaps, recommends purchasing soap-maker’s insurance.
Selling Homemade Soap at Farmers Market
In any sales situation, you’ll want to be eye level with customers. Sit in an elevated director’s chair or stand, which will put you where you can easily engage with customers so they don’t avert their eyes and pass by. When you need to sit in a low position, arrange yourself up front and clearly visible. Customers with questions won’t want to search for someone to answer them. For the same reason, display prices prominently. Folks don’t want to have to ask, and often they won’t.
The market booth itself should be neither stark nor overly complicated. Have an abundance of product available (scarcity leads to fewer sales overall) while not so visually cluttered that people get choice overload and walk away empty-handed. Avoid a distracting display; your product should be the most prominent and noticeable part of your setup.
Get Bars to Noses
The best way I’ve found to sell soaps is to have naked, attractive bars out front, ready to go into a hand – and then up to a nose.
Have options available that won’t repel germ-conscious potential customers. For sniffing, include small jars with cotton swabs or blotter paper strips dipped in the scent. Glass salt shakers, available at most dollar stores, are perfect for this purpose and reusable forever.
Price Soap Accordingly
Making soap costs money, takes time, and requires space and significant know-how. Figure out how much you need to make after you factor in labor and materials costs, and work toward that figure – even though you may have the time of your life running your new business. As only one cost to consider, if you work out of your home kitchen, cover all surfaces against contamination before you begin. Converting your kitchen back and forth is time-consuming and part of your workload.
Invariably, some people will find your product too cheap; others will think it’s outrageous to charge more than grocery-store prices for detergent bars. Don’t sell yourself short! Psychologically, low prices will make people think your soap is inherently less valuable. Also, you’d be undercutting soap-making colleagues who charge more reasonable (higher) prices, which they won’t appreciate.
Make the Business Yours
You don’t want to be the next Body Shop; you want to be the first and only you! Your customers will come to you for a unique product, forgoing big-box stores for a reason. Just because everyone else has lotion, massage oils, soy candles, and lip balms, that doesn’t mean you need to.
By the same token, if having an ever-evolving product line keeps you learning and engaged, then make it your thing. Make sure your business model works for you the way you want to live your life. What better reason is there for being self-employed?
I’ve got more to share on a companion podcast episode.
Melanie Teegarden makes soap in her Appalachian Mountain home, where she lives with her husband and three charming cats. Melanie writes on gardening and horticulture and enjoys foraging wild edibles and painting watercolor portraits.
