In this video I'll be showing you a look into the handmade soap industry.
Is it a complete wash or can you clean up and make a good looking profit?
I'll also be sharing with you how you can start your own handmade soap business
from home. Hi,
my name is Mei and I help makers,
artists and designers make a consistent living from selling their handmade
products online. People have been making soap at home for centuries,
either for practical use or in more recent times just as a creative outlet,
right? Besides making money off of it,
it can actually be quite lucrative and fun to do as well.
Soap is pretty simple to make. It's made from a mixture of oils, lye, water,
and other optional additives like fragrances.
All of these can be sourced from wholesalers and do not require any special
licenses for you to make himself. There's a lot you can do with soap.
You can appeal to a variety of different audiences by using all natural
ingredients or by using exotic fragrances.
Some soaps even may have health benefits and can be molded into fun,
different shapes or just smell amazing.
Just make sure not to make any unfounded claims to avoid negative feedback or
worse, you don't want the FDA knocking at your door.
Another great reason you might want to start a handmade,
so business is that soap can usually bought for personal use or given away as
gifts throughout the year.
And soap sales are also not limited to specific time periods or places.
Unlike items such as hats and scarves or mittens,
people need to clean themselves, right? Or at least they should all year around.
And even during a recession,
like the one we're experiencing right now due to the Corona virus,
this necessity translates into steady sales, repeat business,
and a consistent income is people like your soap.
So here's a crazy statistic for you.
The global soap market is worth an estimated 18 billion us dollars and a growing
sector within that market belongs to just organic soap,
which is expected to reach a value of 383.4 a million us dollars by year 2025
more people are also looking for natural products which don't contain harsh
chemicals in them aside from the sodium or potassium hydroxide,
which is otherwise known as lye, which is used in the soap making process.
Most handmade soaps contain herbs,
essential oils and organic items to create one of a kind products.
Handmade soaps also can include glycerin,
which helps to soften and moisturize the skin. If you're new to soap making,
then I really recommend checking out the spruce crafts.com or royalty soaps on
YouTube.
They lay out the different methods you can use and walk you through the process
for each one.
I'll quickly run through some of the pros and cons for each method,
but when it comes to actually choosing one and making the soap,
you should definitely check out those sources as they do provide.
Excellent tips for free.
There are four main ways that you can go about making soap at home.
These are Melton pour, the Colt process,
the hot process and a rebadging process.
The first two are the most popular as hot process or re batching or consider it
to be a little bit more advanced. Melton pour is essentially just melting,
premade, so an adding your own fragrance to it.
It's good for beginners but it doesn't give you much room for creativity and the
end result is really only as good as the soap you started with.
The cold process involves making soap from scratch using oils and lie.
You'll need to be careful when using ingredients like lie though since it is a
caustic substance.
Sites like Bramble berry.com specialize in cold process soap making and provide
safety tips too, so definitely check that out.
The hot process is similar to the cold process but requires heating the soap in
an oven or slow cooker and re batching involved,
grinding up and read blending batches of poorly made handmade soap.
The coal process is the most highly recommended soap making method for a
sustainable home business.
Soaping one-on-one on YouTube is a great channel to check out for cold process
free recipes.
It's a good idea to do a test run so you can get an idea of the process which
ingredients and materials you'll need and whether soap making is or isn't for
you. If you decide you don't like soap making, then don't worry.
At least you'll know and then you can check out some of my other business ideas
from my channel. Next thing I want to talk about is your supply chain.
You want to know the best places to buy ingredients in bulk at wholesale prices.
Many sellers find it easier and cheaper to source oils such as olive oil and
coconut oil from places like Costco and Amazon for other supplies like light
colorants and fragrances.
Bramble berry.com has really great reviews within the community as well as
nature's garden and wholesale supplies plus.com I've personally bought from the
last two places and have had a great experience.
Now once you've taken the time to choose your market and who you want to sell
to, you source your materials and you've honed the craft.
It's time to start selling your soap online and making the some money.
As always,
my advice is that you should start and build your own website on a platform like
Shopify.
That's going to be your best bet at building a business that's longterm and
sustainable and next one that you can control.
You can also eventually get into selling your soaps wholesale to other stores.
You definitely also want to check out selling on marketplace sites like Etsy or
Amazon who both have a huge built an audience for you to sell to.
I know I just made that sound like a no brainer to go sell an NCR or Amazon,
right, but before you do,
make sure you watch my pros and cons video because you don't want to put all
your eggs in either Etsy or Amazon.
I'm a big fan of the fulfillment by Amazon FBA service and I know a lot of
people love using that too. It's beneficial to you as a shop owner.
Once you start selling it in higher quantities,
it may cut into your profits slightly,
but being able to ship your stock to an Amazon warehouse where they handle
packaging orders to your customers so you don't have to do it.
That's going to save you a lot of time and effort that can be better spent
growing your business. Also,
being able to apply that Amazon prime logo to your listings really opens up a
whole new audience of potential buyers for you. So it's just, it's really great.
You might also want to consider drop shipping your soaps.
This is when your items are advertised on someone else's site and still to their
customers, but the company doesn't actually carry any of your physical stock.
You're still responsible for sending the item to the customer.
Both you and the retailer then split the earnings from the sale at around 50%
each.
This can be incredibly lucrative if you find the right partners to work with,
and the nice thing about it is you don't have to worry about marketing or
advertising. When it comes to listing your soap online,
you really need to communicate the soaks features clearly to the customer.
Soap is a pretty intimate product.
It's all about how it feels and smells and that can be hard to get across to
people online. Since you know, smell a vision hasn't been invented yet, right?
Be sure to also take between five to 10 clear photographs of each of your
products with an without packaging.
Online search engines operate using algorithms and it's all about matching a
buyers search to keywords and phrases.
You'll therefore need to use relevant words and phrases that are likely to get
hits from the title of your product and its description. Everything from color,
fragrance, texture, moisturizing effects,
and anything you can think of that relates to your soap.
You'll want to write that in your product description. At the same time,
you know buyers don't want to scroll through reading like an entire storybook of
text, so try to find a balance between making it as concise and informative as
possible.
Another factor that could potentially scare off customers or entice them is the
price of your bars of soap.
Some people tend to value the handmade aspect of a product and are willing to
pay a little bit of extra money for it. However,
it'd be wary that in a congested market such as Amazon or Etsy,
people have a lot of options and we'll often just go for the cheaper option.
If you know your product and your competitor's products looks vaguely similar.
Amazon does have a handmade platform, but in my experience,
sales don't really benefit from it as much as on the standard Amazon site.
The good thing for you is so cheap to make a 3.5 ounce or 100 grams bar of soap
should cost you anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar 50 to produce.
Depending on the wax and fragrances you use for a bar of that size,
you can expect to sell it for around four to $5 or approximately four to five
times the amount it costs you to make it. This might sound like a small amount,
but there are ways to increase how much you earn.
Making bigger bars or offering value or a tester sets which include a range of
different smells. That means you can sell more products in higher quantities.
Not to mention if you have a great branding experience and customer experience,
you could even charge 10 to $12 for a bar of soap.
You also need to consider the cost of shipping your soap products so can get
quite heavy.
So if you're in the U S definitely take advantage of USBs is flat rate shipping
boxes. You pay a flat fee regardless of how many soaps you're shipping.
You'll also want to think about how to package and protect your soap so it
doesn't get damaged in transit.
Other soap sellers have suggested using shrink wrap,
bubble wrap or tissue paper.
Actually before you even sell online or as you're gearing up to sell online,
it may be a good idea to test your product at a craft show or live event.
As long as you know, social distancing isn't a thing anymore,
but that way you can interact with customers, you can ask them questions,
you can get genuine feedback and ultimately tweak your product if you need to to
improve it and make it better.
Selling soap isn't about huge profit margins and you should definitely not look
at it as a get rich quick scheme. However,
it is a great way to have fun and get creative while also learning about
handmade business and selling online.
It's definitely very possible though to break through the saturated market and
to make a living from it,
but you will need to stand out from the crowd and make good strategic choices
along the way.
I recommend checking out this video if you're wondering how to stand out from
the competition. If you've tried your hand at selling soap online,
I'd love to hear about your experience. Let me know in the comments,
and if you found this video helpful,
please leave a thumbs up and subscribe for more handmade business tips and then
stay on to watch this next video here. Thanks for watching.