Posted on 11/21/2013 5:31:18 PM PST by RoosterRedux
A friend makes lye soap several times a year and she gave a few bars to me. All natural (she uses Crisco vegetable oil instead of lard)...and it is great as a bathing product.
Have been thinking of producing this stuff as a bidness. Have lots of connections who would sell it if a market is out there.
Your thoughts please...
I don't have to know what I am doing...I just have to know that it works.
And that there are those who want to buy it.
But thx for your dumbass advice. It sure is nice to know that there are folks like you who are discouraging people who you come into contact with.
Discouraging regular guys and gals who you know into believing that their ideas will never work.
Is that what made the toilet water turn blue when my wife moved in?
(John Standley and Art Thorson)
Do you remember Grandma's LyeSoap? Good for everything, everything in the home And the secret was in the scrubbin' It wouldn't suds; It wouldn't foam.
Mrs. O'Mally, Down in the valley Suffered from ulcers, I understand She swallowed a cake, of Grandma's LyeSoap Now she's got the cleanest ulcers in the land!
Little Herman and Brother Thurman Had an aversion to washing their ears Grandma scrubbed them with the LyeSoap And they haven't heard a word in years.
So sing right out for grandma's LyeSoap Good for everything in the home And the secret was in the scrubbin' 'Cause it didn't suds or foam.
So sing right out for Gramdma's LyeSoap (Sing it loud and clear) Good for everything, everything in the place The pots and kettles, the dirty dishes And for the hands and for the face.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr_XQjBEgzk
I make our own basic soap out of neccesity. regular soaps are full of talc & titanium dioxide which when combined with our well water make a granite hard deposit on all our fixtures. My soap bars also last much longer than regular bars.
Back to the business end. Some local ladies are doing just that. They only make specialty or designer soaps. Different oils, colors, packaging and uses. I got a specialty bar for fisherman as a gift, cleans hands and leaves a pleasant smell that attracts fish:)
Learn the song “Grandma’s Lye Soap.” Sing it to people, and pay attention to their comments.
Grandma’s Lye Soap video, kind of.
Found it.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=utf-8&fr=slv1-&p=GRANDMA%27s%20lye%20soap%20song&type=
There are a lot of small soap making operations... go into any natural foods store and you should see plenty. However...they don’t use crisco oil lol to make the soap. It’s a niche market, and you want to go with pure natural oil soaps...you can add various essential oils or scrubs to the bars as well. You can order most of the supplies, olive, almond or any type of oil online. Lye is harder for me to find at the retail level... no one wants the responsibility of selling it. I special order it from my local hardware store.
I no longer use bar soap, either and I was once a fan of the translucent glycerin bars strongly scented with green apple scent. I also use body wash and liquid hand soap.
No mess, easier to use less and just more efficient, IMO.
Call it ‘stuff originally derived from hardwood ash’ soap. I have some land for growing and thought of growing lavender and a few other lesser known items for soap. What types of fragrances are you aiming for?
Nice rooster. Use him. Add sand to the formula and call it “COGBURN’S True Grit” “Guaranteed to clean off all of the new dirt and some of the old.”
Before you try to become the Howard Schultz of soap, go check out craft stores, farmers markets, ebay and craigslist. Making boutique soaps is a very popular hobby similar to the candle craze and scrapbooking.
Lye soap might be a viable business in this day and age but trust me, NOT if it’s made from Crisco. The selling point is the natural materials. Most people use lard. Crisco is considered as much a poison as margerine. There are many people also who believe you should be able to eat your soap.
Here is a sample of a lye soap recipe I just found. I have not tried it, although I do make my own laundry soap, which I love, out of washing soda, Fels Naptha and 20 Mule Team Borax, very simple.
http://frugallysustainable.com/2013/05/how-to-make-old-fashioned-lye-soap-for-use-in-homemade-laundry-detergent-general-household-cleaning-recipes-and-as-a-poison-ivy-treatment/
Here’s an article on what Crisco is made of:
http://meghantelpner.com/blog/vegetables-dont-make-oil-so-whats-crisco-really-made-of/
Making a good natural soap is a good idea but Crisco won’t sell it to me, that is for sure!
Call it HOMEMADE IN USA SOAP! I’ve seen several of Granny’s lye soap with the small words on the back, “made in china”.
I make my own soap with lard and lye. It is so smooth on my skin I don’t use anything else.
Lye is becoming hard to get as meth makers now use lots of it.
Some small hardware stores still have it, some you have to ask for it as it is kept behind the counter. I don’t believe you can get lye in California anymore, I may be wrong.
I will hate the day when I have to boil down wood ashes for the lye in it.
I have been a successful professional craftsperson for over 50 years. I have made a living with one line for nearly 30 years. I do not have long-lasting competitors due to closely-held production processes. I have lurked on forums in my medium where very talented artists brainstorm how to reproduce my line. I have had workers hired away specifically to re-create the product and for that reason have always kept several steps secret. I have had buyers for chain stores threaten me with Asian production when I turned down orders that involved 500 drop ships/month.
Handmade soap is ubiquitous and has been a market niche for over 25 years. It is one of those items everyone tries to customize to their own medium and add as an extra Point of Purchase impulse buy. For example: fiber artists add felted soaps, which are hand-made soaps encased in felted wool.
A local woman began a soap line in her 70s, based on her own need for a sensitive skin product. Her marketing was good and she built it into a living, but at the end, she needed younger people to do the real work, because it is hot, involves heavy lifting and needs to be done in a rural area or a specifically-fitted industrial space with excellent ventilation. It also is the sort of product that requires single long time intensive production periods. You can’t stop and start.
Not a VC candidate, IMO.
However, a liquid handcrafted soap that utilized strong natural scents (lavender being the most popular) and highly esthetic containers (preferably hand crafted and not suitable to mass production so as to deter Asian copycats), along with an organic formula and coloration might find a niche within the soap category.
Go to craft shows and see what the market is like at the moment. Or search Etsy. However, unless you own an ingredient or a process today, you will find that any item sold online will be ripped off by Asian mass marketers. Right now I have an item I know would sell. It is not a wholesale item, however, and it would be immediately appropriated by the Asian workshop cooperatives that are run by wealthy Western women looking for a do-gooder enterprise that includes write-off exotic vacations. These enterprises utilize near-slave labor, usually homebound women, and are often initiated with international development grants.
Market is the least of your concerns. Supplies, production processes and labor are the main considerations. Once you teach a worker your process, there is no guarantee they won’t either go to work for a competitor or compete with you on their own. Non-compete contracts have been standard in handcrafted designer clothing for over 25 years due to many conflicts between designers and seamstresses. You need something unique to differentiate your soap.
If you really think you want to continue with this sort of venture, feel free to FReepmail me for more specific crit/analysis.
If she’s using Crisco, it ain’t “all natural”. Crisco is a synthetic, plastic version of vegetable fat created by bubbling hydrogen through super-heated vegetable oil in pressure vessels in the presence of a platinum catalyst.
Choosing unique scents and adjusting the PH will be your initial big challenges, I think.
You can even try to get a start-up contract from Whole Foods in Chicago/Illinois for a local product.
Good luck, and send me a note if you start selling (I'm in Chicago).
You mean it’s ‘high tech’ oil :-)
It’s a pain in the ass!!!
It was my job durring WW2 to stir the bacon grease and lye and cook it for soap.
i wouldn’t make my own soap if it cost $10 a bar to buy!!!
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