Soapmaking: In the Beginning

         Not a very long time ago, in a local galaxy (or maybe a nebula), there lived a young man with his family.  He had no Jedi powers, unless you consider an exceptionally dark farmer's tan to be a useful ability.  He wanted nothing more than to live free on the land, producing things for his family, and things to sell.

Well, here we are in a new spring year, it's finally nice weather, and Disney is the new owner of the Star Wars franchise.  What new things can we expect for the year?  Well, I've finally gotten on the ball with gardening, a part time job is in the works, and we're starting a non-farm business.

We're making soap!  Well, that's where we're starting, I have designs on making a number of useful household products, other than soap, or things that have soap as a base, like shaving soap and laundry soap.  Here's the plan:
1.  Experiment!  Soapmaking is an excellent "cottage industry", unlike say, steel smelting, and building airplanes.  It's basically cooking, but with the added element of danger from the lye used to turn oil into soap!  So far, I've tried bar soap, and liquid soap, and they both turned out well.  The bar soap is still in the little plastic molds, and needs another couple weeks to cure, but the liquid soap is nearly ready to go.  My first few tries at bar soap were hilariously disastrous, and the pot boiled over TWICE in one day, hahaha.  Turns out I used the wrong type of olive oil, which reacted waaaaaaaay too quickly.  Easy fix, and the next few tries worked very well indeed!

2.  Start simple:  Let me be honest.  I am not the first person to try selling soap from home.  It may have been done before, and many people are making a small, but honest living selling soap, makeup, deodorant, lip balm, and fancy looking soaps that look good enough to eat.  Most of these are women, and their products are exceptional in quality!  All kinds and flavours of soap, scented with everything from lavender to coffee.  They seem to sell what they make, or else they wouldn't make it.
       I don't want to compete with these ladies of super-soap.  I think the market might be pretty crowded for "fancy" soap, although I think there is room for someone to make custom printing on soap bars as a gift item.  When is the last time you bought a bar of soap with dried herbs in it?  Or a salt scrub?  Or a bar scented with lavender?  I have never purchased any of these things.  I have purchased bars of soap to wash my hands with, and I really didn't care what it smelled like, except that it didn't smell "bad".  I also buy a bottle of liquid dish soap about every two weeks, because we wash our dishes by hand.  The average Joe (or Jane) may occasionally buy a fancy soap as a gift, but what they NEED is regular soap for every day use.  Some of them might be interested in soap that is free from chemicals, and that's where Herbal Haven comes in! (Herbal Haven is the name of our company)

3.  Ebay, Internet sales:  There is a few sellers of liquid soap on Ebay, but most of them seem to be in the US, and I suspect that they find shipping to Canada to be irritating.  I plan to target Canadian buyers with smaller sized bottles of liquid soap. My wife is working on a different line of products, womens makeup, perfumes, lip balm etc.

4.  Getting bigger:  If you've ever made soap by hand, you can appreciate that it requires a lot of patience, something I was not given an abundance of at birth.  Fortunately, there are shortcuts, although it requires some money to buy these time saving devices, it will drastically cut down on the time spent endlessly stirring a batch of soap.

That's about it, I will have some pictures of what we've done so far, and when it comes time to sell, I will link to the Ebay page where you can buy all natural liquid soap!