Starting a soap business takes very little money and not much time either. That's one reason so many soap makers give selling soap a try. What's there to lose? Not much. But following certain steps makes it much easier to grow a business quickly if that's what you desire. Here are tips for growing.
Make Natural Soap That's Different
Handmade soap is everywhere. Don't try to sell the same soap everybody else has. Make it different. How's that? Specialize in colors in your soap. Marble it for more eye appeal. Or try the special look and feel of milk soap. Your competition won't go to the trouble to learn how. Offer more essential oil scents than anybody else does. The possibilities are endless. Tell your story and make it different.
Getting Customers One Way
Getting a person to try your soap and buy it is the core task. After that it gets easier as I describe next. But how can you get customers to begin with? One obvious route to take is the art and craft show way. Get in a local event of some sort and display soap attractively and I all but guarantee you will move soap. Only if just a little, it's a way to get going with a soap business.
Follow Up For Easy Sales
Here's the easy part. Soap gets consumed. That means happy customers look for more. Make it easy for them to find you and you get sales with little effort. That's the way that a real soap business begins to develop. Build a system to follow up with past customers and you get sales right from home at little cost to you. That's the way you do it!
Money By Mail
Then, even better, build a customer list and occasionally mail out a little catalog and the response to a mailing may shock you. Response rates for mailings to repeat customers are legend. Often 1 in 5 or even more will place orders. It's easy too to get orders for at least 10 bars of soap as a minimum. That's worth doing, right?
After you do the hard work of getting people to try your quality soap, selling more to those wonderful customers gets so much easier.
Those Who Like Soap Will Also Like _________
Most craft events permit you to sell only what you make. Not so once you market to your customers. They are your customers and you can offer them whatever you think they may desire. Use mailings and a website to offer anything that soap buyers might also like. Do it at a profit and make money without making more soap.
Growing a soap business means getting some customers first. Then it means taking care of the great customers and providing them with opportunities to buy more items from you. Make it easy for them and they will buy what you offer. It's a good deal for them and you too.
Selling soap in any kind of volume depends on how well you market which we cover in our material about starting a soap business.