An Open Letter From One Of Our Customers

Here's a letter we received from one of our very good customers. I felt it was so important that I wanted to share it with the rest of our customers.

March 6, 2011


An Open Letter to All the Non-Union Businesses I Patronize:

I love you. I want you to know that. I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being sincere. I love shopping at your stores and buying your materials. I understand why you are not a union shop. In fact, I hate going to the only unionized grocery store but only because those workers at those stores are rude. I don’t think they are rude because they are unionized. I think they are rude because that’s who is hired.

Back to my love for you and what will happen if my union job is taken away. I will no longer be able to shop at your stores. I will be forced to shop at Goodwill. My students will be forced to use scraps of paper for their assignments instead of the paper I bought from your stores. I will not be able to buy your locally grown vegetables and meats. I will be forced into the food bank. I will be forced, shudder to think, to shop at Wal-Mart…the last place any union worker should be shopping.

If you are not aware of what is going on in Wisconsin or our close neighbor, Rhode Island, let me give you some information. They are union-busting. Now you may feel that this is of little importance to you, but it is. The only way I can afford to pay my mortgage AND my utility bills AND my grocery bills AND my insurance AND my first car loan in 5 years AND my pet food bills AND my credit card bills AND my phone bills AND my student loan bills AND my clothes bill AND my Dunkin’ Donuts bill AND my second mortgage bill AND my…well you get it…the only way I can afford these things is because of my UNION.

See, you pay my salary by paying taxes. And I pay your salary by patronizing your shops. I end every month at $0. I have no savings, except for my pension (I don’t even pay into nor collect Social Security. My pension is it, and in CT teachers’ pensions are funded solely by teachers—not taxpayers.). I give back every dollar you give me.

I’m not asking you to turn into a union shop…but I am asking that you are mindful that unions shop at your stores. If the government cuts my salary, they cut yours also. And I don’t want you to lose my business because I do love you.

Thank you.

Jennifer

Facebook fan page updates

Hi all!

We updated our Facebook Fan Page so that, now, you can add reviews!

We'd love to hear from our customers about our products, so stop by and write something about us!

We have a couple of more announcements coming this week, so stay tuned!

Canada

Well, it's official! Soapier now has a distributorship in Canada!

We were approached, shortly before the holidays, by a Redditor, who expressed an interest in opening up a Soapier store in Canada. We were excited, to say the least, as another intrepid Redditor got in touch with us about opening a UK store.

Branching out like this was really only a pipe dream two years ago. We cannot express how elated we are that this type of global reach has started to grow legs for Soapier.

For those Canadians who are now jumping for joy, enjoying a beer with your favorite bear, eating moose stew... we're right there with you.

For those Canadians that haven't used Soapier soap before, we're enormous hockey fans. The pucks, the bats, the field goals. We love it.

Oh, and if you visit Soapier.ca, you can receive 15% off your order (non-reddit items) with the following coupon: REDDITEH.

Thanks!

John @ Soapier

Fragrances

So, we've gotten over 100 emails over the last day asking us, simply HOW do we come up with the fantastic fragrance combinations that we, you know, come up with.

Well, today, I'm going to share the story.

Take our Bacon soap, for example.



I ended up drawing the short straw, going to get the fragrances from a fragrance oil distributor in Brooklyn, who had some combinations of ham, maple ham, straight maple, smoke, etc, that we could try, to see if we could find a workable fragrance.

I get them home and, well, unfortunately, some of it got on my hands. It stayed with me for quite a while, and I had to sleep on the couch for a few nights.

I ship them off to my mom, who works her fragrance magic, gets some additional samples from other companies, and before long we have our very own bacon fragrance.

This is the part where my mom and sister had to decide who was going to work with the fragrance first.

My sister lost.

Now, normally we have a very precise guide to how much fragrance to add to how much soap, etc... but since it was a new fragrance, and we weren't sure how it was going to work with soap, my sister added more than she should. In doing so, the fragrance addressed the internal reflex found in all humans that involuntarily (or voluntarily, depending on your point of view) regurgitates foul, possibly harmful germs, particles, little tiny creatures... you get the picture.

It made her puke her guts out.

We weren't able to sell that batch of soap, you know. But, trooper that she is, she made a second batch, third, fourth, until we perfected the soap / fragrance ratio.

Normally, we look at fragrance lists and pick what we think we would like.

Recently, our great finds have been Let Them Eat Cake, My Peanut Butter Cup, and our latest monthly addition to our Soap of the Month Club, This is CMM (Chamomile, Melon, and Musk).

Part of the fun in this business is creating concoctions that people wouldn't normally think of, and this was one of them.

What you do is, you take q-tips, dip them in fragrances, put them in a plastic bag, seal the bag, shake it up a bit, and then open the bag.

It's what we did for our S'mores soap, which was actually three different fragrances... chocolate, marshmallow, and hazelnut (for the graham fragrance).

Creating new soaps is a lot of fun, and when we get the chance to do it, as we do with the Soap of the Month club... well, you'll find us excited, writing about it, and going out of our way to promote the soaps, because we're sure you're going to love them.

The other fun part that comes with creating soaps is naming them. Our latest soap, "This is CMM", was particularly fun. My mom told me what the fragrances were, and I was immediately reminded of Darth Vader, for some reason.

It could have been that I was watching The Empire Strikes Back, or it could have been that I had recently watched Kung Pow... or that I was reminded of the Simpsons Episode. Luke, I am your father. Simba, you will be king. This is CNN.

Could have been a couple of things...

Have a name for a cool soap? Drop us a line!

The Colbert taping

Ok, so, for those of you who don't know, last night Soapier was able to give away soaps to the Colbert Report audience. This bar:



Not the pie. That soap, called Soapert, is now available for sale, and $2 from every bar sold goes to Donors Choose!

Myself, S.I. and Erik (both NYers from Reddit) went to the screening. Got ushered in by two great people there, Amy and Stewart, got seated, and found all of the Soapier soaps under all of the chairs in the studio. It was awesome. You could smell the apple pie fragrance.

The warm-up guy, Julian (I believe his name was), was hysterical, and mentioned the soap to the audience, who cheered. Really cool.

There was a great moment when Stephen did a quick Q & A, and someone asked for a picture. He said no. When he finally got his make-up ready, he ran into the audience to get the picture, only to have the camera out of batteries.

He then started the show, after the fanfare, with "That was so nice... if only I could have taken a picture to commemorate it." Oh man, it was brutal, but so funny!

The show went very well, the people were great, and we all had a great time.

Thanks to the people of the Colbert Report for hosting us. We really appreciate it!

Now we move on to product placement. We're currently negotiating to have our soaps placed in a feature film. We'll see how it goes!

It's Thursday. I hope everyone's having a good week. It's almost over!

John @ Soapier

Soapier and The Colbert Report

So, after the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, I got in touch with someone who was in touch with the people at the Colbert Report.

I cannot tell you the impact that the Colbert letter had on me, when he (and his writing staff) ended up mentioning Soapier.

Things were pretty gray around here, in regards to what we were going to do about our business. I decided, after seeing that letter, that I was going to take charge of the business.

This person got me in touch with Stephen Colbert's assistant, and after some back and forth, I got an address and sent them a mess of Reddit soaps, as a thank you for mentioning us.

I also was able to get us permission to give out bars of Soapier soap to their audience members on January 19th.

Here's what we'll be giving out.

This is huge for us. I think it will be huge for DonorsChoose.org .

I think it's important that I explain why we're doing this, this year.

After the unprecedented display of generosity from Redditors for DonorsChoose, the last thing we wanted to do is seem like we were jumping on a bandwagon, riding the wave, and taking advantage of the spirit of not only the rally, but also the spirit of the holidays. It was just something I didn't want to do.

What I did want to do was make sure that even though we reached our goal, even though we got the Rally we wanted, and the Reddit After-Party, and all of the good feelings, and we were inspired and all... schools all over the country are still in need of help.

I didn't want people to just forget about DonorsChoose. Not that they would just forget, but you understand. I wanted their organization to continue to benefit, since they're doing an immense amount of good.

Starting today, we're taking orders for Soapert soaps. They will start to ship on February 1. $2 from every bar sold will go directly to DonorsChoose. At the end of February, I'll take suggestions on where the money should go, from the Reddit community.

If you buy a Soapert bar, and you purchase another bar, we'll add another $1 to the cause.

Thanks for being such great customers, great friends, and great supporters, not only of us, but of organizations trying hard to make this a better world.

None of this could have happened without you. We really appreciate it.

John @ S

PS - if you show up to the taping on January 19th, I'll be there, along with some Redditors. Should be a fun night!

Soapier's first commercial!

So, for a little bit longer than a month, I've been thinking about doing a short commercial with one of the talented people from Reddit. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled across a very funny animation, after there was a bit of a flame war on Reddit about drawing comments and animating them. It was very funny to watch it unfold, and I got in touch with one of the animators, gave him a bit of a script, and we went to work.

After a couple of back and forths with some direction, we came up with this!



It's cute, it's a little sick, and in the end it realistically shows what Soapier has known all along about our competitors soaps.

Soapier's new pricing and shipping info, and news for our Canadian customers.

Hi Everyone,

Well, another year has come and gone, and we're so happy we're still in one piece!

To ensure that we're able to keep up with orders, make enough money to have a worthwhile business, and keep our customers happy, we've had to make some tough decisions in the last month.

In November, we found out that the soap base we use was going up in price, which directly affected our bottom line. Projections for next year were not looking too positive, so we had to do the one thing we've been fighting for the past year. We had to raise prices.

Starting today, soap slices are now $6.95. This goes for pretty much everything, across the board, including the shaving soaps, trollface, and soap slices.

We also had to get rid of quite a few of our soaps that were just not selling enough to justify spending money on large containers of fragrances and colors just for these specific soaps.

We realize some of your favorites might have been cut, and we're sorry if we upset some of you. The good news is, over the next six months, we'll be having closeout sales on the soaps we've discontinued, using up the colors and fragrances we have, and giving you all great deals on bars that you love so you can stock up. Every month we'll feature two discontinued soaps.

The good news out of all of this is, after doing some research, and working out a deal with Fedex, we are now offering one flat shipping rate on all domestic orders.

Each U.S. order will ship for $5.95. From 1 bar all the way up to however many you can carry, we now offer a fantastic shipping deal to everyone in the US. This will help our customers with the new pricing structure.

We are also opening up a Canadian distributorship, for our Canadian customers, in the very near future.

Thanks for reading and for being such great customers.

J @ S