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!