Soapier's Blog

An Open Letter From One Of Our Customers

2011-03-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-28T10:49:00.001-08:00

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

2011-02-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-15T12:21:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-20T06:29:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-15T18:37:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-01-15T11:35:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-01-06T13:41:00.000-08:00

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

The holidays

2010-12-26T15:08:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

First off, I hope everyone had a good holiday season, regardless of their faith.

My mom ended up coming to NYC this year, but left early because of the impending snow storm. Wow, I just walked out in it to come to my favorite place to get away and write, and it's pretty spectacular. Depending on who you read or listen to, we could get 10 feet of snow, or 10 inches. Or less.

I read somewhere that it costs the city upwards of $1,000,000 per inch, to clear it from the streets. Since I've lived here, which is pretty much since forever, I can say that the sanitation department does an excellent job of snow removal.

Soapier did quite well this holiday season, thanks to all of you.

We are working on a re-structuring for next year, so we can stay open. We'll have more news on that next week.

On Christmas Eve, my girlfriend and I splurged on dinner out at Harry's Steak House, on Stone Street in NYC. Very good food. The service was good, too. If you find yourself down there, try their sweet potato mash. Oh my god.

Normally, my gf and I cook dinner. We go grocery shopping in New Jersey to save money, and have a rotating set of dinners we cook. We'd been saving up for this dinner for a long time, and it was sooooo worth it.

We'd also been saving all of our change, you know, that we accumulated, and made a special dinner on Christmas day. That was scallops.

Now, I have never ever ever never been a fish eater. But over the past year I have branched out to both salmon and scallops. Maybe next year I'll try some others.

It was a good holiday, though I was sorry I didn't get a chance to see my mom. We were supposed to go to a Swedish restaurant tonight, but alas, that didn't work out.

I'll see her some time in January.

My sister goes to the doctor on Tuesday, to determine when she'll need surgery. They found an aneurysm in her arm, so it might have to be two surgeries. We'll see on Tuesday.

Other than that, we're very happy the way the holiday season went. My mom got a flight back, after changing her flight via jetblue, and they didn't charge her extra because of the snow storm, so that was good. She said she got in at 2:30 in the morning, got home and has been spending her day relaxing with Petey, her dog.

I've been semi-stuck in the house, watching football, relaxing, eating leftovers, and generally just being an online nuisance.

I hope all of you had a great holiday. I hope you got to spend it with your loved ones. I wish you all the best.

John

This does not happen with our soaps...

2010-12-16T13:03:00.000-08:00

I don't know what is in Ivory soap that it would do that... but our soaps don't look like The Blob coming at you when it's in the microwave.

Ours is kind of boring. It just melts... and then reforms into something resembling a puddle... which is kind of cool... I guess.

Soapier's 2-day sale

2010-12-16T12:12:00.002-08:00

All gift baskets are now $15. We only have a limited supply of them, so get them while you can!

Also, all of the Christmas soaps (except for Santa's Nog) are discounted:

Under the Tree and New Ornaments are now $3 a slice. Once they're gone, that's it.

The Christmas Works of Art soaps are now only $5 each. Once they're gone, that's it.

This sale goes on until Friday at Midnight. We'll get all of these orders out by Monday.

We're offering this sale as last minute gift ideas. This sale is not meant to be taken retroactively.

Thanks!

J @ S

Soapier.com

Also, I've updated the site so that it reflects soaps that we have in stock, and I'll be doing my best to keep up with orders, to make sure things that are out of stock from here on out will be reflected on the site!

Sales, stock, Canada, internet cafes, and more

2010-12-10T12:25:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Friday, December 10th. 15 days until my favorite holiday, besides my birthday, which should be a national holiday only because nothing too exciting happened on August 3rd.

Wow, what are the odds that Germany would declare war with France in WWI, AND Hitler would take command over all of Germany, both on the same day in history?

I need to change my birthday. Sheesh.

Ok, so, let's get back to a more cheerful subject.

Christmas is coming soon! Yay. I've always enjoyed Christmas. I don't remember it so much when I was a little kid, but when I hit 10, let me tell you, brother, my sister and I hit the jackpot!

So, my parents divorced when I was 9 or so. It was sad, sure, but these things happen.

Check this out.

Christmas Eve, we would go to my grandparents house, on my mom's side. Always a crazy Christmas. Huge amount of food, huge amounts of presents. It was awesome.

We'd go home, sleep, and the next day, Christmas, was a marathon of gift giving and receiving. First, we had home gifts from mom. Awesome. Then my dad would pick my sister and I up and drive us to our other grandparents, where we got gifts from all of our aunts and uncles. Insane. THEN we'd get my dad's gifts.

We made out like bandits, truly.

I think I get two gifts these days... feels like I'm in the k-hole of gift karma, but so be it. I enjoy giving more than anything else.

Yeah, right.

No, really! Go away.

My dad passed away a long time ago, almost fifteen years ago. I haven't had much communication with his side of the family since, and it's a shame, but we kind of drifted apart. I always got along well with his brother and sisters. I'll have to give them a call this year.

Christmas now-a-days is all depending on how much money has come in, and how creative I'm feeling. I love giving gifts. I have an idea of what to get my gf, we'll see if I can make that happen.

Even though it's a bit early to say, sales have been pretty good this year. We were hoping more people would have purchased the Soap of the Month club, but it's something we'll keep all year round.

We sold out of Alien soaps and Envelope soaps, bacon, trollface, and some Christmas soaps, which is great.

In other news, we'll be, hopefully, opening up a Canada annex of Soapier, starting in January. We'll see what happens.

Other than that, folks... things are things. We're so very thankful for the customers we have, the holiday orders we received, and that my sister is out of the hospital, taking it easy, and doing much better.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for supporting us. I wish you all a fantastic holiday season.

John @ Soapier

Oh, I was writing this at an internet cafe, with no coffee. So there.

Soapier and Wikileaks

2010-12-08T10:12:00.000-08:00

Hi all,

In light of the recent development between Amazon and Wikileaks, we've decided to take down our products from Amazon.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "You had products on Amazon?"

Yes. Yes we did.

Amazon was, by far, the biggest headache of our company. Or, I should say, for me, personally. Setting up the products was a big problem. We don't have UPC codes, so we had to hack our way in, with the help of the Amazon team. It only took six emails to them, and then finally said 'oh, yeah, you're quoting our policy, we'll take care of it. No need for UPC codes on beauty products'. Sigh.

Then, I went through the arduous task of putting up our products. It took no less than five minutes per product, to list them on their site. The first round, I did it over the course of four hours, only to find out I'd made a mistake. Had to go into each of our 50 products, fix the mistake.

Then, we waited. And waited. And waited.

And when we got our first order, well, it was exciting. For all of two minutes.

The first order was for four bars of soap. Pretty cool.

The thing is, Amazon charges a flat shipping rate, per product, for products they do not fulfill. That means, our customers were being charged $4.99 for each product they purchased, of ours. So that 4 bar order turned into a $44 order, instead of a $29.95 order.

We refunded the shipping difference, but we found that we weren't getting any orders, and now we could understand why. The shipping charges were turning people off.

We tried to get Amazon to fix it, but that's another policy.

So, over the course of 1 year, we received 21 sales, and with each one, had to refund shipping charges.

We don't want to take advantage of some policy, just to make a couple of extra dollars. Shipping already costs an arm and a leg.

Don't get us started on the commission amount that Amazon was making per order. It was high. Almost 45%. This made us raise our prices to $6.95 on Amazon.

We kept it going because it was just another outlet for us, and we didn't have to do much self promotions on their site.

So, after the recent news about Amazon and Wikileaks, we've decided to sever our ties with Amazon. No great loss to us, surely no great loss to Amazon, but we felt it was important, especially since we donated money to Wikileaks earlier this year.

You know what was awesome? Julian Assange actually replied to some emails I sent him. His replies were campy and fun. Here's my first email to them:

Hi Daniel,

Well, February came and went and I wanted to let you know that we sold 102 bars of soap for Wikileaks, for a grand total of $250, to be donated to this great website.

Truth be told, I was kind of hoping for more... Blah! But, I hope the money helps, and I think this will become an annual thing for Soapier and Wikileaks. February will be Wikileaks month at Soapier!

Julian's reply:

It's great. I suspect soapy types are not too aggressive but WL is inherently combative... "All your files belong to us is" fantastic, but perhaps "Scrubbing corruption away one file at a time" and similar might work better for women, who I assume buy these products...

I followed it up about four months later, after the Collateral Murder video was posted:

I just wanted to let you know that the video you posted was simply unreal, and I'm so glad that Wikileaks is around to continue the fight for more transparency within the world's governments.

It's quite unreal, the lengths the Pentagon went through, saying that Wikileaks was a threat to national security, and all of the harassment that followed. I'm so sorry you all had to go through that. I hope you're coming out the other side, and in good condition.

I wish you all the best of luck, and continued support throughout the world.

His reply:

thanks. we'll scrub our troubles away for sure.

We'll see what we can do with some of these other companies that are going out of their way to put on a good face, but the fact is that using our wallets to express our distaste seems to be the only way to get things done, any more.

I downloaded the Insurance file that Wikileaks uploaded. We'll see what happens when Assange gets out of jail.

We're running out of stock!

2010-12-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

Just like the headline says, we're running out of stock on stuff, people.

We're officially out of the Reddit Alien in:

Chocolate (Big Heart)

Bacon

Winter Awesome

We're also out of the Pillow Talk gift basket.

Get your orders in quickly!

Holiday orders at Soapier

2010-12-03T08:26:00.001-08:00

So, we got slammmmmmed by Secret Santa, and we're getting the orders out, but to make sure that we get all of our orders out for the holiday rush, we're capping holiday orders after December 12th. This way, we can guarantee US orders get to their people on time.

International orders, you're going to want to place your order by the 6th. After that, we can't guarantee that they're going to get to you on time, since international shipping takes so long.

So, get those orders in ASAP!

Thanks,

John

Donating

2010-12-02T21:45:00.001-08:00

Hi folks,

So, over the course of the last five days or so we've received quite a few orders, both for the holidays and for Reddit's Secret Santa.

Reddit Gifts is the brain child of one of Soapier's staunchest supporters, Dan McComas. He's promoted our site, our product, our message for over a year. Not only is there a Reddit Secret Santa, but the community decided to make another gift giving holiday for Redditors called Arbitrary Gift Day. Dan promoted the hell out of us then, too.

So, this year, I would really like to give back.

Dan is trying to get some money for schools in Alameda, which have been closing left and right, not to mention budget cuts are cutting out school activities that you and I were lucky enough to enjoy when we were young.

Donating even $5 would be an enormous help to this cause. Soapier is already planning on donating a portion of sales we get this year to help out, but we thought we would shed some light on this particular opportunity.

We've done some good over the past year with various organizations. Dan's been so good to us, we can't stand by and not help him and his community in their time of need.

You can visit the donation page here. Dan and his wife don't make any money on the Reddit Gifts site. They do it out of the kindness of their hearts. It would really make a great Christmas for them if they made a significant amount of money this year for the Alameda school system. Reddit donated over $500,000 for DonorsChoose.org. I think Reddit can get $5,000 together to help out Alameda.

Thanks for reading.

John @ Soapier

Soapier update

2010-11-24T08:05:00.000-08:00

Hey all.

Not sure where to begin. We did the shaving soap... and then things kind of went a little haywire here.

I had gone off to Jamaica for a vacation that was a long time coming, with my girlfriend Karen. Went to an all inclusive. I had had a semi-bad experience at an all-inclusive in the Dominican Republic a couple of years earlier. Not the company I was with, but the place we stayed. The food was bad, the room was only so-so, the drinks were watered down and sugary, and the fishing trip I went on was something called trolling, instead of actually fishing.

We get on the boat, start heading out, the seas were choppy, and 5 out of the 6 people on the boat got sick. I found out about twenty minutes in that what they were going to do was drop hooks and just go around and see if something caught on. Not stopping the boat, lowering hooks, and every man for him/herself.

What a waste. So, we got back, I kissed the ground, and vowed never to go to an all-inclusive again.

Then my present girlfriend says to me "If I don't go on vacation soon, I'm going to kill you in your sleep."

So, of course I said "Do it, I just don't care any more."

She spared my life, booked a vacation, and we headed down just before the huge Christmas rush. The idea was, I'd get back to NY after the trip, relax a bit, then head back down to Tampa to help make soap. We had the Secret Santa coming, and with almost 13,000 people signed up, we were expecting a bit of a rush during those 10 or so days.

Get down to Jamaica, first day it rains. I end up watching episodes of House (1st season, I'd never watched it before), she watches episodes of Firefly (she'd never seen it), Arrested Development (she'd never seen it) and Dexter (she'd never seen it).

Second day, sunshine. I play beach volleyball and scratch the hell out of my knees and limp off like a 70 year old. She catches too much sun and burns her back. I end up putting some aloe stuff on her back four times a day, and then hear her groan and cry all night. It was an awesome vacation.

That night we went to rent a movie from the hotel. They had Indiana Jones. I was psyched, because I love the series. Most of them.

Got the movie and found out it was the last installment, and I started crying. Because it's a piece of shit movie. Karen said she wanted to die. I wanted to order everything on the room service menu and time them, because I was so bored.

Third day, things are going well, we're looking forward to going ATVing on some sandy beach on the fourth day, when I get an email from my mom.

Subject: Hey Very Important

Body: Hey
Erica has to have open heart surgery tomorrow they found that she has a bacteria in her heart and she needs a valve replaced.

If you can call me.

I tell my girlfriend.

"So... no ATVing?"

(eyeroll)

Using my girlfriend's business phone, I call my mom. She tells me that the doctors are switching her to a heart hospital in Clearwater, one of the best. The doctors who found the bacteria and did a little video into the heart thingy said "Yeah, you're lucky to be alive, we have to do this tomorrow morning or YOU'RE GOING TO DIE!"

Well, that pretty much raised the hackles of everyone. I don't have any replacement sisters. I had to weigh the option of going ATVing or going back to Tampa, and we were having a really good time.

In the end, I flipped a coin.

So, the next morning, I called my mom and she said "she might have surgery on Sunday. Come back to Tampa."

So, it was best to three, on the coin flip.

Canceled the ATV outing, switched it to river tubing, just in case I didn't have to leave early. Doctor came back that same day and said "Surgery maybe Monday."

Yay!

So we went tubing.

And it was awesome. I went under a waterfall and jumped into the river on a rope swing, we had a very nice dinner and relaxed and watched The Sum of All Fears, which is a very good movie.

I change my flight on Sunday, so instead of going back to NY, I head to Miami, then Tampa. Get to Tampa, I'm exhausted, head to the hospital after buying my sis a netbook, so she can watch movies and go online and all that. At this point, she was supposed to be in the hospital for weeks. Open heart surgery to fix a damaged valve isn't open and shut, unless you're working on a cadaver.

Get to the hospital, give her the netbook, find out that she's feeling better. The antibiotics are working. Awesome.

Next day, they do a culture to see if the bacteria is still there. Her white cell count is down. No bacteria. She's going home, surgery in six weeks.

"So... we can return the netbook?" I ask.

She goes home today. Has a stint being put in for intravenous injections of antibiotics and blood thinners. On disability, bed rest, nurses will be checking up on her.

While I was in Jamaica, with my mom freaking out, she says "Cancel the UK order."

Now... I almost drop the phone.

For those of you paying attention or not, we have a brand new UK distributor. She's very nice, she's very excited about selling Soapier products to the European Union, and we have been making soap, spreading the UK word, putting up ads... and then my sister gets pretty gravely ill. My mom's freaking out (understandably), and I'm trying to figure out how to keep the business afloat.

We lose the UK, we lose a significant amount of Secret Santa. There are more than 1,000 people in the EU signed up. Not to mention, all of the orders that the UK already received.

"We'll honor those and ship them out. J, I can't do this now, with your sister in the hospital."

Sigh. Of course not.

So, I get in touch with the UK and tell her what's going on, and say "I'll have more news on Monday."

She says "Take care of your family, first!"

Monday comes around, and Erica (sister) is doing well. We have a ton of soap made for the UK, and after careful consideration, we start making the rest of the soap order. Not to mention the order that Reddit (the company) placed, and the two wholesale orders we had to get out, and all of the stock we have to make for Secret Santa. We're a week behind.

So, I'm here, in Tampa, waiting to help chauffeur my sister home. Making soap. Sleeping on an air mattress, with dog hair all over it. Eating ok food, burning tv shows on my laptop, and generally not getting enough sleep.

Things went from batshit insane to manageable. My sister is feeling better, the soap is flowing out the door, and I head home Friday to have post Thanksgiving dinner with Karen.

Odds are I'll be back on the 6th of December, to help with the mad rush.

That's the update. We're back on track, ready for the holiday rush, and we'll have all of your orders out in a timely fashion!

UK Customers: Fear not! We're getting out a ton of soap for the UK, and she'll be able to get your orders out straight away.

Cheers!

Shaving soap and a new Reddit Alien!

2010-11-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

Since the holidays of 2009, we've received quite a few requests for shaving soap.

It took us a little while, but we finally got around to it!

Introducing our awesome shaving soap:

We're selling it three different ways.

First, the bars are 2" round, at 1.5oz a bar. They are made with Shea butter and kaolin clay.

We're selling them 3 in a pack, in one of the following fragrances. Doublemint, Pink Sugar, or unscented.

So, you can get them 3 in a pack for $6, or you can get them with a fancy brush for $9.95 or... well, that's what we have right now. But by December 1 we will have a soap, mug, and brush set for the holidays!

Next!

We have a brand new Alien soap. It's called Reddit's Winter Wonderland, and it's pretty awesome. We have been experimenting with water soluble paper, and we found that we could make the Reddit Alien have some really cool backgrounds.

So, the first thing we're offering is a Reddit Winter Wonderland:

It's fragranced with Candy Cane, and will be a huge hit for the Redditor in your life this holiday season! These are $9.95.

We hope you like the new products!

Our gift baskets

2010-11-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

So, the holidays are coming up and I figured I'd show you all what one of our gift baskets look like, when they're all completed.

Here is our Pillow Talk gift basket:

Nice, huh? One of our customers made a really good observation and, admittedly, it's not why we did it, but we're adopting it as a good reason...

He said (and I'm paraphrasing): Good for you for not using paper products to wrap your gift baskets!

It was a very nice comment, and we're taking it to heart with future baskets and product wrapping.

This looks pretty cool, right? The pink, the bow, the gift tag... we thought so, too.

I'll have more photos up as we take them! Keep in mind, we're only making 16 of each basket. Get them while you can!

Also, we have some more big news we'll be announcing in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Soapier, discount coupons, and Reddit's Secret Santa

2010-11-03T08:50:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

A couple of things.

First off, we have a 20% off coupon for your holiday shopping!

Use HOLIDAY20 at checkout to receive your discount*.

Second, if you're a member of Reddit, then surely you've heard of the Secret Santa program they have. If you don't know about it, check it out. It's awesome.

For Secret Santa participants, we're offering a 25% off coupon*: SECRETSANTA. This coupon will work on both the US and UK sites.

Both coupons expire December 6th.

I'd like to show you a quick video, if I can, that summarizes the first leg of my trip to DC, holding the 95lb bag of soap.

Road to the Rally, part 3

2010-11-01T10:23:00.000-07:00

So, check it out. I just took a video recording of my trip, and it ended up being 25 minutes long.

I'm not going to let anyone suffer through that. That's crazy. So, here's part 3.

Awesomeness.

I headed over to One Lounge and found myself among a ton of fantastic people. Redditors.

They were dressed, in some form or another, with Reddit garb, or a costume, they had signs... in a crowd of a 1,000, they would have been easy to find. In a crowd of 215,000, not so much.

But here they were.

I'd like to stop for a moment and give you an idea of what the majority of my encounters were, when I handed out soap.

"Hey, mind if I sit down?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"Thanks. Ah... that's better." Rummage through bag. "Here."

They take the sample bar and look at it. "What the hell is this?"

Yeah. That's basically what I got from more than half the people I gave samples to. Once they knew what it was, and who I was, the mood changed, and they were quite happy to find out I was the Soapier guy.

Other encounters went like this.

"Oh my god. OH MY GOD! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS. Do you know who this IS?! This is the Soapier guy. OH MY GOD!"

I had about ten people do that. And that was awesome.

I found out that the VIP area for the party was upstairs, so I made my way and found HueyPriest up there. Erik and I had met once before at a NY Meet-up for Redditors. I met his sister and some other guys up there, but most of the rest of the admins and Reddit heavies were cleaning up the National Mall. So I took that time to relax.

I handed out more samples.

"OMG! You're the Soapier guy?"

"I'm the Soapier guy."

"Awesome! Didn't you close?"

"No, I am taking over the business."

"That's great! Hey, Chuck, check it out, it's the soap guy!"

"The what guy?"

I told our story about twenty times. I lost my voice at around 8pm, and battled through it until it was coarse, raspy and, ultimately, an indistinguishable voice from my own nasal and pinched voice.

Ok, my voice isn't nasal and pinched. Passport?

Moving on.

Admins started filling up the place. Redditors were told the place was full. I made rounds and handed out more soap.

Now, I'd like to talk about my first official introduction to Alexis (kn0thing). It went something like this.

"Hey, how are you?" I said.

"Oh, hey, you made it! Great." And back to his conversation.

I looked at him for a second, turned away and thought "He has no idea who I am, does he..." I thought that was so funny.

So I sat down for a bit. My bag was getting noticeably lighter, thank god, but my legs and feet were staging a mutiny.

I met... spez, Jedberg, KeyserSosa, Paradox, raldi, karmanaut, ketralnis, MrGrim (Alan, creator of Imgur), aaaxe (sauce guy), and the Stikkitnow.com guy. They were all very cool, very nice to talk to, and simply awesome in their knowledge of Soapier.

I ran into Raldi (who I think I took a joke too far with, sorry Raldi!) and sitting next to him was Lia, who I've been corresponding with about Reddit/Soapier ads.

Lia has been nothing but instrumental in helping us get some ad time on Reddit for the holiday season, and I cannot thank her enough. She's awesome. Her boyfriend is awesome, and we had a great time talking.

I see Alexis again, and I make my move. I grab a Reddit Alien and I hand it to him. He looks at me a second and says "We've never actually met, have we?"

"No."

"It's a real pleasure!"

We went on to have a great conversation.

Man, let me tell you. The first Soapier post is something I'll never forget. It was in August of 2007, and...

No, wait. It was in June of... was it July?

Anyway, that first post was really something I'll never forget. The movement to save Soapier was compounded by the help of Alexis and the people of Reddit. We corresponded a few times, we worked out a licensing agreement, he promoted the shit out of us for the holiday season... it was unreal. Our success was half due to Redditors, and the other half was because of Alexis and his belief in our company.

So, it was great talking to Alexis. I was able to hand off a full bar of the Soapert soap, and I told him about my wish to get them into the hands of Colbert and his people. My goal is to have them given out to Colbert's audience members. I also wanted to get some of the Reddit soaps into the hands of Colbert's writers. Alexis is going to see if we can make that possible. It's very exciting!

I was close to the end of my samples at this point. I finally had a drink, sat down, relaxed for a while, and started getting very sleepy.

It was roughly 8 at this point. I went back to the bookstore cafe, had dinner, said goodbye to Anne/Jen and Annie, went back to the party, only to find it had dissipated, and people had moved on to another venue or two.

It was time for me to leave.

I ran into Lia again, said my goodbyes, gave the last Reddit Alien soap to an unsuspecting new Redditor who said "It's bacon fragranced? In the shape of the Reddit Alien? Who ARE you?"

Said my goodbyes to a few others, and handed out my last sample to this guy. He knew who I was, too, and it was a high note ending for the party.

I grabbed a subway sandwich for the road, and went all the way back to Union Station.

The walk from Union Station wasn't that bad. My back was killing me. My head was spinning. My load was lighter, thankfully, but the wear on my body was evident. My throat was very upset with me. It felt like my body had let down whatever defenses it had, and anything foreign was going to have an easy time with me.

At the station, it was 11:00pm, and I found out I missed the early bus home by an hour.

I had two hours to kill.

Thankfully, I had downloaded Season 3 of Dexter, and watched the first two episodes on the way down to DC. Starting episode 3, I settled in.

I got hungry around midnight and found myself among a couple of college age redditors who were cool, and who knew who I was. We got to talking a bit. They had mentioned something about going to the after party, but not feeling welcome. They said that a bunch of the older people weren't taking them seriously, which, if true, is a shame. I don't know how they conducted themselves at the party. I mean to say, I was not there. I was sorry to hear that.

I also didn't have any more samples to give out. Which was also a shame.

We talked for a bit. I excused myself after a while to relax before we got on the bus, which was not for another hour.

Once on the bus, I was sitting next to one of two seats that were empty. I was able to stretch out a bit and sleep the first half. Got to the service area and the lights came on. What a bitch.

After we left the service area, the driver turned the heat on too high, and made the place uncomfortably warm. I slept what I thought was another hour but turned out to be 8 minutes.

Nodded on and off... got back to the city. It was 6am.

Got to the train, got right on a train, made it downtown, made the 10 block walk back to the apartment, and checked Reddit.

Hi, my name's John and I'm a Reddit addict.

I finally got to bed around 7:30, and was woken up at 1pm, much to my dismay. My girlfriend and my cats decided I'd had enough sleep. I wanted them all dead.

And... for Halloween, I saw Saw 3D. And it was as campy and as fun as all the others.

I'd like to share the following thank-you video to everyone I met.

That was supposed to be Colbert, not Colbiert... sorry!

Thanks everyone for reading, for supporting Soapier, and for being you. We really appreciate it.

John @ Soapier

My road to the rally, part 2

2010-10-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

Hey, so, I left something out.

I saw my first Redditor on the line at Port Authority. I handed him a sample soap, he looked at it and said "Uh, thanks..." smelled it, and I walked away.

So, we get to the station.

At this point, we'll be discussing the pain.

My legs were hurting already, because of the way I was sitting.

I got off the bus and felt like a pilgrim in an unholy land.

Ok, not really.

I walked for a bit until I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to be heading. Luckily, I fell in with that Redditor and his buddy, and he gets out his iPhone and a GPS app. "This way, gentlemen!" he said in an authoritative voice, pointing. If he had a barrel, or a fallen enemy, or perhaps a wild animal, he would have put a triumphant foot upon it.

Maybe spear a flag into the ground.

So, we started walking. Fast. I'm carrying 30lbs of soap, you know? But I'm keeping up a good pace. I mention the bag after these University boys ask me if it's full of beer. Sigh. No, it's not. This is the Rally to Restore Sanity, not get drunk and act like morons.

For some reason this reminds me of a scene from Spinal Tap.

Ian Faith: The Boston gig has been cancelled...
David St. Hubbins: What?
Ian Faith: Yeah. I wouldn't worry about it though, it's not a big college town.

Sigh. No, not beer. It's 35lbs of soap!

So, we get to walking, and we can hear echos. Echos of yelling. Music. Crowds. Pretty unreal.

We keep walking. Now, let's see if I can detail how far of a walk it was. Let me get a map.

Ok, so, we walked from the bus station (red circle) to down the National Mall.

I lost them about half way there. A woman started talking to me and asking me if I was glad to be there. I said I was, but was upset I was missing the rally. She said that didn't matter. I agreed and disagreed.

She said she had been to three different inaugurations, for Clinton, Bush, and Obama. She said she hadn't seen that many people at any of those, than she did at the Rally. I thought that was pretty unreal.

So. I'm all alone. I have a 40lb bag of soap and people keep bumping into me. I even said "Hey, I'm just the guy with the 45lb bag of soap. COME ON!"

I walked back to 3rd and Madison.

Feeling forever alone, I sat on a rock and watched two daschunds play for a bit. I watched people walk around, and I desperately looked for Redditors, whom I did not find. There was no enjoying the show. I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything, and the crowd, while well mannered, was too thick to walk at a respectable gait.

At this point, I spoke with my girlfriend, then my mom, updating them on my day. I sat on the rock for a bit, people watched, took some video, and was then struck with an irony so deep, so sad, that I had to call my girlfriend again.

"You do realize that while you're in the comfort of our apartment, lounging, watching television, you're able to enjoy the Rally, while I'm actually AT the rally, and I can't enjoy it?"

She laughed.

I started crying.

So, she said "Well, I saw this report earlier about people in Washington, DC, people who actually live there, who said they were going to go to the Rally, saw the trains were packed to the gills, and decided not to go, so why don't you head over to that restaurant I told you about, and get some food, then head to the after party."

She's so smart.

So, that's what I did.

She asks me where I am. I tell her. She goes on google and finds me the closest metro station. I say great. Which way is North?

"You can see the sun, right?"

I said yeah.

"So, figure out where North is."

"I... what, do I look like an Arawak?" (I just started reading Zinn's History of the United States)

Sigh, ok, I'll say something funnier.

"I... what do I look like, a..."

Shit, I've got nothing. I said "I could tell you what time it is..."

"Just figure it out. Go here, go left, go left again, it's right there."

So I say ok. I hang up and go to the first official looking person I can find, which is an ambulance driver. She says "That way. Bend to the left. It's Union Station. That's the closest."

Fantastic.

See, now, I didn't know where the hell I was. Union Station sounds like, you know, a good place to go.

The problem was, Union station was all the way back near the goddamn bus station. Here I am, carrying 40lbs of soap... but I didn't realize I was heading in the direction I came from. So I walk back.

I know that white line might be hard to see, but that's the way back.

I stop someone on the way, ask her if I'm heading in the right direction. She says yes. I ask how far. She says about a third of a mile.

Here's where the rest of the pain starts. I've given away, at this point, 1 sample bar.

I'm holding 45lbs of soap and my messenger bag. I feel like I'm slowly dying. I feel like I'm on the second day of The Long Walk and Vegas odds have me buying the farm next.

Once at Union Station, I took the red line to Dupont Circle. The train was empty. So empty that I was able to get a seat, which was awesome. Sitting down was like shutting off the switch on the electric chair, and still being alive.

But not for long.

I had five stops until Dupont. The first stop... not so bad.

The second stop must have been just shy of the mall. In retrospect, I'm happy the ambulance driver told me to walk to Union Station, because this is what it felt like two stops in:

It was insane.

Three stops later, I was able to push myself out, using my 50lb bag of soap as a battering ram. No one smelled as good, or felt as run over, as those did in my path.

Out of the train, I felt I could not only breathe again, but that my blood lust had suddenly dissipated.

Out at Dupont Circle I was able to find my way thanks to a local Washington resident, made my way around the Circle and found myself on Connecticut Avenue. There, I found the coolest place in town.

Now, I hadn't been in town that long, you know, but it's safe to say that there is no place cooler than Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe, who have an awesome place, but wow, what a crappy website...

I got in looking to get a cup of coffee and maybe a dessert or something, I don't know. I had a fresh copy of Howard Zinn's book with me, and I wanted to make a dent in it before the after party. So, I head to the reservation desk and I meet Annie, a very nice young lady who is taking seat requests. One for 3, one for 4, one for 2. I walk up and put one finger up in the air and look sheepishly tired. She smiles. "Just one?"

"Please. I've been wearing the same underwear for twelve hours."

"Oh, in that case, half an hour."

"For chrissake, is there any place other than starbucks I can get a cup of coffee and sit down?"

She thinks for a minute, beckons me closer. "Try Dupont Cafe, across the street."

"Thanks," I say, and head over.

Well, no. That place felt like if I didn't have an MBA, I was not welcome. Also, it was empty. Sure sign.

I walk back. "Yeah, listen, don't ever send anyone over there again, ok? I felt like I needed an MBA to walk in there," I said. I know I already said it to you, but in the interest of full disclosure.

She laughed, looked at her sheet. "Ok, I'm gonna put you in front of all these people."

"Wow, ok," I said, and dug deep into my bag of samples and grabbed her a full bar of Soapert soap. "Here," I said.

"What is this?"

"Soap. It's for the Colbert Rally, for some friends of mine. I only brought 5 of them, so, you know, don't use it. Don't even look at it. Just, you know, smell it."

"Wow, so, I can sell it on eBay for thousands of dollars?"

"No, jeez, it's just soap."

I got a table about three minutes later. You didn't know, did you, that I was so charismatic and charming? Did you!?

So, yeah, I sit down, and Anne comes to my table. No, not Anne, I mean Jen! Jen, yeah.

We talk for a moment, I order decaf coffee and apple pie ala mode. And it was awesome.

I read for a bit, and Anne/Jen comes over and says "Hey, my friend is a big fan of Reddit."

So, I tell her the story of Soapier, and I give her some samples for her and her Reddit friend, who thanked me on Reddit. That was awesome.

The bag does not feel lighter. In fact, after sitting, it felt like I went into default mode, back to a weaker state of being.

I leave and head over to the One Lounge, across the street. I get there and I find more of those amazing inventions...

My road to the Rally (part 1)

2010-10-31T14:41:00.000-07:00

My road to the Rally to Restore Sanity, Truthiness, Keeping Fear Alive, and all of the other sub-names, was one of doubt, excitement, frustration, sore feet, sore hands, disappointment, hunger, awesomeness, exhaustion, and exhaustion.

Let's start at Doubt.

After hearing about the Rally, and what I truly believe to be Reddit's enormous contribution to making it happen, I knew that I had to be a part of it. I didn't know in what capacity, but I wanted to be there. To share in the message, meet like-minded people, and get together with a fantastic group of people who, directly or indirectly, helped my family and I.

So, I started getting in touch with some of the Reddit admins. Or, I should say, I tried to get in touch with them. Running Reddit clearly takes devotion, passion, expertise... and time. Suffice it to say, while the Reddit Admins work hard every day, their work became exponentially more time consuming as the Rally got closer.

So, I didn't hear back from them. With good reason.

As the date got closer, I became more doubtful of my attendance. There was going to be a Reddit booth, maybe. I was hoping to be there. Maybe. I was planning on bringing samples. Maybe. Then there was no booth. Scratch the samples. Ok, maybe stickers. That would be cool.

Would it be cool? Eh, I don't know. Maybe I'll just show my face, I don't know.

A week before the Rally, I didn't think I was going to go. I hadn't heard back from anyone about a spot for me (not that I deserved one, but I wanted to see if I could get one, at a Reddit booth, or what-have-you...)

Now, two weeks before the rally, I had sent an e-mail to Reddit about advertising. I wanted to do some holiday advertising, and wanted to run some 250X300 banners.

Got in touch with a woman I hadn't heard of before at Reddit, who basically said that the advertising on Reddit had picked up steam, and the amount of money that we were willing to spend would not get us any real facetime on Reddit. Well, that was too bad, but she offered a solution.

Oh, 'she' is Lia. I'm not actually sure what her Reddit name is, but yeah.

So, she says 'we'll get you some ads of the Reddit Aliens and envelopes. We'll do that!'

Well, that was great news. Just in time for Secret Santa, and the holidays, for opening the UK store... awesome. Reddit has, time and again, does what it can to help us out. It's greatly appreciated.

So, a week goes by, it's a week before the Rally, I can't get in touch with anyone, and I'm sitting down on my mom's couch in Tampa, and we're talking about the rally and...

Heyyyyyyyyyyyy. Why not call this woman at Reddit? She foolishly left her work number on the bottom of her first email.

So I call her.

And she was like "They didn't get in touch with you? Oh, I'll take care of that, don't you worry!"

Ok, she didn't say any of that, but that's how it sounded. She got in touch with HueyPriest and he got back to me straight away, put me on the party VIP list and I turn to my mom and say "Uhhhh, so, yeah."

She shakes her head. "No. Nope. Uh-uh."

"Yeah."

"No, J."

"Yeah."

"Then you do it. I'm watching HGTV."

I can't, for the life of me, get away from HGTV. My girl watches it, my mom...

Here starts the Excitement phase.

So, I started making these:

6 trays, 16 soaps a tray. 3 trays at a time. Each layer has to be done separately, obviously, and cooled/hardened the next. So, it took some time.

Then I made these:

Full bars.

While I'm making them, I start looking for a way to get down to DC from NYC. Train is too expensive. Flying is out. Am I staying over a night or what? Hotel prices are crazy. Hostel's are sold out. Staying with a stranger isn't going to happen. I'm just too good looking.

What? I AM!

So, I decide on leaving at 6:30am Saturday morning, and coming back at 10pm. But that won't work, because the after party starts at 5... that's not enough time to meet everyone.

So, a Saturday 6:30am bus down, 1:15am bus Sunday morning back home. Yeah. That'll do it.

I'm 37. I should have known my body was going to revolt. I should have known.

I bought the tickets.

Got the soaps all finished, then I wrapped each one, labeled them, packaged them up, and got them all off in time before I came back to NY.

I also added some Reddit Alien soaps and and Envelope set. Alexis wanted one for his father, and I figured I'd give some out to people, and show them off.

I got them three days later, and lost five to a dented side, on the box. Sigh. So, all told, I had 91 samples, 5 large bars, 3 Alien soaps, and 1 Envelope set. Which leads us to...

FRUSTRATION.

How in the hell was I going to carry all of this?

That's about... well, let's see. Each sample bar is 2oz. Each Alien is 10oz. Each large bar is 6oz. Each envelope set is 8oz.

That's... 2... carry the 1... about 16lbs.

No. No way. Absolutely no way was that only 16lbs. It weighed like I was holding 3 bricks... which is about 18 pounds.

Fine. So, I was telling people at the Rally after party that it was like 40 lbs worth of soap. That's what it felt like.

I borrow a knapsack from my friend Elke and start putting them in there. All nice and neat, I put the rest of the things I'm bringing into the bag, put out my clothes for the night, and go to sleep. Or half sleep. I didn't sleep well that night.

I went to bed at 10pm, but didn't fall asleep until 11:30, and then woke up every half hour or so. It happens, every time I have to wake up at a certain time that's earlier than normal. So, I slept like crap.

Woke up, got ready, lifted up the knapsack that I had borrowed from a friend and said "Nope. No. Not gonna happen."

Yeah, there's no way it was only 16lbs. Christ, that bag was heavy. So I put it in a carry bag, brought my messenger bag... yeah, great idea John. Let's not put it all in one bag, let's unevenly distribute it in two. Perfect.

Sigh.

Eat breakfast, wash my face, brush my teeth, say goodbye to Karen and the kitties, and I head out the door.

The first thing I notice is IT'S COLD.

The second thing I notice is I'm exhausted.

I walk the fifteen blocks or so to the subway station, get down there, and a train approaches. I'm on the A line, and it's a straight shot to Port Authority. Well, it's not an A. Not a C... it's an F. I don't have to tell you what I proceeded to read into, that F.

I sit down, let it pass, and wait 20 minutes for... another F train. Oh man.

I run outside the station, flapping my hands too and fro, and catch a cab. "To Port Authority!"

We catch every single light for sixty blocks, no fooling. It was like some force was making sure we get there with some time to spare.

Awesome.

I get there, pay the guy, grab my 20lb bag of soap, and go into Port Authority where I find... the Information desk is shut.

There's a sign that says "Oh, hey, there's another one down there."

Ok, so I go down there. That one has a sign that says "Go somewhere else."

I'm starting to get mad.

I see other people and they're milling about. No one can answer my question. There's no sign that says "Peter Pan Bus Gates Here." Nothing on my ticket.

I'm thinking to myself, "Self... there aren't that many people around, we can't really follow a crowd. Let's go downstairs, see if there's anyone down there."

So, I go downstairs. A lone guy, with no affiliation to the Port Authority says "Washington?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Gate 71. Down there."

"Ok. I'm gonna get a danish."

"Yeah, man."

Au Bon Pain did not have any danish. Bastards.

So I head to gate 71. And there's a line.

Now, when you think of a line, you think movie theater line, or maybe even a line outside that club you want to get into, right?

This line was crazy. It spread out all the way down in the basement of Port Authority. It snaked around columns, followed long corridors, down short hallways, and ended with a bunch of people who were turning the end of the line into... wait for it... LEGENDARY.

No, I mean a circle. They were curling the end of the line. It was full on retarded.

Now, I don't like to meddle. Or maybe I do, because I think of myself as a problem solver. Or an elitist. I'm not sure where the distinction lies. Or not. Or whatever.

So, I go and talk to some PA guy and tell him what's happening. Instead of actually doing something about it, he looks, smiles like an idiot, and goes back to talking to his friend.

I walk back grumbling about "I'll show you..." and tell the people behind me that maybe they should, you know, in the interest of sanity, start curling the line so that it doesn't move in a circle. This woman, wearing a Viking hat says "Dude, take it easy, it's just a $30 ticket to Washington."

At this point, I took the war helmet and bashed her brains in. In my mind.

What I actually did was nothing, and I said "Hey, I just think that people are going to start getting angry, and you have an opportunity to start pointing the line in a good position. But, whatever."

Since her group were behind me, they were at a point where they could move the line, because of a structure they were next to. Alas they did not. So, for the next half an hour, while the line grew, it spiraled and continued to spiral, until there were two lines in a tight space. I decided, then and there, that I would not help save the human race from any asteroid strike in the future.

The line, which I have some footage of, was over 1,000 people, easy, and doubled back to the front of the line and then split off. That was AFTER they'd already filled more than ten buses.

It was unreal.

When I finally did get on a bus, it was 7:20, and we were on our way. I sat, for the first two hours... well, the whole way, actually... with a hardened plastic seat belt lock in my left ass cheek, pain in my left leg, and a seat companion who would turn around, get up on her knees, and talk to the people behind us.

By the time we got to the rest stop, we were on time. By the time we left the rest stop, we were 10 minutes late. By the time we reached Maryland we were an hour and a half late. We made it to DC at 12:45pm, five and a half hours after we left.

I wanted to die.

Quick update

2010-10-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

Well, I just bought a Kodak Playsport compact camcorder for the trip this weekend. I plan on putting together a video of my trip, meeting people etc. Should be great.

I'm gearing up for this weekend. Just got my box of soaps from Florida, and the whole apartment smells like apple pie. Yummm.

Let's see. The UK site is almost finished. That's fantastic news.

I leave 6:30am on Saturday morning and get into DC around 11:00. I hope I get a good view of the show. I'm very much looking forward to the Reddit after party. That will be a lot of fun, and a relief. I'll be able to give out most of the samples by then. Whew. Lugging around 30lbs of soap is going to make for a tiring day.

My trip to Florida was moderately successful. We made a ton of soap, getting ready for the holiday season. I'm very excited to see what the next two months bring!

If you are going to the rally, are a redditor, and want a sample of our Soapert soaps, look for the tall blonde guy in the 8-Bit Reddit shirt. He's devilishly handsome (ehhhhh), in fantastic shape (oh, for God sake), and oozes charisma.

That last part is true. Ish.

See you in two days!

Soapier's Big Announcement

2010-10-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Yay!

So, about two or three weeks ago, or more, I can't remember, I decided to take over the business.

So, I post on Reddit. Anyone who gets us a wholesale account, they will receive a $30 gift certificate to Soapier.com.

Well, I get an email from a lovely woman, Erica, in the UK, asking about franchise opportunities, or a wholesale agreement. We chat back and forth a bit, and, lo and behold...

Soapier UK is born!

Now, I won't get into the particulars, about cost, shipping, UK taxes, etc... but we both did everything we could to keep costs down so that our European customers will be saving money, purchasing Soapier products.

She is also selling our Reddit Alien and envelope soaps, along with Trollface soaps!

As of right now, we're selling our best sellers from the US in the UK. As time progresses, we'll be bringing over more product.

We're working out some logistic issues with the shopping cart right now, but Erica is taking pre-orders and will start shipping December 1, in plenty of time for the holidays!

So, that's awesome.

Soapier goes to Washington, DC

2010-10-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Well, it's just about a week away. The Rally to Restore Sanity, and Soapier will be there, hanging out with the Reddit crowd, and the rest of the country!

Should be a lot of fun. I'm hoping to take video, do a little montage of my trip...

AND, I'll be bringing down a couple of goodies, as mementos. Check it out. They're called Soapert:

You know, for Colbert? And the best thing is, it smells like apple pie.

My friend Nicole, who has her own pretty awesome blog, Thrift Store Confidential, gave me this idea. Thanks Nicole!

Anyway, if you see me down there (I'll be wearing a Reddit shirt, at the Reddit After-Party, smelling like soap) I might be able to give you one! I can only bring about 50 or so... they're heavy.

See you in Washington!

John

Aid for Aidan

2010-10-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

A family put a young boy's artwork up on etsy.com to raise money for his leukemia treatments.

Thanks to Aidan, Soapier has a new mascot!

The prints are $12.00, and go to a good cause. Yesterday, when I purchased, there had been 90 sales. Today, it's at 480, and they had to stop selling because they have so many orders. That's awesome.

Good going Reddit!

Exhaustion, and looking ahead

2010-10-18T17:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been here a total of five days, and let me tell you brother, my 60-some-odd year old mother is running rings around me.

I would venture that she's working harder at her job than most people do. Clearly that might be an exaggeration, but it can't be that far off base.

Let me see if I can break this down for you.

At present, we sell:

34 different soaps by the slice

6 different goat's milk soaps

6 different Soapier accent soaps

5 different soap slices in mens fragrances

3 different kinds of Reddit Alien soap

2 different Reddit Envelope Soaps

1 Trollface soap

We offer more than 40 different Soapier Samples

We have 6 different gift baskets for the holidays

3 different Soap of the Month Club options

8 different holiday soaps

and a set of Animal Cracker soaps for kids.

One woman, over the past four months, has been busting her ass to make all of this soap for our customers. My sister had been helping, but the business couldn't sustain her salary, so she had to quit. It wasn't an easy decision.

To be clear, if I had six months, I still wouldn't know everything about this business.

I've sat here... well, not really sat. I've walked around this apartment, and I've done my share of making soap, but there is no business without my mom.

Let me tell you what needs to happen, for Soapier to continue.

First off, we need orders. Now, I have some very, very good news that I'm going to spill on Thursday. This might be exactly what Soapier needs, to generate orders... we also have the holiday season fast approaching, and also the Reddit Secret Santa. Should be awesome.

We have two different venues for advertising this holiday season. I'm optimistic.

Second, we need to hire someone.

Third, we need a production facility.

Now, 'production facility' is just a fancy term for warehouse space. I like to call it a production facility because, well, that's what we do there. We produce a product.

The second and third things that we need are tied to us getting sales. We need to generate X amount this holiday season to allow us to hire someone and move our soap making out of my mom's house and into a space that is dedicated to one thing.

Clearly, moving our soap making business is not possible between now and the holidays. Not unless we received $10,000 in orders over the next two weeks. Hell, that would pay for a space AND a full time person for the next five months, at least. But I'm not holding my breath.

One of the things I've been looking into is Kickstarter.com. I want to put up a fundraising campaign, offering our Soap of the Month Club as incentive. We'll see if it happens.

Other than that... right now, it's a waiting game. We have to see how November sales are. Which kind of sucks, because November of last year was a busy month for us. It's one of the main reasons I'm down in Florida right now. We're making as much soap as we can, so that when the orders do start coming in, we can get them out without having to stop everything, just to make a loaf of soap.

Tomorrow, we put in a big order for soap base. We put in an order for some extra molds, a new mold for shaving soap (we've been getting plenty of requests), and some fragrances.

Then it's Keep on Truckin', making soap, wrapping it, labeling it, and storing it for the rush.

If you had a good relationship with your mother when you were younger, then the amount of respect you had for her will change, as you grow older. It might go lower... that's probably when you come to see some things about her, as an adult, that you might not agree with, and what have you. I hope that's rare.

Or, it might go higher.

For me, it's clearly gone higher. I've seen my mom fight her way through some personal issues, over the last five years or so, that would affect others in a much worse way, and come out damaged on the other side. Clearly, my mom can be defined as a fighter. She has high standards for things that actually matter, and it's one of the reasons this business has done as well as it has, this past year.

So, to all of you who are fans of our soap, your thanks should go directly to Linda. She's the driving force behind this company, and I'm going to do all I can to take the burden off of her shoulders.

We'll see how Soapier fares after this holiday season. I think that, at some point, I'll have some wonderful news for you, in the realm of our growing business.

Day 2

2010-10-15T20:57:00.000-07:00

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Tension breaker, had to be done.

Soap. More soap. Soap everywhere I turn.

Soap to the left of me...

Soap to the right of me...

Niagara Falls!

Sigh.

Anyway. Here I am, it's a bit past midnight, and I'm exhausted. Figured I'd do a quick update on our progress.

We're running out of room. We're preparing Christmas soaps so that we can get orders out as soon as possible, when they come in. The faster we can get them out, the happier we'll be.

Here is a photo of the holiday soap that people will be getting if they order the 1-year subscription of our Soap of the Month Club.

It's called Snow Mitten, and it smells like Cranberries on Ice! Smells delicious. My mom and I spent yesterday and today making these.

We also have another Christmas soap we put up called Reindeer Games:

That's fragranced with chocolate mint. Yummy.

This weekend, we continue making the gift baskets, works of art soaps, and more. Not sure how much blogging I'm going to get to this weekend, but next week, I have a super, duper, awesome piece of news. I don't want to spoil it, but check back around Thursday or so (though, you know, check out my blog posts that I'll have earlier, too). It's going to be a big deal, for Soapier.

Oh, and two things. One, we signed up for an OpenSky.com account. If you're a blogger, you can make money promoting Soapier!

Two, we got this awesome review.

Day 1

2010-10-14T17:12:00.000-07:00

Got in last night, blew up the air mattress, and slept on the floor in the living room. That's SOP for me, in Florida, since the business takes up the second bedroom of my mom's apartment.

The only problem with sleeping in the living room is that my mom gets up at 5am to walk her dog, and makes enough racket to wake up the corpses that live under the complex here. Remember Poltergeist? Yeah, this place used to be a cemetery, but they didn't move the bodies.

Woke up this morning and greeted a friend of my mom's, who was here for 4 hours to help wrap soap. We were making the Gift Baskets today... it's a lot of soap, a lot of wrapping. We were lucky to have her help.

So, here's what happens when we make baskets. First, we have these cute metal pails, and we fill them with some paper filler.

We did this while the soaps were getting wrapped.

After wrapping, my mom put in shred...

Then my mom started placing them in the buckets...

... and then wrapped them in colorful wrapping, with a ribbon.

That is the Gentlemen's Club gift basket. It has six different soaps, in brand new fragrances: Dragon's Blood, Cool Water, Indian Musk, Vetiver, Issey Miyake, Nag Champa.

Should be a great selection of soaps for the guy in your life!

We went to lunch shortly after, at Boston Market. Wow. I deal with food preparers RARELY in NYC. Karen and I try and cook as much as possible. The people at the Tampa Boston Market were simply awesome, and the manager was an amazing upseller. They even brought our food to our tables, which is brand new. The only issue I had was that they were basically serving food, and were not allowed to accept tips. That's not right. Shame, Boston Market. Those people were busting their ass BEFORE this new situation. Now you have them doing more work, for the same money. Not cool.

Back home. Doing a second gift basket... this time, Sugar Rush, the basket we made for kids, and, you know, everyone who loves sweets. Let's see...

Those are the bars. The fragrances coming from these bars was nuts.

Bubble Gum, Caramel Apple, Cherry Cola, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Snickerdoodle (cinnamon sugar cookie), Marshmallow. Yeah, they're as good as they sound.

Here's another angle, just cooler.

All in all, it was a good day. We did 16 of each basket. That's all we're making, this holiday season. Once they're gone, they're gone. The reason is, the molds for our sample sizes makes 16 bars.

That's about it, for today. Tomorrow I'm making a red, white, and blue soap to sell between now and Christmas. It will be called Soapert... for Colbert. $1 from each bar sold will be donated to donorschoose.org. I'll have pictures on Monday, once we fix it.

Oh, and it's gonna smell like apple pie. Yeah.

Heading to Florida

2010-10-13T15:19:00.001-07:00

Well... I was going to shoot video, and put together a near little montage of my trip to Florida, but I fell to one of the worst genetic problems one can fall to.

Procrastination.

My whole family has it. I'm not going to say 'it's like a cancer', even though it is.

Ok, it's totally like a cancer.

I didn't end up leaving until 4:15. That was 15 minutes late. Then, I got down to the subway and had to wait two trains, because they were tooooo full, and I wouldn't have gotten a seat to relax and eat my sandwich.

Which was important.

The trip was uneventful. I'm not sure what I would have recorded, but I could have put it to cool music, and that would have made even the most benign footage interesting.

Oh well.

I'm at the airport, waiting for the call to get on the plane.

I think it was in The Stand, yeah, where Glen Bateman talks about planes crashing. The gist is that somehow, some people know if a plane is going to crash, and that most plane crashes are actually only half filled, because people sense something is wrong, and they don't get on the plane.

That might have been true in the 70s/80s. I don't suspect that people would give up a seat these days. The cost is brutal.

Anyway, I'm heading down for my initial visit, to help with the holiday rush. We'll be making soap every day, and doing some fixings to the site, and we'll see how it goes. I expect good things.

Then I'll be back up in NY for the Colbert Rally, we'll be hiring on some help, and getting through the holidays. From there... well, you all will know how we're doing. If you get one or two word blogs, we're busy. If you get a novel, buy as much soap as you can!

Testimonials

2010-10-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

So, I've been doing some research on how to improve sales, and one of the things I found was that I should add testimonials to the site.

On top of advertising on both Reddit and Facebook, this is something that should be reasonably easy to do.

If any of our customers would like to write us about a particular soap that they've used, I will send you a 15% off coupon on your next purchase, to use your testimonial.

You can email me at john@wordsfromhere.com. That would be great.

We did do some testimonials on our Trollface soap page. That was fun. Hopefully we'll get some really great testimonials, and I'll be able to put them on this blog.

I sent out an email to the First In Line Soap list, letting people know we were open again, and I was hoping for an order. :(

Then I forgot that today was a holiday. Sigh.

That's what happens when you aren't working. You forget the holiday schedule. Even with my girlfriend home, I kept thinking it was Sunday. Then Castle came on, and I was like "Uhhhh... wait, today is Monday?"

I head down to Florida on Wednesday, to help make soap for the holidays. Should be a fun and productive trip!

Thanks for reading, and for comments people have been leaving. It's nice to know people visit our blog.

In fact, after I did some research with our clicktale.com account, I found that people click on our blog a lot more than I thought they would. Interesting.

If you're reading, showing up for the first time, or want to just say hello, comment!

Thanks - John

Wholesale customers

2010-10-11T11:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

About four months before my mom decided to close Soapier, she closed our wholesale division, First In Line Soap.

I just re-opened it, and we're looking for customers.

If you know someone who might like to sell our soaps in their store, let them know about us! If your suggestion results in a wholesale purchase (we have a $150 minimum purchase, which is 5 loafs), we'll give you a $30 gift certificate to Soapier!

Wholesale customers must have a tax ID#.

With each loaf, customers get wrapping paper for the soap, colorful labels (you all know the labels), and signs, just like this. And, if they sign up for our newsletter, they'll receive a 10% off coupon, for being a new customer.

Thanks!

Doing good for others

2010-10-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

After receiving tons of support from Redditors last year, it seemed fairly obvious to all of us that we had to pay whatever we could forward to others.

I'm not going to list the things we did this past year because, the fact is, it would just be self serving, and that's not what I want to be about.

What I do want to let everyone know is that every once in a while, there's going to be something awesome that we find out about... that the Reddit community, or the community at large, rallies behind.

Just yesterday, there was a sickening story about a 7-year old girl and her family who was being harassed by her neighbors. The thing is, the 7-year old is dying. It's pretty disgusting, and it's garnered some national interest.

But the really cool thing is that a Redditor decided to rally the troops and get his fellow Redditors to chip in and show her that there are good people in the world.

Someone else took it a step further. He owns a toy store near the girl and her family, put up a donation page, and raised over $4,000 (much of it from Redditors), to get toys for her and for other sick children.

Unreal, isn't it?

We're going to see what we can do, not only for this brave girl, but for Mott's Children's Hospital, in Michigan. I'll have to run it past Linda (mom), but I think we'll contact the hospital and see if we can send the kids there a bar of one of our Works of Art Soaps. They might not want the kids to use regular soap... I'll have to find out and update this blog, but it's something I'd like to do.

This whole situation is one of the reasons I love Reddit. Not only does it bring to light news from all over the world, but it also shows how strong the human spirit is. I'm proud to be a part of the community.

J

Edit: due to the time constraints of this young girl's situation, we donated money, instead. If you feel you'd like to donate, you can do so here.

Poker

2010-10-07T19:25:00.001-07:00

I'm a big fan of poker. My gf and I watch the World Series of Poker religiously.

I like to go down to Atlantic City with my friends and play table games and poker. Whenever we can, we go to Vegas.

Lately, our trips have been few and far between. I haven't been working, and when you're not working, trips like that are just too expensive, and just... what's the word. Frivolous. That's a good word.

When I moved down to Florida in 2008 to help my mom and sister with the company, my mom asked my sister and I to write down a bunch of things we wanted, when the company became successful.

My mom's very big on positive thinking.

So, one of the things I wrote down was that I wanted to get into the main event at the WSOP. It's a $10,000 ticket, and, at the time, I felt that THAT would be the ultimate cool thing to do when the company went nuts.

See, we had a retail store, we had wholesale customers, and we had just hired a PR firm to help us get out into the world. We sent out press releases, received a HUGE amount of requests for samples, and we really thought we were going to have a serious amount of magazines, television shows, newspapers, and more promoting our awesome products.

At the time, $10,000 seemed like chump change. Sure, hey, I'll get to the WSOP. Maybe I'll even do well. Sure.

Hell, one of the other things I wanted was an original Jeffrey Jones painting. Something like Age of Innocence. One of the most phenomenal paintings out there, in my opinion. I'm a huge Jeffrey Jones (the painter, not the pedophile) fan.

A bit more than 2 years later, my list has changed completely.

I would never consider paying $10,000 for a seat at a poker tournament. I respect people who can do that. After being out of work for so long, I have to save whatever money I make, and, believe me, I won't be making much of anything for a while.

Soapier needs help. Marketing help, actual physical help. We need to hire someone, to help us with soap making, wrapping, shipping. All very important to the survival of my mom's mental health, and our business.

Let's see. What's on my list.

Well, I'd like to be able to help pay rent and bills.

I'd like to be able to buy Christmas presents this year, though I know how much a handmade gift can be appreciated.

I'd like to be able to get my mom a vacation. She hasn't been on a proper one in many years.

I'd like to get my sister a new (used) car.

I'd like to save enough money so that the company won't ever be on its last legs.

I'd like to have enough money so that we can continue to donate to great causes that Reddit finds.

I would Soapier to be a shining light in the world. We're not interested in making millions. We're interested in having a stable company, with stable employees that get the rewards they deserve.

I had this fantastic idea for franchising Soapier stores. I hope to be able to promote these franchises next year. I think it will revolutionize how businesses franchise. I really do... and what it will achieve will be huge for people who want to start their own businesses, but don't want to pay $50,000 before they even open a store. There's a better way.

The WSOP will always be around. Maybe one day when I'm making a salary, and have a significant amount of savings, and won't stress out about spending the money... then I'll be able to do it.

Until then, it's a nice dream... but there are quite a few nicer, more practical ones that hold priority, and I'm fine with that.

Thanks for reading. I head down to Florida for my initial trip on Wednesday. We'll see how it goes.

J

Update, new products, and more!

2010-10-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hi all.

Today, we have some fantastic products for this holiday season, including a Soap of the Month Club! We can send this to friends and family... people you think are stinky. Whoever you want. We have 3 different subscription options. Each month you or your enemy... sigh, or your family member or friend or someone else... they'll receive a brand new soap in a brand new, exclusive fragrance.

These are very limited, so get them while you can! As we get orders, I'll be updating the site to let customers know how many we have left.

We have holiday soaps, holiday gift baskets, stuff for kids... and all of our other great products.

Most, if not all of this stuff are pre-orders. The Soap of the Month Club members will receive their first order just in time for Christmas!

Gift baskets and gift soaps will not start shipping until the first week of November.

And yes, yes, yes, we have our infamous Santa's Nog soap.

One other thing. To try and market us better, I have added Facebook Like buttons to all of our pages. If you see something you like, Like us on Facebook!

You can also become a fan of Soapier on FB.

Thanks everyone. Two more things.

First, if you or anyone you know is looking for work this holiday season, and who lives in the Tampa area, Soapier is looking to hire someone! Email me at john@soapier.com and we'll see what we can do. It's just one person we're hiring, and we need a really good person, who is creative, hard working, and doesn't need to text 24/7. This job could possibly become full time (we hope it will) if our holiday sales are good enough to sustain them through the new year.

Two. We're looking to move into a new facility. This, too, is dependent on holiday sales. The next two months will be crazy for us, but I believe it's imperative that we find a new space, so that we can get all of our orders out in a timely fashion.

Oh, and one more thing. Normally, we charge orders when we ship. It's taking too much time for us to do this, so we're going to start processing cc fees straight from the gateway (cart). For those of you who need to wait a couple of days, or have some special need, just contact us. We'll work with you!

All the best,

John

The Rollercoaster

2010-10-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

Hello all. Thanks for stopping by and reading what will surely be a strange, yet provocative piece of non-fiction. Nothing to tell the grandkids, you know, but still...

At the end of August, my mom decided to call it quits with Soapier. She just couldn't do it alone any more. My sister had taken a full time job because the soap business wasn't able to support both my mom and her.

So, basically, my mom was overworked.

She said "I'm done. Done. DONE. I can't do it any more." This was on the phone, you know.

So, she said tell them we're closing. Tell them we're closing, but if they want to buy us, they can. If not, I'm going to, I don't know, be a greeter at Wal-Mart or something. But don't tell them that.

Sigh, ok mom.

Now, listen. I love everything that we've done over the past however many years. I love it. I love, more specifically, the amount of help, support, and love we've received from Reddit. I don't know how many retail companies can say the have received as much as we have. It was truly unbelievable.

I know I say it often enough, but I don't think people grasp the full scope of what happened.

I post a thread on Reddit and receive quite the sendoff.

But from that moment on, I was kind of obsessed with keeping the business.

We received over 40 interested parties who wanted to obtain Soapier. We sent out emails with an asking price, and by the end of the month, we had two potential buyers, and one party interested in investing with us.

In the end, none of it was a good fit. I was both relieved and a bit disappointed. My sister and my mom (not to mention myself) could have used the money from the sale. But I had other plans.

I haven't been working steady since February of this year. Nothing's really been working for me. I've been a graphic designer for 13 years, and I'm, unfortunately, in that position where people won't hire me for entry positions because they think I'll rabbit if something better comes along. I'm also in the position to know the value of my experience, and when a company is looking for me (or someone like me) to do the work of 3 people for a ridiculously low salary.

Ok, ok. I applied to those jobs, too. Beggars can't be choosers.

But nothing was happening. I even applied for dog walking positions. One place told me they received over 400 resumes for the position. That was when I knew that not only were things tough, but that my not finding work was not my fault.

So, I thought. And thought. Thought some more. And I decided that I would go down to Florida and take over the business.

Posted it on Reddit, got in touch with our customers who purchased during September, to give them the opportunity to return their product, just in case they felt that they were buying under false pretenses...

And now we're at present day.

Oh, check this out. Stephen Colbert mentioned Soapier in a letter he sent to Reddit. That day was pretty much THE day that I decided I wasn't giving up. It's not every day that someone like him mentions someone like us. I was floored. I mean, seriously floored. I read that letter five times. I couldn't believe it.

So, I'll be heading down to Florida, then heading to Washington, hiring a part-time person to help us get through the holidays, and trying to find a warehouse space in Florida that we can use, so that I can get the business out of my mom's apartment.

I also have a couple of great ideas for the holidays that we're sure are going to be fantastic gift ideas this year.

We're very excited.

Thanks for reading. One of the things I'll be doing is updating this blog more and more, as the days of my being at Soapier continue. Should be a lot of fun, and I'm very excited (and nervous) to get started. Wish me luck.

John

Martha Stewart Would Love These Soaps!!

2010-08-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

Lemon Pound Cake Soapanimals!!!

Well, we think she'd love them.

She loves animals right? Got all those cute dogs and new pet products, check she likes animals.

She loves food right? Has her own recipe magazine, plus she started with a catering business way back when, check she likes food.

So we combined two of Martha's loves and made our very cute soapanimals (that's a new word that we're hoping will catch on).

First lets talk about the scent. A rich buttery lemon pound cake fragrance that has you going back for more. I'm a food fragrance lover, actually I love all the fragrances but I think the food ones are the best. They are the most fun and they always bring a smile to my face. It's a bit uplifting to smell a really good food scent and my gosh lemon pound cake is one of them.

Now we would be remiss if we didn't discuss all these cute face animals. This set of nine different soapanimals includes the cat, giraffe, hippo, lion, cow, elephant, dog, chick and bunny. There isn't a sad one in the bunch, I think they all look pretty happy, but maybe it's the lemon pound cake fragrance that has them so content.

Mix a bit of lemon pound cake scent with a bunch of animals and I'm sure we could have Martha Stewart singing, ahhhhhh, a bit off key but singing.

I have to tell you that making these soaps is so much fun and I think using them would be just as enjoyable.

Each glycerin soap bar weighs in at 2 ozs each and you receive one of each of the following; Sorry folks only one set is available and it's only on Etsy. Click HERE to find them

Cool As A Cucumber

2010-08-10T13:46:00.000-07:00

August, the dog days of summer! It's hot, it's humid, we all want relief!

I live in Florida and the beach is pretty close but my days are so hectic that I rarely get to go. What's a gal to do? Showers, lots of showers! I love a good shower, it cools me off, makes me feel human again and it helps to relieve that hot humid fatigue that sort of comes with the dog days of summer.

Wanting relief from the heat got me to thinking about a cool smelling soap for these humid days. Cucumber Mint or as I call it Cool As A Cucumber was the answer (pictured above) . It's cucumber cool and minty fresh with just a touch of sophistication. Pretty... cool! So fire up those showers, get cooled off and then you'll be human again to do those things you need to do.

Because I love this soap so much all orders from August 6th till the end of the month will get a guest size bar free (2 ozs) in each order. (shown here) You can order the best soaps on the net HERE

Remember keep it cool!!

Linda

FROM ORDINARY TO EXTRAORDINARY

2010-05-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

I don't want you to think that I think that I can do things extraordinary, but really what I wanted the title to mean was don't just settle for ordinary, take it to the next level.

I have this wonderful guest soap mold, that makes these cute 2" x 2" x 1" soaps. Each soap weighs about 2 ozs each. Great size to put at the bathroom sink. I love the size, I love how it has a bit of beveled edge and on it's own it's pretty.

Here I just swirled two colors for each set to make it a bit different. I was pleased with them. They actually were made for my Day At The Beach Gift Set available now on Ebay. You can find them HERE

A blank canvas can become almost anything, so can this soap mold, almost anything. So my first attempt was these heart ones below. I loved making these and they went very well during Valentine's Day. Each color was a different fragrance and I packaged them up four in a clear cello bag, pretty ribbon and a gift tag. They would make great bridal favors or wedding favors.

Then I realized that I had some small silicone molds for seashells. I made a bunch of them in white soap and added them to the top of clear turquoise beach fragrance guest soaps. These are so cute, they are perfect for a destination wedding or even as a gift for someone you are visiting at the shore.

Now I could of added a small toy to the top but I only like using soap on soap. I fear that a toy object might be accidentally rough, scratchy on the skin. Below is the finished product. I just added them to Ebay under our new Ebay name SoapFavors and you can find them HERE

I have a few more ideas cooking in my brain for this blank canvas and I'll give you a holler so you can see and then tell me what you think.

Soap Pets Are Fun!!!

2010-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

ELEPHANT, LION, HIPPO AND GIRAFFE

I love these soaps, I love how cute they are, I love the different animals and I love their faces. I just want to squeeze their cheeks, but I can't.

Along with the great design of these molds, we want to make sure we give them a look you will love. So we did them up in our Oatmeal Milk and Honey recipe with that great fragrance of the same name and we added oatmeal for it's great benefit. The texture that comes thru on them is really special. It just gives these guys a bit of oomph!! Don't you agree?

Now you could buy these for your kids to entice them into the bath, you could buy them as baby shower favors, or as favors for those kids parties. Oh yeah you could also buy them for yourself, but you better hide them like that candy you don't want hubby and kids to find.

These cute soaps as of today May 8th 2010 are up for auction starting at .99 for the set of four. You can get there from HERE If you can't wait for the auction to end you could also buy them at $4.00 for the set plus shipping and you can get there from HERE . Take a look to see what we hav going on at Ebay.

Have a great day, week, month, year!!!

Linda

Closeout Soaps and Soap Favors Now On Ebay

2010-05-07T07:22:00.001-07:00

We've just opened a new Ebay account under the name SoapFavors where we are listing closeout soaps and soap favors.

Pictured shown is a set of 3 White Chocolate Covered Cherries soaps in red and white on a wooden soap dish. With all soap it's important to keep it from sitting in water. Water sitting will make your soap dissolve quicker and become a bit gummy. This wooden soap dish solves that problem with it's slots that let the water escape from the soap. Keeping your soap dry in between washing will let you keep your soap that much longer. You get it all for $12.95 here at EBAY

You say white chocolate covered cherries, what can that possible smell like? It's yummy and one of those scents that you just can't stop putting up to your nose to inhale the sweetness of it. Double fragranced like all of our soaps, the scent will linger awhile on your skin. It will also make your bathroom smell divine after your shower. Oh yeah I know you know this but I'll mention it anyway, glycerin soap is great for your skin. It moisturizes plus the lathered is rich and creamy. Soapier's great soap is an affordable luxury that you enjoy to the very last piece of it.

Don't forget while you are there at EBAY check out some of our other cools soaps. These soaps that you find on Ebay won't be found on Soapier.com. Act fast before they are gone, and once gone, they are .......... gone.

Have a great day and thanks for thinking of us here at soapier.com
Linda

Soapier stuff

2010-02-26T10:38:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

Hope your 2010 is going well!

Things at Soapier are doing pretty darn good, thank you very much for asking. We're closing in on our 2000th order, if you can believe that. Just a scant 9 months ago it looked like we were not only going to have to close our doors (and website,) but also put my mom in a home for defunct soapmakers.

They have homes for them, you know. They're very clean, and very bored. There is no Fight Club there. Supposedly.

So, thank you all for your continued support. We really appreciate it.

Now onto some cool stuff.

First, we created a grab bag soap offer. For $3, you'll get one of our discontinued, holiday, or plain old extra soap. All great quality, all awesome. You can check them out here.

Second, we are also, now, selling our Soap Ends. Since we're so cool, most, if not all of our soaps we ship out are actually a bit larger than 5oz. So, at the end of a soap loaf, there's always a little extra. We're now selling those extras by the pound, for just $8. You'll get an assortment of awesome soap. Check them out here

Third, our Wikileaks fundraiser is coming to an end. Get one of 6 great bars and support a fantastic website!

And, finally, fourth, as one fundraiser ends, another begins. We're starting an Easter fundraiser with 4 soaps, where $2.50 of every bar sold goes to St. Jude's Hospital for Children. It's an awesome cause, and we think one worthy of some help. This fundraiser will go from today until March 31st! Check them out here.

Thanks for checking it out! Be back soon - John

News, new year, and Valentine's Day

2010-01-19T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hi all!

I hope you are all doing well in the new year!

Soapier had a great year in 2009, thanks solely to the help of Reddit.com. Wow. We were very blown away by the support, and the kind words we received about our product.

Really, we are so thankful.

We hope that 2010 is an even better year! Not only for us, as individuals, and for our company, but for the country as well, and all of the people who were hurt by the economy.

On top of that, we hope that things get better in Haiti. Such a terrible tragedy. Soapier will be donating 25% of all sales (except samplers and reddit soaps) to DirectRelief. Reddit users went above and beyond, and have donated more than $100,000 to that fantastic cause. We couldn't help but follow suit. We're doing our best to pay forward all of the help and support we've received.

Thanks for stopping by, for having an interest in Soapier, and for your support.

Oh, and if you've got a loved one this year who you think will love our soaps, we've got a new line of Valentine's Day soaps available!

All the best to you and yours this year,

John @ Soapier

Happy belated Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T12:02:00.001-08:00

Hello all!

I hope you've all had a great Thanksgiving, spending it with family or friends, and ate some great food.

I have been in Florida since Monday, with my girlfriend Karen. It's been an interesting trip.

On Tuesday, my mom, sister, Karen and I moved all of my belongings from a storage unit to the Soapier storage unit, to save money. What a job. We were exhausted afterwards.

On Wednesday, I did some work for Soapier. We had to get a ton of packages out, and I saw just how hard my mom is working. I'd like to put this into perspective for you folks out there.

My sister makes the majority of the soaps. She does it out of her home, since my mom, while having a second bedroom, does not have enough room to house everything. So, we get orders, and they prioritize, and then my sister makes the soap, and then drives it over to my mom's house.

Now, depending on whether we have labels in stock or not, I get the email asking me to send out files to get labels made. We have a bit of a savior in Tracy, a worker over at the Office Depot down the block from my mom's house. We had a sheet of label stock templated with the size of our labels, so that they can be laser copied. He does everything quickly for us, and helps us out a bunch.

So, my mom gets the soap. From there she has to cut the soap, then wrap the soap, then label the soap.

She has to invoice the order, via QuickBooks, or some such program. Then print out the orders, and then pick the order.

Then, she has to pick orders. If we're out of something, she has to wait until it gets made. Or, if it's one of our works of art soap, my mom has to make them. They're the Jack Frost, Penguin March, Santa's Sleigh, or Sparkling Snowflake. You can see they have multiple parts... it's what makes them unique from our other soaps, and they take a while to make.

Then filling out the shipping info, then printing the shipping label, putting the box together...

Let me tell you, folks. She does so much work, it's boggling my mind. I helped out a bit, did what I could, picked orders, wrapped soap...

Owning a small business in this country is hard work. I figure that if it's easy, you've either hit on something by luck, or you're in the mafia. We kind of wish we were in the mafia, these days.

Wednesday night, my girlfriend and I relaxed and watched The Biggest Loser, What Do They Weigh Now... or whatever the hell it was called. I was too busy watching Pandorum, or... In the Mouth of Madness. I've had my fill of reality tv these days. After months and months of being unemployed, I got through Hell's Kitchen (all 5 seasons), Top Chef (all seasons), The Biggest Loser, Amazing Race, some other stuff, I can't remember. I had that part of my brain removed.

So, we relaxed, had Denny's for breakfast the next morning, and went to go see 2012 with my sister, her husband, his friend. I thought it was a good movie. Not sure why so many people were disappointed with it. It's like these people never watched ID4, Godzilla, or The Day After Tomorrow. Whatever.

So, we head over to my mom's. I get there, open the door, walk up the stairs to her place, and she's standing there and she says "I didn't cook."

Let me tell you something about my mom. She's a chef. She might not have gone to school, but the woman cooks some fantastic food. Really. And for her to say she didn't cook, I knew something was wrong.

She said she was feeling sick, that she almost passed out, was weak... things that no son (or daughter) wants to hear. Especially on Thanksgiving! I mean, where's the turkey, stuffing, stuffed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, yams, green bean casserole, cranberries...

What I mean to say is, I was very worried about HER. You know, her. So, we called her doctor's office, and the doctor on call called us right back and said 'better safe than sorry, get to the hospital.'

@#&%.

So we get to the hospital, and long story short (too late), her blood pressure was a bit high, but that was it. It could have been a number of things. Bad eggs she ate that morning, or a problem with one of the meds she's taking... could have been stress.

She stayed the night at the hospital, they ran some tests, everything came back fine, and then she came home and gushed about some doctor that saw her. He was handsome, in his 40s, he set my mind at ease, blah blah.

It's funny. I knew she was going to be ok, but I couldn't help make jokes at the hospital. People think that it's how other people deal with things. Not me.

"Ok, Karen and I are going to be back in an hour or so, ok? We're going to get dinner."

"Ok."

"So, umm, nurse, the morgue is..."

I thought it was funny.

I was supposed to go back to NY today (Friday), but I didn't feel comfortable leaving my mom home alone over the weekend, with the amount of orders that have to go out. It just wouldn't be fair. So, I head back Monday. I've been cutting soap and wrapping soap, labeling them. We packaged up about 25 orders. Some waiting for soaps, some ready to go out tomorrow.

I also started about 20 molds of Reddit soap, and let me tell you, they suck! If you haven't seen the reddit soap making video from the jet blue guys, watch it now. It's pretty crazy. I burned my hand on the goddamn plastic bottles. And I melted one, too. Didn't know it wasn't supposed to go in the microwave. We put everything in the microwave!

Ugh.

So, I'm exhausted. I'm pirating a signal on my laptop from someone named CRAZYALEX. It's not very strong. If I can't have internet here in Florida, and my mom canceled her cable, I'll go nuts. Seriously.

This will be a busy weekend, which is good. And I think we'll cook Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow night. That'll be awesome. I ended up getting a Thanksgiving plate at Ruby Tuesday's, which was just ok, while Karen ate a swiss cheese burger that had me drooling. No fair.

So, in the true meaning of the holiday gone by, I'm thankful for quite a lot of things. One, my overall general health. Two, my girlfriend. Three, my family (obviously this is in no particular order). And four, our customers. I can't tell you how blown away and happy I am that Redditors (and our other 4 customers) have helped to take care of my mom. Really. I'll always be grateful.

Have a great weekend.

J

shipping and shopping carts

2009-11-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

Just got this email from a customer:

"I really really really want to start ordering some soaps from you but my wife keeps vetoing it because the shipping of $11.00 for my order tacks on at least 33% to our order and makes the cost per bar a little on the crazy side. I'm curious, is it just an estimate and then the final charge is different? Because surely the postage for 5 bars of soap isn't that much. Sorry if I'm being a cheapass, it's just that I would much prefer to buy soap from you, but it is tough going convincing my wife. I appreciate any response as I'm holding off on our soap purchases hoping that I'm just doing something wrong. Thanks!"

It's a problem we're having and trying to fix. The shopping cart we're using is a bit of a pain, and they just instituted a ridiculous policy that all phone help now comes with a charge. It's one of those 'we need to make more money in this economy' type plans that's just going to alienate their customers. Ridiculous.

So, here's the reply I gave this customer:

Hi, thanks for writing!

First off, where are you in the world?

Second... In regards to shipping, here’s the thing. There are a number of flat rate boxes that we use, via the usps. The problem is that if we don’t use these boxes, then the items are shipped by weight... And that can be a lot more expensive than a flat rate box. Over a certain weight, we can’t send them parcel post or first class, for two reasons. One, the usps doesn’t accept them, and two, we’d have to charge people a larger handling fee because of the purchased boxes.

So, we send out everything priority. 4 bars of our soap can normally fit in a small flat rate priority box that will cost $5.95. Some of them cannot, because of their design (take the arabian nights bar for example), but 95% of them will. The reddit soaps... Only 2 will fit. We’re not too technically savvy here at Soapier. The shopping cart we’re using has been proving to be a severe pain in the butt. They don’t account for many things the USPS expects, and so real time shipping becomes a nightmare. We’ve lost well over $1000 since we first started selling to redditors because of shipping problems.

So, we generalized pricing. Now, the truth is, we only charge real shipping fees. We don’t hide these costs when it comes to laying down the postage, so people can be sure they’re paying for what they get. Sometimes the shopping cart says one thing, and we find out it will come out cheaper, and we charge accordingly.

So. 5 bars of soap... That ends up in the medium sized priority flat rate box that costs $10. You can fit 20 bars or so in that box. It just so happens that 5 bars is the magic number, and jumps up the shipping cost.

So, that’s where we’re at, at the moment. We’re trying really hard to find a cheaper way to ship, but unfortunately we don’t ship out as many products as a larger store, and don’t get good discounts from UPS or FedEx. It’s a shame, because it only hurts customers of small businesses like ours.

If you’re outside of the US... The rules are even worse.

So, let me know where you are, and we’ll do all we can to make sure that you’re not only paying true shipping charges, but that you’re getting the best price for it, too.

Thanks!"

We're doing our best folks. I promise!

New soaps, Holiday stuff, and more

2009-10-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Hi all.

Just a couple of notes to hit today.

First, we put up our holiday soaps and holiday baskets for sale!

Second, we added two new Reddit soaps... the Envelope set (in creamsicle and blueberry!) and a brand new Christmas Reddit Alien soap that comes in Winter Awesome fragrance!

And Third, we're having a HUGE sale! We're offering 25% off on all sales this holiday season, good until November 15th! Use coupon code REDDIT at checkout to receive this great discount for all your awesome holiday gifts this season! (discount does not apply to Reddit soaps!)

How to make Reddit Alien soaps

2009-09-18T08:13:00.000-07:00

This is Tom and Jake and they are from Reddit.com.

They were both chosen to fly around the country, taking part in Jetblue.com's offer for flying from September 8th to October 8th for a flat fee. Redditors purchased the tickets for them, and they were sponsored by two companies. FoodProof and Associated Content.

They stopped by Soapier on their month long journey and recorded making Reddit Alien soaps! I hope you enjoy it!

John @ Soapier

Bacon Soap!

2009-09-02T21:19:00.001-07:00

Bacon soap.

Bacon soap.

Bacon soap.

Enough said.

The onslaught (part 2)

2009-08-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

Ok folks. We just received the bacon fragrance for the soaps on Friday, finished making all of the orangered soaps, and started making the bacon soaps yesterday! They're un-molded, wrapped and labeled, packed in bubblewrap, and ready to be shipped!

We're all very excited to hear from the first few people who receive the soaps. This is a very pins-and-needles time. New product and all... very exciting!

Thanks to everyone who purchased soap, thanks to Alexis and Reddit for taking a chance on Soapier, and thanks to everyone for the kind words and advice we've received!

We're excited that you're excited about the bacon soaps. We're working on a bacon soap slice as I type... that should be interesting. There are two bacon sites that are interested in becoming affiliates, to sell the soap... let's hope it catches on!

If you have a blog, or a website, and a network of friends who you think would love Soapier soaps, sign up for our affiliate program! We are giving 20% commissions on sales!

John @ Soapier

The onslaught (part 1)

2009-08-02T13:14:00.000-07:00

Well, hello.

So, we had our first wave of orders for the Reddit Alien Soaps, and boy oh boy, Reddit did not disappoint!

In the past week we received over 400 orders, selling over 550 Reddit Alien soaps! Very nice, we're all very excited about it, and my mom and sister are working very hard to get the soaps made.

We finalized on the bacon scent, it's on its way... and in the meantime we're (when I say 'we're', I mean they're) making all the orange soaps, getting them ready, along with all the other soaps people ordered.

Soapier Reddit Soaps now available for pre-sale!

2009-07-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

Here you go!

Update

2009-07-24T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official. The new Reddit Alien soap will be ready for pre-sale on Monday, July 27th!

We're very excited, very nervous, very much looking forward to seeing what happens with the sale.

I do have a request, for those of you who read this... and I'll be posting it on Reddit, when the soap hits.

We'll be having a Cool Reddit Alien Soap Picture Contest! Not sure what the prize is going to be, but it'll be something AWESOME, like a $100 gift certificate to Soapier, or some such thing.

We'll see.

I'm really looking forward to it. My mom and sister have been working their asses off, but they're looking forward to, well, so much. The orders, paying bills...

Thanks to everyone for their continued support. We really appreciate it!

John @ Soapier

Reddit alien soap

2009-07-17T19:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the soap for Reddit!

We're offering it in both orange and bacon fragrance.

Yes, bacon.

Also, to answer some of the other questions we've gotten on this blog, we're going to be offering lotions and sugar scrubs some time in the future.

Thanks for all the great comments! We'll let you know when the reddit soap is available.

My adventure to appease Reddit

2009-07-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, so. The place we buy scents from (one of the places anyway) had a sample order we made for the bacon fragrance.

Now, two other people have to sniff the fragrance, but I think we found a winner! I'm very excited about it.

Had a panic attack while I was walking back to the subway. Was exhausted by the time I got home.

We'll have the soap mold tomorrow or Monday, and have prototypes ready to take photos and send to Reddit.

Looks like I'm going to have to take a ton of xanax and head down to Florida. Reddit will be pre-selling the soap for 2-3 weeks, so that we have time to make as much as possible before they are shipped (although we'll be shipping as we make them... just to get them to the customers as quickly as possible).

I don't have a fear of flying, btw. Isn't that weird?

Oh, and I got a Reddit shirt today, and I can't tell you how much I wanted someone to stop me on the street while I had the fragrances, and tell them who I was, and share them with them. That would have been awesome.

where we're at

2009-07-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy month.

We just recently got some photos of the molds of our new Reddit Alien Soap.

We should get the first plastic mold in a couple of days, so we can create the soap and start pre-selling!

People ask me what my favorite soaps are. I figured I'd take a moment and list / show some...

My all time favorite is:

Amber Goat's Milk.

The smell is nice and warm and refreshing. It's also got some calendula flowers in it for a light exfoliant.

I also really like:

Oatmeal, Milk & Honey

Bits of oatmeal at the top, and again, a nice warm smell. Does a lot for people with dry skin.

Vanilla

Do I really have to say anything about this soap? It smells FANTASTIC.

We have all of our orders shipped as of tomorrow. My mom's been working very hard. It's crazy. So has my sister. I think she's having dreams about soap these days.

Thanks for reading. More later. OH, the other big news... for those of you with websites out there, we'll be having our affiliate program up and running tomorrow, for those who would like to make some money ;)

John

Excuses and business

2009-06-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many businesses out there get an influx of orders that simply and fully sets them back about a week.

Add on top of that capital problems... moving to a new 'facility'... and the problems you'd love to have in business become real world problems that stress you out and make doing your job that much harder.

Well, Soapier has had such a hiccup!

If you read in our earlier post the outpouring of support that we received... you'll see that we've gotten in excess of 500 orders in less than two weeks.

That, in and of itself, is incredible.

The problem is... for all intents and purposes, there are only two people working on all of those orders. Namely, my mom and my sister.

So, first, we had to purchase soap base. We had used what we had in stock to get out wholesale orders that were placed during the transition period.

The soap base company wouldn't ship our order out because we paid with paypal. We had quite a few customers pay via paypal, so since the money was there, that's how we paid.

Unfortunately, for some unknown reason that even the paypal people could not explain, they decided to hold the money we had sent for 24hours. Thus, our supplier would not ship our product.

Hiccup #1.

So, I had to get every cent I could scrape together, and pay for the soap. It was basically all the money I had. And it wasn't a ton of money.

So, they refund the paypal money, ship the product. Crisis averted. I get my money back once paypal clears to my mom's account... yay... and my sister goes through the arduous task of creating soap for, then, 375 orders.

Now, let me explain.

Each loaf of soap yields 12 slices of soap. So, depending on the complexity of the soap being ordered... creating a loaf of soap can take anywhere from 20 minutes to about six hours.

Not six hours of sitting there waiting for the soap to harden... but six hours before you can use an insert, say for Sweet Pea:

Every one of those swirls has to be created first as a long bar of soap. Figure there's six different colors... then you have to curl the slices... this one is probably our most complex soap.

So, she's making soap. My mom's making soap. Florida, at the time, was baking from some serious heat. They're working with no AC. It's pretty crazy.

So, now we have product to ship. People who ordered two bars, one bar... we're able to get these out quicker than ones that ordered 10 bars. Only because we're trying to get the soaps out as quickly as possible.

Enter paypal, again.

We are printing the majority of all of our labels through paypal's shipping center. But the downloaded excel spreadsheet from our shopping cart won't merge with paypal. So, my mom is entering addresses one at a time. And on a pc, she's having trouble switching windows so that she can see the info, then type it in, then go back, what state, ok, then what zip, crap there's an apartment #...

Then the news story hits. And that takes a full day away from soap making. It's funny. Just over 1 minute of news coverage, and it took four hours.

Now, for those business owners out there who are stubborn and know it... you'll know that the majority of the time, handing over the reigns to someone, when you only trust yourself to do it right... this can hurt a business. It's a state of mind, and sometimes you just need to do it yourself.

Well, I had to find out what was going on with the shipping, because we'd gotten a couple of emails asking for tracking numbers.

So, I jump in. I'm working on a laptop, so I don't have my dual monitors that I had (I gave them to charity when I moved to NY, they were old, worked, but wayyyyy too heavy to pack and lug, again). What I could do was split the two screens so that I could see all the info from the shopping cart, and the paypal shipping template.

Problem solved. I got 98 labels done in two hours, and we were back on schedule.

So now we're shipping about 80 boxes a day.

See, it's not just making soap. It's then cutting the loafs. Then shrink wrapping. Then labeling. Then invoicing and charging credit cards for those orders that didn't go through paypal. Then writing out gift cards to people who sent gifts.

Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, regular sized production facility and office space or not. We're organized. Or, I should say, they're organized.

But whew... this took some doing. We're almost up to date with orders, thank god. International orders are getting sent out. That was another headache... we'd never shipped international Soapier orders before. So, we had to estimate shipping overseas, and then contact each customer with the actual shipping cost. That took a lot of time.

One of the things I've tried to drill into my mom's head is the simple fact that, unless you're in a very specialized situation (perhaps as we are in right now), customers do not care that you're working 18 hour days.

They just want their product.

That's not to say that people are insensitive. As I said, I think we're in a pretty unique position, and we're so thankful for people who are being so patient with us... but when you're a business owner, customers are key, and you make them happy. You want them to stay customers.

So, working ridiculous hours is part of the business. I've pretty much been up until 2 or 3 in the morning for the past week or so, every night, trying to make things easier, while I'm 1,151.51 miles away from my family.

On a lighter note, I can't stop drinking berry smoothies.

Seriously. I just had one, and I want another. I put in frozen strawberries, fresh blueberries and raspberries, and soy milk. I can't stop drinking them. Luckily, across the street is a fresh fruit and vegetable stand. They're all over the place in NYC.

Ok, ok.

Anyway.

That's where we're at today. I looked at the addresses I'd entered in, and saw I was getting caught up... I figured I'd update this again.

Hope you're all looking forward to the weekend!

Oh, and our awesome old PR company sent out a press release for us today, for free. That was very nice of them. You can read it here, if you'd like.

Talk soon.

J

Dusting off

2009-06-23T08:35:00.000-07:00

Well. Dear reader, hello!

It's been just over 10 months since I updated this blog. Soooooo much to tell you.

Some good, some bad. Mostly bad. And then good. And then REALLY good.

I don't know where to begin. My girlfriend's cat Kaylie is crying at the door for my girlfriend, and I cannot concentrate.

First off, let me detail the mediocre rise, the plateau, the fall, and the new beginnings of Soapier.

Soapier started out as a retail store online. It was the brain child of my sister Erica, my mom and myself.

See, my mom had started making soap in her basement, to sell at craft shows and all that. She named it First In Line Soap. She had this image of people lining up for her products, and thus liked the name. I created a flash website for her, we did the shopping cart, and then waited for some wholesale orders to come in.

Now, this was pre-google. Pre-adwords. Pre-all-that-shit.

And we had no idea how to get new customers. I mean, sure. "Let's get on Yahoo!"

"Yes! Yahoo!"

Crickets.

You see? We don't know a thing about how to do that.

Time went on. Business cards were given out. And she was making a real go of it. And she loved creating new soaps.

Enter my sister. Business started picking up and my mom needed help, and so my sister was helping her. And we thought "Why aren't we selling our soaps online, retail?"

It was a good question. And so we all sat there and thought of a name for a retail store.

Now, I'm not tooting my own horn here. Seriously, but Soapier was mine. My thought, my idea, my legacy. My (insert word here).

Now, I can't remember when we purchased the domain name soapier.com*, but in my opinion, it's an AWESOME domain name! I mean, unless you own soap.com or soapy.com... is there anything else out there that strikes to the heart of our business?

* The soapier.com domain name is for sale. Contact me at john@soapierforsale.com

And so we bought a template website. Fixed it up. Got new pictures...

And then... I quit my job. See, I'm sure some of you can respect the idea of working in an overly stressful environment. Well, I couldn't hack it anymore.

So, I figured "Hey, I'm talented. I have experience. I'll work freelance!"

And I did. For two whole weeks. And then a day here. There. And then I couldn't find a thing.

I mean, really. That was May of 2007. I was unemployed until I left NY in February of 2008 to move to Florida to help with the business. See, at this time, we had gotten a loan and had money to pay for our salaries, rent, and the new retail store we opened (there's a post here somewhere about it). And the first month we opened that retail store was the best month we'd ever had. It was ridiculous.

We kept fixing the store up. We had wholesale customers. Things were ok. And then summer hit. And 100 degree heat is not for vacationers in Florida. So, ok, we knew that.

And then the housing bubble burst. And then the economy started tanking. And then... and then... and then.

In five months things dried up. We even lost wholesale customers we'd had for years... they had either shut their doors down, or were not buying our product any more, to concentrate on other products... or for whatever reason. They were trying to save their own skin. And we couldn't blame them.

So, we have a retail store that's pulling in close to nothing. It's not even breaking even. We have a wholesale business that is floundering. We have two places we have to pay rent on. We have three salaries. Electricity. Internet. Water bills.

I stopped taking a salary in July and broke my lease for my apartment. I dumped things in storage, and put other things I could sell at my mom's. I moved in there, too, to save on rent and food and all that stuff.

August was a pain in the ass. It's super hot. You have to run the AC.

And you know, it's funny, but in the months I was in Florida, I was in very good shape. I mean, I was exercising all the time, eating well... my anxiety problems were not as prevalent in Florida, as they are in NY. Don't get me wrong... this has been a 10 year battle.

10 year battle.

I've been a graphic designer for 10 years.

Holy crap.

Ok, ok.

So. I'm a drain on the business. My sister, irreplaceable. My mom, of course, is the rock of the business.

So, I move back to NY. I move in with my girlfriend... the economy is not at it's worst... the store stays open, the production facility stays open. They're saving money without me down there... they have to work a little harder but, that's life when you own your own company.

So, I'm in NY. And it's September, and it's a good month to find work.

Between September and November of 2008 I sent out over 100 resumes. I went on one interview. To be a stock boy at a wine store. And I didn't get it.

I had sent out resumes to just about any kind of job I felt I could do. That was the only response.

It was about October/November that I started having panic attacks every time I left the house. Now, I'm an avid bike rider. I shipped my bike up. I could ride in September. October was ok. After that... forget it. Going to the grocery store became an event.

I'd get half way, and have to turn back. If I had to take the subway... I'd trying and convince myself that nothing was going to happen while I was on the train. That would take half an hour, on the platform, trains stopping, going.

It was terrible. And the thing is, I still have this problem. And I've been working on it. And I'm on my fourth medicine. And I can't tell if it's working, because I still get panic attacks.

And, yes, I'm seeing a therapist.

You know, people might say 'why's he sharing all this' and the fact is, I'm almost at the point where I have nothing to lose.

Some of you readers are coming from Reddit. If you are, you might have seen one of the following threads posted.

Hi Reddit... I need some help

A Thank You From Soapier to Reddit

You can read those threads, or you can continue and then read them.

So, I get to NY. And I slowly become a mess. No money, no work... no reason to leave the house, and I slowly become agoraphobic. And OCD. And depressed. It's like a snowball.

Things are getting worse all over. My mom's borrowing money to keep the business afloat. We're giving product away on our wholesale site to entice new customers.

And things get worse.

We have to close the retail store. No choice. No money is coming in. We had hired a retiree to run in 4 days a week... she wasn't even selling enough for her $50 a day salary. It was a joke.

My sister can't draw a salary any more. She gets work with her husband at CVS.

Then we have to close the production facility that we're four months behind on in rent.

We put things in storage. My sister moves into a cheaper place, and we move stuff to her home to start making soap for wholesale orders.

My mom is beside herself and has no income coming in. She's behind on her mortgage. She starts going to garage sales to find things to flip on ebay. She's 61 and has two marketable skills. Bookkeeping (no degree) and soap making. She goes on five interviews. No one returns her follow-up calls.

See, back when I was actually working, I purchased a lot of artwork, as investments. I loved collecting artwork. So, I started selling pieces off, so that I could send money to my mom. Then I got a part time job with the job that stressed me out so much in May of 2007. They contacted me out of the blue, and it was a godsend.

I ended up missing four days of work over the course of a few months because I couldn't get on the train to head up to work. I tried taking taxis. I'd get halfway there and have them turn around, head home.

Now, I get 1 day a week... 2... when they need help. It's enough to keep me in pocket money, but it's not enough to help my mom with her mortgage or bills. Seriously. And it takes me a half an hour to get out of the house.

I'm running out of options. We've no money for advertising. Our wholesale customers are drying up. My mom's borrowed money from pretty much everyone she can think of. She's going to lose her home if things don't shape up...

So, I'm here, 35 years old. House ridden (80% of the time), a mess, broke... and feeling like a complete and utter failure on all counts. I mean, seriously. I can't even get a regular job type job, just so that I can send money to my mom.

So, I take a step that is a hail Mary, like you wouldn't believe. I'm sure Redditors will agree that the odds of what happened on reddit were about 1,000 to 1.

It is impossible for me to describe my mom's voice pre-reddit thread. She sounded like her, but something was missing. And there are so many words that I can use to describe them, you know, but they aren't going to come close.

My mom called me on Sunday, June 14th, two days after I posted the first reddit article. I said "Hello."

Nothing.

"Hello."

Silence.

"Hello?"

Now, I don't know about you guys, but I haven't heard my mom cry in about 20 years. And it was because I did something very stupid.

She was crying and said "Bay News 9 just called me up and said they want to do a story on us." She said that someone from Reddit (yes, I know who) called them and told them what had happened.

And, as most of you have seen, my infamous hair made it onto Tampa news.

Sigh.

I've had friends from all over write me to say "Dude... it's no wonder you didn't have a girlfriend all through college." Or reasonable facsimile's thereof.

My mom, after that phone call, sounded like a different person. Or the old person. You know. It's almost like you see someone with a new haircut, or something, and you're like "God, look at that..." and then a few days later, you can't remember the old cut.

Well, that's what happened here. Old mom, depressed, under stress... new mom, under good stress, working her ass off, accomplishing things... different/same old person, just new, again.

It's refreshing, you know? And I hope it lasts.

I thank you for reading. I hope to keep this journal up with more info, more adventures, and more stuff. All the best to you,

John

Update

2008-08-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

Well, we had torrential rain, sleet, snow, cows, and...

No, wait, we had 4 minutes of rain. That's about it.

I survived. The business survived. Things are really picking up. We launched a brand new product, had our PR firm send out a great press release, and the response has been amazing. We sent out samples to Rachel Ray, E! Online, Vanity Fair, Essence Magazine, Elle, and 70 other magazines, newspapers and television shows.

Very exciting.

The new product is called Soapier ScoopsTM, and they're really fantastic. Made with all natural shea butter soap, they come in four different fragrance combinations. You're going to love these!

Thanks for your interest!

A new Soapier review, and PR update

2008-07-08T17:21:00.000-07:00

Well, things have been quite hectic over at Soapier. We've got a new person working the store. We've got two PR firms helping us get the Soapier brand out there.

And we just got reviewed, again.

Weird Stuff In My Desk gave us GLOWING review. We couldn't possibly be happier. Wow.

So far, we've gotten requests for products from such magazines as Lucky, Sly, Mint, Damsel, and More.

Strange names there, huh? Sounds like a law firm.

"Good afternoon, Lucky, Sly, Mint, Damsel and More. How may I direct your call?"

Tons of other places, too. We're expecting a review to pop up at momfinds.com any day now.

We're hoping it's a positive one!

Hope all is well. Again, sorry for the scant updates.

John

Soapier Product Reviews!

2008-06-30T17:10:00.001-07:00

Here are three sites (with more to come) that reviewed our products!

Laura Williams Musings has a wonderful blog and gave us a great review!

Scribbit is a fascinating blog about motherhood in Alaska. We sponsored Michelle's June contest with a $50 gift certificate. We had given her samples before hand and LOVED our Luscious Body Lotions.

Mummy Product Reviews gave us a GLOWING review of our products, and we couldn't be happier!

John @ FILS/Soapier

Our re-designed store

2008-06-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

So! It's been a while since I've been here, and the site deserves an update. So, here goes:

First off, we've gotten a very nice response from the PR firm press releases we sent out. 15 different magazines, news stations and newspapers across the country are interested in seeing samples.

Now, let me put this into a bit of perspective, because I think it's important.

The release we sent out, we were told to expect about .5 to 1% response. We got less than that.

BUT. Prior to our sending out the release, we had ZERO exposure to these venues. So, we're all very excited.

Getting the Soapier brand out is what's important. We have another release going out in two weeks... we feel things are moving in a great direction.

I also wanted to post some images of our store, so people can check out what we're trying to accomplish here in Tarpon Springs.

You can kind of get an idea of what the store looked like a few months ago, here. It was good for our soft opening, but it wasn't enough. Here are some more shots.

We had the back wall orange, the side walls a kind of light orange. Couple months later, my mom wasn't too pleased with the colors, she said they weren't inviting enough.

The right side of the shop, the shelves, while inventive, weren't economic enough when showing product. The left side, the stained wood shelves, we all liked those. We liked the height of them for customers, and how clean they looked.

So, we changed the paint, changed the center display, added some great signs, changed the back wall display and the right side displays to this:

If you look at this picture, the top right, you'll see that empty shelf on the top. I put some more product out, so that they were straight, and shot this.

Looks better, right? Isn't that crazy?

Here's the outside of our shop:

We're kind of tucked away in the corner, but we get some very decent traffic during the season.

This is just a little display sign outside we use to get people to come in. It's two sided. The other side says "SOAPIER - SALE"

Redesigning the store window is next. Right now it's kind of functional, but plain.

We recently hired someone to work Monday - Thursday at the store, to free up my time so I can help at the shop, which needs cleaning and organizing. Then I'll start to work on more PR, the website, our fledgling myspace page and more.

Thanks for visiting, let me know what you think of the new shop!

John

PR firms

2008-06-12T19:30:00.001-07:00

Well, we hired two. One to get the word out nation wide, and one to concentrate on the local region.

We're very excited here. We think we're finally moving in the right direction, and there's a lot of enthusia... snoreeeeeeee.

Huh? What? Don't hit me, mom!

Sorry... dozed off a second.

TONS of enthusiasm. I joke, but it's true. We have new photos being shot of all of our products on Tuesday. We have press releases going out, introducing us as one of THE premier soap designers in the country. Promotions, magazine articles. We're hoping that things are going to start steamrolling.

Now. Have you ever seen a steamroller?

Ah ha!

These things are slow as hell!

And that's exactly what we want. We can pretty much take care of any order that comes down the pipe, unless it's 100,000 bars of soap that look like Mohammed Ali. And pink.

Yes, that's happened.

We want things nice and paced. We want to grow uniformly and slowly. Growing too fast accrues too much outlay in capital, hiring new people, a new, larger space. Of course, growing too fast is something everyone should have to deal with, heh. And we could, of course, handle it.

But 3 people running a wholesale operation with over 750 customers, and a retail store... we're stretched pretty thin.

So. Steamroller. Good analogy, though I feel I'm mixing metaphors, but it's my blog, so nah nah.

I'll post some of the photo highlights for you once they're done. Should be great.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! It's funny, but I remember so many different lessons from business people. One that sticks clear into my head is 'things are slow? expand. things will pick up again, and you should get ahead of the game while you can.'

This lesson, mind you, only works for Walmart. But, we can compete with those guys.

Our First Contest... IS OVER!

2008-06-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a ride.

On May 11th I decided to have this really fun contest. Take a photo of yourself, your friends, your pets, whatever, with soap. 3 prizes, $30 gift certificates.

And we have got our winners!

Ahem.

Yes?

Can I talk to you for a moment

Uh, sure... excuse me folks.

(walk over to a table, sit down)

Listen, I'm not sure how to tell you this.

Ok.

We didn't get any entrants for the photo contest.

What?

Yeah. No entries. No photos. No interest. Nothing.

But... I did all that promoting.

I know.

I put that contest on like 16 websites.

I know.

Well then, what happened?

(shrugs)

Sigh. Well, thanks.

Don't mention it.

(back to crowd)

Well... I, ummm, am not sure how to say this... but there are no winners because there were no entries.

Well. Thanks for stopping by, I guess.

We'll have more contests soon!

soapier.com

Fundraiser time

2008-06-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

Ok folks. I'm not sure if you know that there are hundreds upon thousands of people out there, every day, being selfless and giving of their time, money and energy.

I've done some fundraising in the past, and I have to tell you, it's hard to get people to donate money. Especially in this economy.

I'm not asking you to donate money.

It's easy to be cynical in this world. Some people want to grab their little piece of life and community and family and be done with it, and other people, like Jamie Holmes, who started Jamie's Dream Team, they want to make the world an easier place to live. A better place.

They were just featured on CNN. I watched the video just about an hour ago, and I figured that this is a woman who could use our help.

And your help. So. Any purchase made between now and August 1st on Soapier.com, Soapier will pledge 30% to Jamie's Dream Team.

Now, unfortunately, I can't give them 30% and you, our loyal customer, 15% off, which we advertise on this blog. So, I'll give you 10% off.

Grumble, grumble.

FINE! I'll give you 15% off. You twisted my arm. Clean off. And I'm bleeding. But that's ok! You guys are worth it, especially when it comes to helping out a great organization.

These are extraordinary people helping those in need. It's a worthwhile cause, I'm sure you'll agree.

Please use the following coupon code: JAMIE - when placing your order. You'll see your 15% come off, and we'll be updating this blog and give you the total, come August 1st.

Tell your friends! We sell fantastic soaps and spa products. Seriously. Sooner or later, everyone's going to be loving them.

John

VP Marketing & Sales

coding your own online shop

2008-06-03T17:25:00.000-07:00

It's not easy! I remember when I first learned HTML. This guy at this job I had a long time ago gave me a book on it and said "start learning, or you'll go the way of the dodo."

Those were not his exact words.

So I started learning. Then I learned a bit of flash. Then some java.

And then I stopped doing all of it. I kind of got a bit burned out on graphic design and web design and wanted to do other things in my life.

Then my mom said "Hey! Build me a website."

And who can say no to moms?

So she found a template she liked and I shot the photos for First In Line Soap and we hired someone for the Soapier shots, and someone helped with the copy and we got the site done.

Then my buddy Al Rotches said "Hey, do that thing they do at istock, where you roll over the images instead of having pop-ups."

Al is currently missing. Grumble, grumble.

So, I started looking up how to do the code and I found this Dynamic Drive site and they had the code! But they also had 36 pages of comments and no real follow ups... plus all those words were driving me bonkers, and moving along the screen by themselves, so I said "let's find another site."

Found this guy, WebDesignInfo.wordpress.com and so I'm hoping he'll be able to answer some questions.

I only did one quick try on it here. You can see that Froggie's Pond is the one I worked on, because the text has shifted down, instead of where it should be, on the right side of the pick. But the in screen pop-up works!

Hurray!

So... I'll keep you posted. But it's fun to learn new things, and even funner when someone can help you fix those problems that need fixing.

J

the benefits of taking baths

2008-05-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

Daily stress can take many forms. You can be a stay at home mom with three kids that get into, well, kid trouble.

You could work a full time job and then have to come home to a family.

You could be a single mother and work two jobs. Three jobs.

You could be stressed out about bills. About your kids and school. About their friends. About... gosh, so many things, right?

Suffice it to say, guys can have the same problems. Or different problems.

The good thing is that baths are for everyone.

What people have to understand first about baths is that, it's not just about buying some product that is going to make everything melt away. This isn't Calgon talking.

That's some pretty clever marketing, especially for the 1980's. And I'm sure it sold a ton. But silky smooth water is not the point of baths.

It might help, but it's not necessary.

Bath time is a break time. You do it when your mind is harried and your decision making process is just not right. This break will help you center yourself, and let you clear your mind... and after, will help you come at problems correctly.

The first and most important thing about baths is the mood. Quiet, light music, candles, what-have-you.

You're taking a bath to de-stress. And quiet and mood lighting are so important. It's the first step to relaxing.

The water has got to be warm to hot. Luke warm, tepid water isn't going to relieve tension in your muscles. Warm water dilates blood vessels and helps with circulation.

If you can remember any time that aches and pains were relieved when you took a swim, or floated in the ocean... well, the same happens while you're in a bath. Joints, bones, muscles... all of them are relieved in water. The weight of your body isn't adding pressure to them, they get a chance to relax... not unlike the relief (boy, there's that word again) they receive while you're sleeping.

OK!

Quiet, or light music. Check.

Candles lit. Check.

Oh, don't... don't like hook up a radio or a tv or something, near the bath. That... that's not safe.

So! You're in the warm-to-hot water... mood's set... what's next?

So many things to choose from, it's hard to decide.

Do you use soap? Bath oil? Body scrub? Bath salts?

Fragrance during a bath is a huge plus. Certain fragrances allow you to relax, some trigger emotional responses, some bring you back to a happy time and place in your memory... these are all subjective. Find something that will help continue your calm mood. Remember, this is YOUR time... so make the best of it.

We recommend using a product that will not only get you clean, but will also moisturize.

Baths aren't always about replacing your clean time in a shower. Sometimes you want to just concentrate on relaxing. Sometimes you want to concentrate on your legs and feet.

For that... we have to recommend sugar scrubs. These are not too oily, they won't leave a residue around your tub, and their exfoliating ability (along with their texture) will feel divine while taking a bath.

We feel that baths should take anywhere between 15-20 minutes. After that, the house will be in a sort of chaos because, let's face it... and chances are, you'll be hearing fire trucks or police coming after 20 minutes if you're not around.

Thanks for reading. We're sure that most people know the benefits of baths, but it's always nice to have a reminder every once in a while.

We're all fans of baths here at Soapier. We're sure that if you take the time to take care of yourself each day, even if it's a foot soak for a few minutes, you'll feel better about your day, feel healthier, and be able to tackle everything that comes your way!

Linda @ Soapier

Soapier's first blog review!

2008-05-21T13:11:00.001-07:00

Check it out folks... at Laura Williams Musings.

We're very happy to have gotten such a great review of our products!

Go over and enter their giveaway for free Soapier stuff!

Our First Contest!

2008-05-11T09:08:00.001-07:00

Hi all, thanks for stopping by at Soapier's Blog!

We have this fun, great new contest we're going to start today, and I think you'll all enjoy it.

It's a photo contest, and who doesn't like photo contest!

Me!

Quite, you!

The photo you're going to take is of you, your cat, your dog, girlfriend, your mailman, someone... with soap! (seriously, we had to throw soap in there somewhere, give me a break already). Doesn't have to be our soap, any soap.

And, it has to be a humorous photo.

Not a serious soap photo.

Not a pulitzer price winning soap photo. Fun. Like this, except with more prominent soap...

Anyway, here are the rules.

1. Photo must be shot by the person submitting the photo (or, have you in it).

2. Publish a link to our contest page on your blog, with your photo posted there, then leave us a comment and give us the link!

3. Hmmm...

Ok, I could only think of two rules.

We'll have 3 winners and there will be a poll for visitors to choose their favorite!

Each winner will receive a $30 gift certificate to Soapier, which you can use online at Soapier.com.

That's it. Contest starts today, ends June 11th (I'll give you all a month to really buckle down and take your best shot).

Thanks again for stopping by, this should be a lot of fun!

John @ Soapier.com

Displaying products

2008-05-09T11:33:00.000-07:00

This is going to be one of those posts that will be in the "I know that" column for some, and the "Neat ideas" column for others.

What I want to talk about is how to display retail products properly. Now, this isn't an article on how to display items in a chain store where the home office gives strict guidelines on how to display and market product.

This is for small boutique shops that sell product they don't manufacture. Gift shops, salons, soap and spa product stores, etc. I'll be using our products to demonstrate... since we sell our products exclusively ;)

Promoting products in store

One of the things we wanted to help solve for our customers was promoting our line in their stores.

First In Line Soap, as a wholesale loaf soap seller, is trying to make the in-store marketing of our products as easy as possible. What we do is provide each loaf soap we sell with decorative signs, wrapping paper for individual slices, and decorative labels for each fragrance/design.

What this does is provide customers with an easy to read sign on the name and fragrance of the product. Wrapping a slice of soap and putting our decorative label on it does a few things. One, it reminds people of the product name they purchased and, two, sends them home with a little gift to open.

One of the things we've noticed at First In Line Soap is that our customers buy small quantities. Space might be the issue. We completely understand. Having our own retail shop forces us to not only make compromises with purchasing product, but also allows us to be creative in our displaying ideas.

Let's use our loaf soaps, which are our best sellers, as an example of customers making smaller purchases due to limited space issues.

Space issues

Customer A has ordered two loafs of soap.

2 loafs of soap (and a slicer) would cost $83, plus shipping. We have a $75 minimum for first time buyers.

We recognize that space is always going to be a factor when it comes to displaying product. Most small business owners will tell you that they never have enough space.

Regardless of size, the fact is that a full store always looks better than an empty one.

What if you want to introduce a new product, but you only have a small space?

The first thing you're going to have to do is get some specifications. It would be a shame to buy a new product line and find out that not only is the space too small... but now you're stuck with all this new product, and you can't properly display it!

First In Line Soap loafs are 1-foot long, 4-inches wide and yield 12 1-inch slices.

On a 5-foot wide table that is 2-foot deep... that's a pretty impressive presence of soap you've got there! You could have a display similar to what we have at our Soapier retail store.

Now, maybe you have that 3-foot table. We're a new product for you and you want to see how things sell. So you buy two loafs.

What you're going to get is a pretty empty table with two great smelling soaps on it... but nothing that is going to catch your customers eye.

I recognize that this might be a bit of an exaggeration, but from our experience, we get so many customers that purchase only two to three loafs of soap, and not even multiple loafs of each! While there is no break in price for purchasing multiple loafs, we're all consumers. We all know that going into a store and seeing a rack of similar items triggers something in our brain that entices us to buy. Repetition, in all of its many forms, works to get people's attention.

Having a large selection of product (from one brand or multiple) can never really hurt you. But, having a range of products from a single brand you trust (and have experience with) will give the product a more impressive presence in your store, and will certainly catch your customers eye.

In our store we have a large set-up in the middle of the shop where most of our loaf soaps are. We also have our soap slice cutter there, so customers can watch us cut fresh slices for them.

We know most stores can't afford to give up that much space. But if you are opening up a new store (or looking to re-design your shop), you might want to consider displaying your strongest items (whether it be soap or stuffed animals or chocolate) like we have.

Let's take a look at two of our smaller soap products, our Soapier Accent Soaps and our Loofah Boats when it comes to displaying.

Soapier Accent Soaps are about 3.5-inches wide by 1.5-inches high and come in six fragrances.

Here's what you get when display 4 of our Kitchen Soaps. We get these kinds of orders all the time.

As a consumer, I would look at that and not be interested. The sign is nice enough, but there's nothing to hold my attention except for a bunch of white space. Put this in a store corner, and it will either get hidden or dismissed pretty quickly.

Here's what we did at our retail store. And while we know that space defines product quantities, you can be inventive on how you'd display 8-12 of these bars.

We used clear glass plates and stacked soaps all over, like they were spilling off the plate. The colors are such that that Kitchen Soap is striking, a contrast between the Chamomile, Clay and Seaweed, Jasmine and Orange Soaps. It almost serves as an anchor. And when customers get a whiff of chocolate and coffee soap... well, they always comment on it.

Don't have this much space? No problem! Get a large platter and stack the soaps that way. They are all very distinctive, people won't have a problem distinguishing between them.

Our Loofah Boats are a great combination of glycerin soap and loofah. They come in four great fragrances and are a hit with men and women looking for a soap and exfoliant in one. There are some people who are partial exclusively to loofahs, and they love this produce.

Here's an example of displaying them when purchasing a small handful.

When Soapier first opened, we didn't have signs up for our products. The store is so small, we figured that if people wanted to ask a question about a product, they would just ask. This is hardly ever the case.

Most customers don't want to be bothered with asking questions. They can see what the product is. They want to know the price and move on.

So we started making signs up for our products, and using a simple clear plastic bowl you can buy at K-Mart for $15, we displayed them like this:

Huge impact, nice sign, colorful, fragrant... makes a statement, right? Not a lonely box shoved in a corner, but a display that will attract customers. The ones you WANT to target.

The last example I'm going to give you is with our sugar scrubs. Sugar scrubs are not a cheap spa product. Super high end brands can sell for $40, minimum. It's not something retailers want to take a chance with because six of each fragrance from some of these companies will end up costing you an enormous outlay.

First In Line Soap respects its wholesale customers. And, frankly, in this economy, purchasing a new product can be quite scary. We deal with it every day as we try and stock our retail store with more and more bath accessories. What will work, what won't, what we won't be able to give away... we know the drill.

But just like everything else, if you're ready to take that step in purchasing a new product like our Sweet Sugar Scrubs, presence is key.

Our Sweet Sugar Scrubs come in a number of fragrances. 8 to be exact. You are going to want to offer your customers a choice of them, naturally. Perhaps not all 8, but 4 at the minimum.

Sugar scrubs look GREAT when stacked together. We suggest 6 of each fragrance. Take a look at how nice and vibrant our Sweet Sugar Scrub selection looks:

At our store, customers go right to it. All those colors, all those possible fragrances... they love it.

One of the things we suggest (though sometimes it's not possible) is to offer sugar scrub demonstrations for your customers. We have ours set up like this.

Basically, if someone is interested, you ask them what fragrance they'd like. Once they've chosen, you use the pitcher of water to wet their hands. Use a small spatula or spoon and spoon some of the sugar scrub into their hands. They rub their hands with it (make sure you tell them to get the backs!) and then use the pitcher to clean off the sugar scrub, all the while toting the sugar scrubs wonderful properties and selling points.

Give them a clean washcloth to dry their hands and viola.

The Sugar Scrub Hand Spa Treatment has been enormously successful in our retail shop.

Soap as a new product

This question is the rub, right? To try a new product or not to try.

I don't think anyone can really answer this question for you. And if they try and answer the question for you, chances are they're the salesman.

In regards to our products, the only thing you can do is the research and feel your customers out. Are you getting requests for soaps? Do you have space to market, display and sell a new product correctly?

There are very few products that sell themselves.

First In Line Soap prides itself on selling quality products, colorful, fragrant and unique, at good price points for our wholesale customers. We want you to make money, and we want your customers to like our products.

In the end you have to trust your own instincts. Because at the end of the day you have to look at your store and be proud of it. You have to look at your daily report and be happy, or figure out how to improve your business. You have to be happy with your decisions and stay positive.

It's hard, but we're not giving up. And neither should you!

Thanks,

John Painz
VP Marketing
Soapier.com
First In Line Soap.com

Our Products

2008-05-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

Soap

This is what we do the best. All of our designs are original ones. We use glycerin soap and... well, I can't give away all of our secrets, sheesh! But it's a melt and pour process. Glycerin soap is good for your skin. Most soap you purchase in grocery stores and department stores are detergent. It's one of the main reasons the lather is so great. The problem is, detergent dries your skin. Company's take all of the glycerin that was in the soap originally and put it in lotions and bath gels... just another product you have to buy (from them) to keep your skin healthy.

Our glycerin soap adds moisture to your skin, keeping it healthy and shiny. Let's see... what have we got... (we have over 20 different designs to choose from, this is just a sample!)

My Little Sweet Pea - probably one of our toughest soaps to design, truth be told. But it smells awesome, fruity and floral and fun!

Vanilla Soap - What can I say about this one? If you're a big fan of vanilla, this bar will be great to help your bathroom smelling nice and clean and... edible!

Crisp Cotton - This is a nice delicate fragrance, like clean clothes on the line, drying in the sunlight. Seriously, I write this stuff... it's one of our most popular bars. Not too fragrant, just perfect.

Raspberry Soap (Raspberry Lovers) - All of our soaps are double fragranced. This one... wow. It's one of the dominant fragrances in our retail store, and it's the one most people say "God, I wish I could eat this!" If you love raspberry, you won't regret cleaning with this great bar.

Lily of the Valley - Classic scent, nice design, this is one of those fragrances that will make you get your hands dirty so you can clean them and smell this wonderful flower all day!

Cucumber Melon Soap - Neat design, fun fragrance, this is another favorite. It smells almost fruity, but the cucumber smell cuts it just enough to have it also smell really fresh and clean.

Body Wash

Lush Body Wash - This is one of our best non-soap sellers. Comes in four really great fragrances. Coconut Mango & Papaya (you would not believe how awesome this smells), Bergamot & Coriander (with some orange, too!), Jasmine & Vanilla (yummy), and Chamomile & Lavender (the classic scents). We added pumice and bamboo to the mix, for an exfoliant. Really great.

Goats Milk Body Lotion

Luscious Body Lotion - Goats milk and honey lotion provides much needed vitamins and nutrients to your skin to keep it healthy and vibrant. Comes in matching fragrances of our Lush Body Wash. Great for daily use on your hands, legs, arms, anywhere there is dry skin.

Sugar Scrubs

Sweet Sugar Scrubs - Our best seller. A unique recipe of Hawaiian Sugar, macadamia and almond oil and castile soap. The great thing about this sugar scrub is that it's not oily, so it won't leave a residue around your tub, and you won't have to worry as much about slipping (we don't want that!) It's good for your entire body and face (although not more than once a week on faces, it's still a scrub). Comes in a ton of fragrances:

Beach Breezes, Berry Berry, Coconut, Cucumber Melon, Pink Grapefruit, Kiwi, Oatmeal Milk & Honey, or Raspberry.

We have more, but I think you get the picture, right folks? Awesome stuff. And anyone on this blog who wants to order, I'll give you 15% off your purchase. Use BLOG1 as the coupon code at checkout for your discount!

OK, my brain is completely frozen over now after all that writing. But thanks for checking in. I'll be back later with more goofy news on the shop.

John @ Soapier.com

Welcome to Soapier!

2008-05-09T11:18:00.001-07:00

We're excited to start this new blog.

We hope to do a whole bunch of fun things here, including contests, sales, samples and much more.

Thanks for visiting our site, and stop back again soon!

Linda @ Soapier.com