The Colbert taping

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John @ Soapier

Soapier and The Colbert Report

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

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

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

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

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

Here's what we'll be giving out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John @ S

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

Soapier's first commercial!

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

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



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

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

Hi Everyone,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading and for being such great customers.

J @ S

The holidays

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...

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

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!