Custom Soap Boxes from McKenzie Crest

Kudos goes to Michael Hildebrand, the graphic designer. He’s a friend from church, and all he asked for in payment was a large gift basket for a silent auction to benefit his son’s football team. I gave him a vision, and with very few revisions, he came up with the design. I love the window on the front so you can see and smell the soap. This is just the beginning though. I will need several more designed for the rest of my regular line. I also asked for a blank blue one for all my limited edition soaps (I put a Winter Rose soap in there for the photo.) I’ll have to write the name of the fragrance on the front and put a sticky label on the back with the ingredients.

Kudos also goes to Anne Rohde, sales representative at McKenzie Crest Inc.. She worked very closely with me to let me know what the box company needed from me. High quality customer service for sure!

I just can’t tell you how excited I am not to have to shrink wrap and label 100′s of soaps anymore. I love how the shrink wrap showed off the soap and allowed the scent to come through, but it was SO time consuming. Definitely worth it when my production wasn’t as high. I am still planning to sell the smell-through shrink wrap on my website – in fact, I just had another big roll delivered today too (ironic, isn’t it?). I will probably find myself using it here and there, even after I have all the boxes I need.

So that’s my big news! If any other soapmakers out there want to check out McKenzie Crest, their prices are reasonable and their minimums are low! They also offer custom labels.

So, in an effort to get this soap business a bit more streamlined, I’ve been making a few changes that have taken a lot of time up front, but in the long run should make my life easier, and benefit my customers as well.

1. I switched my newsletter service for my Preferred Customers to MailChimp. After I saw how the template could be adjusted to look more like my brand, and how it doesn’t cost me anything to send out the same number of newsletters that I was sending through my old newsletter service (which was costing me $10/month), I was convinced! There were several other factors involved as well:

a. I had several of my local customers tell me they never got my newsletters from the old service. They are now getting them with MailChimp.
b. MailChimp has a lot of great features that make it easier to use from the sender’s standpoint – that’s ME!
c. One word: autoresponders. Now, when someone signs up to be a Preferred Customer, it will automatically send out an email with the 10% off coupon. AND, it knows when your birthday is, so it can send out a fun birthday email asking you which lip butter you want for your free gift!

2. All orders are now sent out via USPS Priority Mail or UPS. First class mail has been discontinued due to erratic shipping cost calculations that were not in my favor. Even though it was nice to have a less expensive option for those smaller packages, Priority Mail has always proved reliable and faster.

3. Soap shapes are about to change again. While I am absolutely in love with my soap cutter “tank” that cuts up to 12 bars at a time in one fell swoop, I’ve never been truly happy with the 1″ wide bars. It took me awhile to realize that it was cutting my soap thinner than I was cutting it by hand, so my soaps were dropping below the 4 ounce size that I had been advertising. So I started making the soaps wider to make up the difference. This still hasn’t made me happy. I found out Willow Way aka soapequipment.com sells several different standard size cutters, so this week I decided to go ahead and get the 1 1/4″ cutter – and it’s scheduled to arrive TODAY!! Once I’ve determined that I love this cutter more than the 1″ one, the 1″ one will be up for sale. I can’t wait to have standard sized soaps again!!

My 1" soap cutter. You know you want it.

4. Packaging is about to change too. I love the way the smell-through shrink wrap protects my soaps and shows off their design, while allowing the fragrance come through! However, as my production rate increases, it is becoming less time efficient for me to wrap and label every soap. I am looking into some box ideas that will be custom printed and have windows to show off the fragrance and design – at least for my regular line that I keep in stock.

Example of custom soap box

The boxes seem so expensive compared to the shrink-wrap and paper labels, especially since I would have to get a custom size, but I have to keep in mind how much time (and toner) I’ll be saving! I’m still deciding if I should have some generic boxes that can be customized with sticky labels for my limited edition soaps, or continue to shrink-wrap them. I definitely still plan to have the smell-through shrink wrap available to sell to other soapmakers.

The last thing I want to do is raise prices. It may come to that at some point, especially with the way the cost of ingredients continues to rise. Other changes I’m considering include dropping product lines that aren’t selling as well. Handmade soap is and probably always will be my best selling product – because you can’t buy it at Walmart and it’s obviously what I’m most passionate about.

Handmade Lip Butters by Great Cakes Soapworks

If that wasn’t enough, I also spent the better part of the day updating my welcome page on Facebook! Apparently the size requirements for the welcome photo have narrowed considerably, so my welcome page has been sitting there blank for quite some time. If you’re already a fan, you can visit the direct link here. If you are NOT yet a fan, please go here and tell me how it looks! You can also sign up to be a Preferred Customer from the welcome page.

Ad from the Johnson County Gazette

My older daughter and I made the farmer’s market ad in the Johnson County Gazette which is a free local newspaper. It’s just our faces, but those who come to the market will hopefully recognize who we are! The top photo is Dennis, the market manager, and the middle photo is Christine, the vendor next to us who sells beautiful garden rocks that she paints, as well as plants and cut flowers.

It was SUCH a cold day to be at the market this morning! My older daughter usually comes with me, but she spent the night at a friend’s house, so I got to bring my baby with me instead. Last night I jokingly wrote on the Great Cakes Soapworks Facebook page “Can’t believe how cold it is! I’ll be the one shivering under a blanket at the farmer’s market tomorrow morning! If you’re coming by, bring me some hot tea, please!” And wouldn’t you know, my sweet friend Jacki brought me a steaming hot mug of tea!

The weather in Kansas is just so unpredictable. It was 90 degrees just four days ago! Today it was 46 and cloudy when we left for the market, and they were saying the wind was going to be 15-25 mph – which fortunately wasn’t as bad as they said it would be. I still wore two pairs of socks, leggings under my jeans, silk underwear, another shirt, a hoodie, and my down coat with gloves! I sure hope it warms up again soon!

I wanted to use a name that people actually search for on Google. At first, I thought I’d call them Aloe Vera Lotions, since aloe vera juice is the main ingredient. But then I read an article about Aloe Vera Creams, and their stance was that it should be at least 50%, and closer to 95% aloe if you’re going to actually call it an aloe vera lotion. Mine are about 40%.

So I went with a fairly common term instead. They are simply “Hand & Body Lotion” now. Same formula, different labels. In fact, the new labels wrap all the way around the bottles now. Hopefully no more peeling edges! Of course, I can only fit two labels per label sheet instead of four, but I think I can live with that.

Hand & Body Lotions by Great Cakes Soapworks

These are the fragrances that are currently in stock:
Lavender Meadows (essential oil blend of lavender, patchouli, palma rosa, and ylang ylang), Almond Milk, Stress Relief (essential oil blend of eucalyptus, spearmint and peppermint), Grapefruit Parfait (brand new scent blend with a natural vanilla infusion and grapefruit & orange essential oils), and Black Raspberry Creme.

My goal is to create all natural scent blends, so once the current Almond Milk and Black Raspberry Creme lotions are sold, they will not be re-stocked. These are sold at Greatcakessoapworks.com for just $8.00 each, or if you purchase 3 or more, the price drops to $7.50. Update: Almond Milk lotions are sold.

Let me know if you have some ideas for natural scent blends!

I’m still working out the details, such as whether or not to announce what all the soaps will be ahead of time, or just on a week-by-week basis, or make it a complete surprise. And if I do announce the scent and show a picture of the soap, if I should allow customers to be able to reserve any number of bars. That could get tricky. Any advice on this is welcome!

One thing is for sure. I finally have a log mold that will make just eight bars of soap! Another soapmaker and I arranged a trade – my slab mold for her three smaller log molds. The only log molds I had are about 31″ long – too long for small batches, and too long to fit in my oven, should I ever decide to try the CPOP (cold process-oven process) method. The medium sized mold I received is the perfect size to make eight bars of soap, plus a little left over on the ends. I re-sized my recipe, and tested it out with some Lily of the Valley fragrance this morning. Here’s a sneak peek of the soap in the mold:

Lily of the Valley Soap in the mold

I wasn’t trying to get too fancy because my main objective was to make sure I re-sized my recipe correctly, but I’ll tell you there is a layer of yellow soap sandwiched between two cream-colored layers. Yes, I textured the top a bit and sprinkled on some glitter too. That’s a pretty easy way to spiff up a soap!

P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day!!

Are you a fan of Great Cakes Soapworks on Facebook? If you are, then you probably wouldn’t notice that I have a new welcome page for first time visitors. However, if you aren’t a fan, then I highly suggest that you check it out!

Mike Holmes of Redpinservices.com contacted me before Christmas saying that he had found me via a local twitter search. He’s located here in Olathe too, and wondered if I was interested in having him create a welcome page on the Great Cakes Soapworks Facebook site. Turns out, I had been thinking about doing it, but hadn’t gotten around to it. I had even attempted to figure it out myself, but you have to understand a different type of coding, and I didn’t have time to mess with it. So, I told him I would get back with him after Christmas.

When my hubby helped me with the shrink wrap video tutorial, I asked him to take a few still shots as well to use for my Facebook page – and the line of soaps you see across the top of this blog. I sent the photos to Mike, and told him how I wanted things to look, and he got it all set up! He even embedded the Preferred Customer sign-up form. If you need a custom welcome page for your business on Facebook, I’d highly recommend Mike.

If you are already a Great Cakes Soapworks fan and want to see the new Welcome page, you can click on the >> sign across the top, the Welcome page tab will show up and you can click on it.

Last night I mentioned on the Great Cakes Soapworks Facebook page that my new stick blender would be arriving on Wednesday (that’s tomorrow – yippee!!). I asked my fans which soap I should make first – Black Raspberry Creme or Country Clothesline, with the unanimous response of…well, you’ll just have to go see for yourself!

Turns out I’m in the beauty and body gift guide of the current issue, on page 56. (Click on the photo of the front cover, following the link, not the photo in the blog post, and it will be easy to flip to the correct page.)

They incorrectly infer that all my soaps are made with goat’s milk, but otherwise it’s a nice little write-up! And now, since I contacted him, the publisher wants some soap for his wife’s stocking. Of course, I’m happy to oblige.

Great Cakes Soapworks Tote Bag

Creamy Castile soap
Oatmeal, Milk & Honey soap
Lavender Meadows soap
Lavender Lemon soap
Old Fashioned Lye soap
Sugar Scrub – any scent
Grapefruit & Peppermint Foot Scrub
Whipped Shea Butter
Jojoba-Shea Lotion – any scent

Your testimonial is your entry for the drawing for a Great Cakes Soapworks tote bag. If there are lots of entries, I will give away more than one! So leave a comment below. Please include your first name, last initial, city and state. I will leave this open through the weekend and draw for the winner(s) on Monday. Thank you in advance!

P.S. If you have sent feedback before and would like to send more, please feel free, but only one entry per customer this go round.