Soapy Friday - Celebrations

There's much to celebrate this week! First, my trademark approval finally came in and Ravish Soap Company is legally legit from copyright infringement...

This alone has been a journey that has taken well over a year to finalize. I won't bore you with the legal details, but I'm very proud that I did this all on my own and have learned A LOT from it.

Secondly, all of my box designs are finalized and are ready to go to the printers. THIS I am very, very excited about and a bit nervous....it wasn't cheap to do what I did, but go big or go home, right? Some people have kids and spend the money to put them through college at my age...me?...I start a business. LOL! This is my child and I'm investing in its future. :-)

All the single ladies...almost ready for showtime! 

Have a few more tweaks yet...

Thirdly, I've started official production! I've made 50 lbs. of soap this week and put in my first "big soap" supply order. The UPS guy/girl is gonna hate me! Since I wan't to give my soap "at least" 6-8 weeks to cure, I need to start now. Each 25 lb. slab gives me about 80 bars of soap.

2 batches down, 7 more to go!

My "Taste of Honey" soap overheated, but I think it makes it look more authentic, yes?

Is it a real honey comb or soap?

My "original" goal was to launch by May 31st, but I don't see that happening. There's just too much to do graphic-wise yet and my graphic artist is taking sooooooo slooooooow to finish. I'm thinking of hiring a second one to help out in the meantime, but we'll see.

Lastly, I was recertified this week for a professional certification that I worked really hard to get 3 years ago. Something sparkling and alcoholic will be enjoyed tonight!

Soapy Friday: Almost Ready to Party!

After many, many, many tweaks and edits, my graphic designer and I have finalized a baseline template for my soap boxes. I am now shopping printing companies for production. Ultimately, these boxes will have a soft, matte finish with spot glossing...

My BFF Rosie...ready to get printed

This soap, "My BFF Rosie" is just one of NINE baseline soaps that I will launch with Ravish Soap Company later this year. This will also include matching body butters and sugar scrubs. I'm hoping to have shampoo bars too, but you know....test, test, and test.

I'm aiming for a May 31st launch, but it takes SO MUCH TIME to put all these pieces in place....including trademarks, licensing, insurance, A WEBSITE. Ugh...but I just try to think about the old saying that goes, "How do you eat an elephant?"

Soapy Friday: Sealed for Freshness

It seems like little has been going on this month, but there has been a lot. I've been tweaking formulas, buying equipment, and finalizing packaging labels.

I bought an induction heat sealer to give me lovely sealed jars like this:

Sealed for Freshness

Got anything you want me to seal?

It's an interesting machine. Hubby thinks it looks like one of those defibrillator paddles and keeps yelling, "CLEAR!" when I use it.

"CLEAR!"

I'm on a deadline of getting my business up-and-going by May 31st...god willing. I still have to have an e-commerce website built, get all the boring business stuff in place, and actually have a product line to launch other than one bar of soap. If I keep on top of things...and keep on top of the people helping me...it will happen.

In the meantime, I keep experimenting to formulate a solid shampoo bar that will give all the good things healthy hair wants and needs, but also remain hard enough in the shower. I think I stopped counting past batch #7...

What batch # is this?

Soapy Friday: Goals for 2019

Happy New Year everyone! I'm SOOOO glad the holidays are over, although I always get the "post holiday blues"...I'm glad to be rid of the mess, but I do miss all the fun and cheer. Now it's on to 2019!

This year will be very, very interesting. I'm not going to set any uber lofty goals other than officially launching an online and vendor-based business, which to be honest is a lot! We are on the fence on what to do with our current renting/living situation and may be moving again by April...and it might be out-of-state!

We shall see...

In the meantime, I am on revision cycle #3 for my soap box templates with my graphic artist. This does take a while, but it's worth it and we're close to finalizing something.

So close and yet so far

I haven't made any soap lately, as I don't want to waste ingredients if I'm producing and not selling, AND those ingredients are expensive to purchase and have expiration dates. Also, I don't want to make a lot of soap that may or may not fit in my future soap boxes.

So...I experiment with formulas. Here I've made 3 different shampoo bar samples using 3 different formulas, I'm close to getting what I want, but need to order more ingredients.

Shampoo Bar Formula Experiments

I've FINALLY found the holy grail of rock hard bath bombs that float and fizz...except now they are FLAT! Grrrr....back to the mixing bowl.

I like flat butts...said no one EVER!

Although the funny thing is I don't think I will sell them as part of my product line...they're too mainstream now and you can buy bath bombs at the Dollar General Store. I just prefer to solve the mystery and move on....I don't like to leave problems unsolved.

Soapy Friday: Packaging Concepts - First Revision

So, last Friday night I met with my graphic designer to go over the first packaging concept designs for my soap boxes and other labeling. I could NOT be more thrilled!...

I loved something from all of these!

 I love that she provides 5 mock-up concepts and we go from there. There will be 2-3 more revision cycles from this (I believe) until we narrow it down to the perfect design. I'm liking a little bit of all the boxes, so we'll pull that all in to design the one we want as a final concept.

So much fun!

Once that is done, then we decide how we want these to be printed. Glossy? Flat? Embossed? Foil?

I can't wait!

LOVE!!!

Soapy Friday: Building a Brand

Where have I been?

Oh, you know, the usual…but mostly I’ve been in a holding pattern, and I’ve only made ONE BATCH OF SOAP SINCE OCTOBER 19^TH!!!! It’s the longest I’ve gone not making soap since we moved and since I started on this journey.

I’ve been slowly, oh so slowly, working on building a brand. For the past year, I’ve applied and gone through the trademark publishing process. I’ve hired two graphic artists and fired one. The second one is a true soulmate and can visualize where I want to go.

So far, we have developed my logo and my brand-style, which has a modern, inclusive, pop-art sassiness…

Super Sassy Pop-Art!

And we came up with this...

Next, we are now working on packaging design. I’m in a “chicken-or-the-egg” situation, where I don’t know if I should design the soap to fit a box or design a box to fit my soap. I DO know I want some sort of open pane on my soap boxes for smelling, but I don’t think I want it where it is in this sample. 

Soap Box Template #1

I don't this window pane will work...stuff will fall out

I like it on this soap

I’m meeting with my graphic artist this afternoon to look at her first batch of packaging concepts and we will go from there…I'm so excited to see what she has come-up with!

In the meantime, I’m working on formulating solid shampoo bars. This is my first one and IT WORKS and IT’S pH BALANCED! I have a loooooong way to go though….down the rabbit hole I go.

First solid shampoo bar...it works, but needs tweaking!