Production Time!

Time always seems to pass by so quickly and I am just amazed to find that it has been 2 months since my last post! I have been busy formulating my Shaving Soap and making and testing the various batches. I also worked on my Shaving Cream formula and made tests on that as well. I think that it is really important to give each product a good long trial to make sure that not only does it live up to expectations but perform well over a period of time! I am pleased to say that both soaps have not only met my expectations but surpassed them! I am very pleased with the Shaving Soap and have tested it over the last couple of months along with my Shaving Cream and both are ready to put into production!

I placed an order with a supplier I had used before for the raw materials I needed and they were great to work with and not only provided the quantities but my rep from the company hand delivered them himself! Great opportunity to meet a very nice guy who represented his company well but also he was able to offer suggestions which were very helpful to me! It is nice when you encounter a company who is willing to work with smaller businesses like mine to help them expand and grow!

The next step for me was to go over samples I had ordered for packaging and select just the right one for my shaving cream. I chose one with a “natural” colored translucent thick walled jar and and inner “dust liner” to help protect the product in transport and topped it off with a black screw cap. I also decided that I wanted to market the shaving soap in a travel container with a screw top and ordered a sample with the same “natural” colored translucent container to match the shaving cream in a smaller size perfect for the soap and with the same black screw cap. All of my packaging uses “natural” bottles, jars and tubs with a black cap which give a cohesive look to my line which I think is really important.

I have also begun work on labeling for these two products. I managed to find a software program to do round labels and have been playing around with it in my spare time to create a label that I can print myself and will look nice on the container. Presentation is of key importance and I am confidant that this will work for the moment. One thing I have learned in this venture is that things like packaging can evolve and change according to your needs and that you need to remain open to new ideas and new ways of doing things that will, in the end, help you present and sell your product.

Another aspect of these two new products that needs to be covered before I actually begin production is fragrance! Fortunately, I have quite a few scents in my “Masculine” soap section that I feel confident will work well for these two products. The other benefit is that I can now offer more of a “range” of Men’s products that have the fragrance as the continuity element from product to product! I will need to make up batches of each fragrance blend ahead of beginning actual production, so I have my work cut out for me!

I have noticed that besides my friend Seth, I have some new “Followers” here on the blog! Welcome to Lori, Chasmodai, Lea, and milly2u whom I think I know from one of the message boards! Thanks for your support and wish me luck on this new avenue in soap making!

As always, stop by http://www.stonecottagesoapworks.com

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers!
David Bruce

and now..... Shaving Soaps!

Shaving Soap

I’ve started a new project that I am really excited about! I am in the development stages of making a Shaving Soap! I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time and had done of ton of research in soap-making books and online a while back. I looked up all my research and books with a renewed energy and got down to work! I thought it might be a good idea to go back to one of the shaving message boards I had joined last year and create a post looking for information about what characteristics “wet shavers” are looking for in a shaving soap as well as what scents would please them. I got many responses offering quite a few helpful suggestions which I have taken into consideration. Badger & Blade is the name of this particular board and is one of the premiere message board for shaving with thousands of members and over a million posts! It can be found at: http://badgerandblade.com/ ... Check it out! There are actually a few other boards which I found later and I joined another one called Shave My Face and that can be found at http://www.shavemyface.com/forum/index.php . One kind gentleman sent me a post from The Shave Den and that url is http://www.theshaveden.com/forum/ .


I finally decided upon a formula I wanted to try and worked out a variation of it and tried the two a few days ago. To my surprise, everything went smoothly and the first and second tests went very well, placing me pretty close to where I wanted to be! The next day I worked out another two formulas both of which went in slightly different directions from the original. One created a slightly “fluffier” lather which just didn’t give as much cushion as I wanted and the other was a bit better. Sometimes it is helpful to try variations to see which is the best route to follow!

I decided that I wanted to improve the emollience a bit and I also wanted to try a slightly different set of ingredients as well as increasing the glycerin content (glycerin provides lubrication and acts as a humectant bring water to the skin). I created another formula variation with this in mind and made a couple of batches one with glycerin included and the other with glycerin added at the end. I made these batches pretty late on Thursday evening, unmolded and cut them the next evening and did a trial run with one yesterday morning. I got an incredible shave and used it again this morning having the same results! It worked wonderfully and I am really excited about it! I want to see if I can make some minor modifications and will try a couple of variations in the next couple of days. I am hoping to have this project completed in the next week or two and then I can direct my energies toward my next project... Shaving Cream!

As always, stop by http://www.stonecottagesoapworks.com and spend some money time! ;) Thanks for stopping by and check back often and I’ll fill you in on my progress!

Cheers!
David Bruce

Here I am , back again in Mid-August! I have begun to look around the store with a critical eye and have begun to make more changes. I had several “old time” black and white advertisements that I had framed and were hanging above the long wall. Since they were ads for other “brands” of soap, I decided that they should go. I had in my mind using some old botanical drawings that are very beautifully drawn and colored that I found online. Since they are in the public domain I have no problem using them. I located a site that has them online and downloaded some that pertain to the fragrance and raw materials that I use in soapmaking. I photoedited them giving them all a crisp white background and vivid colors and printed them on photo paper. I found glass picture frames in which they can “float” in the glass with a thin shiny black glass trimming the edges. I am really pleased at how they look and how they bring more emphasis to the raw materials I use in making my artisan soaps. I have gotten good responses from the customers that have seen them!



Tell me what you think!



I also found a nice natural colored rectangular basket and lined it with a quilted handtowel in a natural shade and have placed all of the many new wooden soapdishes inside it. They are neatly organized and all have price stickers on them. So far, customers have been attracted to the basket and I have sold many more soapdishes than I was selling before! It seems that I made the right decision on those as well!

As I mentioned in a previous post I was planning on making up signs that told about the characteristics that my soaps have to better inform the customers what my soaps are all about. I went to work on it one afternoon, printed it up and placed it in a large 11X17 frame and it is in the store ready to great the customers!

I have more ideas and improvements to make so I’d better get busy and work on them! Thanks for listening and remember to stop by:

www.stonecottagesoapworks.com

Cheers!
David Bruce

Progress Report!

So far, the reorganization of the store has been a success! Business has picked up a bit but the weather this Summer isn’t helping whatsoever with high humidity and lots of cloudy and rainy days. The store space now flows a lot better with a logical circle around the new aisle shelving bringing the customers in and around the perimeter of the store enabling them to get a sampling of each category rather than having them confused as to where to go first!

The most significant change is the new scent categories! “Lavender” being the most popular selling soap has proven to be an attraction to many people as a separate category with a dozen different Lavender based scents in it. The “Sandalwood” category (with 9 different scents) and Musk (also with 9 different scents) categories have proven themselves as strong enough a scent base to require a special category for each of these as well. “Masculine”, “Floral”, “Minty” and “Spicy” are holding their own with “Exotic” moving forward with more interest than before! With so many scents with a tropical base lent itself to having a special category for “Tropical” scents. Summer is a good time for these types of scents but Winter has proven to be a good time for many customers wish they were in the Tropics at that time! “Kitchen” isn’t doing as well as I had hoped but neither did many of the scents that are in “Kitchen” when they were in the “Herbal” section! I am hoping that adding more dish towels to my offering might assist the “Kitchen” category.

Having a “Sale” has it’s good point and it’s bad points! I am hoping to sell more to reduce my offerings by 50% but with a “slow” economy I am not getting the amount of sales I would like a lately most customers are buying only the 50% OFF soaps although I have had a few exceptions which is good! It is interesting to see what is selling out of the 56 soaps I have put on “Sale”! “Sophisticated” which didn’t get much interest before is now selling like “hotcakes” and “Chamomile Eucalyptus Mint” is also doing very well also so I might have these two scents return to the regularly offered merchandise!

All in all, I have an optimistic outlook on the business but things will only happen if I put more effort into it and try new things! I have enough raw materials to make several new products so I need to put some effort into that and come up with additional products and increase my offerings to encourage people to come in. Additional signage in the window might help as well as signs inside the store that tell the customers a bit more about the products that are offered at Stone Cottage Soapworks. I think my next move is to take a walk around the store asking myself why each and every item is there and whether it is successful in it’s purpose and if it isn’t then it needs to go or be rearranged! The biggest part of this re-evaluation of the business i.e. the rearrangement of the store has take place and has been a success so now I must follow this up with further refinements! Wish me luck!

In the meantime...

stop by:
http://www.stonecottagesoapworks.com

and check out the large sale I am having!

David Bruce

It’s hard to believe but two months have passed since my last post! June was a horrible month business-wise and part of that was the rainy and humid weather that we have been having all the way to today, August 1st! July was a bit better but still below what it should have been. I spent most of the July 4th holiday rearranging the store. I left all of the soap shelving on two walls as it was and concentrated on my area in front of and behind the desk and register. I decided that I would try to move myself a bit further away from the door to a less conspicuous position in the middle of that wall bringing the back of the counter area out of the eye of the customer as it should be. Part of this arrangement involved adding a narrower version of the tall shelving and adding another such tall shelf in front of the first with both now being on special wheels. On paper it looked like it would work well but in reality it didn’t work quite as well as I would have liked as the two towers seems to loom over the space a bit but I decided to leave it because for the most part it does what I need it to do! (That is until I can reach my goal of reducing the stock in the store!).

This project involved moving, reorganizing and restacking all of the stock in the first half of the alphabet. The other thing that I concentrated on was putting together a display area on the floor. Moving the tables provided more space in the back of the store as well as a much wider aisle when you first walk in the store. During the day I came up with the idea of using the wider shelving units that I had replaced with narrower shelving for display instead of using a table! This would also give me the added benefit of all that storage underneath for all of the understock! I set up what I thought looked good in the back and continued to work on organizing the work area in the back of the register. Finally I decided to try creating an aisle out of these shelves in that open area in the front and continuing it toward the back with two sets of Metro shelving end to end! I was a fabulous idea and worked out really well! I got most of that set up that day and left the store exhausted at about 7:00 PM.

I came back the next day, moved that shelving a bit more forward enabling customers to move freely around all four sides of the display. I had some time to think and had to decide what individual soaps I would like to support and what would have to go. It wasn’t an easy decision but a necessary one! To start I chose 56 scents that I planned to eliminate and I set them up in a special 50% OFF section on the new shelving on the aisle. So far it has worked out beautifully with the customers having full access to everything that they need and plenty of room to peruse. Along with creating new scent categories, reorganizing each area and alphabetizing all of the soaps in each category, I am pleased to say that this has proven to work out quite well!

I’ll get back to you all in a little while with more updates!

As always, stop by:

http://www.stonecottagesoapworks.com

and check out the large sale I am having!

David Bruce

Time to Take Stock!

It is time for me to take stock both literally and figuratively. I have had the store now for nearly three years and the website will celebrate its first anniversary around the same time in September! It is always good to look at where you have been, where you are and where you are going. This is especially true with the economy being bad and business in general suffering because of that. It is easy to coast along and hope that things improve but better to take stock and see what you can do to make things better until the economy picks up!

I am looking at my offerings and seeing what is working well for me and what isn’t and what isn’t will just have to go! I have put a lot of stock on sale in both the store and on the website and plan to cut my soap offerings in half! So often I have heard the phrase “There are too many soaps to choose from in here” from customers to which I laughed and replied saying that I felt that I had something for everyone but not realizing that I just had too much stock and that I need to find the best selling items and concentrate on them.

I am taking a long and hard look at all of the soaps that I offer and making lists of what I feel should stay and lists of what I think should go. As not everything is always black and white, I also have a list of those scents that are in-between and I am considering that to do with them. In both the store and the website, I have soaps offered by category and I am making changes in those. I have found that some of the soaps in question actually would benefit by simply moving it to another section or category! One scent in particular comes to mind and that is “Citrus Tonic”. I describe is as “A citrus based tonic with the Essential oils of Bitter Orange and Petitgrain from the Bitter Orange tree and given assistance by a dash of Cardamom spice with a base of deep, rich Musk, precious Sandalwood and made with ground Orange peels.” I had it in the “Fruity” section in the store but came to the realization that because of its strong Bitter Orange scent and the addition of notes of Spice, Sandalwood and Musk that it would be perfect to offer to the gentleman in the “Masculine” section! I will also add “Vanille de St. Marie” to that section because of its Cedar notes and, after all, Vanilla has always been a great favorite of Men!

I am also looking to take my business in a different direction and start offering more bath related items and a section of kitchen related items as well! I think these things will really go well with the soap line and give the customers more reason to shop at Stone Cottage Soapworks! I prefer to leave the lotions and potions to the cosmetic people but I will certainly toy around with things like body butter and tropical butter sticks to use right after the bath or shower. I am also looking into shampoo and conditioner as well as bubble bath to add to my line, which already includes bath salts and bath bombs!

Another thing that I am considering is rearranging the store. I have tried several arrangements, all of which have moved me closer to the door but am considering trying something different and perhaps adding a table in the middle of the floor and see how that works. I think the best thing is to make up a full-sized scale model of the store and cut out templates of the stainless steel tables that I have in there as well as the wooden shelving and move them around on the mock-up to see what might work best. There are so many factors involved including the location of the power outlets, my location in regard to the door, how much of the store is visible from the register and how close to the door I am. Unfortunately, shoplifters are another consideration even in a small store like mine and in a quaint town like Frenchtown! Ask me how I know!

Another aspect that I should consider is the décor of the store itself! Many, many people have commented that they think my store is cute and I do appreciate hearing that but perhaps I may wish to make some changes in how I arrange and display things so that it may have more appeal… lots to consider!

In my last post, I mentioned our trip to Bermuda and meeting that lovely woman named Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone who is the perfumer from “Lili Bermuda”. I have been in touch with Isabelle and have consulted her on some of the things I have mentioned. She shared her thoughts, feelings and insights on scents and business and made some very helpful suggestions for which I am very grateful! As this is a somewhat new venture for me, I feel that it is important to confer with others in similar businesses to get new ideas and insights and she has been extremely helpful. Please stop by her shop at the Bermuda Perfumery and see her line of perfumes called Lili Bermuda if you visit St. George in Bermuda or visit her website at:

http://www.lilibermuda.com/

Meanwhile, I will be working on all of the things I have mentioned and will get back to you when I have made some progress! As always, stop by:

http://www.stonecottagesoapworks.com and check out the large sale I am having!

David Bruce

The Bermuda Perfumery!

How à propos that my last post was about fragrance! On a recent trip to Bermuda I had the distinct pleasure of going to the island of St. George and visiting the Bermuda Perfumery. As it was our first stop fresh off the ship, we were taken back by the atmosphere of the island with its’ pastel buildings with their bright white topped roofs! We walked up Queen Street past flowering bushes along the sidewalks to a lovely white stucco building with contrasting shutters and a white tile roof. We entered Stewart Hall in which the Perfumery is located and is the home of Lili Bermuda, a name that was familiar to me from my online research. It was simply but elegantly decorated with beams across the ceilings and the exposed tilework visible under the roof of this charming cottage.

We were then greeted by a lovely and very charming woman who invited us to sample the fragrance offerings for Men, giving us samples on white fragrance strips and telling us about each fragrance and its’ componants. She offered a tour and brought us into a back area with a video presentation about scent playing and a sampling of essential oils and fragrance componants on trays on the sideboard. After the presentation she came back and I mentioned that I was a soapmaker and that I worked with scent and develop unique scents of my own for my soap. Finding out that we had something in common we began to chat more indepth about scent blending and our experiences and goals and our businesses. She told me about many aspects of perfumery and I shared some of my experience in scent blending in my cold process soapmaking and much of what I talked about in my last blogpost. She then excorted us to an out building that contained huge glass bottles of fragrances that were macerating and shared some of her insight in scent blending talked about perfumery.

We went back to the front showroom area where we selected a fragance that we each liked and purchased them. I bought one called “Navy” that is described as “Crisp, clean and cool, Navy is a classic gentleman's cologne. Navy is a perfect harmony of citrus’s including bergamot, mandarin, verbena, green lime with a touch of coriander, juniper and basil delicately sustained with the refined undertones of vetiver, sandalwood, black pepper and amber.” from their website and my partner picked out another called “Cedar” for himself which was descibed as “This classic fragrance is a warm woody blend of cedarwood, bergamot, lavender, rosemary and juniper. Cedarwood exists in perfect harmony with subtle notes of vetiver, red oak and nutmeg in combination with white musk, labdanum and suede.” She introduced herself as Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone and gave us her card. She mentioned working with the perfumer Mr. David Botello who had been the prefumer for Lili Bermuda and who very recently passed away. I was given the opportunity to sample new fragrances that are being released this Summer as well as some that are still in the preparation stages. I eagerly await their release as they were quite lovely! She also very graciously offered us quite a few samples of their fragrances which I am eager to experience when I have a few free moments! We did briefly meet her husband but prepared to leave as we had taken up quite enough of her time and were heading out to see a bit more of the island. Hearing that she told us about many of the fragrant flora that can be seen and enjoyed on the island and gave us suggestions of where we might find some and even looked up some photos in a book so that we might know what we would be looking for. She was indeed right and we did find several of the beautiful flowers and flowering bushes whose fragrance we enjoyed and I photographed.

We appreciated the time she spent with us and we enjoyed our visit. She was indeed a good “hostess” to her visitors and even walked us to the door and waved to us as we headed out in search of some of those beautiful flowers she told us about!

If you have time check out the site of the Bermuda Perfumery at:
http://www.lilibermuda.com/

If you are in Bermuda make sure you go to St. George, go to the Bermuda Perfumery and meet Isabelle Ramsay-Brackstone the perfumer for Lili Bermuda!

As always, stop by http://www.stonecottagesoapworks.com

David Bruce