Читать книгу Natural Soap - Melinda Coss - Страница 7

Introduction

THE VAST MAJORITY OF MY WORKING life has been spent in the design and marketing of craft products. For many years I was involved in knitting and embroidery and wrote numerous books on those subjects, but in the mid-nineties I discovered soap making and my life was turned completely upside down. It is hard to imagine how a simple bar of soap can fundamentally change lives but history shows that it truly can.

Firstly, if you look at soap as a simple hygiene product it has and does undoubtedly fight disease and save lives. In addition, soap presents creative marketing people with an irresistible blank canvas. They begin with a product that is used by men, women and children worldwide in all their wonderful shapes, colours, sizes and income brackets and create, design and package a simple bar of soap to fulfil needs, lifestyles and aspirations. I am frequently asked the question ‘can you really make a living making and selling soap?’. The answer is that 70 per cent of people use soap and the other 30 per cent just need to be persuaded. This is a dream market for an entrepreneur but your success or failure will depend on your business acumen, your creativity, your marketing skills and your product, in that order.

Soap making sent me on the hugely challenging adventure of building an enterprise from scratch with traditional values and methods and with the aim of making enough volume to supply supermarkets. My creative and business learning curve was steep and fruitful, and in the last five years I have had the privilege of sharing that learning curve with entrepreneurial spirits worldwide through my consultancy work and to teach hands-on soap making to the many hundreds of people who have attended my courses.

An even greater privilege has come from the opportunity to start social soapmaking enterprises in Africa and to discover and add value to local plants and oils that can be used in soaps and toiletries. This work has been humbling and hugely satisfying.

If you have my two earlier books The Handmade Soap Book and Gourmet Soaps Made Easy you will note many differences in method in my bar soap section. These changes come from years of experimentation and practical experience. My previous methods still work but the processes suggested in this book will make your life a lot easier.

I am also including sections on liquid soap making and on creams and lotions. Liquid soap outsells bar soap eight to one so if you want to run a business it’s a good skill to master. Creams and Lotions give you the opportunity of experimenting with all the wonderful luxury oils without worrying about caustic substances – the products you can produce at home in your kitchen are just wonderful but don’t take my word for it, make them and see for yourself!

Finally, for those soap entrepreneurs of the future I have included a section on setting up a business.

Enjoy !