Starting your own soap business is an exciting process, but it's not all fun. There are a lot of tough decisions that you have to make when starting your business. From designing your packaging to picking an appropriate price and choosing where to sell your soap, there are several things you have to worry about outside of the soap itself.
With so many aspects to consider, you're probably left scouring the internet for soap business tips, trying to create the perfect business plan to grow your brand. But what if the perfect business plan doesn't involve you actually making soap at all?
Read on to learn more about the pros and cons of making soap and some extra soap business tips.
Pros of Making Your Own Soap
Before making an informed business decision, it's important to know both the pros and cons of making soap on your own. Below, you can find the benefits of making your own soap.
You Have Full Control
When you make your own soap, you have complete control over every aspect of the soapmaking process, including:
● Type of oil used
● Amount of oil used
● Size of soap bars
● Soap color
● Soap fragrance
● Designs
If you don't like how a batch turns out, you can tweak the formula until you get it right.
You can't fine-tune and play with recipes when you choose to outsource bulk soap manufacturing.
It's Fun and Rewarding
Most soapmakers fall into the business accidentally after realizing how fun it is to make soap. After all, if you have dozens of bars of soap lying around, you might as well sell them and make some extra money.
Anyone who has made soap before will tell you how great it feels when it slides out of the mold, and you get to see all of your hard work come together.
Cons of Making Your Own Soap
Although soapmaking is fun, doing business isn't all about having fun. Below are the drawbacks of making your own soap.
It Is a Time-Consuming Process
Making soap is no walk in the park. From carefully mixing the right combination and ratio of ingredients to delicately pouring the soap mixture into molds to slicing the bars by hand and waiting for them to cure, it's not something you can rush.
From the time you start blending the oils together, it can be up to a month before that soap is ready to be used. Not to mention all the time it takes to source the proper tools and ingredients before you can even start.
Higher Startup Costs
When you decide to make your own soap, there are a lot of startup costs you have to consider. You have to buy all of the raw ingredients, additives, molds, blenders, mixing bowls, curing racks, and safety equipment, and you must have a way to store it all.
It's Very Difficult to Scale Up Quickly
Your business may have been born out of your soapmaking hobby surplus, but that tends to be very small scale, with most hobbyists only making a couple of dozen bars a month. If you're serious about growing your sales, you'll have to scale up production eventually, which can be very difficult to do on your own.
Scaling up production isn't just working a few more hours a week to make an extra batch. It entails sourcing the right ingredients from reliable bulk suppliers and requires bigger equipment and more space.
Outsourcing your bulk soap manufacturing makes it easy to grow your business and product line-up very quickly. Instead of being able to fulfill ten orders a month, bulk soap manufacturing can help you fulfill hundreds of orders.
You're Responsible for All the Cleaning
Most people will agree that cleaning up afterward is the worst part of making soap. It's not hard, but it can be tedious to wash every little piece of equipment. You get the final product and none of the mess when you outsource manufacturing.
Why Outsourcing Could Be the Best Option
If you're looking to just have fun and not focus on profits, then you can stick to making your soap at your own pace. However, if you want to grow your fledgling soap startup into a successful and profitable business, it's a wise decision to outsource manufacturing.
Outsourcing manufacturing is one of those super simple soap business tips that you just don't hear about very often. But keeping in mind the pros and cons of making soap, it's easy to see how outsourcing can save you time, money, and manpower.
At Botanie Soap, we make outsourcing simple. Whether you're interested in one of our popular, ready-to-label scents or learning more about our custom manufacturing services, reach out to our team today to get started.