Soap Pricing

I have been meaning to write about pricing for a while now.  Ever since I saw a post on a soapers blog calling another soaper’s soap “pricey”.  This was during that trend a few years ago when people sent their soaps in for soap reviews?  I was never really into the soap review thing… neither having my soap judged/reviewed nor publicly judging or reviewing other people’s.  I have tried others soapers' soaps and have found something I like about each and every one.  I love my own the best though as I hope all of you do as well!!  

 I didn’t like seeing someone calling another soaper’s soap as “pricey”.    I know most of us are undercharging and when I see someone who is charging more, I am rooting for them!    Let’s look at my soaps – 6€ per bar.  Not very often, a new client will make a comment about the price… and I try not to react but my blood boils.  I usually smile politely and say I am sure they can find cheaper soaps out there, not sure they will be the same quality and although I would love to offer a soap for less, I am not prepared to lower the quality of our ingredients.   But what I really want to say is:

- Do you realize that within those 6€, 21% of that goes to the government as sales tax?  So I only really see 5€.  Many soapers here don’t actually declare their income from soaps but we do, and we pay our taxes.

- Do you realize that another € of that goes to packaging?  Locally handmade packaging that offers 4 different work sources locally? ( 1) we purchase the material locally, 2) a local lady hand makes them for us, 3) we get them stamped locally by a small t-shirt printing company, and 4) our bag tags are printed by a small local printer) .  We could get them printed in China for pennies, if I wanted to bring the price down, but that is not what we are about.

- Do you realize that I use only ingredients that are fabulous for you?  Ingredients that I feel amazing about using, only natural, mostly local?  I am not using recycled olive oil as many other soapers do here.  We use only fresh organic, extra-virgin olive oil from our local olive oil mill.  We could use palm oil, which would harden up the bars and bring price down, but I don’t feel great about its environmental implications, so we don’t.  We use organic un-refined Shea Butter in all of our soaps except for Castille.  And only pure essential oils.

- Do you realize that instead of making these in our kitchen, we actually have a dedicated studio as required by Health and Safety here and pay monthly rent, insurance, electricity, water, social security which is expensive here in Spain, and that we pay for an analysis from an external laboratory for each batch?   

- Do you know that in pricing our soaps, I can’t actually include my time or there would appear no profit?

-    Do you know that we have not increased the price of our soaps in 3 years although the cost of living has gone up?

That is secretly what I wish to say.  But I don’t.  Most of our clients are pretty amazing and get what we are all about.  Most don’t have a problem at all paying 6€ per bar.  I will eventually have to increase that price.  Especially if we are going for the official “organic” label here.

So to all those soapers out there who are able to charge what your soaps are actually worth -well done!!!!!  

I am including some random photos over the past few months.  We have been getting out to more and more trade shows and loving it.

The journey continues to be amazing and I am so thankful to be doing what I love each and every day!!!

Happy Soaping everyone!   Xoxoxo Jen