Would you pay $21 for a bar of bath soap? I wouldn’t. I get my soap when they’re on sale at Costco for about $2.1 per bar. That’s me, I just need a basic bar of soap that gets me clean with no frills. Some people need more than that. Their soap needs to do a lot of jobs and they’re willing to pay much more. I’m building a side business for those people.
This week, I’m starting to make luxury bath bars to sell online. Premium ingredients, no artificial dyes or fragrances and all the care you find in an artisanal product, including a 6-week cure time. These bars will be made with love.
Soap may seem like a departure for me, but it’s actually not. I’ve been interested in making soap for several years. I bought the how to books and the DIY equipment all the way back in 2022. They’ve been sitting in a bin collecting dust. This week they come out to play.
Making soap at home is fairly easy with inexpensive equipment. You can do something as simple as melting pre-made soaps and adding color and fragrances to suit your artistic vision. You can also make it from scratch, like I’m doing. Making it from scratch lets me make exactly the soap my customers will buy again and again, at a premium price.
That price is the tricky bit. The other day I shared with my wife and daughter that I’m planning to sell my bars for $21 each ($42 for a two-pack). They were both shocked. My wife is willing to pay $12 for a bar of soap, but swap those digits and $21 is too much for her. She’s not my customer.
The next day, I asked my daughter if she wants to make her own soap and sell it at farmer’s markets. She said yes, but only if she doesn’t have to sell it for $21. That was a perfect opportunity for me to explain to a second grader about price as a signal of product quality.
To illustrate my point I gave her the example of two hypothetical lemonade stands.
One stand sells lemonade for $1 per cup. They use lemon flavored powder, city tap water and mounds of sugar to make their lemonade. It looks like yellow water and tastes like it maybe met a lemon at a party once. People who buy it give polite smiles and praise the 10 year old owners for their entrepreneurship. They’ll come back if they’re parched, maybe.
The other stand sells their lemonade for $3 per cup. They make their lemonade from fresh lemons they squeeze themselves and add organic cane sugar and filtered water. Those 10-year-olds taste test every batch to make sure it meets their high standards. People who buy it come back every week and bring their friends. The repeat business is the only compliment needed.
After I presented these hypotheticals I asked her, why do those people pay $3 at that second stand? Her response, “it’s worth it.” She gets it.
I’m building my version of that second lemonade stand. No compromise on ingredients, no short-cuts and love, lots of love.
Am I crazy to think anyone will pay $21 for a bar of soap? On Etsy you’ll find hand-made bars for $6 - $10. Some specialty bars go for as high as $14. I’m still 50% higher than that. Add another check mark to the crazy column? Nope, I’m not competing with Etsy sellers. I’m undercutting Aēsop charging $29 for their Refresh bar.
One day I’ll ask my wife and daughter about that $21 price point and I hope they’ll both say, “it’s worth it.”
Disclosure: I write these posts. AI helps me edit them.