In the summer of 2015, we were lucky enough to be part of Fund on Etsy, a pilot crowdfunding platform. We launched our HANDMADE FOR CHOICE collection in July and were fully funded within three days. Over the course of our 30-day campaign, we reached 315% of our funding goal and had 126 orders. We ended up making over 300 bars of soap, all of which were shipped out by the end of October.
While we were hoping to reach our goal, we had no expectation that our CHOICE collection would be so popular. We are now working on bringing it to life, both in our Etsy shop and at shows and markets. Check back here to track our progress and, of course, feel free to Contact Us if you’re interested in HANDMADE FOR CHOICE!
HANDMADE FOR CHOICE
Read our original campaign here.
As traditional cold-process soap makers, one of our biggest hurdles is maintaining a varied inventory. Our bars are carefully handmade in small batches and then left to cure for over one month before being sold. While this had worked well for our small shop in the past, we were limited to offering about twelve soap styles at once. We often have requests for a specific scent or combination that we don’t have in stock, and it’s disappointing to have to tell customers that there isn’t enough interest to make a full batch of their favorite bar.
To fix this, we developed a unique method that allows our customers to order the exact bar they want, without compromising our recipes or traditional production methods. Our HMF CHOICE collection separates our textures and scents so we can create a wide variety of bars that are truly made-to-order. This new collection increased our offerings tenfold and hopefully enabled even more people to enjoy all-natural, cold-process soap.
In our normal production process, scent and texture combinations need to be chosen before the bars are made. But, by making the textures and scents separately and then pairing them for each order, our customers can create their favorite bars themselves. Our HMF CHOICE collection relies on a new assembly process that doesn’t change our commitment to using our traditional productions methods and all-natural ingredients. We are very excited about HMF CHOICE and can’t wait to introduce it at larger scale!
