'All Natural' & 'Chemical Free'

[Rusti]

I both love and abhor the soap making facebook groups. I love them for the sharing and the resources and the inspiration but I hate them for the 'chemical free' and 'all natural' crowd.

Stop telling me your soap is all natural and chemical free. I'd rather go for the neat looking soap with the colors and the skin safe FO most of the time than the 'all natural' version where somebody used cinnamon or pepper EO and didn't know what they were doing because 'natural'.

I know this is rehashing an old gripe, but I had to get it off my chest!

 

[Viore]

I was at a craft fair last year and there were HP soap makers selling their "fresh" soap that they had made the previous week >.<

 

[toxikon]

I hear ya... I love following soapers on Instagram but as soon as they start dropping those buzzwords I unfollow. Drives me nuts!

 

[LilyJo]

Trouble is (and speaking as someone who has used 'natural' as a descriptor in the past) its what customers know and understand. So many beauty blogs tout natural all the time that it has become a catchall for so many products.

Customers have an expectation, a short hand of what to expect with natural - not saying its right or correct or anything its just what people expect.

For some natural will just mean made without any additional chemicals - meaning parabens, sls, preservative etc and for others it will mean made without synthetic fragrances.

Running away to hide now as I have no doubt I will be beaten severly!

 

[toxikon]

Trouble is (and speaking as someone who has used 'natural' as a descriptor in the past) its what customers know and understand. So many beauty blogs tout natural all the time that it has become a catchall for so many products.

Customers have an expectation, a short hand of what to expect with natural - not saying its right or correct or anything its just what people expect.

For some natural will just mean made without any additional chemicals - meaning parabens, sls, preservative etc and for others it will mean made without synthetic fragrances.

Running away to hide now as I have no doubt I will be beaten severly!

"Natural" is a vague one that I don't mind TOO much about. But "chemical-free" is just laughable. Another bothersome one is "detoxifying". Please tell me how washing my hands with your soap for 10 seconds is going to magically suck "toxins" from my body. Or soapers who tout the benefits of their raw oils and additives, expecting them to be fully retained in the finished bar.

 

[Rusti]

Trouble is (and speaking as someone who has used 'natural' as a descriptor in the past) its what customers know and understand. So many beauty blogs tout natural all the time that it has become a catchall for so many products.

Customers have an expectation, a short hand of what to expect with natural - not saying its right or correct or anything its just what people expect.

For some natural will just mean made without any additional chemicals - meaning parabens, sls, preservative etc and for others it will mean made without synthetic fragrances.

Running away to hide now as I have no doubt I will be beaten severly!

LOL, not going to beat you, but not going to agree with you either. It's my opinion that if you're going this route, be perfectly aware why you're using 'natural' and don't come to a group of other soapers and tell them your soap is natural and is sooooo much different from that other yahoo over there who uses *dyes* (mica) in their soap!

Frankly I feel as though it's best to say what it is (Free of this or that, or contains only oil, lye, water, etc) as opposed to using a buzz word, even when speaking to customers. I just try to keep the BS to a minimum as a personal goal.

 

[MySoapyHeart]

I feel ya.

I am seing lots of people on Instagram, who ramble on about their "all natural" or "chemical free" bathbombs, soaps, perfumes (don`t get me started on that one )

Sometimes I get so baffled with what they claim, that my eyes roll all the way back into my head, and I can practically see my own brain start to grow arms just to be able to facepalm itself!

I am not letting them know anything, they have to take full responsibility for their claims. But man it is annoying that people claim they have all the answers and yet have not educated themselves to give a balanced wiev of what chemicals actually are, and what they can do for us.

A kitchen knife can be used to cut up bread so you can feed your child. If someone decide to use it to stab someone instead, it isn`t the knife`s fault, it is the way it was used. Chemicals are the same way. You can give a thirsty person a glass of water, or you can drown them in your pool. Is water deadly if used correctly?

Never mind my ramblin`s. I need coffee bad. And an aspirin. (Wait, that is a chemical, isn`t it? Uh-oh...)

 

[LilyJo]

LOL, not going to beat you, but not going to agree with you either. It's my opinion that if you're going this route, be perfectly aware why you're using 'natural' and don't come to a group of other soapers and tell them your soap is natural and is sooooo much different from that other yahoo over there who uses *dyes* (mica) in their soap!

Frankly I feel as though it's best to say what it is (Free of this or that, or contains only oil, lye, water, etc) as opposed to using a buzz word, even when speaking to customers. I just try to keep the BS to a minimum as a personal goal.

I dont want to disagree with anyone on here for having an opinion but it was simply an opinion not cast in stone. I never said my soap was better or more natural than anyone else's and I never would.

The only point I was trying to make was not about me or my soap but about the way the public think about this. We - soapers or candle makers - may not agree with it and may have our own views but if the public have a understanding or an expectation of what 'natural' means, that is what they will look for, no matter whether that is wrong or right.

As I said, talking to people about what they want in products there is a wide range of views on 'natural' and its often simply used as a shorthand for not including SLS/SLES. Parabens etc. But equally another customer might want it to mean vegan, no palm, no synthetic fragrances. People think (from my focus groups) that if a product says 'natural' it will have less nasties.

I know that US and UK markets are different, the customer profile is different, the industry and the regulations are different so there is no one size fits all answer.

 

[cherrycoke216]

'All Natural' &amp; 'Chemical Free'

Uh, I can't agree with you more. And these people also said soap is not detergent and surfactant. I have look up dictionary ( English is my second language) and this show up on dictionary.com :
detergent1
—noun

1.any of a group of synthetic, organic, liquid or water-soluble cleaning agents that, unlike soap, are not prepared from fats and oils, are not inactivated by hard water, and have wetting-agent and emulsifying-agent properties.
2.a similar substance that is oil-soluble and capable of holding insoluble foreign matter in suspension, used in lubricating oils, dry-cleaning preparations, etc.
3. Any cleansing agent, including soap. Compare anionic detergent, cationic detergent, synthetic detergent.

And darn it! soap is surfactant, otherwise the lipophilic end won't bond with oil and dirt and dead skin cells, and hydrophilic end won't bring all these stuff with water down the drain.

And there are lots of chemical constituent in EO like linalool, thymol, limonene...etc. it is not idiot proof like skin safe FO evaluated by lab. And saying that, I use EO cautiously. These touting natural route people use cinnamon, pepper, ginger, wintergreen, sassafras free handed. Duh... I have so much negative feelings toward these who bashing FO, colorant and spread wrong words about soaps. (I do use EO and herb in my soap )


ETA: and bath and body product made without preservatives is a DARN joke!!! It will either grow mold, have some unknown microscopic organisms,bacteria, or just go south...
I hope you have insurance to get your rear end covered... Seriously I do!

ETA 2: and these people are calling their strawberry EO, rose EO ( for $5-7 a bar, and you use rose EO from distillation, and not Rose absolute? Rose absolute at this price range is BS, too) watermelon EO, vanilla EO ( do you know how much a teeny tiny bottle cost?) , and sandalwood EO ( you gotta be kidding me, $5-7 a bar & you use sandalwood EO. Did you add a freaking drop in a 50 kilo soap batch? )

Is there a way to market ( or gift ) soaps to customer/ receiver without bashing these BS people? Please kindly let me know... I know saying negative things about other seller might make me look bad. ( but in their case, it makes them look smarter, and more experienced to customer )

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

LilyJo, that's the issue - it will mean different things to different people. So a soaper might call the soap all-natural and chemical free, but it doesn't mean what YOU take it to mean. So you are buying something which isn't what you expect it to be, because of words being used with no real meaning behind them.

 

[LilyJo]

LilyJo, that's the issue - it will mean different things to different people. So a soaper might call the soap all-natural and chemical free, but it doesn't mean what YOU take it to mean. So you are buying something which isn't what you expect it to be, because of words being used with no real meaning behind them.

I agree with you TEG - the point I guess I am trying to make is that the public have been told (or led to believe) by advertising, the beauty industry, the newspapers etc that natural is better, that ingredient X,Y or Z is scary or wrong or whatever the latest scare story is and they go out looking for a soap (or whatever) that has less of scary ingredient X.

Looking at hundreds of soap companies online they want to narrow down the choices so they search for natural soap, or natural cosmetics or natural cleaning. Its a starting point, a way of narrowing down the choices - I am not saying I am right nor am I defending the woollyness of the term its just what I have experienced. Most customers who search for 'natural' or bring it up in conversations know what they are trying to avoid.

I think so often how any of us market our products and how they are received is partly what we do and partly what else is happening in the industry generally. Natural is one of the current buzzwords used across lots of sectors and yes it does mean different things to different people.

Yes that does devalue it but there are countless other generic marketing terms that grate with lots of us for lots of reasons. All I know is that if someone asks me if my products are natural I use that as an opportunity to explain what is and isnt in them. And why we use or dont use the ingredients we choose.

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

Agreed - but the buzzword can be used in a more meaningful way. "Made only with ingredients which can be found in nature". "Contains no harmful chemicals". That is more accurate but also not so fluffy