First Years of Business

[Zany_in_CO]

For those who think it can't be done (like me ), there's Biggs & Featherbelle

They started out in 2003 at a sidewalk sale at a strip mall.

They moved up to Craft Fairs & Farmers Markets.

Eventually the business grew and they bought a factory that employs Mom, Dad, and several other family members.

Click here to go to their Flicker site where they captured every year of their journey.

 

[Lin19687]

That works if you HAVE a family , have a 2nd Great F/T income coming in with a lot of extra money, live in a cheap area or had your house given to you by a grandmother paid off and in excellent shape of a house hahahahhahaaa.

I don't EVER want to be that big and get lost in the shuffle of all the other commercial soaps. I HATE Whole Foods, they are not selling per the law with the naked bars, no label, no weight, no INGREDIENTS . The other bars that they have you package and they weigh it at the counter. mmmm I would like to know the weight before I get there. THAT is Just Me............ course Amazon ownes them now so Pfthhtf

 

[Cellador]

Briggs & Featherbelle also sell raw ingredients too (beeswax, butters, etc). Funny, but I bought their stuff at Earth Fare when I first started crafting a few years ago.

 

[Carl]

Seems like a common theme here is that there is an over-saturation of soapers, locally, Etsy, etc. Many people doing it.
But, that is every business in today's world. What business can you start today that does not already have an over saturation of people already doing it? NONE! There's already a million people doing everything that you can think of; Real Estate Investing over saturated, Web Site Design over saturated, Restaurants over saturated, catering over saturated.

Business people help me here, but there's that law of economics that I can't think of the name for it right now. It's when the rate of return in a business is high, new competitors will continue to enter the market until the rate of return gets slightly above the risk free rate (U.S Treasuries) plus a small risk premium. I think this is where we are with soap. The competition is so high it drove the rate of return down.

There is no way to get rich quick unless you have something that no one else has thought of (therefore you are new to the market when the rates of return are high). But you still can get rich SLOW.