Interested in custom silicone molds?

[Hibryd]

Hey, long-time lurker, first-time poster here. Hope you guys don't mind me doing some market research here, but I wanted to see what the demand might be for something before I started a business making it.

So, I'm looking at making custom silicone soap molds. Like, if you had a B&B client who wanted their name in soap bars, or you wanted to get your logo into soap without a stamp, you'd send me an image file, and I'd send back silicone molds.

Other companies, as far as I can tell, charge $400 - $500 for the first mold. Yikes! No wonder hardly anyone does custom soap in the states. (Most of it comes from China - no kidding.)

I think I can either make 4-cavity molds for $200 for the first one and $80 for additional ones, OR I can make single-cavity molds for more like $70 for the first one and $15 for additional ones.

This is less than other people are doing it for, but it still seems pretty expensive. (I'd love to make these even cheaper, so that any soapmaker could get into the custom soap business, but nothing I've tried has worked out.)

So, are custom molds at that price something you'd be interested in, or is the price still too high?

Thanks for your input!

 

[Soaplady22]

Hi! and Welcome!!

Yes, that is still too high for me. I live in a small rural area (read: sticks) and I would never re-coop the investment. Now if I lived in like New York custom soaps would be all the rage. I would love some but it's just too much for me. Unless I'm having a martini and searching the web at midnight ......

 

[agriffin]

Yeah...that's still way high (at least for me).

I think when people want to customize a soap bar they go with a stamp. It's much cheaper to get a customized stamp than a mold. And by getting a stamp you aren't limiting your soap bar design/shape. You can make slab bars or log bars and stamp them.

 

[Hibryd]

Thanks for the honest feedback. I tried stamping, but the quality was always iffy - too many times the soap would either come off with the stamp, or the entire surface would depress. It wasn't always bad, but I lost too many bars to stamping goofs.

I hoped to come up with a cheap way to make molds so that everyone could do that instead, but I don't think I can make them cheap enough or good enough. Well, it was worth a shot.

Thanks again, everyone.

PS - I also investigated options for cheap stamps, since metal stamp makers normally charge way too much. You could take your artwork to a shop that does laser engraving, and they can make you a clear acrylic stamp for less than the metal stamp makers are charging. I also looked into going to a rubber stamp maker, and instead of buying the finished stamp, instead get the original magnesium plate that they make the rubber stamp from, BUT I don't know how many shops will actually let you keep that metal plate.