New soap maker here and was wondering from all experienced soap makers how long you tested your recipes and soaps before you began selling them. I realize there are logistics that go along with selling soap as a buisness but am more curious about the testing phase.
Thank you ahead of time for your feedback and advice!
As someone who started selling about six months after I started, you really need a good year. I got talked into selling my soap at a holiday craft fair; while it was a positive experience, it taught me that I really didn't know as much as I thought I did and I certainly didn't know all that much about my soap because there simply wasn't time.
You need to know what your soap is like before and after cure of course. You also need to know what it is like three months, six months, a year down the road. You need to know what your soap is like when it's taken care of and when it's not.
Example...I went from cutting my bars from 1" wide to 1 1/8" wide to make sure that a year later, they weighed what the label said they weighed.
You need time to learn which scents last and which don't. I have some scents that start to fade after three months, so I don't make as much of them as I do the scents that are still good after a year.
Though people who pay somewhere around $10 for a bar of soap aren't going to leave it sitting in a puddle of water, you have to consider that because some of your customers are going to have kids, where they store the soap in the shower has water running over it while the shower is in use.
How well does you soap lather overall, and how well does it lather after three months, six months, a year down the road because your soap may not be used right away. And speaking of months...how well does it store?
These are questions that you can't answer if your don't spend the time learning the answers. I still have a bar of soap left from my third batch (I used or gave away the first batch, second batch...not good). And I have a bar of the same recipe from tad more than a year later...there is definitely a difference between the two. The first bar looks like something that made in someone's kitchen...the second bar looks very professional, even though it was made in the same kitchen, same ingredients, same equipment.
