Taking the first steps to go into business

[kazzii-x]

Hi my lovelies,
this is a really exciting time because i have decided to do the appropriate assessments to be able to sell my soap. But i do have a few questions from you more experienced owners. I would like to get insurance for making soap, because i do this to make people happy, i really don't want things to turn ugly. I am based in the UK & was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of insurance and how much it is roughly going to cost per year?

Also here is another question. How much do you sell your soaps for? After the cost of ingredients how much profit do you add on? I'm finding this slightly difficult, because i don't want to overcharge while I'm starting out. But i don't want to undercut myself and leave myself short. As i would like to put my profit back into my business to make different items for my customers.

Thank you so so much for your help guys, it means alot xx

 

[Lindy]

I understand that Ian Wallace is the best to deal with for soapmakers but I don't know how much they charge. As for pricing take your cost x 2 for wholesale and x 4 for retail. I hope that helps

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

That's costs including your time!

But look out - in the UK, if you want to sell cosmetics (and pretty much everything that we talk about on this site falls in to that category, including soaps) then you need to do a heck of a lot of work on the documents. There is another thread (http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=41483) about it, but as an overview -

You need to register yourself online with the EU as the Responsible Person for your concern/company. The buck for all regulation activity stops with you! This is free
You will need to have a qualified person check out your process for making things - where you do it, what you do and what you do it with. You're lucky in that in the UK it seems that your own kitchen is fine - in Germany they have to use a whole different kitchen just for soaping. You will most likely have to pay for this.
Then you need to get your ingredients safety checked - each ingredient only needs to be checked once and then you can use it in all of your recipes. So if you use olive oil in all of your soaps, it only get's checked once regardless of how many recipes you use it in. You will also most likely have to pay for this, too.
Finally, every time you make a batch of product to sell you must register it online - you then get a batch number to put on all the labels for tracking. You can do this yourself for free.

It's an interesting path for us EUers, but you do have the better end of the stick being based in the UK, it seems.

 

[kazzii-x]

I understand that Ian Wallace is the best to deal with for soapmakers but I don't know how much they charge. As for pricing take your cost x 2 for wholesale and x 4 for retail. I hope that helps

Ian Wallace is such a brilliant suggestion thank you. They are specifically for handmade crafts, they are an Aviva company and there insurance cost per year is very reasonable. So i think i will go with them . Thank you for your help xx

 

[kazzii-x]

That's costs including your time!

But look out - in the UK, if you want to sell cosmetics (and pretty much everything that we talk about on this site falls in to that category, including soaps) then you need to do a heck of a lot of work on the documents. There is another thread (http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=41483) about it, but as an overview -

You need to register yourself online with the EU as the Responsible Person for your concern/company. The buck for all regulation activity stops with you! This is free
You will need to have a qualified person check out your process for making things - where you do it, what you do and what you do it with. You're lucky in that in the UK it seems that your own kitchen is fine - in Germany they have to use a whole different kitchen just for soaping. You will most likely have to pay for this.
Then you need to get your ingredients safety checked - each ingredient only needs to be checked once and then you can use it in all of your recipes. So if you use olive oil in all of your soaps, it only get's checked once regardless of how many recipes you use it in. You will also most likely have to pay for this, too.
Finally, every time you make a batch of product to sell you must register it online - you then get a batch number to put on all the labels for tracking. You can do this yourself for free.

It's an interesting path for us EUers, but you do have the better end of the stick being based in the UK, it seems.

Thank you so much for letting me know all of this. I have registered as part of EU regulations, I have purchased an assessment for a qualified person to check out recipes etc. Wow i didn't know about not being able to use your kitchen outside of the UK . I am very lucky. For ingredients being safety checked i have a question. Would they of already been safety checked by an official website that sells ingredients & sells the assessments too? Thank you for the link, ill be sure to go and read that now xx

 

[The Efficacious Gentleman]

So cool that you've already ticked some of these things off!

In answer to the question, I'm afraid I'm not sure. I'd like to think that if something has already been assessed as safe and certified and all that good stuff, it would apply to everyone that would use that product. But I'm not sure that it does work.

In an ideal world we would be able to access a list of products that have already been assessed and see if we could just use that instead of getting a new brand added to the list. For you, if you could use Sainsbury's olive oil without needing a new check rather than having to get a new check done for Tesco's olive oil, it would be a lot easier! And imagine if a product we want to use has already been checked? Perfect, we can just use it. But I think they actually check each and every product each and every time.

Best to check with the company that provided the safety check to be on the safe side.

And I'm hoping that I can use my own kitchen here in Austria, or that my cellar with cold running water is enough, rather than needing hot water. But it's tricky to get an answer on that without having to pay the full cost - I'm not paying the full cost only to be told that I need certain things that just aren't possible where I live at the moment!