We turned the calendar to May and realized that Kumbha Moon Soap Company celebrates its one year anniversary on May 3! It’s been an incredible year and we’d like to share a few thoughts and loads of thanks to all of you for giving Kumbha Moon Soap Company an unbelievable start and for hanging in there with us as we learned how to run a small business.
| Our learning curve has oddly felt like that first hill of a roller coaster so tall you can’t see the top of the hill until you are already slightly lifted out of your seat as the car plunges downward so fast it leaves you feeling exhilarated and scared out of your skin at the same time. And just when you think you have the ride figured out, there’s an unexpected inversion that totally skews your perspective. Yep. That just about sums up our learning curve this first year as we transformed our hobby and simple urban homesteading values into a full-fledged business. It’s been a white knuckle, exhilarating, scream-at-the-top-of-our-lungs-and-get-on-the-ride-again kind of year and we wouldn’t have wanted anything less! | 
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We were artisanal craft soap makers who made soap for our own use and to gift or barter with friends. Homemade, all natural soap aligns with our desire to keep as many chemicals out and off our bodies and with our values toward environmental sustainability. And we just like the way our skin feels when we bathe with a real natural soap. We learned the art of soap making from our dear friends, Archie and Robin, and then let our creative muses take hold and began experimenting with original recipes, essential oils, and various botanicals. While we were having fun with our soap experiments, we found ourselves with an abundance of bars on curing racks, more bars than we could ever use, barter, or gift. So as we patiently watched our soap cure for months on end (hyperlink) we knew we had to figure out either how to get more friends to give our soap to or begin to make a little money back on our growing investment of high-quality ingredients. One year later, it seems that we’ve done both!
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We’ve learned so much in just one year when we nervously awaited to see if anyone would show up at our very first “soapen house” and actually pay for a bar of our handmade soap. While most of our “customers” during that weekend launch of Kumbha Moon Soap Company were family and friends, we were so lifted by their nice comments and support that we just kept going (and we really hoped like heck that they weren’t just telling us what they thought we wanted to hear!). We experimented with new original recipes and formulations and gradually understood that in order to keep up with the growing demand that we were experiencing we would need to scale up our production. Soap making is a long process that can’t be hurried so we had to learn how to make bigger batches in bigger handmade molds (thanks to friend Dan Brown for craftsmanship!) all the while making every batch from scratch, hand cutting each and every bar, and never sacrificing our values or high-quality plant-based ingredients. We knew we were in this whacky business model thing when we started to use words like “production schedule” and “pallet pricing” and “market development plan” instead of “Hey, I think I’ll run to the store to pick up a bottle of olive oil so that we can whip up a batch of soap this afternoon because one of our friends would like a few bars to give as a gift to someone.”
| | But we kept making soap in our small house little kitchen, running up and down the rickety cellar stairs to retrieve heavy boxes full of olive oil, coconut oil, essential oils, and dried herbs and spices that we had to store in the dungeon since our kitchen barely has room to move. Making every batch was a workout and an exercise in patience as we tried to use our kitchen for both soap production and food production and exercise caution not to confuse lye for salt or splash our walls and dishes with soap batter (disclaimer: we can almost guarantee that anyone who ate at our house during this time did not consume lye in place of salt). So we converted our small single car garage, that was so full of junk, kayaks, bikes, stuff, and more stuff that we never could park a car in it, into a soap making/creative space studio. After months of construction, dust, and continued cramped space soap making, we finally moved into our new studio in late fall and have been going full steam ever since. Oh, did I forget to mention that each of us also has a full-time career that fill our day and sometimes evening hours? |
Our artisanal craft has now transformed to a real business and we now find ourselves having to think about exciting elements like an inventory control system that goes beyond us manually counting soap bars and body products and weighing hundreds of pounds of oil to calculate value of ingredients on our shelves. Or the logistics of having a tractor trailer back down our dead end street to drop off a pallet of coconut oil, shea butter, castor oil, and lye in our tiny residential neighborhood. And receipts….we need to be better about keeping those pesky scraps of paper (or so our very patient income tax preparer tells us). And we can tell you first hand that any website editing platform that claims to be easy, simple, and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get), is probably wrong on all accounts. We’ve learned, we’ve made a few mistakes, and we’ve learned from those mistakes. But we strive to continually stay true to our values, create safe all-natural products, and always try to give back more than we use or take.
The absolute best part of this roller coaster learning curve and the reason we’ve decided to keep buying a ticket for repeat rides? Our customers, our friends, our families. Kumbha Moon Soap Company could not have risen and succeeded so quickly if it wasn’t for the unprecedented support and encouragement of everyone who has given us such real and honest feedback about our products, suggested new products, and has encouraged us to keep going. One year ago Kumbha Moon Soap Company seemed like a distant part of us, but as our little business has grown and evolved this crazy first year, it truly has become an extension of each of us and an extension of the unit that is us…it is a true representation of Kimberly and Kellie, two creative, unpredictable, stubborn Aquarians who always have too many things going all at once but who are also very dedicated, passionate, and grateful for all that we are blessed with. Thank you dear customers, friends, and family!!! Namaste....and keep on lathering!
With gratitude,
Kimberly & Kellie
With gratitude,
Kimberly & Kellie
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