This is your chance to voice your needs! Below, you will find a very important survey.  Cibaria Soap Supply invites you to voice your Soap Making Oil needs! Please select up to 20 items that you are currently buying or needing to buy, but haven’t been able to find on our store. We are especially calling upon our existing customers, as well as those who need to buy from us, but currently don’t because we don’t carry all of your preferred products.

If you are not planning on purchasing in the near future, or are out of our shipping proximity, we kindly ask that you refrain from voting in this survey, so we can keep the data as accurate as possible for our valued Cibaria Soap Supply clients.

Make Your voice heard! Your VOTES COUNT, as they WILL directly affect what products we add to our store!

Select up to 20 products that you’d like us to stock:

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• When Is It Time to Turn Soap Making Into a Business?
• A New Year for Soap Making Oils, Base Oils, and Carrier Oils
• 7 Lb Quantities Have Changed to 1 Gal
• Jojoba Oil – Best. Oil. Ever.

Ultimately, this decision can’t be taken lightly, and it’s one that generally imparts a huge impact on our lives, as well as on our immediate family’s lives. Many Soap Makers that we’ve spoken with have gone from hobby soap makers to making soap as a full-time or even a part-time business. We reached out to our Soap Making friends and colleagues on Twitter and Facebook to find out what made them turn their hobby of Soap Making into a full-fledged money-making machine! While we know that most don’t bring in the big bucks as soon as they start out, we’ve found that quite a few figured they’d charge people for what they were already doing for free. A little extra income never hurt anyone, right?

Out of the bad economic chaos, many Soap Makers found themselves looking for work and when they couldn’t find any, they created their own. That’s exactly what @dreamingtreesw of Dreaming Trees Soap Works did.”We lost our jobs, and there was still no jobs out there, so we made our own and we haven’t turned back since”.

Other stories that we’ve heard are equally as admirable. Tami Thornton of Beehive Soap and Body Care says

“After helping my husband in his business for 30 years, I decided it was time to start a new challenge! So, after the children were basically out of the house, and Bachelors Degree was finally completed, it was time! Been in business about a year and a half now… and loving it!”

And a good amount of other Soap Makers were just happy that someone was willing to pay them to do what they loved, just as a few of our Twitter friends who shared similar stores.

Belonger Botanicals began “as soon as someone offered to pay for the product”.

It’s definitely a joyful experience when you realize that someone finds value in the things that you create. We talk to hundreds of Soap Makers per month, and we find that the joy and care that go into their products really do make the difference. Many people say that once you go “handmade” with your soap, you never go back! (to the store-bought stuff, that is!)

Day Three is another great example of a Soap Maker making the easy decision to turn their passion into a business. They expressed that they started their hobby became a business “when we realized that people actually wanted to give us MONEY for doing something we’d do for FREE!”

Now that’s passion!

We’d LOVE to hear your story and your thoughts! Are you considering turning your Soap Making hobby into a business? Did you already take the plunge!? Tell us about it below!

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• Survey Time! What Do you Want us To Stock?
• 7 Lb Quantities Have Changed to 1 Gal
• Jojoba Oil – Best. Oil. Ever.
• A New Year for Soap Making Oils, Base Oils, and Carrier Oils

How to Write For Our Newsletter

(will also be featured in our blog)

If you have a self-written unpublished article about soap making or the soap making industry – simply submit it to social@cibariasoapsupply.com for review. If it’s approved for inclusion, you’ll be notified via email. We will include your name, a short bio, and a link to your website on the article, and you are of course credited for your article’s creation.

What Kind of Soap Making Topics Are We Looking For?

- How-to’s
- Tips and Tricks
- Ingredient Suggestions and Ideas
- What’s in demand (what your customers are asking for and are generally attracted to)
- Packaging Ideas and tips – as well as special resources

- Holiday Soap Making  and Soap Making Business ideas, suggestions, and content
- Anything else relevant and helpful to Soap Makers

- Oh, and Soap Making Recipes are also accepted!

If you have any other questions, give us a shout via our Blog Comments Section -Twitter, Facebook, or our Website Contact Form!

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• We’re Going to HSMG 2010!
• Survey Time! What Do you Want us To Stock?
• When Is It Time to Turn Soap Making Into a Business?
• Amazing Halloween Soap Making Ideas!

This time of year is really one of the best for soap makers to flex their creative muscle and get into some fun little side projects for kids (and the young at heart). We’re especially fond of the pumpkin scents and abundance of candy-related soaps that happen during the fall season.

We have gathered some of our favorite Halloween Soap Making photos from Flickr.com, and are very excited to present to you our fine collection of Halloween Soaps from amazingly talented Soap Makers from all over the world!

An adorable Halloween Soap By Loveleesoaps!

Adorable ghouls and eyes by cupcakesoapcafe!

The black soap bar, chunks and dots are anise and the orange is scented with kumquat. By CupCake Nana

Neat and Clean – The Halloween Wholesale collection by Sunbasilgarden

Cute little ghosts in a Soapsicle! By SoapyLove

Eww – Brains in a Cupscake! (but it’s soap). By Sunbasilgarden

Amazing little dark cupcake soaps by Kcsoapsnmore

Scary skulls for Halloween! By Brambleberry

Harvest Moon Cold Process Soap By Lippincott Soap Co

A super cute soap – classic and hints of nice swirls! By t-lifephoto‘

Have you seen some amazing Halloween soap ideas? What are some current trends that you have noticed when it comes to Halloween and Fall soap making?? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• Amazing Summer Soap Making Ideas!
• Creative Soap Making Inspired by Food!
• Survey Time! What Do you Want us To Stock?
• Christmas Holiday Soap Making Showcase

We have been getting asked by many people if we’d be attending the 2010 HSMG show. Well, we are! I’m very happy to announce that we’ll be there walking the floor – ready to mix, mingle, and catch up with some of our favorite soap making customers and friends!

Are you going to HSMG?? Let us know, and we’ll keep a lookout for you! We love meeting our online friends and customers!

A New Blog Layout

The Soap Box has a new layout! We’ve made the blog a bit more streamlined and easier to read though. It’s also easier to share our helpful content with your friends on your preferred social networks. We’ll be adding and modifying as the weeks progress, but we’re happy with the kind very words we’ve received so far!

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• The 2010 Soap Maker’s Marketing Guide
• Christmas Holiday Soap Making Showcase
• Amazing Summer Soap Making Ideas!
• Soap Making Soap Supply Essentials

Here at Cibaria, we love planning our activities and promotions around what our customers actually need during those special times of the year. We want to know what kind of things you have in store for your special occasion soap making?

Do you plan out ahead of time what soap you’re going to make for the following year?

Are you kind of winging-it?

Do you have new areas of soap making that you’re looking to try out, but aren’t sure how it’ll work out?

We’d love to hear from you – and we’re sure the other soap makers that read our blog will add a great amount of their own ideas on things they’ve already implemented to become a more organized soap maker!

Note: The Soap photo above is an Olive Oil and Shea Butter Soap made by Catherine Filippelli

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• Christmas Holiday Soap Making Showcase
• A Basic Soap Making Recipe
• The Biggest, Baddest Soap Making Blog EVER!
• Cibaria Soap Supply Gets Social

Just as a website has to keep the attention of it’s web user, so does a trade show booth have to keep the attention of the people passing by before they, well..pass by! Your goal is to entice them over with a message that doesn’t tell them how great your product is, but how much it will help them. People are generally quite selfish, and when they’re looking at most anything in their day to day life, they are constantly asking themselves “How will this help me” or, “How will this make my life better or easier?”  So while your product may contain all natural ingredients, and it may be fair trade compliant, your best bet is to stress how it helps them. All of the other attributes are really secondary. This one fact will literally decipher whether someone will stop at your booth and look around, or simply walk on by in search of the next thing that will help them or “change their lives”.

I called upon our Twitter friends to see what their advice was to first-time craft and trade show sellers, and I got some amazing and invaluable tips! Remember, these tips are from people who have been out there on the front lines of selling soap and crafts at markets, and they’ve seen it all! Thanks to all of the following people for their advice! This truly is priceless information if you’re looking to sell your soap or craft at a show!

Janice Summers (Twitter ID TresSpa) of Tres Spa offers some great advice to new craft show sellers: “Booth design – Use a thematic color palet that matches your company colors.

Keep in mind Line of Site when setting up your display. You want people to be able to see what you have to sell.

Clearly post the prices on the products.

Colors- I cannot stress enough the importance of thematic colors and I know it may seem silly, but your clothing should also match or compliment the colors you choose. If you have a dark product, display it on a light color surface and if your product is light colored, display it on a dark surface.

Try not to overpower the viewer with either to many colors or to much of one color. Use a color wheel to find compliments for your main color.

Give Away’s- I like giveaway’s freebies and incentives. It’s also a good way to let someone try before they buy. I have converted several lookers into buyers solely because I gave them a free trial to take with them. I have also found that creating special incentives for purchasing multiple items has been effective. Or, a free gift with a purchase of some dollar amount.

Give away your business card as if it were candy! Even if someone just passes through and doesn’t buy a thing, don’t let them leave without a card that has a way of reaching you on it.”

Alana Rivera (Twitter ID AlanaRivera) creator of www.ettaandbillie.etsy.com offers another great bit of advice that many often overlook: “Make your display interesting with varying heights and keep with your brand; take lots of ones ”

Jessica Morelli (Twitter ID diPalermoBody) owner of diPalermoBody.com advises new trade show users to “Have sample items for $5 and under. My sample soaps for a $1, and sample scrubs for $4.50 sell like crazy at shows.”

Other Posts You May Find Helpful:

• We’re Going to HSMG 2010!
• Amazingly Cute Soaps that Inspire
• Winter 2011-2012 Soap Making Showcase Series
• Gorgeous Summer Soap Making to Inspire!