Sorry to hear you are closing your big soap studio. I love the size. I never have enough room. I completely understand your thinking for your decision. I've been making soap since 2005 and I just turned 70 this year. Sometimes I think why am I still doing this! My daughters and others always ask why I'm still doing it. I love doing it and don't plan to stop any time soon, even with worsening RA. I find a way to do things. I don't make soap in the volume that you do. It's just me. You'll still want to make soap I'm sure, just back to smaller volume you can keep up with. Good luck to you in your change and a great 2024!
Having room is key! I remember moving ten things around before I could even start making soap in our old studio. I love that you're still making soap and that you love it! I find it very relaxing and even therapeutic sometimes... just to get away from everything and let the soapmaking take over. I'm really looking forward to simplifying and getting back to smaller batches, more creativity, and making soap when I want! :)
@@kate4121 search their channel. They are closing. I discovered this video a few weeks ago and while searching for more videos saw that they are closing. I'm bummed out. This would have been a channel I would have really liked to follow.
I read from your blog that you decided to move to a smaller studio, and I don't know if this youtube channel is going to continue or not, but if you do have plans on making more videos, I would like to suggest a video about packaging. Especially because you don't use plastic, it will be interesting to see how to wrap each bar, and then how you handle delivery. Thanks!
Thank you for allowing us into your soaping studio. I learnt a lot and picked up some tips. The very next day I went into our soap studio at the bottom of our garden and reorganised everything. 😍
Ok, I loved this tour! I make soap in my second kitchen, have scaled back down to word of mouth and family, and my happy place is my favorite place to be!
Would you be willing to make a video telling your story of why you started your business and how you grew your business into what it is today? As a soap maker I very much enjoy your videos and seeing how you have your production and shipping area set up!
Thank you so much for watching! That's also a great video idea... we have quite a few ideas for the new year and I'll add this one to the list. The why we started is easy... it was an accident! A hobby turned business, like so many others. But that's the best way, as it wasn't about money or success... it was just about making a good product for people and our growth was completely organic. More on that in upcoming videos. :)
We are so sad to hear your are closing as well. I recently found your soaps we moved from Colorado to build from the ground up. I'm working on building a small soap business and I am so inspired by the hard work you guys have done.
I know... it is sad in a lot of ways, but we're also really excited for what's to come (for starters - more RU-vid videos!). Thank you for the kind words and for watching our channel!
Hello! I watch you and is very inspirational. Thank you for let me know how it could work for me some day ❤ I started making soap 2 years ago and when I look back I feel proud of myself for what I've reached, and I keep on trying to make my little project my main economic support. So labs like yours show me it's possible. Thanks and congrats!!! Silvana (an argentinean in Italy)
I love the relaxed, cozy feeling of this video. Getting into the professional side of a business but still being approachable and and easy to understand❤
Hi there and thanks for watching! We began by creating relationships directly, but we moved all our wholesale to Faire after a couple years and that's where we really grew. :)
I really appreciate for your video sharing. You are sharing idea to help other people to start their own soap business. This sharing is really helping to build confident for other to start their own soap business. And not to be forget, thank you for Joanna the Soap Gal for her high spirit to keep sharing her experience in large scale soap making business.
That's a fun idea for a video! I started making soap as a hobby in March 2016 and opened an Etsy shop in August 2016. Lots of details after that, but that's how it began!
Wow!!! I admire your work and your soaps. I am a small business, just started with soap making a couple of years ago. I love it. Thank you for your channel.
love it all, and thank you for posting. We are building our workshop at the moment and this is insightful. Love that you are plastic free like us also.
What a fantastic video! I always learn so much from you all. Very educational and thought provoking for a newbie like me. Thank you so much Simi & Troy! And I just realized I’ve seen your shop before. On Main Street right?
Thank you so much for the tour, I loved it. So helpful for me who is starting a soap business from Mexico. I have a question about the cutters, where can I get the one that you use for cut the big bars?
Hi there! If you mean the slab cutter, we got that from "For Craft's Sake" which is no longer in business. You can get them now from Modern Soapmaking or Custom Craft Tools. I have a video about this cutter here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-JMlo1X5ySuM.htmlsi=yJbOANmK41BgTuED and there are links in the description to the different cutters. I hope this helps!
Thank you for sharing. That was a fantastic tour of your soap studio. I am very small scale along with family members we do Maori art, kai and skincare in particular soap. I have been have some time out because of a big health issue. Feeling inspired by this video. 🌺🌺🌺
I love when soapmakers have a specialty product like that! I'm sorry to hear about your health issues, but glad you were a little inspired by this video.
So happy to hear that! Thanks for watching. And, yes... the book! We are getting close to being done and it should come out in late May 2024. Phew! It's been quite a process, but I'm SUPER excited about it!!
I’ve been waiting for this vid!! 🎉 Thank you both for taking the time to share this with us. Beautiful studio inside + out! You guys are so organized! Looking forward to your book as well ❤️
Great job on the videos! I'm down in Walsenburg and getting with some goat ranchers from church, figuring out the process together. Recently started making my own videos as well and will plan to make some on soap making in the future. Thank you for the great tips!
Great tour Simi! I loved it! Wow! Yall have so much there and now knowing yall are scaling back, that will be quite a lot to get rid of and downsize and all. I can only imagine the process of all that. It is really neat to see all that though. I am still very very small and cannot even imagine having to get drums and order larger quantities of supplies, but you never know. Right now, I just do markets but am going to try online soon and am nervous about that. But like you, I don't want to get too big either. I like somewhat moderately small to medium size business. But I am really excited for you cause you are excited about going back to the smaller studio and I really hope you and Troy do more videos in the future that maybe lean more towards education and soap making and the like. You two are very good on camera! I also am looking forward to your book! I am really excited about that! You, along with Melissa at Goods Apothecary are the reason I started soap making and I am so inspired by you and just can really relate to everything, probably because I am close to your age as well. Ha! But this did give me some good ideas, like those baking racks and baking sheets, how cool is that! I like that idea for curing soaps. And, because of you, I am going to start doing the 50/50 lye solution. Thanks for this tour! I loved it! Brought a smile to my face when I saw you had another video up! Once payday hits, I plan to buy some more of your soap, if you aren't sold out by then! Looks like it's moving pretty quick! You are amazing Simi and I will always be a fan of yours! And Troy too...cannot forget about him! :)
I forgot..I actually had a question! 😅You mentioned in the video that to not put soap that is curing directly onto the metal baking sheet, to lay a piece of the wax or parchment paper on the sheet first. Why is that? Why can't soap sit on the baking sheet like that? I know there are ventilated baking sheets as well (small holes on the bottom of the sheet) and I thought maybe those would work nice.
Haha! Thanks for reminding me of how much we have to get rid of... ;) I'm kidding. It will be a big task, but all the soap will be gone and all the drums will be gone as well. We will be selling some of our larger equipment and keeping most of the smaller things, as we want to keep making soap, but in much smaller batches. The biggest things is tables. Hopefully someone wants them! I do think going online is a great idea! It offers a lot of flexibility and in times like Covid, it was a big business saver for us. Don't worry about getting too big. If you make what you want to make and it all sells out, that's great! If you decide you want to do more, go ahead, but don't feel pressured to. And thank you for the compliment! I also LOVE Melissa at Goods Apothecary. She's fantastic. I'm happy we could inspire you! I'm also glad you're going to try a 50/50 lye water solution. It makes things so much easier, in my opinion. I started doing it a long time ago. Thanks again for your lovely comment!
As you probably know, lye reacts with metals like aluminum, so the main reason we don't put our soap directly on the trays is that saponification is still happening for the first 48 hours. If you place your soap directly on the trays before that time, there's a chance that the lye will react with the aluminum in the tray. If you wait 48 hours or longer to cut your soap, it'll probably be fine, as saponification should be done by then. I just prefer to use freezer paper anyway just to keep things clean and off the metal, but I know some soapmakers that use the ventilated sheets with the holes and it seems to be working for them. It's probably more environmentally friendly too. I'd personally be worried about two things: (1) the holes may leave a mark on the bottoms of the soap, but I don't know that for a fact, and it might not be a big deal even if it does (2) the scent may transfer from one batch of soap to another if you were to put a mint soap on a tray and later add a lavender soap, for example, so I'd be inclined to wash my trays which would take a long time. We also make unscented soap, so I'd definitely use paper for those as many people are sensitive to scent. That's just me thinking out loud! :)
@@muddymintsoap You can always count on me to make you feel good about how much work there is ahead! Ha! I feel ya though. I am cleaning out stuff too and oh my, you just start to think to yourself just how much there really is. When I was watching the video and knew yall were going back to the small studio in a few months, that kept going through my mind about all that equipment and such. I already ordered those jugs from Amazon (the ones you recommended) for the 50/50 lye solution and I am excited to see how that helps my process. Makes so much sense and I am with you...getting the lye ready is the thing I don't like doing the most! I dread it! Anything that makes things go smoother is a win in my book! 🤗
@@muddymintsoap Lots of good points here that I didn't even think of. I do know that lye reacts with aluminum and it didn't even process in my mind that the baking sheets are aluminum...I wasn't thinking, but now that you mentioned about the scent transfer that is something to think about. Thinking out loud is a good thing! 👍
Great video! I still use the nuture soap molds, if you ever wanted to sell these or some of these I would be interested.😊 You both are such good teacher’s! Hope you all have a wonderful day!
Hi! Are you saying that you don't think we should make more than 50k bars a year? I'm curious why you think that! We did in fact scale everything down and are no longer in this space. :)
Wow, thank you for sharing. Hopefully, one day, I will too have a studio like this. How long have you had this studio? Did you start at home like many of us? Talk about it. I would love to hear about your experience.
Hi there! We've been in this studio since April 2021. I started making soap at home, just like everyone else, in March 2016. I started selling online on Etsy in August 2016, which is when I started my business officially! I had a brief foray into having a retail space in 2017-18, then I went back to my home studio in 2019. That's the year I decided to take my business seriously, have a main product line (instead of always running out of things!) and really ramp up. I hired my first employee in 2020 and we grew five times that year! In 2021, I hired my partner, Troy. He left his architecture job to join Muddy Mint! That was a big deal and with his help and renting a larger space, we were able to grow a lot more! Troy and I are both full time at Muddy Mint and we have a team of four part-time employees and one employee that comes in when we need extra help (like right now!). Our team handles all the shipping (I haven't touched an order in years!), cuts all the soap, and moves all the soap. Troy and I take care of everything else (finances, photography, bookkeeping, recipe formulation, soap releases, website, customer service, etc). In the new year, we'll have a lot more time to work on videos and other things, so I"m excited to share more then!
Thank you so much! I love your tour - and I especially love all of your awesome systems that you have in place! I'm going to try to incorporate some ! Thank you again!
Hi and thanks! We got our first one (the cocoa butter one) from Soap Equipment (soapequipment.com) and our second one (the shea butter one) from Discount Soap Equipment. I prefer the one from Discount Soap Equipment (discountsoapequipement.com), as it has a sturdier handle for pouring and just feels higher quality. If you look on those sites, look for oil/wax tanks and you'll find various sizes. Ours is the 20 gallon sloped bottom tank. :)
I'm very curious about the ins and outs of running the business at that level. I have some questions, feel free to answer any (or not, lol). 1. Were your employees part time or full time? 2. I came across your channel late. How much did you charge for bars of soap? How many oz were the bars? 3. Were you using custom molds or where did you get them? 4. I"d be very interested to hear about profit margins and such, if you don't mind sharing that information 5. Did you keep lye water pre-prepped? I have a bazillion more questions :P Maybe there's a business book in your future? :)
I’m happy to answer questions, and yes! There is a business book in my future. 😂 1. Our employees were part time, except Troy and I who were/are full time. 2. We charge $10 for a 5 oz bar. 3. We made these molds ourselves to be equivalent to four 5-lb Nurture Soap molds. We couldn’t find the size we needed at the time. 4. I’ll be going over bar costs and profit margins in another video, so I’ll save this question for later. :) 5. Yes, we had a lye tank for all our lye water, which we show in this video and we cover how we filled our lye tank in another video.
@@muddymintsoap Thank you so much for answering all my questions :D A couple more for you: What would you say the hook is for your soaps, if you feel you have one? Why do you think people bought yours over some others? These are things I've been thinking about as I start my soap journey. I fully intend to make it a business (aside from using it, as that's first and foremost).
Hi there! Our "hook" is that our soaps are all-natural, palm-oil free, and super gentle on the skin. Many people told us that they aren't able to use any other soap on their sensitive skin. People also love the natural scents. :) I hope this helps!
@@NasAnas-fu4hy Hi there! It is for environmental reasons. If you look up palm oil and deforestation, you'll find out why a lot of soapmakers don't use it. You can find sustainable palm though!
Absolutely love your studio. Thank you for sharing it! You inspired me to get the custom oil blend from SC, they arrive tomorrow! I think it will be a huge time saver as well as $$. Can I ask what pump you use for your drums (if you like it) Thank you!
That's amazing!! Congrats! You will absolutely love it. We love our pump! It's the Blackmer AT-210A and we actually got it on Amazon. Here's a link: amzn.to/3w0De3G
Thank you! Glad I could help! I want to do an entire video one day on what it takes to switch to drums, as I found the information lacking when I was doing it. Our soap labels are custom designed and printed at our local print shop. :)
I just found your channel a few months ago. I am very impressed with your work. What does the commenter mean when she says you are closing your soap studio? Y'all have what amounts to a well oiled machine. Very organized Studio. I am in awe.
Thank you so much! We are indeed closing down our production space and returning to our roots. We'll be moving back into my backyard studio and I'll definitely do a tour of that space one day! If you're interested in why we're "downsizing" our business, I wrote a whole blog post about it here: muddymint.com/blogs/news/goodbye-my-love. We move out at the end of February, which should free up a lot more time for videos and education content here on RU-vid and elsewhere! :)
I'd love to get to this level of production and have this much space to work with. Your shop is wonderful ❤ curious, how long did it take you to get to this scale?
Hi there and thank you! We started our business in August 2016. It was mostly a hobby at first and then we decided to really focus on the business in 2019. We moved into this space in 2021 and it felt HUGE! So, it took 5 years to be big enough to warrant needing a space of this size (we were in a 350 sq ft studio before that) and 7 years to get to the size we're at now. Moving into the space allowed us to grow much more quickly!
Thank you! I've linked the coconut milk in the description. It's my absolute favorite coconut milk for soapmaking! It is 100% coconut milk (nothing else) and it can sit on a shelf for a while, so it's super handy!
You are an inspiring lady many thanks for sharing this soap making educational video, the question to you is that how could I start a soap making business as a beginner please advice
Thank you for watching! A lot going into starting soap making business, but the first few steps are: (1) make sure you understand the science of making soap and have made many batches, (2) get your business name registered in your state/area, (3) get insurance - I get mine from HSCG, (4) come up with a product line - keep it simple!, (5) learn to take good photos, (6) start on a platform with a built in audience, like Etsy, to get started easily. I hope this helps! We'll be making a lot more business content in the future!
Hi and thanks for watching! One of our tanks is from soapequipment.com and the other is from discountsoapequipment.com. I think I prefer the latter. :)
Do you have any advice for someone wanting to get into the soap making business? What were the first tools you bought and how did you sell it? Great video. It looks like you really enjoy what you do.
Hi there! I started small and just sold what I made. My best advice is just to start. Get yourself set up to sell soap, either in person or online and see what happens! If you're not selling, find out why and try to dig into how to get seen. Business requires a lot of time, work, and patience, so my best advice is just to START! Whatever that looks like. The earlier you start, the better. I hope that helps! :)
Thank you so much for making this video. As a fellow soap maker, what are your recommendations for finding wholesalers and what kind of licenses & certifications would we need to run a soap making business? A great next video would be the background of it for those of that want to scale but don’t know where to start. Please and thank you.
Hi there! Thanks for watching! By wholesalers, do you mean wholesale supplies or wholesale accounts? I'm assuming you mean wholesale accounts. We use Faire for all our wholesale, although we started off just working directly with retailers. At minimum, you'll need a business license, a sales tax license, and insurance to start a soap business. We'll definitely be doing a LOT more videos in the new year on business and scaling, so stay tuned!
Love the tour. Thank you for sharing. Question. Do you have issues with your heat belts going out on your drums? Mine seem to burn out about every six months.
Thanks for watching! No, we've actually never had that issue! I linked the bands we used in the description. They've been great and are relatively inexpensive too. I think we have 3 of them and they've all worked well. One thing I can think of is what heat you need on your band? We set ours to about 90-100 F, since the hardest oil in our drums is coconut. If we had cocoa or shea in there, we'd probably have to set it higher and then maybe they would burn out? I"m not sure, but we've had these running non-stop for nearly 3 years without issue!
Oh, yes! Great question! I'm assuming you mean the cured soap shelves... there's a liner for these racks, which I will link in the description here in a minute. They fit on the shelves and are clear. On the curing trays we use freezer paper.
@@muddymintsoap Thanks, I'm in Australia so postage would cost an arm and a leg! Maybe we have something like that here, I'll have to do some research.
Hi there! Thanks for watching! As I mention in the video, we get our essential oils from New Directions Aromatics. Our coconut milk is linked in the description box. :)
