How To Scale A Soap Making Business – The soap business is one of those small-scale businesses that can be easily started with little capital and make money every day. With a budget of N20,000, you can start a small business and scale as you grow.
This is one of those businesses where you can easily start from home and focus on making liquid soap for washing dishes, cars, and clothes, among others.
If you are looking for the best way to scale your soap-making business, you are on the right page because this article discussed everything you need to know about how to scale a soap-making business.
How To Scale A Soap Making Business
1. Prepare your oil and alkali
Your first step is to increase the batch size of oil and alkali to minimize setup time and maximize efficiency. Most small soap makers measure, heat, mix, etc., for each bar several times a day. They make soap with a bar. This increases labor costs and reduces scalability.
You should not prepare your oil and alkali more than once a day. Blending sodium for several days is more common (and cheaper) than blending oil, but both increase production efficiency. Ideally, the two of them will make enough base dough to last a few days or a whole week.
2. Increase group size
Small batches reduce your production and increase your labor costs. It takes the same amount of time to ship and observe the five-pound and 125-pound groups. Let’s say it takes four minutes to stream and view for a five-pound band and nine minutes for a 125-pound band. For an additional five minutes, your production will increase 52 times.
While larger molds are more efficient, you don’t need them to increase production and save time. You can make larger batches and use several smaller pans.
3. Increase the size of the mold
After mixing the ingredients (step 1) and making a larger batch of soap (step 2), you can increase the size of your mold. Its large shape saves lining, assembly, disassembly, cleaning, and space. Think about it, you can put together one large pattern that takes over 400 bars, or several smaller patterns that don’t come close to that amount.
Just like with your batch size, it takes about the same time to pour a 125lb (57kg) pan as a 5kg pan (especially with our pot turner). Yes, the larger bars have a longer saponification time, but they do not require additional working time. The right equipment can allow you to increase your sales while reducing labor costs and production time. Making small batches in small molds is time-consuming.
4. Reduce cutting time
Minimizing cutting time and increasing die size go hand in hand. Your goal is to cut as many slats as possible with as few cuts as possible.
When making rectangular bars, you need to produce the soap in large blocks. This block is cut in two stages. The first step is to cut the bread, the second step is to cut the strips. The mold slicer replaces dozens of individual loaf pans.
After cutting the loaves, stack them one on top of the other to cut them all at once. Even if you’re not using a block mold, you still need to stack the loaves and cut several sticks at a time. If you make round loaves (shampoo bars, razor sticks, etc.), you can still stack this loaf and cut it up.
Once the cutting of the bar is complete, you need to set the soap to cure it. You’ll know the process is efficient when most of the cutting time is spent stacking the soap instead of cutting the bars. Stacking is faster when you use our vented drying trays on both sides of the cutting station for quick transport.
5. Minimize Curing Time
Reducing drying time is one of the most important steps you can take to make your business successful. Long curing times take up space (increase rent), increase the time from money spent to money received (more work to be done), take longer to respond to sales changes, cause too much or too much little inventory at the time of sale, and reduce competitiveness when bidding for contracts.
It is worth spending time and money to reduce curing time as much as possible. Cure time is important because it is the biggest driver of the work-in-process (WIP) for soap makers. Business in progress (WIP) is your inventory that is in progress and not yet ready for sale.
The high value of work-in-progress means your business is more expensive to run has more money tied up in inventory, and uses short-term cash as your business grows. When cash is running low, an increase in billing can lead to a cash shortage or “growth interruption.”
How To Sell Your Soap
There are several sales channels for the sale of soap. If you’re just starting, you can start by giving your family and friends free stuff and asking them to tell others by word of mouth. Ask them several questions about your product, product inquiries will help you make changes and bring them to market.
Here are some questions to ask them: – Do you know if the soap is durable? How nice is the scent? What do they like and dislike about the product? The answers to these questions will help you develop the product before it goes to market.
Make the color very attractive and good, have good marketing skills, and sell online. Other good places to sell your products are hotels, schools, churches, etc.
How To Solve Challenges When Scaling Your Soap-Making Business
1. Leverage Technology
In the chemical business, the use of technology helps overcome various challenges. It’s easy to make small batches using liquid mixes, but there are problems when trying to produce the same product in large quantities. It is important to monitor the chemical reaction to ensure that the quality of the final batch is the same as the original batch.
Finding the best way to do this can be difficult when it comes to saving time and money. It’s like trying to create a small batch of soap instead of a large batch. You cannot use the same technique for a small group and expect it to be the same for a large group. You can use special software programs to help you determine the best mixing strategy to help you achieve the same results with a smaller batch.
2. Hire Help
Even if you don’t have enough bandwidth to tag and ship all the new soap orders, you can hire someone else to help you out. If you focus on product creation and development, you can use a team to help get your soap and product into the hands of others.
While you may sacrifice some profit at first, it’s important to get help as you grow your business. You can use the skills and knowledge of others to give you new ideas and help you build a successful business. You can also easily outsource things like accounting, marketing, and design as needed.
3. Keep thinking
Thinking of the challenges he will face as he grows up, he is looking for solutions for future problems now. You won’t be surprised if you need to upgrade because you already have a plan.
Think about how much you want to grow your business a few months before the holidays, not a month or two. This helps you develop the product and produce enough sales-ready batches on time.
4. Learn from the competition
You can easily learn important lessons from those who came before you. How do you produce more products at once? How do your groups develop? When growing a soap business, it’s important to learn not only from your own mistakes but also from the mistakes of others.
5. Don’t diversify too fast
Before producing a new product, you need to do enough market research and product development. Start by expanding on your bestsellers and do your research before creating something new. This will help you develop a product line that doesn’t distract you from why people already love you and your soap business.
Conclusion
Soap-making business is profitable if you know the best way to manage. Knowing how to scale the business is not left out too. If you understand the content of this article very well, you will find it easy to succeed in your soap-making business. Check some of the recommendations below to read more articles. Thank you!
Frequently Asked Question(s)
How profitable is soap making business?
You can charge between $5 and $10 per bar and easily make an extra $1,000 per month.
What is the profit margin on soaps?
Although the profit margin on soaps is considered to be low, however, being a part of FMCG and having frequent sales, the profit percentage that you can make through this business would be between 10% to 25%.
Is making soap cheaper than buying it?
If you are in dire financial straits, do not take up soap making as a way to save money. The upfront costs of the tools are a real consideration. It is still cheaper (short term) to buy the world’s cheapest soap.
What is the best way to sell soaps?
- Your website (not Etsy, Artfire, eBay, etc., but an actual website you own)
- Your email newsletter.
- A blog or other form of content marketing.
- Various organic social media posting.
- Various paid advertising.
What business category does soap fall under?
Lotions, soaps, and other cleansers may be regulated as cosmetics or as other product categories, depending on how they are intended to be used.
Reference(s)
- soapequipment.com – How to Scale Your Soap Making Business
- wealthresult.com – How To Start A Successful Soap Making Business in Nigeria
- postexaminer.com – Ways to Overcome Problems When You Scale Up Your Soap Business
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