New year, new beginnings, Part I

The new year seems to bring a mental readiness for me to try new things. It's also a time for reflection about how the past year has been and what I might consider changing. Last November I celebrated the third anniversary of my business. I've had three awesome years of learning and growing, both personally and professionally. It's been a sweet roller coaster of discovery. I say roller coaster because time spent in the lows of business development tend to produce more productive highs. These three years have been full of learning so many things. How to build a website, how to promote my business in a changing e-commerce marketplace, how to make new products, experimenting with aromas as often as I can, etc. etc. It's been so amazing and fun. Full of everything ... except a paycheck.

I started Lavande de Bois in the fall of my oldest son's junior year. Anticipating college ahead I figured I'd have two years to experiment, and learn, and then return a profit, just in time to pay the looming cost of college. After two years, it wasn't quite there but I thought I'd give it another year. And really, 2010 was amazing. It was sort of a break out year in terms of building my customer base. Things just seemed to grow exponentially as my loyal customer base gave my naturally good soaps and bathing essentials to friends and relatives and then recommended me to the same. I am so grateful for the tremendous support and encouragement I've receive from my customers who continue to love and share my products!

So it begs the question, why is it not this huge success? There's still more to analyze for me to fully answer that questions but here's where I've discovered the most success: direct sales. The people who meet me and listen to me talk about my products for a few minutes or read about them hear my passion and open their mind to trying something that seems in their mind expensive, after all, it's just a bar of soap. But when they discover that it's more than just soap, it's a beautiful package of aromatic and natural goodness that uplifts your spirits and nourishes and cleans your skin, then they appreciate the value of this premium labor intensive handcrafted product. Appreciation translates into sales.

The other area of success and intrigue is in creating custom soaps that are just the right expression for someone else. Whether the soap is for a wedding or an adjunct to a businesses marketing plan or private label soap I love creating custom soaps.

Where I haven't been successful is in retail outlets. My soap just tends to sit on the shelf. It gets dropped, it collects dust. A retailer doesn't have the passion and care that I do for my soap. So they tend to end up with older product that doesn't look so good. And the truth is it takes a lot of time for me to service these accounts and my wholesale pricing leaves little room for profit opportunity, especially when the volume is not there.

So for now I'm going to keep networking and sharing my naturally good handcrafted soaps and bathing essentials with you all and I'm going to be more selective about my retail outlets. In addition to creating new soaps and bathing essentials throughout the year, I've decided to start another new thing! I've decided to become a Willow House Design Consultant. And I can't wait to tell you more about it in Part II of this post.