More than happy to keep it simple
Raw North Soap Company owner content with keeping things small
Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, October 16, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
In business, bigger isn't always better.
In three years, Kristen Gagnon's home-based Small North Soap Company has grown from a crafty hobby into a thriving wholesale business with clients in Yellowknife, Norman Wells and Williams Lake, B.C.
Kirsten Gagnon of Raw North Soap Company cuts cakes of her hand-made soap on her deck last month. Gagnon is building up her inventory for the busy Christmas season. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo |
"You wake up one morning and you realize you have customers on a regular basis," Gagnon said. "You're suddenly a business. I'm no longer a crafter."
However, the opportunities afforded by her word-of-mouth popularity and commercial success have not convinced Gagnon to expand her business.
When she turned to wholesale in 2011, she made a few modifications to streamline her process. She began shipping in 20-kilogram buckets of liquid and solid oils, lye and sodium hydroxide at a greater rate. Her packaging became more consistent and professional. She replaced her home-made wooden moulds with plastic four-chamber moulds, but she remained an artisan, she said.
"Every single soap is a different recipe. It doesn't make sense to go big. I don't want to go big. I want to keep making artisan-quality smaller batches. Unfortunately, that means I've reached my limit. I'm saying no to other wholesalers. I've saturated my local market," she said.
"I could almost now pull in a part-time employee here. But, I would have to change how I'm equipped. I would have to buy everything in giant drums, get a shipping contract. I would have to heat the drums and I'd need machinery to pour them and then I become Dove."
Gagnon's extensive product line, which includes handmade soaps, shampoos, balms and lotions, are sold at a half-dozen area retailers, online through her website and at craft shows.
"Now I'm at the point where I've actually had to learn to say 'no,'" she said. "I'm balancing this with my life. I'm not doing this full-full time. My family is still my full time."
Her hobby ballooned into a business at about the time she participated in her first Folk on the Rocks artists' market. She has since turned profits into research and development, using her funds to explore new handmade products to sell.
"Almost all of my money up to now has gone in to product redevelopment and in acquiring equipment that can handle the bigger volumes that I'm doing now," she said. "My product line developed from what I need. You only get what myself and my family need."
By staying small and working in a local market with wholesale clients such as Sutherland's Drugs, Old Town Glassworks, Visual Effects, and Down to Earth Gallery, Gagnon is not worried about maximizing her production. She keeps her promises to clients, she said, and that means ensuring they understand that supply sometimes dries up for awhile.
"I'm a one-person show. This is what I do. I'm not going to make soap in a giant factory. You're going to run out of certain kinds of soap sometimes. There's very much a back and forth with wholesalers. They're not Wal-Mart and I'm not a supplier for Wal-Mart," she said.
