Start a 🧼 business to support COVID-19 prevention
How to start a hand soap business in one week
Each week I send a detailed guide on how to start a practical side business to supplement your income during COVID-19.
We all have that one business idea that we’ve been waiting to start.
Maybe it’s selling your famous chocolate chip cookies, or your homemade scrunchies... but whatever the idea, something’s been holding you back from taking the next step.
I published One Week Startup to show you how easy it is to take that great idea of yours and start testing it in one week or less.
During COVID-19, I want to get these guides out to anyone whose income has been affected by the crisis. If you value these guides please subscribe!
By subscribing, you’ll get first access to my weekly guides and bonus content on how to build your one-week startup into a permanent side business.
Find all my guides at: oneweekstartup.substack.com
I want to help as many entrepreneurs as possible during the crisis.
If you are building a business and need assistance, please reach out to me at: brett@leafforward.org
In this week’s guide, you’re going to learn…
💦How to make high quality liquid hand soap to support COVID-19 prevention
🧴Building an authentic and beautiful direct-to-consumer brand
📈Selling your first 10 bottles and laying the foundation to turn this into a long term side business What I’m listening to in quarantine…
How start a business that helps with COVID-19 prevention
problem
Since the lockdown came into effect, I've been thinking a lot about all the ways that I could personally contribute to the relief effort. You're reading one of them. I started this newsletter to help anyone who's income has been affected by the crisis.
But another idea I had was around supplies. Anyone reading the news knows how scarce hygiene and personal protective products are. Look no further than the hand soap section at my local grocery store:
Clearly we need more soap. So I started to look into it. I wanted to see if we could quickly develop a reasonably priced, high quality hand soap product in a week? After some research, I could confidently say yes.
And this was great because I've been thinking about soap for some time now. In case you don't live in a 2km radius of Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto, there’s a cool Australian skin care brand called Aesop. One of their flagship products is a line of hand washes that retail for around $50. Now, the product is good but is it $50 good? Not really. In my opinion, its value proposition is more the beautifully designed bottle and label than the soap itself.
Seeing those empty shelves at that grocery store put it all together for me, why not create a modern and high quality hand wash product without the Aesop markup? I thought this would be both helpful for the current crisis but also has staying power beyond COVID since people always need soap.
solution
That's what I'm going to walk you through this week: how I'd go about creating an affordable and high quality hand wash brand. For the sake of the exercise, I'll walk you through the creation of a brand that a friend and I created called New Day. I'm actually hoping to get this off the ground shortly so stay tuned for more details.
💼what business are we building?
We're building a high quality and affordable hand wash brand called New Day. Based on my plan, the upfront costs of this business are a bit higher than others I've written about, but I think you'll see that the margins make it very worth it.
Here's New Day's value proposition:
Quality: soap with only organic ingredients that smells and feels great
Affordable: we want to promote proper hand washing for everyone, so our product will be accessibly priced
Beautiful: our product will be aesthetically pleasing and should be considered a household accessory more than a skin care product
Caring: in our case, 100% of New Day's profits will be donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank
💸why I like this business
I'm a huge fan of direct to consumer brands that are new takes on daily essentials. Among many others, Harry’s, Glossier, and Flow Water are a few standout examples. Their formula is pretty straight forward:
Some may argue that verticals like soap are overcrowded. I couldn't disagree more. The category size of hand washes is so massive (basically everyone is a customer) that there's space for hundreds, if not thousands, of brands. As we’ve seen with other digitally-native brands, the key to breaking through is developing a strong relationship with your customers customer and building an authentic brand that resonates your audience.
Here’s why I like the business:
Quarantine compatible: You can do almost everything for this business from the comfort of your home.
High margin: creation of the soap is super affordable. At scale, you can easily make 70-90% margin on direct to consumer sales.
Repeat business: the customer lifecycle is sticky. Customers will buy your product, use it till it runs out and, if all goes according to plan, buy a new bottle or refill. If their loyal to your product, this could continue for years which creates a super compelling LTV (lifetime value).
Easy to scale: there are huge contract manufacturers in Canada who specialize in creating huge batches of costumer soap products.
Serves a need: the world needs more soap, sanitizer, masks, and gloves. Creating a hand wash company today is filling an important void that can help with COVID-19 prevention.
Easy to find customers: you’re not building a niche product. Everyone needs soap so finding your first customers should be a fairly straight forward exercise.
📈goal
You always want to have goals to measure yourself against. Here’s mine: Manufacture a batch of products and sell 10 bottles in your first week.
resources
Copy these public resources for your own personal use.
📊Google Sheet Workbook – Tasks + Sample Sales Sheet
💸Reflection Document – What to consider about after you're done your one week test
📈New Day Budget and Modelday 1-2: product development
the soap
Have you ever made soap before? No? That's okay, neither have I. Thankfully, there are some great resources online that will walk you through the entire process. Here are two helpful ones:
For New Day, I wanted to get as close as I could to an Aesop formulation as possible. I found this recipe which seems to be a near exact knockoff of a popular Aesop recipe. That's perfect.
on copying
On that, I did want to take a second to discuss 'copying'. I recently read AI Superpowers by Kai Fu Lee. In it, he talks about how Chinese entrepreneurship is so much more competitive than in the West. Primarily, how, in China, copying other peoples business ideas isn’t frowned upon but, in fact, is generally encouraged. This is in contrast to the West where “knock-off companies” are heavily stigmatized by the startup community.
I agree with the Chinese philosophy for two reasons:
No idea is truly unique. Many others have had similar ideas to yours and the only differentiator is your ability to execute. If someone can execute better than you, they deserve every penny earned.
Market economies are designed for competition. Every business is bound to have competitors. If you don't copy their business, someone else will. Competition is a feature of markets and should push every business to be better.
Don't worry about stealing someone else's idea. If it's a good idea, you'll compete with the original business on a level playing field with your respective ability to execute being the only differentiator. The way it should be.
To test the formulation, I bought a small bottle of Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap. This is the base of every hand wash. And I picked-up the essential oils in the recipe at my local health food store, all organic of course. I spent a few hours in my house mixing up the ingredients until I was happy with a formulation. I had a few friends come by (this was pre social distancing) to try it and, once I got their approval, I was off to the races.
I knew I wanted to create 30-40 bottles. Enough so that I'd be able to test the idea and keep selling if it was a success. To do that, I had to find much larger quantities of the Castile soap and essential oils I used in my test formulation.
A quick Google search lead me to New Directions Aromatics, a local liquid product manufacturer. They sold bulk Castile soap along with a diverse selection of organic essential oils. It was perfect.
I went ahead and ordered 20L of Liquid Soap 105N from New Aromatics. The total came to $220 CAD with the equipment needed to open the container.
For the essential oils, I went to my local health food store. Prices were between $7-$15 depending on the oil.
Total ingredient cost (Castile soap + essential oils) = $270 CAD
packaging
Okay you got the soap. Awesome. But you need something to put the soap in. Luckily, bottles are fairly easy to source. Every major North American city likely has a local bottle manufacturer.
In Toronto, I found Consolidated Bottle. The cool thing about them is they have a grab and go store where you can go to see and feel the bottles before purchasing. Most of their bottles are in stock at the store, so once you find one you're happy with one, you can buy the number you need right there and then.
Aesop uses 500ml sized plastic bottle so that's what I was searching for. Here's what I ended up with (I've included the specific product info so you can order it from consolidated bottle yourself):
Now's the fun part: putting it all together. You're going to want to follow the instructions in your recipe on how to mix it all. I did the messy part in my shower. We haven't gotten to the label yet but you're going to want to have those printed so that you can get your batch ready in one shot. I recommend applying the label before filling the bottle.
The easiest way to ensure you apply the label correctly every time is using this Label Wizard. I’ve used it for previous projects and it works great!
pricing
I created a really simple model to give you an overview of your costs. I estimate you’ll need about $300-$400 of up front capital to produce and start selling your soap product.
Based on my calculations, the cost of each bottle will be $6.37. Since your first batch is going to be small, your costs will be inflated by the low quantity of bulk product you’re purchasing. Your next order should be larger and significantly cheaper.
Seeing this, I recommend starting with a $13 retail price. You’ll start with a 50% margin but as you grow, you’ll see that increase as the costs of goods sold decreases. Considering our closest competitor, Aesop, sells their soap at $50, anything in the $13-$16 range is a steal.
day 3-5: branding
Alright folks, you've got an awesome hand wash product that everyone is going to love. As I touched on in the problem section, I really want New Day to be a beautiful brand. Our customers should both love the product and be proud to display our soap on their sink countertops. So I'm going to put a lot of work into the brand.
messaging
I want to start by figuring out what our brand stands for. It always help to develop and brand story before even considering logos, colour and copy. Crating the story upfront will make developing all the other brand assets much easier.
In our case, New Day’s story is centred around the following:
Quality: soap with only organic ingredients that smells and feels great
Affordable: we want to promote proper hand washing for all so our product will be accessibly priced
Beautiful: our product will be aesthetically pleasing and should be considered a household accessory more than a skin care product
Caring: in our case, 100% of New Day's profits will be donated to COVID-19 relief
For New Day, we're going to donate 100% of all profit to COVID-19 relief. This social enterprise model was inspired by another Australian company called ThankYou — check them out.
The aesthetic of our product and the charitable component are going to be our main selling points. These are the points that I'll focus on for our copy.
customers
I also want to figure out who are customers are. We’ll only get a real picture of our customers are when we actually start selling it. But in the meantime, we can pick a segment to focus on. My segment is 23-35 year old Toronto young professionals living downtown. I chose that segment because it’s the most reflective of my social circle, which I’ll be personally selling to over this trial period.
name
Unlike the previous businesses I've written about, in this case, the name does matter. We went with New Day because our goal is to use the proceeds from this product to contribute to a more equal and caring future – a new day.
The way we usually choose names is we have 2-3 collaborators go into a shared Google Doc and write down their suggestions for names. No idea is a bad idea. We then review everyone's answers and usually there's one or two that stick out. Don’t deliberate too much on this, go with what your gut tells you.
logo, colours, and fonts
For colours, we wanted a set that would stand out but also reflects the modern interior design aesthetic. As always, we used Adobe Color to set the palette.
My friend, Taylor, is a great designer so he created the logo. It's simple and clean which is exactly what I wanted. If you don't have a designer, I recommend playing around with Canva to come up with something that appropriately reflects your brand.
You're also going to want to figure out which fonts to use. You'll want a primary one and a secondary one. For New Day we used Aktiv Grotesk and Arial. To pick fonts, I usually just play around in an easy to use design tool like Keynote on the Mac and pick what I think looks the cleanest.
If successful, you'll likely hire someone to help you with brand so don't worry about it being perfect on day one.
assets
In this section, I'll go through all the different design assets you'll need to create before launching your brand.
label
This is the second most important component of your product, second only to the soap itself.
If you go into any pharmacy or grocery store and check out the soap section, you'll quickly notice that they almost all look the same and most feel outdated. We want to solve for that but at a price point that's more accessible than our competitors.
Take a look at whatever finished hand wash product you have and you’ll see exactly what information you need to put on the label. Copy that but change the ingredients to whatever your soap base is and the essential oils used.
To start designing your label, you're going to need to figure out sizing. Our estimation is that, for the 500ml bottle, dimensions of the label should be:
Height: 183.7mm
Diameter: 75.4mm
Max label size: 97.3 H x 236.7L*
I’ve used Canva for labels before and it works pretty well so give it a shot. If you need additional support, feel free to reach out and I can connect you to a designer. One recommendation I have is to make sure you print out a sample of the label to test on your bottle before ordering a full batch.
Once you’re sure the label fits, you can print as many as you need. One important consideration is that the labels should be water resistant so they don't wash off the bottle. At least for the first batch, you want to go as cheap as possible so try using one of the online printing services, like Vistaprint.
website
Developing your website is the next step. Since we're very much in testing mode, I don't want you to spend too much time on this. Your goal should be to get a simple Shopify site online so your customers can order their product.
Here are the steps you need to take:
1. Pick a Shopify theme
2. Customize the structure of the site and add your brand elements
3. Draft the copy using the messaging that we developed in the beginning of this section
4. Attach your stripe account so you can start taking payments
That's it. The whole process of building your site for this product should take around 3-4 hours. Keep it simple.
If you need help, feel free to reach out: brett@leafforward.org
product photography
Professional product photography is essential for any successful direct to consumer brand. Since you're starting out, you probably don't have the budget or time to get amazing product shots.
I've been experimenting with how to take high quality product photography on a budget. And what I've learned is it's all about the lighting. Unless you know what you’re doing and have the proper equipment, this is a real challenge.
To solve for this, I did some research and found that you can buy these mini lightboxes designed for product photography. I picked this one up and would highly recommend.
I played around with it last week and took this photo of another product in my portfolio.
You can shoot all of this with your iPhone. Here’s how:
Shoot your product in the lightbox, and
increase the brightness in the iPhone editing tool.
If you want to take more creative shots, you can purchase craft paper and use it as an alternative background.
Your main online marketing channel is going to be Instagram. It's where customers outside of your friends and family will discover your brand, so you need to make a good first impression.
Designing a beautiful Instagram feed that tells your brand's story takes longer than a week. That being said, you should launch your feed and start to raise awareness of the brand as soon as possible. The key to social is consistency. While you won't have 10k followers on the first day, if you're a consistent poster, you'll grow incrementally and more prospective customers will discover your brand. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
For your first few posts, I recommend a product shot, an image with a core value of your brand and a general landscape photo that reflects the brand story you're aiming to communicate. Here are my examples:
To grow your Instagram, you're going to start by following friends and family who will follow you back. Then, pick a different brand that's similar to yours and start following followers of their account. There's a limit of how many you can do per day so pace yourself.
In my experience, this is the best way to expand the reach of your brand and you may even get some sales from it.
day 5-7: sales!
You're incredible. Who thought you'd be starting a soap business? Probably not you... But you've done it and that's awesome.
Now we're going to start making money. Where do you start? The good news is that this is a fairly easy product to sell. Everyone needs soap, especially right now, and if you did this right, you'll come in at a price point that most can afford.
friends and family
If you've read one of my earlier guides, you know the best place to start is with your friends and family.
Be methodical about your outreach. Compile a list of everyone you know who might be interested and track all contact. Here’s a sample spreadsheet.
You'll want to write a quick message to send them via whatever platform they’re on. Here's what I put together:
Hey [NAME], hope you’re staying healthy! I noticed hand soap is hard to find so I started a new hand wash business called New Day. Our soap is entirely organic and 100% of profit is being donated to COVID-19 relief – would love your support [LINK].
Don't forget to follow-up. We're all inundated with messages these days so a gentle follow-up is always a good idea.
social media
You’re going to want to promote your new hand wash brand on all your different personal social media channels.
For Instagram, I'd record a short story of myself talking about the brand and then share a photo of the product with text directing your followers to your link in bio.
And that's kind of if for sales... If you can't hit your goal through these channels plus your brand’s Instagram, reach out to me and I'll personally help you sell.
day 7: reflection
Wow — you crushed it. You built a business from scratch during quarantine. Way better than baking and making Tiktok videos. Take this time to reflect on what you've done. Reflection will allow you to better plan for the future by seeing what worked and what you can improve on.
Here's the reflection doc I use and below are the questions I'm always asking myself about my businesses:
did you hit your goal?
how much did you sell?
how did you sell?
did you validate your assumptions? If not why?
what were the main objections you heard from prospective clients?
any other learnings?
next steps
Okay so you crushed your 10 sales and are ready to scale up, what do you do next?
First, you'll want to figure out a way to scale up your manufacturing. There are lots of contract manufacturers who specialize in liquid consumer goods production. I've spoken to this one in Toronto who say they can help: Petra Soap.
Then, you'll want to start organically growing your sales. Since your per unit manufacturing cost is so low, I'd try sending out a bunch of bottles to local influencers. Especially now, I'm sure many would be thankful for the product and agree to promote it. This will extend the reach of the brand.
Moving forward, you should setup your email marketing using a tool like Mailchimp and begin to consider if any paid advertising makes sense.
Super grateful to you for these amazing guides! Sharing with my network, these are super practical and easy to follow. Thank you!