Do you want to start a soap making business but you lack ideas on a niche to pursue? If YES, here are 43 best soap making business ideas & opportunities. Soap is one thing people cannot generally do without in the home.
People have been making and using soap for thousands of years through different methods, with varying levels of effectiveness and a vast variety of ingredients.
Instead of going through the complicated and stressful method of making soap, people just walk into stores today to get the soaps they want in whatever varieties they want it in. But this does not discount the fact that soap making and selling is indeed a profitable business.
You can easily make good capital from producing and properly marketing your product. If you love working with soap, but you do not want to start making soap from the scratch, or if you are looking for a soap making related business idea you can get into, we have provided you a couple of ideas for you to look into.
Best Soap Making Business ideas
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Make and sell Specialty Soaps
Making and selling specialty soaps is a business enterprise that can include the entire family. The business can easily be set up and run from home and will not require very much investment capital to get rolling. The equipment needed for the manufacturing of specialty soap is inexpensive and can be purchased at many craft supply stores.
In addition to manufacturing the soaps, be sure to give careful consideration to how the product will be marketed. One idea may be to design a POP (point of purchase) display and establish accounts with local retailers to stock the POP displays and sell the soaps.
Providing the POP displays are in the right retail locations to attract maximum customer interest and the packaging of the product is unique and attractive, you will be well on the way to establishing a profitable and personally rewarding home based soap manufacturing business.
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Specialize in Melt and Pour Soaps
Melt and pour soaps are yet another kind of soap making business idea. This idea is for people that do not want to go through the long process of making soap. All you have to do is buy the premade base from a soap shop, melt and customize it with your favorite colors and scents, and pour into a mold.
Cold process soap is made by combining oils and sodium hydroxide lye. Melt and pour soap has already gone through that process. That means you don’t have to handle lye, you can focus on the design, and you don’t have to cure the soap – it’s ready to use as soon as it’s cool and hard.
It’s a great aid to teach kids soap making. Melt and pour soap making is perfect for beginners. You can find melt and pour soap bases in arts and crafts stores and online. White or clear glycerin are the most popular choices to use.
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Create soap molds
Soap making molds come in a somewhat overwhelming amount of styles, shapes and sizes. You can either buy wooden soap making molds that are made specifically for making soap, or you can create your own if, of course, you have the necessary carpentry equipment.
You can to tap into your creativity and make your own unique soap molds. The sky is the limit with what you can do. It’s a lot of fun; so try and think outside the box.
The only advise here is to make sure that what you are using as a mold will withstand the caustic properties of lye and uncured soap. The last thing you want to happen is for your curing soap to eat through the mold, and then damage your table or counter top
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Teach soap making classes
Asides from making and selling the soap itself, yet another way you can get into the soap making business is to teach people how to make soap. Of course you know you can only do this if you are already specialized in different forms of soap making.
You can focus your classes on different methods of soap making and the different kinds of soap. Note that you should only offer to teach what you are quite conversant with. You can market your teaching classes effectively both online and offline so as to get clients. Be sure to focus your attempts mostly on soap making forums online.
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Create soap making eBook
An e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. You can write courses on soap making and put them on ebook formats so you can sell them online on blogs and forums. This business would serve you well if you do not have the time or finances to startup any kind of soap making business.
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Sell Soap Making Equipment and Accessories
Before someone can begin making soap, he or she needs to have some equipment at hand. Some of these accessories include soap cutters, soap molds (moulds), bath bomb presses, soap stamps, soap drying, thermometer, immersion blender, trays, oil heaters, heavy duty plastic or silicone spoons and spatulas, soap making systems and more.
If you can stock these items on your shop, then fine, but if you cannot, then you can sell them online through the dropshipping process.
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Supply soap making oil
One of the most important aspects of any soap recipe is the oils and butters you choose. They affect moisturizing properties, how well the bars lather, and the designs you’re able to create.
Some examples of nourishing soft oils in a soap recipe are high oleic sunflower oil, high oleic safflower oil, olive oil, canola oil, almond oil, apricot kernel oil, and avocado oil. Some of these oils are common, while others are not so. You can decide to source for these oils and supply to soap makers.
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Make fragrant bath bombs
Bath bombs are hard-packed mixtures of dry ingredients which effervesce when wet. They are used to add essential oils, scent, bubbles or color to bathwater. When baking soda and citric acid are mixed and are then put in water, they undergo a chemical reaction.
The reaction produces lots of bubbles, which you see as the bath bomb dissolves in the water. These bubbles that make the water become so fizzy are made of carbon dioxide gas. If you are creative, you can start making these bath bombs for sell. You can sell these luxury products to hotels or other establishments.
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Make activated charcoal facial soap
Charcoal soap is becoming a rave these days because of the many properties and skin benefits it is touted to have. The Activated carbon typically binds to and helps pull the dirt and grime out of your pores, making them less visible and reduces their size.
This leaves your face feeling fresh. The texture of charcoal makes for a gentle natural exfoliator. There area lot of skin benefits to using activated charcoal soap, and this can act as a great selling point.
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Make Shower gel
Shower gel is a specialized liquid product used for cleaning the body during showers. Not to be confused with liquid soaps, shower gels, in fact, do not contain saponified oil. Instead, it uses synthetic detergents derived from either petroleum or plant sources.
Lots of people these days use shower gels instead of bar soaps. If properly made and packaged, you are sure to get a cult following.
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Create soap gift baskets
One way to sell varieties of soaps to one client at a go is to start offering soap gift baskets. You can create your gift baskets by including lots of pampering delights, such as soothing bath salts, bath loofah, soaps, gel eye mask, aromatherapy and much more.
You can market your gift baskets to friends, families and organisations, and this would make a great Christmas gift idea, so you are guaranteed to make a lot of sales during this period.
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Supply soda crystals
Sodium carbonate, Na₂CO₃, is the inorganic compound with the formula Na₂CO₃ and its various hydrates. They present as white, water-soluble salts. All forms have a strongly alkaline taste and give moderately alkaline solutions in water.
This is one of the key ingredients needed for soap making. You can start sourcing for and supplying soda crystals to soap makers in your areas, and you can equally sell your crystals online for better spread.
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Become a Soap Making Youtuber
YouTube is one social media platform that can give you a wide reach to diverse audience. If you are well versed in soap making, you can open up a YouTube channel where you can teach your viewers soap making tutorials, and you can also use the medium to sell your soap and seek for sponsors. If you have a big enough following, you can be guaranteed to sell thousands of your products there.
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Write soap making recipes
Homemade soaps and other beauty products sell well even in tough economic times. And these days, people keep churning out new recipes for soap making that either gives off a better end product, or that greatly simplifies the soap making process.
If you have great soap making ideas lurking away in your head, it would be in your best interest to put them down on paper and start selling them.
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Make and sell designer soaps
Luxury soaps and other beauty products sell well even in tough economic times. Novelty soaps and soaps with natural ingredients, visual appeal and wonderful scents are purchased as gift items and personal luxuries. If you quite savvy with soap making, you can start adding a touch of class to it, as well as some quality ingredients so that you can start selling to the cream of the society.
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Make organic soap
Organic soap is a soap that is made with only organic materials. A lot of the time organic and natural are used interchangeably and, for many, an all-natural soap is a great alternative. Organic soap is simply better for your skin. It contains natural ingredients such as plant-derived base oils, glycerin, and essential oils.
By contrast, synthetic, mass-market soap is made of petroleum-based lathering agents, synthetic fragrances, harsh dyes, and dangerous preservatives.
Since organic soaps contain natural ingredients, they do not only work primarily to cleanse the skin but to restore it. Most organic soaps have healing properties that can greatly contribute to the treatment of eczema, acne and other skin conditions. You can focus your soap making on only organic soaps.
17. Make and Sell Melt and Pour Soap base
Melt and pour soap base are yet another kind of soap making business idea. Quite a number of soap makers do not want to start soap making from the scratch, so they typically purchase premade soap base and continue their soap making from there. Your target market will typically be people that do not want to go through the long process of making soap.
All the need to do is buy the premade base from a soap shop, melt and customize it with your favorite colors and scents, and pour into a mold. If you are ale to create great soap base, you can easily sock them at soap shops and you would sure make sales.
18. Soap Subscription Box Business
Subscription boxes are a recurring delivery of niche products as part of a marketing strategy and a method of product distribution. Subscription boxes are used by subscription-based ecommerce businesses, referred to as “subcom” for short, which follow a subscription Business model.
If you have put together some awesome bath products, whether you make them or you get your supplies from elsewhere, you can create beautiful subscription boxes and get people to subscribe to them. If your box is filled with a lot of body pampering items that are of high quality, you can easily increase your subscription base.
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Soap making consultant
A consultant is a professional who provides expert advice in a particular area of endeavor, and this of course includes soap making. If you have cut your teeth in the soap making industry, you can pull of your gloves and go fully into the soap making consulting business.
Here, you would help soap making out with different problems which may include; creating or troubleshooting recipes; determining bar, batch and mold sizes; or helping them explore new business and sales strategies.
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Soap making school
Soap School provide professional soap making and natural cosmetics courses to empower aspiring entrepreneurs to start their own cosmetics business. Soap School provide online soap making courses that you can complete at your own pace, and in the comfort of your own home.
This business is capital intensive so you have to ensure that you have the right capital before you go all out. You should also ensure that you can promote the business in such a way as you would start making profits out of it from the first quarter.
21. Make swirl soap
Swirl soap is the kind of soap making process that gives the finished product great and very beautiful patterns. Making swirl patterns on soaps is a great way to increase the appeal of your handmade soaps. Whether learning how to swirl soap in a loaf mold or slab mold, the techniques are often very much the same.
There are many different types of soap swirling techniques – the Butterfly Swirl, Drop Swirl, In The Pot Swirl, and Spiral Swirl are just a few. Perhaps you can create your very own soap swirling techniques.
Many soap designs require rather precise pour patterns, such as the Funnel Swirl, which requires repeated pours of circles within circles. The Wood Grain Swirl, on the other hand, requires a repeating series of very thin lines of soap batter. You should find the one you are most confident with and start with it, but remember to give room for experiments.
22. Sell handcrafted soap
Also known as “handmade soap” or “homemade soap”, handcrafted soap is a blend of both science and art. This is typically the soap you make from home or in small batches with locally sourced equipment. Soap ingredients are usually food-quality, natural ingredients starting with a variety of vegetable oils such as olive, coconut, or palm, or purified tallow or lard.
Handmade soap contains glycerin which is a natural byproduct of the soap making process, an excellent moisturizer and also one of the reasons that handmade soap is so good for your skin. You can easily sell out in your neighborhood.
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Make and sell herbal soap
Herbal soaps are made using natural herbs and ingredients that are healthier and beneficial for the skin and are less likely to cause any damaging effect. Herbal bath soap contains natural ingredients like essential oils from aloe vera, patchouli, citronella, rose, and sampaguita.
Most of the commercial soaps contain chemicals that can be harmful to the skin and using a natural herbal soap can be a good alternative. With all the benefits of herbal soap, you will find it very easy to sell them if you market them properly.
24. Start a soap making blog
A blog is a discussion or informational website published on the Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries. This is a great soap making related business idea that a lot of people may look down on.
One of your secrets of being successful with your blog is to gather following through posting great articles and spreading the articles online through the use of seo. You can start earning revenue from Adsense or from affiliate marketing.
25. Create soap packaging
The final stage of the detergents and soap manufacturing process is the packaging. In this stage, the finished product is packed for final supply to consumer. During the packaging stage, bar soaps are either wrapped or cartooned in single packs or multipacks.
The colours, the pattern and the material of bar soaps packaging show the inventive idea behind their designs. Labels and packaging are extremely important when selling your soap. Whether it’s a simple band with a label or a more sophisticated box, this is the first thing your customers will see. if you are very creative, you can stat designing soap packaging labels and selling them to soap makers.
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Make bath loofah
Loofahs are made from fibrous material found in gourd-like tropical fruits. The spongy texture is perfect for exfoliating skin to keep it smooth and sleek. This is a great soap making business idea. You can start making bath loofah and start selling to your neighborhood. These would be your first customers. If they like your product, then you can start selling to a wider audience.
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Make Clear Soap
Transparent or clear soap is simply hot process soap that uses solvents (sugar, glycerin and alcohol) to dissolve the soap crystals that form allowing light to pass, therefore creating transparency.
When creating a transparent soap recipe, choose at least 75% hard oils (coconut oil, palm oil, tallow, lard, stearic acid). Making transparent soap from scratch is not very difficult, but patience is definitely needed, as it definitely takes several hours.
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Supply soap fragrances
One of the beauty of soap is the fragrance. If your soap has great fragrance, then you have a high chance of selling them. This is why selling quality soap fragrance is a good business you can start and make good profits from. The only thing you need to do is to be able to get good fragrance and then know who and whom to sell to.
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Become a soap distributor
Soap distributing is another good way to get into the soap industry. For soap to get to the right users, it has to be distributed.
Soap manufacturers typically employ two types of distribution strategies to get their products to retailers’ shelves: direct distribution to retailers and distribution through trade intermediaries. Direct distribution to retailers eliminates trade intermediaries in the distribution funnel.
This translates to lower prices to consumers, because trade intermediary margins for the risks of providing financing, warehousing and distribution functions are likewise eliminated. But that notwithstanding, you can source for various soap making companies to help them with distributing their products.
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Make baby bath soap
One very essential baby need apart from food and diapers is the soap they use in bathing. Gentle, sophisticated and natural, baby soaps are made using quality essential oils, herbs, fragrances, and other natural ingredients that can gently clean the skin of baby without irritating or drying it.
Not everyone is into this specialty because of the technicalities involved. If you can dabble into the baby soap making niche, and you have the right recipes, then go right ahead. Know that you make have to do a lot of marketing for mums to believe you the first time.
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Make soap for sensitive skin
Eczema is a common skin condition affecting more than 30 million Americans, according to the National Eczema Association. But this doesn’t make dealing with the itchy, irritating skin condition any less frustrating, especially because eczema can flare up at any time.
Because those living with eczema often deal with sensitive and sometimes sore skin, finding the right cleanser or soap to add to your skincare routine can be a challenge. If you can make a soap that would be just right for the sensitive skin, you would have a lot of patronage.
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Make body scrubs
A body scrub is a popular body treatment that is basically a facial for the body: It exfoliates and hydrates your skin, leaving it smooth and soft. A body scrub is done with an abrasive material—usually sea salt or sugar—mixed with some kind of massage oil and an aromatic like essential oils.
A scrub works in a few ways: As you massage it over your body, the exfoliating granules help to slough off dead skin, and the rubbing action itself boosts circulation and helps drain your lymph nodes, by increasing blood flow to the skin’s surface. You can make organic body scrubs for the market.
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Make bath teas and soaks
One good way to soak stress away is with bathtub tea bags. While making them, you can use dried roses, dried chamomile, dried mint etc.
A green tea bath can aid with relaxation and detoxification, is an antioxidant, and softens skin. Chamomile relaxes the body, calms the mind, and may ease certain types of pain. If you know your teas, then you should start focusing on making bath teas and soaks.
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Create spa treatments
Spa treatments are the services that a spa provides. But of course you can create your own spa treatments right at home and package them for your clients to use at home too. No need of wasting money in expensive spa when you can do it on your own.
You can create and package the products in small packs with instructions on how to use them and start marketing them.
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Sell cosmetic colorants
There are dyes, pigments, or other substances that can impart color when added or applied to a food, drug or cosmetic. They can be found in a wide range of consumer products—from soap and breakfast cereal to contact lenses and eyeliner.
Soaps require colorants, and if you can lay your hands on a good supply of organic colorants, then you are in business. This is because organic pigments for cosmetics and personal care are cosmetic colours classified as lakes colours, toners and true pigments.
Certified, high-quality pigments are used in cosmetics. Also, Organic pigment colours are brighter than inorganic pigments.
36. Make insecticidal soap for organic gardening
Insecticidal soap is based on potassium fatty acids and is used to control many plant pests. Because insecticidal soap works on only direct contact with the pests, it is sprayed on plants in a way so the entire plant is wetted. This is the next step in managing pests when other natural, non-toxic methods (like hand-picking pests off plants, spraying them off with a sharp blast of water, or introducing beneficial insects to the garden) aren’t working.
Insecticidal soap kills common pests on houseplants and garden plants on contact; you can use the same formula indoors or out. This is another good soap making business idea.
37. Make laundry soaps and detergent
Laundry detergent, or washing powder, is a type of detergent that is added for cleaning laundry. While detergent is still sold in powdered form, liquid detergents have been taking major market shares in many countries since their introduction in the 1950s. The first soap and detergent makers used plant ashes to produce alkalis.
Today they are chemically produced by running electricity through salt water to produce sodium hydroxide (NaOH) or caustic soda and potassium hydroxide (KOH) or caustic potash. These are the most commonly used alkalies in soaps and detergents. Instead of bath soaps, you can focus on laundry soaps.
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Become a soap critic
A critic is a professional who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works. You can function as a soap critic to criticize soaps that have just been introduced into the market.
If you are good at this and you have good followership, people would essentially listen to you before they make any soap purchase. You can also become brand ambassador to various soap making companies because you will be well sought after.
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Make Vegan Soap
Vegan soaps are made from fats or oils of vegetable origin rather than from saponified tallow or other animal fats. These soaps are preferred by vegans and may be preferred by vegetarians. Vegan soap is often promoted as ethical and environmentally friendly. You can make and sell this soap for people that are environmentally conscious.
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Make goat soap
Goat milk soap does not contain harsh detergents or harmful chemical compounds. Goat milk also contains alpha hydroxy acids. They can break the bonds between dead cells, which makes goat milk soap a mild exfoliant. It is why using it gives the skin a glowing and clean appearance.
Goat milk also contains vitamins A, D and B6, as well lactic acid which is thought to contribute to skin smoothness. It’s no wonder why goat milk soap is loved by so many.
There are many benefits for your skin if you use a natural goat milk soap. If you have dry skin, eczema, psoriasis, or sensitive skin, goat milk soap can help. With all these benefits, you can see that goat milk soap making is a good soap making niche.
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Make Castile Soap
Castile soap is an olive-oil-based hard soap made in a style similar to that originating in the Castile region of Spain. The oils found in castile soap penetrate pores with their antibacterial agents, helping clean your skin without drying it out.
Some people have success using it to balance their skin’s pH to reduce acne. Whereas a castile soap is made from plant based fats and oils, other natural soaps are made from animal fats like lard or tallow. You can specialize in making castile soap.
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Soap making without lye
While some people doubt it, but it is indeed possible to make soap without lye. What happens is that the chemical reaction of making soap, called saponification, when complete, the lye and oil molecules would have combined and chemically changed into soap and glycerin.
If the soap is made properly, the lye is used up in the saponification process to turn oil into soap. Therefore, there is no lye (sodium hydroxide) present in the finished bars of soap. If you are great with this, you can start making soap that has no lye in it as people would definitely prefer it.
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Olive oil soap making
Olive oil is a liquid obtained from olives, a traditional tree crop of the Mediterranean Basin. The oil is produced by pressing whole olives. The oil is used in cosmetics, medicine, cooking, and soaps, and it is great for the skin. You can start making soaps with the use of olive oil. You are sure to get customers for your product if you market it properly.