Expert: Stephanie - 4/24/2007

Question
Hi Stevanie, I hope all is well and the world of soap moulding is ever fruitful. I have took on board your information about making shower gel and think that maybe it will prove rather costly. It also turns out that my local chemist (you call it a drug store or pharmaceutical practice) does not sell the ingredients you stated and the only way to purchase these is from a chemical distributor. There is a chemical distributor near me but you cannot get anywhere near it as it is surrounded by protesters who believe the company make cats and dogs smoke woodbines or something like that. I don't want to go anywhere near the place.
I have decided to stick to making soap for now and have recently recieved an order that should give me a gross profit of approximately 17.5k and a net profit of 16.2k, thus creating a yield of 5.78% increasing my annual turnover by 15.9%. Projectively I should achieve a 68.9% market share of my area by 2012 increasing annual profit to over 106.9k increasing annual product output by 109%. Impressive I hear you say.
My question is, obviously shower gel is harder to make than soap. Would bubble bath be easier?

Answer
Hello,

Bubble bath is pretty much the same product as shower gel (believe it or not). The trick with bubble baths is that you want to get the bubbles they create to last longer. This usually means adding lather-rich oils and extra glycerin (helps give lasting bubbles). Bubble baths are more tricky, and possibly more expensive, then shower gels. Bubble baths, you see, require much testing and some even more specialized additives/ingredients in order to get a product with bubbles that last.

Congratulations on your business! It looks like it is thriving.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Stephanie