Feb. 13, 2008 - Cheap Ways to Package Soap

Our landfills continue to overflow and soon little white plastic grocery bags will be banned.  Looking to be good stewards of our environment meshes with cheap ways to package soap.  The cheapest way I know of to reduce cost in packaging soap is to not package it at all.

What?  But what about labelling soap and providing our customers with reorder information?

Well, that is quite simple.  Include your business card with their purchase.  If they truly need more information, you can easily supply that on a small notecard size paper. 

Soap makers are not required by law to label their soaps, but I do like to let my customers know what kinds of oils I use.  A small note card listing your ingredients and your company's information would truly suffice.  Let's say a customer buys 5 bars of soap and you only give them one or two note cards, you save paper, time, and money.

Perhaps you sell your soaps wholesale and need to have them individually labelled.  A cigar band paper label is one of the cheapest ways to package soap that I know of.  Most computers have software that allows individuals to do a pretty decent job of manufacturing labels.  Of course this is a little labor intensive if you sell a lot of soap wholesale.  You will need to design, print, cut and apply all of your labels to each bar of soap.

Another idea is to tie a piece of raffia ribbon (also very cheap) around the soap and attach a small gift tag style card with your company information.  This presentation gives the purchaser the feel that the soap is a little more "gift like" and has a quality of "boutique" about it.

Another idea (not quite as cheap) is to attach a clear mailing label with your company info printed on it directly to the soap.  This is probably my least favorite option as the labels may not always stay on the soap. 

I have used these labels in the past by applying them directly to a small gusseted plastic bag that I put the soap into and tie shut with a ribbon.  Although I preferred to put the soap into the bag without any label at all except a small label on the back with my company information on it.  I like my customers to see my beautiful soap.  I always bought the ribbon on sale or from a wholesale ribbon source.  The plastic bags ran about 5 cents per bag.  I felt this presentation wasy very nice and a cheap way to package soap, but again it was time consuming to prepare my soaps for soap.

So....if you want my opinion on cheap ways to package soap, I would recommend that you NOT pakcage them at all and allow the beauty of the soap to sell themselves.  Make yourself a card that gives all the useful information you want to share about your company and your philosophy about soap and share those with your customers. 

It may be a good idea to give repeat customers a magnetic business card and they'll always have your phone number handy.   You are keeping good customer records, right?