Is it difficult to find the balance between having to compete in a competitive world and building a culture of caring?
I would love to say it’s easy but it’s close to impossible and that’s why not every business is a social business. It’s really hard but a strong proposition like The Soap Co. makes things a little easier. It’s a high end product so we have a bit more space to ask ‘How do we make this the best it can actually be?’.
If you’re selling soap for 99p it’s not about quality necessarily but more about creating a formulation and trying to sell tens of millions of units in every country in order to recoup the cost of production, it’s a very different philosophy.
We’re also focused on the environment, local sourcing, supporting other small social enterprises etc, there are so many things we do that aren’t about disability. We recognise the systemic nature of social change, you can’t fix one thing without being aware that there is always a problem somewhere else. We are trying to pay attention to the impact of the bottles at the end of their life as much as the impact on our staff when they move on to the next place. I really believe that business can be done in a much more cohesive way. One that considers people in the local environment but also the knock on impact of where your materials come from.
We talk about social enterprise being ‘good’ business, but it should just be business and the other stuff should be called ‘bad’ business. if a company is not doing everything it can to put life and enjoyment into the local community then what’s the point of it?
So what are your plans going forward?
Retail is a clear strategy of ours. We want to put our products out there in front of people that care about these issues and those who would appreciate the brand. I think it will be a slow and steady process but I would hope in a couple of years time for us to be in John Lewis or somewhere like that. I love to think that conversation could start fairly soon but it will definitely be a year and a half process of making it happen. At that point though we could have real scale. We are also talking to a lot of big businesses about getting our products into their bathrooms.
Extending the range is also something we are looking at. We will have three new fragrances launching this autumn which is exciting. We’re extending the hand wash and lotion range into bar soap, body wash, body lotion and bath oils.
A key theme of what we are pushing for in the imminent future is on the eco side. We have launched with a strong social message, you look at the bottle and see the braille on the front, the ingredients are good and prosocial, now we are really trying to push harder in communicating our environmental mission. It’s simple things like could we increase the percentage of recycled content from 25% to 50%? The outcome of that is that the bottles would be more grey because of the milk bottle tops that get thrown in which contaminate the colour. It’s not quite as appealing as it is at 25%, but, with good communication could we help to explain this to customers? I would love it if we could take our consumers and potential consumers on that journey with us.
What have been the highlights so far of this process?
I have had a lot of bars of soap to test at home when we were trying to decide how many grams of poppy seeds to put in!
It’s been so well received by people which is an absolute highlight. We’re going into buyer meetings and instead of them saying ‘no, don’t get the brand’ the response is more like ‘come on in show us your brand’ which has been really positive. People understand it and if they don’t get it straight away you just walk them round the factory for five minutes, they see the guide dogs, they meet some of our staff and it’s just so plainly obvious why we do the things we do. I love that sometimes I don’t have to tell the story at all.
I was invited to Latvia a few months ago to talk to a social enterprise there and present The Soap Co. There were a few questions about how this can be replicated there, I’d love to think that we would have production in other countries in the future. Why should other places struggle to work out how to solve these social challenges when actually the solution is right here already, it’s just about replicating and sharing success. Having said that, we are a local brand that means a lot to our consumers and we don’t want to lose that. There is a balance to be struck between who we are and what we stand for, and helping people around the world to imitate what we do.