My story by Julie Holmes

My professional background is in property and then telecommunications I was part of a team that founded what was in the 1990s the largest independent telecommunications company in the UK and whilst this bears no relevance to the world of soap.. I think we were the first company in this field to put the customer first! This is what I attribute our success to and is something that has stayed with me today.

After many years in this field I opted for a complete change pursuing for once my creative interests....dried flower arranging had been my hobby for some time and i decided to go on a flower arranging course and this introduced me to the real thing and I fell in love with flowers. I quickly moved onto a full time floristry course and bought a shop. I love everything about flowers being able to create different arrangements whole themes etc is magical and although it is very hard work I have never lost that passion and work and pleasure are truly combined!. Being very business driven periodically I felt the need to start a new shop and then sell it! In my shops I had always sold gifts and “soaps “ were always an important product, I loved handmade soaps and when this coincided with me looking for a new hobby the obvious choice was to make soap...just glycerine melt and pour at the start. and I became interested in essential oils and natural beauty products ....

When selling one of my shops I was just browsing on the internet looking at similar florists for sale and an advert seemed to just jump of the page at me” Soap Business For Sale”... i read it, rang the agent and demanded an appointment straight away. The lady was away but i managed to make an appointment the afternoon she returned from holiday... I saw the business it was located a long way away but i just knew I could make it work... I took home a sample of all the soaps and that is when i knew that I needed to make soap of that quality, it was the best soap i had ever used and i knew buying this business would open the door to another hobby becoming my life!.

I bought the business in 2008 and learnt the manufacturing process ...it took about a year and I combined this with other courses both practical and theoretical, soap certification etc and some consultancy help ... I moved the manufacture to a new purpose built soap lab in my partners medical business and set about introducing my own recipes. I make all the soap myself with the help of my team Laura and Sarah , everything is mixed by hand and for us quality control is paramount.

Although confident of the quality of my product I felt that I was not confident of my presentation. Even though I loved the product and would always use it I did not feel that is was presented in a way I could enjoy giving it as a gift. I decided we needed a new look and set about a rebrand in the end this was carried out largely in house as professional branding carried with it a price tags of tens of thousands of pounds...and I now have a new look with beautiful environmentally friendly packaging for each soap..

I now know a lot about natural beauty products now, much of it is like cooking it is in the quality of ingredients and if you can get those right you are a long way there. My mission is to produce the very best hand made soaps and body products offering a real luxury experience at a value price.

Inventing the recipes for body creams and several new soap recipes is keeping me busy at the moment and I am looking to develop the company into a serious company in this field and one that “puts the customer first”..