Announcement - We're taking a Break

Well, I have a rather large and important announcement.  I've thought long and hard about this for several months now, talked to my husband about it and my friends, had discussions back and forth and, just this weekend, I came to a big decision.

I've decided that I will be closing down Soaperstar for the time being. 

In the time that it's been in existence, I've learnt a lot about myself - what I like, what I don't like, what I can do and what I can't do, what my limitations personally, emotionally, professionally, and spatially are.  I've learnt that I ADORE soapmaking and love making loads of other body products - I love the experimentation the best of all.  I get excited like a big kid when I work on something, even if it doesn't work out because then I have the challenge of trying to fix it and working out why it didn't work in the first place (witness my recent tussle with the Pomegranate Noir soap!). 

I love to build a recipe, to understand why I'm adding the different ingredients, to adding those buidling blocks together and see how they interact - I just adore the puzzle of it, the endless questions about "can I do this", "what if I add that", "why does this happen when I add X but not Y".  I don't always get the answers right but I like trying.  And once I've worked on something, I like moving on to a variation, to something new, to another challenge. 

What I didn't anticipate when I started was the HUGE amount of work that goes into starting a business, no matter how small it is.  Producing something for sale, making decisions about what it should be, what colour, what fragrance, what ingredients, does it do what it's supposed to do, what is my target market, will they buy this, how is it to be packaged, what colours and designs will the packaging be, how will I send it out, how will sell it, where will I sell it... honestly I could write reams of paper about the number of decisions that you have to make for each and every product that is sold.  And then someone comes along and says, yeah your soap is nice but do you do body butters... so you make body butters and have to make all those decisions again .. then someone says, yeah 100ml jars are nice but do you do 200mls? So you have to look and see if there'd be enough demand, how much would the change in packaging cost, does your supplier supply the new size, what should you charge, what should you offer that size in and so on and so forth.  I didn't have a notion quite how many questions you could ask yourself in one day - plus I hadn't copped on to the fact that there was only one person to answer all those questions - me!!!

Some of you might be aware that I also work full-time in education - the reason I got into soaping in the first place was to de-stress from that job, one I find actually very stressful indeed.  I needed a hobby to focus my energies on, and found that I had a huge creative streak (or, at least, I like to think so) and it needed to be expressed - apparently, through the medium of soap! So I made soap and I was excited and happy. 

Being the typical Type A personality, I have to always do the ultimate job I can do, there are never half measures - I drive myself harder than I would anyone else and I'm my own worst critic.  I also jump in with both feet and put my heart and soul into everything I do; now, that's a great thing if you're the person buying the products because you know that I'll have done everything in my power to make the product the very best it can be.  For me, working a full time job and coming home to another full time job, it's not such a great thing, long term. 

For some time, I've suffered from major tiredness issues moving on recently into total exhaustion.  This past week has shown me that I needed to take a step back and look at what I could do to resolve that issue - in the long run there are several options but they'll take time to implement.  What could I do in the short term? And I looked at what gave me pleasure and what didn't, anymore.  Soaperstar has given me huge pleasure but has, in the last few months, also proven an enormous amount of work - the paperwork, the regulations, the promotion, marketing, sales, shipping, designing etc all take such huge time.  Notice I haven't mentioned the making there.  The making, the R&D part I love so much, was becoming a smaller part of the whole - the part I liked was being swallowed up by all the other things around it.  I wanted the "glitter and kittens" part of what I loved (the mad scientist experiments) but the other million jobs still had to be done and I was running out of energy, fast. 

So, in discussion with my husband and my friends, I've made a decision to put me first - to do what I love doing, to make what I want to make, when I want to make it, how I want to make and with whatever I want to make it from.  So, up til now, I've been limited to 1% citrus essential oils in anything - well next soap I make will have 3% citrus oils and who's gonna stop me?! There's a world of US fragrance oils I've not been able to use (because you can't if you sell to the EU) and I want to use them.. so, guess what? I'm going to! I'm going to take all my oils and butters and fragrances and I'm going to make stuff for me, I'm going to have the best fragrances ever, I'm going to take my most expensive extracts and use them on me! In the past, I've always used the spare bits, the ends of things, the leftovers.  Well, no more, I have decided... it's all about me!

I am being flippant really - I have enjoyed Soaperstar in the main, I have learnt so many things along the way and made lots of new friends (I can't even remember if they were customers first or friends first but it doesn't matter now, they're friends now).  I found out what I liked and what I didn't like and I know what I can and can't do .. and what I should and shouldn't do. 

So, I'm taking an extended break, perhaps forever - I need to see what I want to do and when I want to do it.  I'll keep the website open for the stock that's on there at the moment but I won't be putting any new stock up there.  I'll keep up the blog, of course, because I love writing this and I'll keep up the Facebook page cos I love showing off what I've made and I love the comments.  Really, the only thing I'm going to stop doing is running a business ... all the other things, the fun things, the things I like, I'm going to keep doing and enjoy doing. 

I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who's supported me, purchased from me, commented on my soaps or body butters or helped me in any way during this whole time.  I won't be going anywhere, but where I'll be, I'll be a lot happier and, hopefully, far less tired doing it!!!

Sayonara Soaperstar, it's been a blast!