Additional Products?

We are looking at expanding some product lines, but not sure where to go with this… yet.

We have been asked by one of our wholesalers to not only be their provider of soaps (they have purchased three batches from us already and are asking for another 7) they have also asked us to make other body care items for them such as lotions and shower gels (liquid soaps).

Of course, we said, “yes, and we’ll look into it.” And now the fun begins!

Given the volume they would like us to supply them with, there seems to be a couple of pieces of equipment we will need to purchase for this project.

An air compressor is easy. A used one can be purchased from outlets such as Facebook Marketplace. No problem! We can do that!

We would also need a paint mixer (won’t be used for paint). We are looking for a pneumatic paint mixer so the air compressor won’t be the only one working. This can aid us in blending fragrances into lotions and so they would be uniform from bottle to bottle and maintain the consistency that everyone already loves from us.

The next item is specialized: and is a Pneumatic Liquid Paste Filling Machine (say that five times fast). There is no two-ways about it, this would allow us to keep up with the volume they are requesting (500 bottles of lotion and shower gel at a time) and this would make things 100% faster rather than trying to fill a funnel and tapping lotion into a bottle for several hours a go (been there, done that). The hopper holds about 10 gallons of product which comes out to 160 eight ounce bottles at a time. They want 500? No problem! We can have a 5 gallon bucket of lotion being blended while we have 5 gallons in the hopper being processed. Once we empty the hopper, the bucket on the paint machine will be ready to go. Pour that in, set another bucket on the mixer and keep going!

We have created an Amazon wish list for a couple of reasons: To maintain our focus in looking ahead

We are also looking at a labeling machine that would be used to apply labels to bottles and jars. Not a requirement, but would be nice to have to make our products look professional for the customer.

Another nice-to-have would be a cap sealer. Nice to have, but not a requirement. Just something to consider if we choose to use bottles or jars for lotions.

The scale in our list, is for soap making and other duties we have around the workshop. The scale we are currently using has its limitations that we have been working around, including the capacity and the requirement to wait for it to “settle” before getting an accurate measurement. We are unable to check the weight while an item is being poured into a vessel and is very time consuming when attempting to make fine measurements.

The use of pneumatic devices sets us up for the future to making batches of soaps that are greater than 60 bars at a time. Currently, we make about 12-14# blocks of soap per batch. The batches we are considering will enable us to make 96# of soap at a time, which comes out to about 400 bars at one time!

If we were to make lotions, what “flavors” of lotions would you purchase from us? What other items would you find appealing? What would make you a life-long customer of ours?

Feel free to leave a comment.