Photo Tents for Christmas

One massive issue for us as a start up has been photography.  Editors, Websites, Internet shops etc., all require high quality images.  There are two sorts, editorials and hero shots.  The hero shots almost always have to be on white backgrounds, of high resolution and crisp.

I say here and now - "I FAIL!"

Despite Carla's great photography my limited technical ability and impatience editing has turned fantastic photographs into a great big blob of blurry mess.   Despite great tools on the web such as PicMonkey for collages and Fotofuze for better definition or even the ever popular photobucket which allows me to write text and special effects - I've have usually come up no better in my photography than this:

Now this little shot may look adequate when only a small image but increase the size and you can rapidly see that the image is of poor quality, poor definition and the fact that I shake like a pneumatic drill hasn't helped the blurring of the bristles.  I've used photofuze to brighten the image but it lacks so much that is necessary for a good internet image.

Answer to these problems?  Well, there are many.  First and foremost - we need good lighting.  In Northern Ireland that in itself proves to be a major difficulty.  Not helped by the fact that we live in an old and typically dark fisherman's cottage.  Still on the right day, with a clear sky and some sun you can get good quality photos.  Secondly, A good camera is essential and we tend to be struggling with a little digital camera bought for Tobin's birth a couple of years ago.  The 3rd problem however was that of a clean white background.

So, without further ado - let me introduce you to one of Carla's Christmas presents.

The tent, with a clean white background and some tripod lights gives a much brighter feel to a drib and dab day as seen outside the window.  The photo of the "S" is as it is photographed in the tent without any touch-up.  (you can see the corner of the tent getting in the way a little on the right hand side.

Now, I am learning how to use photoshop and Gimp etc for photo editing and cropping but to demonstrate the difference the tent in itself makes to a photo I wanted to show you these - editing done in the same way as the apple - a little fotofuze.

How much better do they look.  They are crisp, clear and gorgeous!  How much better will a little photo editing help?

New year - New lines....

Much of last year contained product testing, costings and EU listings due to new cosmetics changes.  We had just tested and launched a range of products that went with the fruit soaps when we were forced to re-vamp our entire product range and focus on an entirely new product line.

To be honest I am not even sure we have had a chance to formally introduce them.  I must do that later next month.

In the interim period though we managed to experiment with a few new styles of soap-making and play around a bit with natural colours.  None of which excited Carla as much as this castile soap with alkanet and spirulina.  The colours where bright and in your face initially but just look at how it ended up.

Nothing short of stunning.

Now, for the skin conscious among you - what is in this bar and what can it be used for?

So for 5 months of last year we experimented and produced our main lines.  But the above little experiment opened our eyes to the wonderful potential of castile soap (soap made with just olive oil as opposed to a blend of oils).  We could make castile soaps for each of the lines, reduce our overheads, our costs and remain fairly traded.  It would help with postage and produce a hard bar (which when you blend the oils can make a moisturising bar - but one which is quite soft and doesn't last too long).

So, knowing that Castile soaps need to cure longer - we are already starting our batches for Christmas 2014 and in the interim are keeping our blended soaps which cure in a 6-8 week period - the debate for the minute is whether or not to use organic palm oil to keep the bars hard.

Its an ethical decision.  We had wanted to remain palm oil free but frankly, the soap suffers.  It can be a fabulous skin product without palm oil or lard - but without it the soaps don't last too long and go mushy far too quickly.

In the interim, we are opting for a sustainable and organic palm oil provided via Aromantic and Akoma both of which are business' we both trust and respect.  That said, despite our love of both companies the oil they sell is certified by the RSPO (Roundtable of Sustainable Palm Oil) which is not highly regarded by any environmental organisation that I'm aware of - you can find out more of the probems with it on this link http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oil.  Whilst using these oils as a stop-gap we still anticipate being Palm free by the end of 2014.  One can but do our bit to save the wonderful Orangutan

Palm oil is in so many food and cosmetics products. Palm oil and its derivatives are used in a ubiquitous array of packaged foods, including ice cream, cookies, crackers, chocolate products, cereals, breakfast bars, cake mixes, doughnuts, potato chips, instant noodles, frozen sweets and meals, baby formula, margarine, and dry and canned soups. It can be labelled as anything from palm kernal oil to vegetable oil and is cheap and easily sourced. The difficulty is that rainforest are being devastated in order to make Palm Tree Farms and species, environment and people all suffer as a result. The Orangutan has become the face of this campaign through organisations such as Rainforest Action Network.  And, as we launched our products in 2013 we decided to not only go Palm Oil free but to ensure we used some of our income to protect rain forest from being exploited for more Palm Oil Farms and crucially, to protect the rights of the indigenous people who live in the rain forest - hence our support for both Cool Earth and Survival.  As Carla is native to Brazil who's ancestors were native to Brazil both the rain-forest and rights of the people are something we personally want to get involved with.

At best we can be palm free and use our profits to make a difference. At worst, if we really need to use palm oil then we can source it sustainably, ethically and organically/wild-crafted.

As a cosmetics business however - we think Palm oil is a wonderful product. Great for making a hard bar of soap which lasts. It just grates at our conscience however to claim to be an ethical company when we are aware of so much devastation and difficulty around this one ingredient.

Craft Fairs, Stalls and Displays.

In the run up to Christmas we had been spending a little bit of time and money to enhance our presence at craft fairs and stalls.  I wish I could say that the investment paid off.  I confess, my belief in doing charity craft fairs has now ended.  The next person that can convince me to do a charity/community craft fair deserves high praise indeed.

That said 2014 will see us committing to St Georges Market in Belfast for a short period to see if we can increase our presence in Belfast as well as make more money from sales rather than solely from the internet.

So here is a little of what we have been up to...

It started with the crates.  We needed something that provided multiple layers to ensure we could get a wide variety of our lines out on display without it looking cluttered and difficult to differentiate.  We needed something that would be easy to pack and display, was visually eye-catching and offered us a way to keep changing the format so people wouldn't keep seeing the same old week in week out.  Something that didn't offer a blank canvas that the products would fade into but would instead enhance the appearance of the products.  We think we found the answer.  The white crates work perfectly to bring out the colour of the products whilst the blue ties in remarkably well with our brand colour.  The odd bit of blue in the display really draws the eye and the best bit is that we can carry much of our stock in the crates to and from the market.

Much better than a flat table and tablecloth!

Carla had a few ideas of how to develop the stands for craft fairs.  Some of which haven't materialised yet but one which has are the letters for ScENT.  Carla has been working with Little Roots to come up with some letters for the stall.  Here is a quick look at what they have been working on together...

Personally, I can't wait to see the rest of the letters.

Packaging, Branding, Logo Placements and Strap-lines.

We have been working for the guts of a year on a new website.  Thank goodness for the patience of saints! We have been blessed with great friends who have lovingly and patiently guided us through to what I think is going to be a great site that we can only aspire to do justice to.

The process has really challenged us to hone in on our logo, our branding, our strap-line and our packaging. Getting something that works across all platforms, epitomises who we are, what we are about and engages people in the story of what we are trying to do.

The business cards were ironically one of the first important things to get out of the way.  Getting it finalised, thanks to +Nigel Smith  we have managed to get the logo, the brand colour and a strap-line.

The scent, all lower case with the white 'c' emphasises the meaning to us as a business.  The angel encompasses our desire to be messengers of change and blessing and the strap-line adequately conveys the fact that we make cleaning products that are ethically made and guilt free.

All this is portrayed on a pale blue background which is clean, neither too feminine or masculine, and reminds us of water.

Having this has helped us in getting the right background colour palette for the website.  The colour themes for each product line/range will carry on to our packaging (eventually - when we have the money) and the angel and word "scent" are, as we speak being transferred into stamps which we can then use on our soaps. Thanks to +Luciana Teixeira Gomes and her new stamp-making business.

Which leads us to our packaging.  Its been long disputed and hours upon hours of my life have been spent on this one thing alone.  We have looked at paper, fabric, glass, wood, plastic, aluminium, cardboard, ribbon, scrap-booking.  I've pursued labelling companies, made my own boxes, cut glass bottles, talked to designers and still, we have been missing that essential ingredient.  I've considered boxes, parcels, bottles, jars, kilner jars, cosmetics jars, bamboo, banana leaf and starch packaging for that ever so evasive product that is natural, organic, sustainable, fairly traded, enironmentally freindly and yet crucially fit for purpose.  Don't believe me?  Take a look....

And, did I mention cheap?  Having own-brand products have been so incredibly expensive for a start up such as ours that we have had to come up with solutions without the important advice of designers and their help in personalising our packaging to suit our brand.

So, I am truly delighted to be looking at a possible end in site.  We may well have the solution....  Having got frustrated at paying too much for plastic boxes I eventually sought the courage to enquire about a direct supplier.  If I am able to standardise all our soaps into a limited array of packaging options I thought it might just be possible to purchase in large enough quantities to permit us buying from manufacturers.  Plastic boxes - sorted.

Next up was for the bars of soap and cosmetics.  This, is perhaps a much more difficult challenge as we need to ensure it ties in with our desire to reduce, reuse, recycle, be sustainable, environmentally friendly and ethically traded.  The cold process soaps don't sweat as much as glycerin - so we have opted for some fairly traded lokta paper from Nepal to cover the bar and the more and more I thought about the high-end luxury market, the more I started to fantasize about wood.  It is ink free, which paper packaging rarely is, sustainable, reusable if nice and virtually unheard of for a bar of soap.

Which leads me to introduce a possible new venture for us in 2014.  Now it is fair to say that it won't look much like these - the logo is all wrong and the angel image is in the wrong place but it does give an idea of where we are heading.  Subject to feedback and prices.  It may even be the appropriate time to look into a crowd funding venture as a way to finance it.  It is fair to say that I, Garreth am quite excited by this new little possibility.  The hope is for something that looks high-end, luxurious and ethical.  The thing for us to avoid is the pitfall of it becoming too tacky or unnecessary.

Time will tell.

Christmas Scrapbook Play-Time

Just a quicky as we run up to Christmas.  I thought I would show you a little of some of the scrapbooking Carla has been up to recently.

And... Breathe!

It's been a long time since we notified the launch of the social enterprise.  I think it was the 2nd Oct in fact. My how time flies!  My absence from blogging is simple - we have been up to our eyes in work.  Good work, fabulous work in fact!  We have been busier than than a bee in an ocean of nectar.

The moment we launched we saw orders start coming in over the internet.  It could be the social slant or the move into organic skin-care but beyond a shadow of doubt it is certainly to do with favour because within just weeks of launching the new product lines we also received a letter from Consumer Safety to inform us that we are permitted to continue selling our fruit soaps.

THIS WAS ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS NEWS and was received with an somewhat embarrassing leap for joy and yelp of relief  (photo of Evan Rock on his travel blog)  We were free to trade.  It may have been 6 months of waiting and it may have left us in a mad dash in the run up to Christmas - but the news was in.  We could continue to sell and it leaves 2014 wide open to sell to retail internationally which we have been unable to commit to for much of this year. Infact, within just days of this news we had four wholesale orders.

Some of the fruit soaps being made now that we can sell again.

To top the year of a tumultuous business year - there was no greater feeling than being able to give our first donations to the four different organisations we support at the beginning of December just 6 weeks after we launched.  Finally ScENT felt purposeful.  We were making a difference and whilst perhaps still being a long way off from being profitable and earning a living wage, we were definitely on the road to being able to live generously again and that for us is life-giving.

Social Enterprise - Defined and ready to launch!

I'm so excited, I might just burst!

It is time!  We are as delirious as a bee in a nectar storm as we announce all the structural changes for us as ScENT in the coming weeks.

If you have been following the blog you will know we felt we were dealt a bit of a death blow a few months ago by the Consumer Safety Council - over a piece of legislation called the "food imitation policy".  It risked putting us as a company under the water long before it was deemed possible to fulfill our dream of becoming a social enterprise.

But, I'm pleased to say - it did the reverse.  It forced us into a dark corner where Carla and I talked and thought, and prayed about where to go and we figured that if we were going out - we would go out with a bang!

We looked at what we were doing and where we wanted to go and started to veer headstrong into the vision that we set ourselves all those months ago when setting out.  We decided that we didn't need to make massive profits before giving money away - we could just factor it into the costs of the soap.  We looked at our ingredients and made choices on ethics and quality rather than on cost and delivery.  And, importantly, we looked past the soaps that look like food (as wonderful as they are) into a range of cosmetics that could be made by people, like me (Garreth) who are a little less talented than Carla.  Products that could still be hand made but made in larger quantities.

I don't want to bore you with the detail - but there is a fair about of stuff we are passionate about and when it got knocked around a bit we were able to hone in on some things we think are important to us as pioneers. And it all boils down to ethics.  Its always been about transformation and justice.  We'd always wanted to focus on Organic and Fair Trade - but I think we may well have excelled ourselves.

Here are our 6 reasons to buy from ScENT

•  For every product purchased, we will donate 10% of our wholesale price to marginalised children in Nigeria through Stepping Stones (see below). 
• Every product sold will provide funds towards a weeks clean water for one person with Charity: Water.  We will keep you posted when we get to build our first well.
• 1 square metre of rainforest is protected for every bar of soap, bath salt, or candle sold by supporting CoolEarth.
• We will also make a donation to help fund micro-credit loans to other social entrepreneurs.
•  By purchasing organic/fairlytraded ingredients we are helping to improve the lives of the workers and communities who farm the raw materials.  We are proactive in abstaining from ingredients such as Palm Oil and hope to be Palm Oil free by the beginning of 2015.
• Lastly, we are still working towards is providing employment in disadvantaged areas of Northern Ireland and fully functioning as a social business.

Stepping Stones Nigeria:

We are big fans of Stepping Stones the charity – which is why we are choosing to give a percentage of each bar of soap we sell.  This charity focuses on children of the Niger Delta and works in the following four areas: 

•       Children’s Rights  
•         Child Witches 
•        Education  
•        Human Trafficking 

Interestingly, Nigeria has a long history with soap making.  When the slave trading ended in the 19^th Century the traders turned their attention to Palm Oil. West Africa used to be the centre of the palm oil industry but in the 1870s, British administrators took the plant to Malaysia. Now Malaysia is the world's leading palm oil exporter, based on huge plantations which are stripping us of one of the most valuable rain-forests in the world (but that's another story!).  Nigeria’s agricultural income has withered from almost 100% of GDP to 18%.  Perhaps this is just our way of giving something back.

Clean Water Program

Diseases from unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war.  Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren't strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.

90% of the 30,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are in children under five years old.  The WHO reports that over 3.6% of the global disease burden can be prevented simply by improving water supply, sanitation, and hygiene. Source: Charity Water

It seems and issue that a soap company should be involved in.  Its also an equality issue, as is often the case, women and children who suffer most.  

But what can we do?  Well, we considered giving a bar for every bar as a strap-line of the business.  This would have been a good marketing tool but would have been yet another totally useless charitable gesture.  People don’t need soap.  Many of them have it.  They do not however, have access to clean water or the knowledge about the wonderful cleaning power that a bit of soap and clean water can have against some potentially life threatening diseases.  

So, that is where we step in. For every bar of soap, bath product, or candle purchased, we will donate 5p to Charity:Water.  That 5p, we calculate, gives one person at least a weeks supply of clean water. It may take us a while to build our well for 300 people but step by step we hope to raise enough to build our first well.

Sustainable, Organic & Fairly traded:

Each bar of soap is natural, biodegradable, and contains ingredients ethically harvested from sustainable resources.  Where there is an option we buy Fair-Trade as our first option, organic as second and natural/wild as third.  We have created what we consider to be the ethically conscious soap on the market today – preferring to avoid becoming a single issue product (say fair trade, organic or palm oil) and cover as many possible areas of interest and passion as we could.   

Our products are not currently certified by any particular body.  (It’s a money thing – it simply costs too much to get registered as Fair Trade by the FairTrade foundation , Organic by the Soil Association, and  The Social Enterprise mark.  In fact its the same story for most of our suppliers too!

However to reach these criteria one must prove the following:

Fair Trade Certification: Products must contain a minimum fairly traded ingredient set requirement of 2% for a wash off and 5% for a leave on products.

• Our soaps, on average, contain 25-60% Fair trade ingredients the lower percentage is because we also buy local organic ingredients, 
• Our body butters – 50 to 90% fair trade ingredients, 
• Our lip balms - 50%, 
• Body oils 30% 
• Hand salve – 60%. When others do the bare minimum, we strive instead for the maximum. We also actively pursue opportunities to work with suppliers and producers directly to ensure we can increase our percentages.

Organic Certification: Under the COSMOS standards there are two levels of certification: COSMOS organic and COSMOS natural. Products certified to COSMOS organic must have a minimum of 20% organic ingredients or 10% (hardly breath-taking!) organic ingredients in the case of rinse-off products.

• We can safely say that we can easily meet this requirement on all our products (one exception being our bath salts as salts are not minerals or plants.)  In fact almost every single mineral or plant that we use is certified organic by the Soil Association.

Cruelty free

We love animals and never test our soap on them.

Palm oil

There are many negative environmental issues that are derived from the production of Palm oil, even when organic.  86% of palm oil is produced in Southeast Asia. High demand for palm oil has lead to rapid clearing of tropical rainforests. The United Nations Environmental Programme predicts that by 2022 the palm oil industry could wipe out 98% of Indonesia's remaining forests.  Many orangutans and other wildlife are killed in the process, so that this one vegetable oil can be used in many of our everyday foods and products. Palm oil plantations are also directly linked to a decline in biodiversity, soil degradation, carbon emissions from burning forests, and a disregard for local communities and land rights. To find out more, please read this report from Friends of Earth or this link:  "Say no to palm oil"

While we DO NOT use ingredients, specifically palm oil, derived from cleared rainforest, we recognize that many other soap companies do.   As such, we are doing our part to stop the destruction of rain-forests by protecting just over 1sq metre of rainforest with each and every purchase.  We do however use some Palm oil in our cold process soaps sourced from two ethically renowned suppliers.  Even this we hope to abstain from by the beginning of 2015.  The co-operatives we buy from are Co-operatives and we try to source from Ghana or Nigeria as opposed to Indonesia where the Orangatangs tend to live and suffer from forest clearing.

Social enterprise

The foundation needed for sustainable economic growth, specifically in the developing world, are thriving small businesses'.  Scent is therefore helping to secure microcredit loans for local businesses to get up on their feet, or get the jump start they need. Offering a microcredit loan to a small business empowers the individual, which in turn, strengthens a community. For every product sold we will make a donation to a fund which will be set up to support other social entrepreneurs.  It may take a little bit of time to build but we have got to start somewhere.

Packaging

Sustainability means more than just providing eco-friendly soap.  We have had to think seriously about our packaging.  Having looked at carbon-offsetting we decided to proceed with our donations to Cool Earth in protecting the rainforest.  We then took the following decisions about our packaging.

Reusable, recyclable and sustainable.


To support local business we haven't been able to use recycled paper for our retailed soaps.  We have however ensured it is sustainable and recyclable.  The craft paper we use to protect the soap is fairly traded Nepalese Lokta paper.  The PET bottles are recyclable but hopefully, and importantly, people will much rather clean them out and reuse them.  That's why we have gone for the nicest looking cosmetics jars we could find anywhere.  We are also keen to look at sustainable & biodegradable innovative cosmetics packaging in the future as we grow.

So, What do you think of all that then?  No wonder we got excited.  Our desire and journey of wanting to see transformation through soap may well just be about to begin!