The Indie Experience
February 25, 2008
A Publication of The Indie Beauty Network
ISSN 1530-9630 | Volume 9, Issue 7
To subscribe, click here
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1. Meet IBN's New & Renewing Members
2. Indie Tip of the Week: Internet Sales Tax: Are You
Ready?
3. New At the Blog: How To Make A
Profit
4. This Week On Indie Business Radio: Stop
Procrastinating Now!
5. Indie Candy: Adam Chapman :: Savannah Black, Florida
6. New At The Forum: Email Newsletter Bonanza and More!
Plus, a group coaching reminder
Indie Marketplace: Services, Products, Fun!
Indie Beauty Ritual: White Rose Cold Cream
1. Meet IBN's New & Renewing Members
Welcome Renewing Members!
Annabella and Company | Alicia Grosso | California
* Member since February 2002; Soapmaker and author Alicia
Grosso is the Creative Director of the Annabella and Company Creativity
Collective. Through this site you can shop for soap, get information about her
books and contact her for instruction, consulting and private label service.
Lavender Valley | Dayle Harris | Oregon
* Member since February 2006; At Lavender Valley, all our products
contain our own farm distilled lavender oil. All products are naturally
handcrafted at the Lavender Valley Farm in beautiful Hood River Valley. We
strive to manufacture all body and home care products at the highest standards
with quality natural base ingredients.
Welcome New Members!
Anyday Bath And Body | Melissa Milne | Rhode Island
* Anyday Bath & Body provides high quality bath & body
products intended for everyday use. Anyday only uses therapeutic essential oils
and natural products in the manufacturing of these bath and body products.
Alluring Aromas | Trish Elmore | California
* Alluring Aromas sells hand poured jar and pillar candles. Our jars
are made out of a soy blend wax and tested extensively to give maximum scent and
a clean burn. Our pillars have a "rustic" effect and are largely used
for home decor.
Breathe For Body Soul Spirit Life | Annette Brinker |
Colorado
* Apprentice Indie.
Brooklyn Flavors | Sophia Sylvester | New York
* Our mission is to promote a healthy approach to beauty and candle burning by creating natural handmade bath and body products and candles made with the best quality natural ingredients from around the world. We hope you enjoy the products we make for you.
Candles And Soaps By Danna Lewis | Maine
* Handcrafted soy wax candles and natural soap products.
Flutterby Beauty | Jennifer Lamb | California
* Flutterby Beauty offers high quality bath and body products in the
finest fragrances.
Mama Love Products | Sheryl Karas | California
* Spiritually guided, Reiki-infused, delightfully organic flower
essence/aromatherapy perfumes and related products.
Pacific Scents | Marlene Sun-Sternberg | Texas
* Pacific Scents specializes in handmade, premium quality bath and
candle products. Our candles, bath and body products are made from the finest
ingredients. We offer a full line of candle and bath products in over 150
scents. Our products are made fresh, when ordered. Pacific Scents proudly offers
fundraising and wholesale opportunities as well as home parties, party favors,
gift baskets and birthday parties.
Sweet Dreams Lavender Farm/Ajones Designs | Anne Jones
| Texas
* Pick your own lavender farm just outside of Austin, TX. Lavender
products sold retail only.
Victorie, Inc. | Marilyn Boerner | Washington
* We are a retail and wholesale supplier of church anointing oil
supplies, inspirational gifts, natural perfume & skin care products,
therapeutic grade aromatherapy ingredients, apothecary supplies, perfume
bottles, glass vials, and alternative health products for the wellness industry.
Learn more about Indie members and their exciting products, services and activities by visiting their websites through our Online Member Directory. You can search for your favorite Indie by state/country, business name, keyword or alphabetical listings.
2. Indie Tip of the Week: Internet Sales Tax: Are You Ready?
For years, now cash strapped state governments have moved steadily toward implementing online sales taxes to collect revenue when goods are purchased by citizens of their states from retailers without a physical presence in the state. Today, an online purchasers only pay sales tax if the retailer is either located in the purchaser's state, or has a physical presence there in the form of an office or an agent. It's not a question of whether this will change, it's a question of when, and exactly what form it will take. Here are some things you can do to get ready.
1. Give Your Customers Notice. If you have an online newsletter or a blog, let your customers know the current news regarding this issue in your state. If it looks like your state is moving toward an Internet sales tax, it will be reported in the news. Share this information with your customers so they know it's coming. If you are against the tax, write a letter to your state legislature and share it with your customers. Maybe even draft one that they can use. These steps will let your customers know you are looking out for them and doing your share to prevent or at least stave off the sales tax.
2. Prepare Your Cost Structure For The Hit. Begin now by cutting the fat from absolutely everything that does not adversely affect the quality of your products or services. Get less expensive boxes, switch your domain hosting to a cheaper service, shop around for lower merchant and banking fees, lower your phone bill, cut out the fax machine if you never use it, ditch the toll free number if it's rarely used, switch your credit card balance to once with a lower interest rate, cease production of products that are most costly to produce and which do not add to your bottom line. Do anything to make sure that your costs are rock bottom so when it hits, you have as much wiggle room as possible.
3. Plan To Offer Your Customers Free Stuff. Let's face it, nothing
makes people buy more than when they can get stuff free. If you already offer
free shipping for a minimum order, lower the minimum. Start offering a free gift
of value with purchase. Implement a "product of the month" club where
people pay less for gift sets or other items with a flexible cost structure in
exchange for placing a monthly automatic order. Partner with another Indie to
give away samples of each other's things so your customers get some surprise
goodies by ordering from you.
Like I always say, Indies are successful because they are creative. Now's the
time to start creating to save money and enhance your customer's shopping
experience. It's important to educate yourself about what's going on in your
state so you can prepared yourself and your customers. Here are some recent news
articles and editorial columns on the topic from around the nation:
- Boston Globe: Amazon Fights New York Online Sales Tax Plan
- San Jose Mercury News: E-tailers Should Collect Sales Tax
- Information Week: Retail Advocates At Odds Over Internet Sales Tax
- CBS News.com: Time For Uniform Online Sales Tax
3. New At the Blog: Informing and Entertaining the Indie Community
Here
are some current popular blog posts. Enjoy and feel free to make your opinion
known. And don't forget to leave your blog or website address so we can learn
more about you, your products and your services.
How To Pursue Profit: It's not all about the cash
51 Great Topics For Your Newsletter Or Blog: Awesome Health, beauty, lifestyle and family topics
"I Won Best In Show!": No, not me, but a member won best in show at Extracts this month!
Top
10 Reasons To Buy Indie: link to this post to let your customers know what's so
great!
8 Ways To Get More Newsletter Subscribers: it's easier than you might think
Want more great information to help you grow your business? Then click here to get my blog posts automatically delivered directly to you through our RSS feed. If you prefer email, provide your email address at the blog, upper right corner.
4. Today on Indie Business Radio: Stop Procrastinating Now!
Today's Show: Stop
Procrastinating!Kerul Kassel is the author of "Stop Procrastinating Now: Five Radical
Procrastination Strategies To Set You Free." She joined me today to
share her strategies and make sure you aren't stuck putting off what needs to
get done to move your business forward. The audio will be available later this
week.
Today's
Indie Guest Co-Host: Tiffany Kolbe of TikoSoy, LLC.
Tiffany makes soy candles, sugar scrubs and other natural products. Enjoy
Tiffany's Indie Candy spotlight here.
New Shows Added To The Website! A slew of my most popular shows have recently been added. Check them out at these links!
Sail
Through Tax Season
Are
Bad Manners Killing Your Business?
Get
Free Publicity For Your Business
7
Rules of Small Business Growth
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5. Indie Candy: Adam Chapman :: Savannah Black, Florida
This month, my free group coaching is focusing on email newsletters -- why to have one, how to launch one and how to maintain one. Everyone is loving it. During the first week, an Indie asked me how I have published a newsletter for 8 straight years, missing only a single week of publication. She wanted to know why I took several hours a month to do it, and what drove me when I really didn't feel like it. I told her that aside from the fact that it is a great marketing tool, it's also fun. If she were to ask me that question today, I would also say because I get to meet people like 26 year old Adam Chapman, the man behind Savannah Black, a supplier of shea butter, Black soap and other products from Ghana. After reading a bit of his story here, not only will you feel like you know him, you'll also want to get on a plane and fly to Florida to meet him. I know I do.
How did you start your business and what was the inspiration for it?
Savannah Black took off about a year ago while I was sitting under a giant tree ripe with cashews after a long day watching the ladies walk by with their head-pans full of fresh shea nuts. I had been doing work as a Peace Corps Volunteer with some rabbit farmers all day, but the shea-nut ladies kept drawing my attention. Little girls and boys and women walking by, mostly barefoot down a hot, dusty road across the Ghanaian savannah. Those unforgettable images are the basis for Savannah Black.
What sorts of things did you do before starting the business?
I was born and raised in Florida. After high school, I took a “gap year," which became an "8 gap year," and now, Savannah Black. I was plenty of things before I got to Africa with the Peace Corps. I took a few successful terms at Johnson & Wales in Rhode Island, was a white water raft guide in Tennessee, rock climbing instructor, lumber jack, and sailing and windsurfing instructor in the Turks & Caicos and lived in Europe. I’ve guess you could say I've done a few things.
I joined the Peace Corps in 20005, and it has made all the difference to go oversees to help at the grass roots level. That’s the way all foreign aid should be. Money can be misappropriated; foods and other goods can be stolen, sold or “lost”. But helping people do what they already know how to do is the best. After spending 2 years in Ghana, I packed it up and came home. I have mom, dad and brother and now a great girlfriend who was in the Peace Corps with me and introduced me to the woman’s co-op I use for my shea. And my family is super supportive. Mom and Dad are both very hard-working adventurers them selves. Even my brother is getting in the mix.
How often do you go to Ghana to meet with the women you support?
I try to go to Ghana at least twice a year. I will present the woman’s co-op with a number of things that they need and to work on new products. I wont just bring them things, we will all sit down under a shea tree and figure out what their co-op needs to grow, be it a grinder, a storage unit, more this or that. And that’s the key to helping people, they may be un-educated but you have to respect that they have intelligence when it comes to what they do best, make shea butter.
I have always been supportive of women mainly because of my mom. She a very outspoken women who I wouldn’t classify as a feminist, but maybe just thinks everyone has the potential to do incredible things, and women in America and in Ghana are often denied the right to that potential. And if you have been to Ghana then once you step outside of the city it’s a full male dominant society. Not that the males are evil or that they all conspire against the women, it’s their society. And that too has to be respected.
On
my trips to Ghana, I get to meet and hang out with beautiful little girls like
this one. The women there do a lot of work. They are up with children early, they fetch the water (wells and boreholes), go to market to get the food, make the cooking fires, cut the wood, cook the food, do the dishes, mend the clothes… and around that time the guys get up. Now the men go work hard and make the money mostly, but the women still try.
How do you make a truly global business like this work?
How my business works is through a highly involved series of business and transportation funnels, and then working with everyone’s favorite business partner, the US Government. Things that go in my favor: I have excellent contacts that I trust with my money and who know their business. I benefit from WAFTA, the West African Free Trade Agreement, in that there are no tariffs on many goods (including shea butter) imported from Ghana.
What are some of the challenges you face?
Ships that don’t leave port on time, tropical storms, and pirates (for real!), cost of shipping and freight, and the US Customs and Border Protection Agency. Not that they are hard to work with, just it requires lots of paper work in triplicate. Most of this business has been from the ground up and I have just felt around and made it work.
What's the hook for your products?
Well, I could tell you how much cheaper it is, or that it benefits the women who make it directly. But how about
this? It's really good shea butter.
My packaging at the moment could be better, but one of the things I taught my ladies in Ghana is packaging. So in the shipment I have coming in 4-6 weeks my 4 tons of shea butter is packed is all types of resalable/reusable containers and drums.
Why shouldn’t you buy those 4oz tins of shea butter from a certain French company,
or from other mass marketers and high end retailers? I'll tell you..
- It's refined, and refined shea butter might as well be petroleum jelly. It’s nice and smooth, yada yada, but it’s been treated with hexane,
a chemical used in diesel fuel used to clean the injectors while the engine is running. Refined shea butter does have its place in mixed cosmetics, but not as a standalone.
- The price of between $8 and $40 they charge for 4 ounces of the stuff is
pure profit for them. They pay far less then that per pound. Now, they say they help
women in Africa, and that’s a gray area if you ask me. They pay them a fair daily salary, but don’t pay them per unit produced.
And they do "demand" that they produce.
I pay per kilo produced, which is more fair. For example, say a woman has to look after her kids and family, and only has an hour or two to work per day. I pay her for the units she produces. They don't. The women I buy my shea butter from are therefore better off than they were before I started buying their shea butter. I won’t claim to have stopped the beatings, ridicule or semi-forced labor. Nor will I claim to have created a band of protesting; marching for their rights. But I will claim that I have given them a chance to do whatever they want and if not them, then maybe their daughters.
- Besides the shea butter I have black soap in BARs, wrapped in plantain leaves. They have been insanely popular. I sold out of them a few weeks ago but I have about 1000 bars coming in the next shipment. Its real nice black soap with shea butter and its packaging is unique. No one else has this. I also am getting in to carved Drums, xylophones, other musical instruments, masks, palm oil, mango butter, coco butter and anything else that comes from Ghana.
Who helps you make your business work?
My website designer, Heather Noe, is an incredible and incredibly friendly person who can do anything with a website and printed material. I highly recommend her. My father is a great business man with a natural instinct for marketing and salesmanship, which luckily, seems to have rubbed off on me. He pushes me to work harder all the time and not to quit when it gets down or hard.
How do you market your products?
I have tried many different things for marketing. I have tried cold-email, which
works only a fraction of the time. Direct mail with free samples seems to work
-- it’s costly, but it has paid off for me. I make a nice intro letter and include a 2-3 oz sample of shea butter. I would take a bet and say a few people who are reading this have received a sample of my
shea! My website works well for me and I advertise
here at this fantastic Indie Beauty site and at the website for the Handcrafted
Soap Makers Guild.
What business tips can you offer to others wishing to start a business of their own?
Don’t get locked up too much with feasibility studies. Go with your gut. Business is hard. Life is hard. Getting out of bed is hard. Everything is hard. If you want easy, don’t ask me for advice, because I don’t know how to do easy things, but the payoff for hard work is that ear to ear smile that can only result from the satisfaction felt by making your business work. A business working is not just about the bottom line and your profit percentage. For me, to sell a single pound of shea butter because of my hard work is a great feeling. And I get excited over EVERY sale.
What book has been helpful to you as you have grown your business?
If I was going to push a business book it would be “The 4 hour work week” by Tim Ferriss. It's inspirational, educational and it’s a good read. I would also recommend QuickBooks as a tool.
This is Indie Candy, so if you were a brand of candy, what would
you be and why?
I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I love those chocolate covered peanut butter balls you can buy at fairs, I just want to crawl I inside of those and eat my way out!
What are your annual gross revenues?
My revenues are very low right now because I just really got started. I estimate I can do $100,000 in the next 12 months based on what I have sold, my new products coming in and because I want to. And that may be the key to business; you can’t just run a business or work at a business. You have to want it, you have to wake up with new ideas and fall asleep staring at your product and really want to make it work.
6. New At The Forum: Email Newsletter Bonanza and More!
New
At The Forum
Find answers, ask questions, and share your expertise with others on other hot topics of discussion, including:
Tips
for setting up a great trade show booth
Trademark tips for choosing a business name
How
to use a private blog to write your business plan
And don't forget our group coaching this Thursday night! We'll be reviewing and critiquing the most recent newsletter of Indie Beauty Network member Renee Deal of Deal Farm Soap! Get all the details here!
4-DAY BATH & BODY BOOT CAMP. Presented by The Nova Studio, Point Richmond, CA. The intensive covers 17 products, including lotions, body butters, sugar scrubs and perfume. Register here.
MAKING SOY CANDLES. With Joan Morais, Sonoma, CA. Everything you need to make soy candles using natural essential oils. Click to register.
ROCK YOUR ONLINE NEWSLETTER (IBN MEMBERS ONLY). Don't miss our last Email Newsletter Group Coaching session. We move onto Blogging For Business next week! Click for info.
Best & Success!!
Donna Maria
Editor, The Indie Experience
The Indie Beauty Network | www.indiebeauty.com
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2008 by The Indie Beauty Network (IBN) and Donna Maria. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized distribution or reproduction is prohibited. IBN does not necessarily endorse any product, event or ideology featured in The Indie Experience Newsletter or on IBN's website. All information is provided on an "as is" basis and no express or implied warranties are given. Any use of the information contained in the newsletter or at IBN's web site, including recipes, is solely at your own risk. IBN and Donna Maria disclaim any liability in connection with the use of all recipes, products reviewed and other information. Except for sponsorships, the newsletter refuses compensation from companies to feature or mention their names or products. Opinions expressed in any Product Review are personally those of the reviewer and do not represent the views of IBN, Donna Maria (unless she is the reviewer) or any other person or company.
