Soapmakers Clean Up
​
Brothers manufacture private label and custom soaps that 'dance until the last bubble'
​
By Celene Adams
Tucked unobtrusively behind a bank of office buildings in Albuquerque's Northeast Heights, Sandia Soap would be near impossible to find were it not for the scent of lavender, sage, lilac and eucalyptus that emanates from the building in a fragrant cloud.
Inside, founder Chris Norton sits among the 6,000 pounds of colorful, five-and-a-half-ounce soaps that he and his brother, Mike, hand make each year to sell nationwide.
Although Norton started the business as a hobby six years ago, making 80 bars a night from his kitchen and selling about $3,000 worth per year, he now sells 40,000 bars annually and projects gross revenues of $165,000 this year. That's an increase of almost $100,000 since we last covered the enterprising Norton in 2002, when he was the company's sole employee and was selling about 24,000 bars a year.
It was while buying his then girlfriend a book about candle-making that Norton, then a surgical equipment technician, noticed a book about soap making. He took it home and "got hooked," spending the next six months experimenting with different kinds of oils.
Yet, despite his efforts, the soap always turned out either too soft, too hard or "just didn't have the right texture."
But then Norton learned to turn his duds into suds. La Montanita Food Co-op and Kellers Farm Stores were his first customers after he discovered the formula he uses today to create his "exceptional soap, with a rich lather, long life, silky texture and a scent that dances until the last bubble."
That is, at least, the way he describes it. The fact is, all soap is made from water and sodium hydroxide. But the difference in his soaps, Norton says, is that they contain between 25 to 35 percent glycerin, a byproduct of the soap-making process. Glycerin is "sort of like the cream on milk," Norton says. "It draws moisture."
Most large soap manufacturers, he says, remove the glycerin and replace it with detergent because they also sell moisturizers. But if a soap contains a high percentage of glycerin, moisturizers are not always necessary. "They'll sell you the soap that dries your skin out and then they'll sell you the moisturizer," Norton says, adding that his soap is so lubricated he uses it to shave his head.
Commercial soap also contains animal fat. It's "their number one ingredient," says Norton, who instead uses palm kernel, olive and soybean oils.
Sandia Soap also uses cold processing rather than the more conventional heating process to combine ingredients. "If you do a hot process, the essential oils and fragrances could be weakened," Norton says.
He uses 17 essences: sandalwood, lemongrass, plum and papaya among others. While he buys the vegetable oils in New Mexico, the essential oils are either too expensive or unavailable in-state, Norton says. Sage, for example, is available here, but it costs $300 per pound compared to $32 per pound from Indiana.
The oils are what make the soaps so popular, Norton says, because the scent draws customers. "People walk by and they ask what that smell is." In fact, the scents are so appealing Norton refers to them as "flavors," believing that the word is more evocative than "scent."
While none of the soaps are edible, with their creamy appearance, delicate swirl of colors and divine aromas, it's easy to wish they were. Indeed, Norton says he's caught people taking bites out of the soap in health food stores. (Paradoxically, he's had to discontinue several soaps such as olive, oatmeal and goats milk, because they didn't sell.)
The fragrance also lures would-be customers to his warehouse where they try to buy soap, he says. He does not, however, sell from the premises. Instead, he sells to 182 gift stores, health food stores and custom buyers, most of which are in New Mexico, although he also has numerous distributors in Arizona and Colorado, as well as nationwide.
"We're lucky. We don't need people to walk through our door. We have other stores sell our soaps six to seven days a week," Norton says.
Of these, 35 percent are gift stores, 25 percent are health food retailers, and the remainder are custom buyers -- spas, hotels, airports and resorts that buy the soaps, re-label them and then re-sell them.
Companies that produce lines of similar products, such as creams and bath oils but that lack a complementary soap also make custom orders.
The custom buyers specify the oils, colors and styles of soap they want and often provide the supplies to Sandia Soap themselves. "There [are] companies that sell everything around one fragrance. [For example,] sage body wash, sage lotions, sage candles, maybe clothes made out of sage. The soap is the one thing they're missing," Norton says.
The Hyatt Regency's Tamaya Resort and Spa and Japanese spa Ten Thousand Waves, for instance, both order custom soaps, Norton says.
Norton acquired most of his business by pounding the pavement -- visiting retailers himself to establish relationships and generate orders.
"That's one thing that I probably would have done differently. I would have hired sales reps. It's impossible to keep track and have a personal relationship with every account when you're the manufacturer and the distributor. It's really hard to make the phone calls and a lot of times the stores like to see people in person," Norton says.
Increasing the efficiency of Sandia Soap's operations is paramount among Norton's priorities. The former biathalon competitor is near obsessed with making his processes as streamlined as possible.
Consequently, he's designed and built molds that have enabled him and his brother to move from making 16-pound blocks in two-and-a-half hours to making $3,000, 32-pound blocks of soap in 10 minutes.
Similarly, his labeling process has undergone four revisions, starting out as recycled denim, moving to a handmade label that covered the entire bar of soap, to a label that partially exposes the soap so that customers can smell it when they walk into a store.
While currently the Norton brothers cut each block several times manually with a wire, they will soon buy an automatic press that will slice the blocks into individual bars with the touch of a button. The manual cutting process enables them to cut batches of 1,500 pounds, or 3,600 bars, twice a month, in eight hours. The new press will cut 1,500-pound batches in two hours.
The improved procedures have enabled Sandia Soap to grow business 200 percent in the past four years, two of which Norton only worked part time at the business into which he'd initially invested about $20,000 over three years.
Now, the company is expanding, having just launched High Desert Essentials -- a line of new products such as incense, "body butter," a fragrant spray for one's home and/or car, and four soaps made from the essences of desert plants -- pi�on, juniper, sage and cedar mixed with sweet grass and oak moss.
Norton also plans to hire sales representatives in Texas, California and the northeast coast.
"By the end of next year, we're shooting to do a quarter million," he says.
Ahh. The sweet, clean smell of success.
​