Happy Birthday Little Shop!

Yes, a whole year old. One can hardly believe we've been trading from Portland Road for a whole year! It's seen so much in that year. 3 employees, an NVQ2 in Retail for Ben (AKA Butterman- long story), a leaky loo, scary shelving, snow chaos and unutterable stress, soap making at gone 3am, 3 complete shop changearounds and 2 new printers. We're not so good with those...



Since we've opened one thing is clear- shoppers (especially internet shoppers) love it. Funny that it's made the internet site busier than it's ever been, one customer commented that 'it gives you credibility, I feel safer knowing that you have a proper shop'. I'll be honest and say that if the shop was the sole source of income, we wouldn't still be trading today as the traffic past the shop is low (we've seen 3 competitors close down because if this), but with the strength of our well established website we're doing great things.

One of our biggest stumbling blocks has been our despatch times, something recently we've improved on and I personally am very proud of that. A combination of different working patterns and practice, more raw materials in stock at any given time, a slimmed down product range (though no-one has really noticed!) and better stocked shelves in the shop have made this happen. One cannot ignore either the massive improvement Fedex has made to our shipping times either! Of course, mistakes do happen when picking and packing, but we always like to think that we recify mistakes promptly. We're only human after all :)



One thing we do know- our customers make us fantastic. Just the other day I was sat on the bus and I overheard a lady literally hopping about telling her friend about our little shop. She was shouting our praises from the top of her lungs bless her, that sort of praise really does mean the world and it spurs me on to make bigger, better and funkier products.

Lets be honest, we're in a recession, we're all sick of hearing about coalition cuts, austerity measures blah blah blah, so lets make one thing better. Lets have a truly awesome bath time with fabulous scent, maybe some petals, glitter, a few bubbles (yes, I know, I need to make a wider variety of bubbly bath bombs- eyes peeled!) but ultimately lets do it without paying ridiculous prices! Handmade shouldn't mean rip-off, but it should mean great service, top quality and brilliant creativity and individuality.



We're celebrating a whole year of shop trading with a week of competitions, prizes and special offers for the most important people to us- YOU. And we're starting today. So, any orders placed today will go into a draw to win the cost of their order back, no minimum, no maximum. We'll refund it straight back the way you paid, and we'll pick the winner using random.org, a random number generator (it's very clever I must say!). Of course, T&C's apply, we'll add those at the end of our post, so the only thing left to say is Be Lucky!

Thanks for your support, at the end of it all I'm just a mum, raising her kids and making soap as a way to make ends meet and to satisfy my creative impulses. I had dreamed I would have a shop and a huge customer base, but like most dreams it can seem out of reach. Guts, imagination and a little craziness all helped the cause!

Sam x

Competition rules-
1-Valid for individual purchases on the 8th May 2011 (00:01am-23.59pm) only.
2-The winner will be generated randomly on the 9th May using the Sequence Generator at random.org. The first number in that sequence is the winner.
3-The winner will receive the cost of their order in full (including P+P) back via the way they paid.
4-There is no minimum or maximum order amount to qualify.
5-Not valid for Consultants, family or employees of The Soapy Cauldron.
6-Only one purchase will receive the refund, we cannot combine several orders from one customer.
7-A list of customer names and website order numbers (format A. Smith 715) and entry numbers will be added to the blog and our facebook page, winners will be published in the same manner.
I think thats it. Have fun!!