Those darn Restraints and Sabbaticals!
See guys! It's not just the BSTs that suffer at the beginning of the year! We need to do our part to help out our vendors too.....
Just Say No
to
Restraints
and
Sabbaticals
to
Restraints
and
Sabbaticals
The Shaving Cadre
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Price Break Point
- Thread starter Bogeyman
- Start date
See guys! It's not just the BSTs that suffer at the beginning of the year! We need to do our part to help out our vendors too.....
mrdoug
"TSC's Shave Sales Deal Finder"
I for one am very glad to read your post. I'd think you were way out of touch if you didn't know it's universally thought that Stirling is among the best deals in wet shaving. I think that is what drives the sales. New people to the hobby are often told, "go try Stirling it's great soap, great selection, at the best prices". That's good for you, and because your soap is a quality product, it's good for the "industry".Leap of faith is the perfect term for starting your own small business. Looking back to October of 2013 when I left the Army and Mandy and I decided to do this full time instead of just as a hobby, I'm blown away by how far it has come. It's still frightening at times (Especially for the first two and a half months of every year when sales are extremely slow), but it's worth every headache and extra hour spent working. Mandy is literally 3 feet from me all day, and my 7 year old is 10 feet away at his desk doing his schoolwork. Here after lunch when he's done we're going to take a break and go to the batting cage and I'll pitch to him for 45 minutes. We wouldn't be able to do that if I were still in the Army or Mandy was still working in IT. With how we price our products, Stirling Soap will never make us rich. That's fine. We live a comfortable life and we now have employees who are across the board in a better situation financially with us than they were at their previous place of employment. 100% of them. We take care of them and they take care of us. That makes me feel good at the end of the day.
I do see some soaps that make me raise my eyebrows at the pricing, but ultimately it's up to each business owner to decide how to price something, and up to the customer to decide if they are willing to pay that. No need for angst as none of us are forced to buy a single product. FOMO only affects you if you allow it to. We probably should charge more. Mandy wants to charge more. We've had customers ask why we don't charge more. I'm fine with our pricing. As a wetshaving consumer I'd pay what is being charged for Stirling Soap. I'm not a spendthrift, but I'm also not given to excessive spending. So that's kind of where our pricing model comes from. We do also have the benefit of being in a poor rural area, so our cost of doing business is much lower than a business trying to survive in higher priced areas.
Selfishly, I say let the other prices keep rising. That will just make my products a bit more attractive to some.
Now, I'm not staying you have a voodoo witch doctor on staff as an accountant... But it can't be out of the realm of possibly, right? [emoji1787]
A new trend for the TSC? Buy what you didn't get for Christmas January!
Loved what you had to say there. It is amazing and wonderful that The Stirling brand has been able to do so much for so many people.Leap of faith is the perfect term for starting your own small business. Looking back to October of 2013 when I left the Army and Mandy and I decided to do this full time instead of just as a hobby, I'm blown away by how far it has come. It's still frightening at times (Especially for the first two and a half months of every year when sales are extremely slow), but it's worth every headache and extra hour spent working. Mandy is literally 3 feet from me all day, and my 7 year old is 10 feet away at his desk doing his schoolwork. Here after lunch when he's done we're going to take a break and go to the batting cage and I'll pitch to him for 45 minutes. We wouldn't be able to do that if I were still in the Army or Mandy was still working in IT. With how we price our products, Stirling Soap will never make us rich. That's fine. We live a comfortable life and we now have employees who are across the board in a better situation financially with us than they were at their previous place of employment. 100% of them. We take care of them and they take care of us. That makes me feel good at the end of the day.
I do see some soaps that make me raise my eyebrows at the pricing, but ultimately it's up to each business owner to decide how to price something, and up to the customer to decide if they are willing to pay that. No need for angst as none of us are forced to buy a single product. FOMO only affects you if you allow it to. We probably should charge more. Mandy wants to charge more. We've had customers ask why we don't charge more. I'm fine with our pricing. As a wetshaving consumer I'd pay what is being charged for Stirling Soap. I'm not a spendthrift, but I'm also not given to excessive spending. So that's kind of where our pricing model comes from. We do also have the benefit of being in a poor rural area, so our cost of doing business is much lower than a business trying to survive in higher priced areas.
Selfishly, I say let the other prices keep rising. That will just make my products a bit more attractive to some.
mrdoug
"TSC's Shave Sales Deal Finder"
Personally, I don't mind a soap that has some moisturizers... at least as compared to something completely drying.Let it be said that we all agree to let capitalism & the free market decide whether a soap makes it or not as in the end that is the great arbiter.
Now back to something far less controversial. Have I told you how I feel about PSF? [emoji90]
Yes, I use an aftershave which gives me a good post shave feel. But I also use good soaps that provide at least a modicum of moisturizing.
Isn't there a correlation between PSF and soaps that moisturize during the shave? If it's lacking all those butters, creams, whatever... Isn't it more likely to be a rough shave?
I'm not a chemist, scientist, whatever... So this is all hypothesis. I'm sure some of our soap makers (@CBLindsay , @Dragonsbeard , etc.) Could weight in better.
Just a thought...
mrdoug
"TSC's Shave Sales Deal Finder"
I hear ya. But, since it had been tossed around in the thread, it got me thinking. I do wonder if there's a correlation, or if their different butters or oils or ???I meant that tongue in cheek so to speak.
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
Post Shave Feel is VERY important. If I don't have it, it means that I have probably severed some nerves in my jaw 
I have a feeling this thread has either accomplished what it set out to do ...or could expand exponentially in a multitude of ways. Let me test the waters.
As a guy who has a product for sale, one which I’ve gone through a certain amount of effort to develop, produce, package, make available, market in some way, sell/exchange $ for, then ship ...all the while watching everyone I have done business with make a profit with in order to do all of that, dont I get to make a profit that is proportional to theirs? Again, as the guy selling the stuff, when I fill an order and the USPS is getting more than I am ...does that sound like a good deal for ME? The guy buying the stuff is getting a product that took hours of my time (time I could have spent with my family or working at my other job) and the postal service gets more than I do. This is both the beauty and the the beast that is small business and why small business is SO important to the economy.
So (putting on the big boy OWNER/MODERATOR hat for a minute) recognizing how difficult the business of artisan soap making IS, it is important that the forum community here and elsewhere be mindful of those difficulties and embrace the fact that, at least here at The Shaving Cadre, we encourage communication between artisans and the community. Like any business, there is an expectation of value, quality and service. It is incumbent on the artisan to establish a price point for their items that is supported by the market, if they do not they won’t sell much and will either adjust their prices or go out of business...that’s how it works. If YOU (the individual) don’t like the price please DO NOT start a thread saying “Artisan X is so exploitive deleted expensive, who do they think they are...”. Take advantage of your ability to contact the artisans directly to discuss pricing, ask them about their product and how they arrive at their prices. If you have tried a product and don’t see the value, choose your words carefully when doing reviews, if your beef is purely price point say so but let the artisan know what price you would pay ...AND IF THEY DROP THE PRICE GO BACK AND BUT IT. If you don’t like the product, say spin your reviews but tell us why not just that you didn’t like the price or the packaging etc.
...taking off the big boy hat but holding it in my hands because it just feels right. I am in awe of those artisans that take the leap and go all-in. The ones that quit ‘real jobs’ that pay big dollars to make and sell soap. In many ways they have become free and that is super cool but it’s still something to acknowledge. We have 2 artisans here on the Cadre that are full time totally dedicated soap makers (which means they single handedly keep the postal service in business) @LNHC and @Joe Hackett . So seriously, next time you see someone posting some petty complaint about one of their soaps consider the amount of work these two do everyday so you and I can buy a tub of soap from them when we feel like it (and give the USPS a little more $).
Everything that Chris said is true plus you might also want to take into account the artisan actually paying themselves a wage. You don't put your heart and passion into creating/working and expect to earn just enough money to cover the cost of the product and the expense of running a business, you expect some payment for yourself wouldn't you. Just remember that when you purchase from smaller artisan businesses.
woodpusher
TSC’s International Man of Meh
Yup, small business owners give a LOT more of themselves than just about any of us who have "normal" jobs (i.e. you work regular, you expect a regular paycheck of $xxxx). My parents had a convenience store when I was growing up and it was 7-days a week, about 18-hours a day between the two of them. I think all they got out of it was cheaper groceries.
That's a BIG reason why I support small business when given the choice.
That's a BIG reason why I support small business when given the choice.
I'm with you on this 100%. My grandparents owned a small convenience store in Hackett, Arkansas, right on the Oklahoma border for years. It really was an all day, every day job. It didn't bring in enough money to have employees. It only worked financially if they were the employees and ran everything. That definitely meant long hours for them, shoestring budgets, and days off meant that there just wasn't any money coming into the store that day. If my mom needed them to watch us kids, it meant sometimes we would be sitting at the store while they worked (which wasn't a bad deal to me because it meant I could get a piece of candy if I stayed quiet and didn't get into trouble). It supported them though, and their money stayed in the community. Big difference between that and a chain gas station/convenience store that pays the employees minimum wage and then all the profits leave the community. I'm not saying chains are inherently bad. But if all of your businesses are owned by outside entities, the end result will always be an outflow of cash and the community slowly deteriorating.
I'll jump off my soapbox now, as I know the topic of the thread was the price of soaps and I don't want to derail it further.
