SAMPLE TIME!

Our sample bottles of liquid hand soap

Well, dear reader, today is a big day for us. Finally, after nine sample batches, we have a foaming hand soap we feel is superior quality, gentle, and moisturizing. Yes, I said nine batches. We made a few more after my last update. Although we thought the other batches were good and made progress, the soaps we made were too drying. Even with the addition of super lux oils, the soap was drying.

Once again, we went back to square one and again reformulated our recipe. Ultimately, one bib overall wearing genius had the idea that cracked the code on adding moisture to the liquid soap. We removed coconut oil from the recipe because it can be drying, although it has excellent cleansing abilities. We also removed the lard from the mix. Lard creates a substantial big bubbled lather, but it too can be drying. We replaced the coconut and lard with shea butter and added moisture-rich olive oil, and voila, a super creamy, moisturizing, foaming hand soap!

Yesterday, we rolled out our first samples to our phase one group. This phase is family and friends who we believe will give us honest, constructive criticism. I wanted to roll out phase two samples today because I have the patience of a gnat, but Eric is making me wait until we have some feedback from group one. Sigh. He can be a total killjoy.

Phase two will consist of local friends/soap family members who will give us honest, unbiased, constructive feedback. These are individuals who are within driving distance of the farm. Eric or I will be messaging you to make sure you want to participate before we just drop by and bombard you with soap products.

Our last and final stage will be our trusted friends and soap family members who have to have samples mailed to them. We want to make sure we are indeed on the right path with this product before we pay to ship it out. This, too, is The Bibbed Wonder’s wise, frugal, rational idea. If it were up to me, I would be mailing samples all over the country willy-nilly. Again, we will message you before we just mail you random bottles of liquid soap.

We are hoping for candid, detailed feedback, and I know my soap family will not disappoint. Unfortunately, we in Western Pennsylvania are bracing for more ice and freezing rain so that we won’t be delivering to our phase two friends until the weekend at the earliest. Eric and Mother Nature conspire to work against me and test my patience.

We are indeed making progress, dear reader. Keep your fingers crossed that this is the final batch. If not, we will continue to work diligently to provide you with amazing hand soap. As always, stay safe, be smart; I hope you are more patient than I am, and keep washing your hands.