From my dining room window I can see grazing, the very cows that within minutes provide the milk for these soaps - still warm and frothy and completely natural. We toddle over with our basin, and toddle back to make the soap. Our thanks to the Farmers Meakin (Freeby) for providing the milk and Carl the herdsman for not even so much as blinking at our reasons for wanting it.
During my blog surfing, I found a relatively new small business blog from the UK, all about a company that makes soap. Heather Platts, of the company Eie Flud, has been blogging about their experiences setting up a shop, packaging their products, and creating soaps and perfumes. She’s also been blogging about her blog and her experiences in the blogosphere.
And she’s had some interesting experiences, including a brief appearance on the BBC radio program Shop Talk, in an interesting program about British business blogging. I highly recommend listening to the show. It’s up at the BBC site until Sept 13th, 2005, so hurry — especially if you want to hear the meaning of the company name!
Initially her posts were more about the business side, but occasionally she’d post something almost mouth-watering about the making of the soap, such as the one above, about using milk for a new line of soaps.
Now that’s the kind of market conversation the Cluetrain authors were talking about! Such detail as this speak volumes about the care and craftsmanship that go into Eie Flud’s products.
And see how she she describes a colleague’s new perfume:
…there is intrigue to this perfume. I wore it yesterday.
There is a hidden hint of citrus coming from somewhere at the beginning that is fleeting, which mixes with the ambra to have a gauzey effect over the floral heart which is sweet. However, unlike Maroc, this one metamorphs as you wear it - and as the sweetness settles there comes through a musk which is very appealing and very sexy.
She does more than just evoke in words its fragrance and experience; she again shows us how much she knows and cares about these things. In this way she builds confidence in her readers that her own products will be of the very best quality.
You can’t buy marketing like that — you can only create it in the authentic conversation of the market.
![email address: ctbizblogs [at] gmail.com](http://www.ctbizblogs.com/wp-images/email.png)
September 9th, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Dear Sabine
I’ve not yet had chance to go through your blog - but would like to thank you sincerely for this post,
because I think you are perhaps the first person outside of those I know - you actually seem to have
‘got’ what we are about and the reason for the blog.
I like to talk about Eie Flud - but this is about letting our customers - old or new, know about what we do and why
we do it. It isn’t just about soaping, or just about thinking up perfumes - its about actually running
a small business - I’m often not taken seriously as a business because the products are girly or cutesy
but the business is a business like any other - even something big and butch like ship building, will experience
the same kind of issues that we face at Eie Flud at some point in their existance.
They just won’t smell as good!!
Thank you - Heather
September 10th, 2005 at 10:30 am
Heather,
Thanks for the comments! I just love making serendipitous discoveries on the web, like your blog. I’ve learned a lot from reading it — not just about soaps, but about blogging as well. And about the Ooslum bird, with a little help from Google.
Plus, you use WordPress, as I do, so it’s interesting to see another template.
Keep it up, and good luck!
September 12th, 2005 at 10:08 am
[…] Some businesses, such as Eie Flud, (first mentioned in this post) have a website as well as a blog. But for some, such as CT BizBlogs, the blog is their website. […]
November 21st, 2005 at 10:32 am
[…] 2. Trackbacks Trackbacks are automated notifications that actually appear on the blog linked to — usually in the comments section or a special trackback area. In this case, the link back to you might happen right away. Some blogs do this automatically, or semi-automatically. For example, my WordPress blog will automatically send a trackback to any other WordPress blog I cite. You can see what this looks like on Heather’s Soap Blog for Eie Flud. That’s how Heather found out I mentioned her, and how she found me and left a comment on that post. […]