₦airaland Forum

...i want to thank those who have ordered for my product. For those who may want to place order, here is the deal; if you are within Isuikwuato-#1750 for 5 to 10 cartons. #1700 from 11 cartons upwards. For those within Umuahia and Okigwe- #1750 for 10 to 20 cartons and #1700 from 21 cartons up. Presently we don't have the capacity to take orders outside these places we mentioned but if you are outside those places you can still call for discussion and a possible special arrangement. Note, these prices are tentative and subject to change. Thank you.


We will continue our story today, so keep a date..

engrgordon:
Wow you are even my inlaw. can i visit your factory?

you are highly welcomed, just put a call across before coming.

QuitNotice:
Op, I am trying my hands on paper air freshener production, which is similar. I need your advice on how to market the product. Anyone else who has an idea can also help. The products is ready, but marketing is proving to be an insurmountable obstacle. Please reply

sorry my reply is coming late. I don't know much about this product and how you can market it, but i have given it a thought. The best bet is to market it as souvenir and campaign/advert stuffs. You can approach politicians to use it as a platform to enhance their campaign. You can also approach "about to wed" couples and those preparing for burial to use it as souvenirs. You can setup facebook page or an advert here to promote it. You can also approach all these printing press and gives them samples to advertise to those who come to print wedding and burial programmes as a souvenir. Promise them some good percentage of what ever business they bring to you. Thats what i think about this but if i take out time to study it, i may begin to see better marketing strategy. Goodluck as you try it.

henrymidas:
Great job. Please what did you add to that soap in the mold that makes it white.

nothing. It is the type of oil i used(PKO) that gave it that colour.

edoman2016:
Please, I want to ask if you run production daily in your factory or not?

i have not reached full capacity hence i don't run production daily. Check my previous post up in this page.

on Thursday last week, I got 25L for 6500, price is actually crashing

so back to where we stopped.

...after my short period at IEA, I took the remaining time of my IT to go for electrical installation training. Fast forward to 2016, after I have picked interest in soap making, I started learning about soap making. I sourced for articles and videos, online and offline. there are too many of them, I read a lot and watched a lot of youtube videos. I started trying out some formulations/recipes. Funny enough, I never tried out any soap production even before I started getting my machines. I just believed so much in the business that I felt whatever I needed to know will be learnt when the time comes. My instinct was actually leading me. So I didn't try out soap making first, it came later after I have gotten my plodder, cutting table and boiler. By then, I have gathered a lot of information and ideas about soap making. So I had to try it out because I needed to test my machines, especially the plodder.

By the end of 2016, I thought to myself, "I need to go learn industrial or large scale soap making". I made contacts both online and offline but no one was really going to help even when I offered to pay. There are two people I discovered here in this forum. I reached out to one but anytime I bring up the idea to visit his factory, he will shy away and change the topic. The second person, I never got to speak with him. He never replied my DMs and quotes. I trailed him, put a face to his moniker and got him on Facebook, still no reply. I spread my tentacles and contacted his brother his brother, but he couldn't help me with his number. I even got the address of his factory and it was close oh but I decided not to go search for him physically because I needed his consent before barging into him. I just gave up and started thinking of another strategy to learn.

But I wonder oh, why will people not want to teach others, even for a fee. It is not even as though soap making is a secret. At least two people from this forum have visited me in my factory, I don't see any big deal there.

picture 1: testing my plodder after making my first soap.
picture 2: trying out more soap making using different recipes/formulation. Notice the difference in colour. one was made transparent.
Picture 3: trying out more soap making

Grupo:
Please, one last question before we stop talking about money.

You mentioned that your salary has been taken care of. I don't understand that, who is taking care of your salary?

Like I said earlier, I pay for labour and it is captured in the total cost of production. That labour also includes mine. I don't include labour for running around to find market, its the sacrifice I have to make to help my business. In summary, I pay myself for production only and none for marketing. There are more sacrifices I make, I may mention them as we go...

EMMAACHILE:
In soap business, your best bet is to go for luxury soap production just like sebamed. Sebamed may be an overkill as an example but I learnt from a seminar that luxury medicated soaps gives the most margins as some can sell as high as a N1000-N3000 per tablet.

The soap targets babies, toddlers, adults and cures plenty skin diseases. A replica like that can be added to your production to help in profit margins.

I have an uncle who has runs a small provision store in the interior part of his village. He sells small and cheap items like small sachet milk, small sachet beverage, Lipton etc. You should have the picture of what I mean. So one day I visited him only to discover that another young guy has opened beside him. This guy's shop is very big and you can take it to be a mini "super market". I was worried that my uncle will soon pack up. My uncle was not worried, he told me that the big shop will close up and his own will still be there. I wondered how possible that will be. So after some time I visited my uncle again as usual and discovered that the big shop is down. I asked my uncle why the shop was closed, he said the guy have moved to another location, and that nobody will come to this interior village to sell expensive items and make it. How can you stock your shop with big sizes of tin milk and beverage, big big size of tissues (when the villagers mostly use pit toilet and paper), etc It doesn't work like that, you need to also have a view of what your customers can afford before you venture. Take a look at " Peak milk and cowbell milk" (why am i even using milk milk for examples, it seems I like milk, ). Now when cowbell came into the market, Peak was there with big sizes but cowbell went for smaller size of products, and today Peak have joined the chorus and cowbell have captured a huge market share. Peak was for high class, cowbell came for the low class. The low class was, I don't know if they are still, higher than the high class. Understanding your customers base helps in the choice of product to start with.

The consumer base for that kind of soap you are talking about is small compared to the ordinary soap, at least in my primary market zone. And most importantly, that soap is more or less a "drug" than a soap. However I have plans to move into multipurpose, toilet and beauty soap(not like the one you mentioned up there) with time. In the course of telling how I learnt soap making, I think I will capture those kinds of soaps if questions about them arise. So lets keep a date.

Great500:
Ihart I think the profit margin for now is not really much...though I know you are looking @ the over all profit... don't you think making the soap a bit bigger...will help you price it better?...Just a thought though...

Very good. Yes, making it bigger does affect the profit per one and subsequently the overall profit. Plodding a bigger size is faster and saves cost on diesel and labour. But there is what we call consumer poverty. I learnt that from the MD of a soap factory I worked in Awka, Anambra state, The Coopers. Queried why he was selling more of the small soaps, the MD made me to understand that due to the hardship in the country, consumer tend to buy what they can afford and use up at any given time even if it is more expensive on a long run. Take for instance, a peasant farmer who loves to take tea will prefer to buy 1 sachet of milk for #30 every day than to buy a big sachet for #800 naira. But actually, if you check the quantity of the #30 sachet that will give you that of #800, you will discover the consumer is paying more for less. The same thing applies for soap depending on your location. in my location, consumer are mostly low income earners, they prefer to buy the small soap once they want to wash than buying the big one. But do you know the good news? my sub distributors are now demanding for the big ones. Seems we are now getting out of recession?

So today, I took out time to design the eyelet for big size, and its cool.

You see why I didn't want to go into the "money" aspect of the business, it will make me to leave the story half done. Please I will want ti continue with my story telling. later we can come back to this.

pictures coming soon.

Great500:
hmmm...well, if you buy a carton @ 1,800 and sell @ 50 naira...meaning you will make 3,200 as profit....a carton contains 100tablets according to Ihart.Ihart what do you think about this analysis

Any soap of this type and size in the market is sold @ #25 per one at retail price and in some cases #30 (mostly by retailers in very remote areas) another thing affect the retail price. Mostly retailers buy from sub distributors. I showed okeytus one lady in our village market that buys 5 cartons every week. She is more or less like a sub distributor. She buys from me at #1800 and sells to the retailers at #2100, she also sells retail too. She makes about #1500 from my soap every week, the retailer that buys from her makes about #400 per week (it takes long for the retailers to finish their stock than the sub distributors). And I currently have five sub distributors I give between 5 to 10 cartons every week bringing my average sell per week to 25 carton. if I make an average of 200 per carton, in a week it amounts to #5000. Remember, my salary have been taken care of, this is just the net profit and I am flinging it back into the business. So in actual sense who is making more money and who is working for who?

Grupo:
So, if I'm a retailer and decides to sell each tablet for ₦50 which is still fair, it means I would make ₦5,000 on one carton.

If this my analysis is true, it means you are working for retailers then.

retailers sell two tablets for #50, i.e #25 for one. Actually, a retailer makes more profit per soap but I make more money overall because I sell to many retailers. it can take some retailers one week to finish a carton while presently I can sell as much as 20 to 30 cartons in a week.

can we see some pictures of your light packaging boxes?

EMMAACHILE:
That means he has not even started production! What's hard for him to answer? Let him take his time like Mr Buhari.
I have ran enterprises and I can give you an average for any of them.

Relax, I am not avoiding the question, but I want to take things easy because I feel that answering your question outrightly may not make us to appreciate the "money" part of the business. But I am happy you have ran enterprises, so I will give you an old man's tale that can help you figure out the ROI.

here comes the tale; I have a proposed annual capacity of 60 tonnes, that is to say that I will target 5 tonnes/month. Note: the installed capacity is actually above 5 tonnes/month. I targeted to start operation at 30% (1.5 tonne/month), unfortunately I started at ~10% (475kg). To achieve that, I spend #172, 020 (including raw materials, labour, power and transport) and it gives me a total of 110 cartons containing 100 pieces each excluding offcuts. That is to say that I spend about #1563 to produce one carton, #15.63 per tablet. On a wholesale, I sell #1750 and #1800 per carton depending on negotiation and quantity demanded. On an average, I make #200 per carton. Now let met give you an assignment, deduce the ROI.

I lease gen (a 40kva generator), though I have "NEPA" I am yet to use it in production. I hire labour on contract. Any time I want to run production, I call in three more hands and I pay each #2000/day. I actually run that ~10% in a day. That is to say that my cost of production can still come down when i reach a full/regular operation as i will employ factory workers on a full time basis, paying them like #15000/month thus bringing down their salary to as low as #500/day. More so, by that time I would have integrated "NEPA" into the business. That will further bring down my cost of production and increase my profit and the ROI.

okeytus, can you please gist us your experience when you visited the factory yesterday? we will be glad to hear it

lexdino


You may love to read and follow this story: https://www.nairaland.com/4442304/how-started-soap-making-business

I am sorry for being absent for some days now. Unfortunately "I collected small ban". I tried to open a new account to address some rising issues but it turned out that I can't use it until after some weeks. I decided to wait for the ban to expire. So I am back. EMMAACHILE, Ogakazeem, Great500 and Others, I am back. Akwaidara, I am yet to see you here. Where are you

igbozionism:
nairaland has gone to the dogs. how can the mods move unverified news like this to front page? I can't actually talk for pensioners but my father is an active worker in the state ministry of education and he receives his salary when due. there is no case of owing for now.

pls mods some people here are political jobbers and it will be wrong for you to give them the audience for their propaganda.




stop saying what you don't know. t a is the worst governor in abia state but one thing he didn't joke with is workers salary. pls stop spreading false information based on here say here say. I live in aba but currently schooling in owerri. so I know things happening in abia cuz that is where my family resides

Guy, you are lying. My mother is being owed 9 months pensions and her gratuity!

shit, I know this man. He is a distributor in Okigwe, an astute business man

did I read "two wives'? case closed!

I never knew Deeper Life people dey do fraud too


my friends at https://www.nairaland.com/4442304/how-started-soap-making-business please chill. Don't set the house on fire, I will return after my ban. It expires on the 14th. Pass the message to others. New people are welcomed, go check out the story going on. Thank you

jnfoage:
Today is 12 April 18

hahahahahaha hahahahahaha oh, I never knew oh. I was thinking today is 14. I can't stop laughing. hahahahahaha, Thank you for pointing it out. so let me go and rest and wait until 14.

I was banned yesterday for making a post in one of my thread here. one ban has been lifted and another one that was due by 3.55pm today have not been lifted, and it is already 7.35pm. Please the people in charge of banning should unban me so that I can go quench the fire that wants to start in my thread.



*Modified
oh, sorry. I thought today is 14th. So let me go and rest until 14th

HappyScent:
Pls ur contact or email so we can reach u privately

07066705594

...I managed to setup the factory. Now I can ease a sigh of relief. Its time to start production. I procured other necessary things; weighing scales, hydrometer, caustic dissolution container, oil bleaching container, cartons, oils, caustic, etc... Before we talk about my first production. let us take out some time to see how I learnt soap making.


My journey into soap making could be traced back to 2009 when I did my Industrial training (IT). I was opportune to secure an IT place in a soap making firm, International Equitable Association, No 1 Nicolas Rd, off Brass Junction, Aba, Abia State. The company produced the famous "Truck Soap". Unfortunately my training was short lived as the firm faced a deadly management war that saw it being shut down. I don't know if they ever resumed operation.

Chai, RIP to the dead.

izzou:


FOCUS

That should be your watchword bro

You came for your phone and he asked you to order something. The business of the day is to get your phone, not to eat.

Focus bro. Focus

I don laugh tire. Focus bro. Focus! hahahaha

Franklyspeakin:
is your factory in umuahia i would love to put your product in my super market

please I am still waiting to hear from you. Thank you.

... the machines, the starters, everything is now ready. What was now left was to install them, do electrical wirings and connect everything to source of power and then test run the factory. I did that too.

hahahaha, I remember one funny thing that happened. I hired a local electrician to come assist me in the wiring. When we starter laying the cables, the guy kept complaining that what I was doing was wrong. I just instructed him to do as I told him. At a point the dude wanted to leave the job, but since I was going to pay him, he stayed till we completed the job. He was just complaining that everything will blow up. He insisted I pay him before I test the wiring. So I paid him and he ran away. He didn't want to witness the catastrophic blowup that will happen. hahahahahaha. I tested my thing and everything worked well. I was happy my factory was set for operation. So what was this guy's fear? This electrician is not used to industrial wiring where you have to take three live lines (three phase) into the machines. He is just good at domestic wiring, one live and neutral. lol. Me too, I never knew that there is a kind of wiring where you will have to take three live lines into a machine. During the period of my IT back in 2009, I took out time to go learn electrical installation. We did surface and conduit wiring of buildings and never did this three phase wiring before i went back to school. I learnt the three phase wiring in my previous place of work and then subsequent soap factories I visited. In my previous place of work (a pharmaceutical firm), the Engr was a difficult person. when there is fault, especially an electrical one, he won't come to fix it. If you shout at him, he will shutdown the factory. If you hand him a sack letter, the MD will wage in and ask you if you will be able to get another Engr that can take what he is being paid and do the job he is doing. He only went to a technical school, i don't even know if he has an SSCE. He always complained that he is under paid, but who is not under paid in the firm? I was the Manager but I couldn't deal with this Engr. The Engr was literarily controlling the MD somehow. So I decided to sideline him in my duty and that turned to be a blessing in disguise. When it was time for maintenance or there is fault that needs an Engr, I will report straight to the MD and an external Engr will be contracted. Engrs usually come down from Lagos every two weeks to do maintenance and repair works but our own Engr wouldn't want to work with this contract Engrs to learn, even if it is just maintenance work. So I took it upon myself to always stay around and watch those Engrs any time they were around. I followed them up, asked questions and jotted down things. At my free time, I usually go back to study what they did, follow the electrical lines, check the replaced mechanical parts, dismantle and reassemble machines just to understand their working principles. After about two months, I took over every maintenance and repair works in the firm. After about another month, our MD called the supervisor to inquire why we haven't had the need to call in a contract Engr. She told him that I was now doing the maintenance and repair myself. The MD was astonished. He was like, he is doing the electrical and mechanical... and the supervisor was like; everything, I mean everything Sir! The next day my MD personally handed the Engr his sack letter. So the stubbornness of our Engr offered me the opportunity to learn the rudiments of industrial wiring and also learn the working principles behind every machine we had.

Today I am using every skill I learnt to my own advantage. Try to learn anything you can, even if it means learning just to do other people's job. You may need the skills tomorrow.


Picture : electrical wiring ongoing

EMMAACHILE:
This your project looks like a DIY (do it yourself) project. There should easier and simpler ways to install a soap making factory.

Exactly, it is a DIY project. The major reason behind doing it myself is to reduce cost as I had limited fund. Take for instance, the least i got for Star delta starter was #50 000 but i did it myself at #26 000. If I tell you the price difference between the least I was charged and what I actually spent for the machines, you will scream down the earth. Are you getting the gist now?

The next stage was to build starters for this machines. Starters are switches used to control the machines. These starters are not just ordinary switch. There two major starter I built, the "Direct Online starter"(DOL) and "Star Delta starter". The DOL are used on machines with electric motors of lower HP mostly below 10HP while the star delta are suitable for electric motors above 10HP. However I have seem factories use DOL on 30HP motors. You can google about these starters to know why, how and where each one is used.

All these while I was doing this, the internet has been my tight friend. YouTube was where I watched and learnt whatever I needed to do. Everything is just there. So I got several videos from youtube on how to build starters. I also got articles and books from the internet. I made a schematic drawing of these starters, listed the items I needed and headed to the market to pick them.

picture 1: in the market getting the necessary components of the starters
picture 2: Back in the factory, ready to build the DOLs
picture 3: the DOL almost completed
picture 4: building the star delta starter.