North Carolina – Coastal Carolina Soap Blog

Anticipating the Thaw

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, are not from the U.S., or have no access to outside news, you know that the better part of the East Coast has been dealing with way sub-freezing temperatures, snow, and ice. Even Florida saw wintry weather, and they almost never get yucky winter weather! Here in coastal North Carolina, we got ice and snow. That in and of itself isn’t really remarkable; it’s certainly not the first snowstorm we’ve gotten since we’ve lived here. A layer of ice then snow usually brings some widespread power outages – around 24 hours of no electricity and quality family time. This is followed by a day of full sun and 55 degrees to bring on the melting.

That didn’t happen this time. We got a little icy precipitation and we were supposed to get 1-3″ of snow. We got more like 6″ of snow. And we have yet to see temperatures climb to 40, let alone the coveted 55.

snow picture — A section of our backyard on Thursday morning.

On the plus side, we didn’t lose electricity, for which we are grateful. This snow has been hanging out since Wednesday night, and it was beautiful. Thursday, it was brutally cold and we enjoyed some time playing in it. Friday was still very cold, and the girls enjoyed throwing snowballs at the house. Today, colder still. Tomorrow promises more of the same, and lows are staying in the teens, so the ice isn’t going away very quickly. But… Monday’s coming!

As I looked at the weather forecast on my phone and felt the delirious excitement of what’s to come, I remembered this episode of Northern Exposure. You may remember this dramedy from the early 90s about a young New York doctor sent to a small town of quirky residents in Alaska to help pay off his med school loan. In this one particular episode, as the days begin to get longer, the residents are excited and planning a huge celebration. At last, the long darkness of winter is over!

That’s me as I think about this coming week. The temperatures will rise and the snow will melt completely. I will be free to leave our property safely to run errands and take care of business for the first time since New Year’s Day. I’m almost giddy with excitement! Me, who spent so much time in December bemoaning how busy I was with all the running around! I get to run errands and spend over an hour in grueling torment at Dance2Fit. Yes, it’ll be glorious!

The week has brought ministers snow surfing; teens, kids, and adults playing in snow; snow people; snow angels; snowball fights; widely impassible roads; and many school and business closures. Even our church is planning its first web-worship, live on Facebook. It’s also brought salty waves kissing snow-laden beaches and eerily desolate footprints on an empty, snowy pier. The week made a liar out of me again, as I’d told my oldest when we moved down here that we probably wouldn’t see snow much anymore.

These are the trials and joys of living at the beach. Snow here is pretty unusual, so the excitement of “just a snow day” ramps up exponentially. But just like spring’s rains and summer’s heat, too much of a good thing makes it less of a good thing, and we’re ready for the thaw and the promised 70 degrees of later this week.

The time stuck inside being warm has made it easy for me to move on my soap restocking. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook to see what we’re brewing up that’s new and awesome. And I’d love for you to join our Facebook group for the first peek at new products and the first tidbits of news from Coastal Carolina Soap Co.

Making the Change, pt. 3

You can read the first part of this saga here, and the second part here.

I was sitting at the beach, and I’d lucked out on a bench swing overlooking the ocean. The air was nippy (it was April), the water was a beautiful greenish blue, the sky was a crystal clear gradient blue, and the wind whispered through the sea oats on the dunes. I closed my eyes and allowed my other senses to study my environment. My mind went back to countless beach days – warm beach, friendly kids for the girls to play with, sand in the bathing suit (hey, it happens), sunscreen. And there it was. I would make soaps that capture by scent my memories and associations of various North Carolina beaches, and this would be my niche.

I already had been making one soap, Crystal Coast Morning, that was inspired by wonderful memories of waking up at Emerald Isle in the late autumn (think early December) when the air is clean and brisk and the beach is silent but for the waves and breezes. Kure Beach is kissed with a bit of sunscreen and a little sand. Outer Banks is wild and primitive – sudden storms, cedar-sided houses, the ghosts of pirates. And Ocean Isle has a hint of fruity drink (with an umbrella, of course) served ocean-side.

These four soaps form the heart of my new niche. A surprise gift of 5 pounds of Bolivian pink sand were the inspiration behind a new type of salt scrub, also in these fabulous scents (though, being a “man scent,” Outer Banks isn’t yet available in salt scrub). You know how your skin feels after you’ve been at the beach? That fine layer of sand exfoliates your skin as you wash it off. Then you wash off all the sunscreen and salt, slathering on the lotion afterwards, and you feel sun-kissed, moisturized, and completely luxurious. That’s what Bolivian Pink Sea Salt Scrub does for your skin.

From my niche came my conception of my ideal customer. It was the oddest thing. I was transferring soaps from table to rack late one night before bed, and I started talking to her in my mind. In a flash, my ideal customer came to me, and I knew everything about her. Experts put out worksheets to help businesses identify their ideal customer, but I kept getting stuck when I’d do them. Apparently, though, at 11:00 while I’m doing mindless tasks, I can come up with lots.

Anyway, moving on… (I just get really excited about my new products, if you couldn’t tell!) We’re moving forward on this rebrand, right? I had the blessing of 1 1/2 weeks without the girls to make products, take pictures, talk to my web developer. Things were looking good! I would take a few pictures a day as soaps cured and were close to being ready for sale. My web developer and I worked hard, troubleshooting and setting things in place. The launch date was 1 June, and I was trusting him to be working his coding magic behind the scenes while I dealt with the front-end and administrative tasks.

Then another one of those screeching halts came at the end of May. My husband and I both lost two people close to us – his mentor/friend and my grandmother. My work time was then pushed into traveling, and I pushed the launch for the following Monday, giving us the weekend for final tweaks and adjustments. I wasn’t hearing anything much from my developer, so I took deep breaths and trusted that all was going fine on his end. Then Monday comes. And Monday goes. No website, and nothing at all from my developer. It’s like he’d dropped off the face of the earth. Panic ensued. If this site was going to be ready for the grand new business launch, I was (a) going to have to build it myself, or (b) pay someone big bucks to build it for me. I knew I couldn’t afford option B, so A it was.

I started with my shopping cart, a trusted one that I’d used for years with my old site. I was familiar with the admin, was pretty comfortable navigating the cpanel, and I was ready to roll. The first problem hits. No big. I go to the support forums, find the solution, fix the problem, roll on. The next problem crops up. Same thing. By the third problem, I had figured out I was in over my head and started exploring other shopping carts. Getting started and through the first three problems took me… probably about 20 hours to deal with, and I hadn’t gotten very far at all. I found a new shopping cart, scrapped those twenty hours’ worth of work, installed the new cart, and after about another six hours’ work, had a rough but working website. Score one for the not-developer!

Several more hours, messages between the shop’s developer and me, even more hours, and the site was done and ready to launch a little over a week later. Given that website development really isn’t my forte’ at all, I really have to be proud of the fact that the launch was only delayed by two weeks, and for the most part, I built my site by myself (though again, with valuable help from the template developer’s team and my own friend Bobby). My web developer is still MIA.

Even while all that was going on, I ordered note cards, postcards, and business cards. I invested time in sending personal notes to some of my customers. I set up email addresses… And to my surprise, last Monday, one of my customers who received one of those notes talked about it in her own blog. You can read about that here.

So, that was pretty much my rebrand, start to present. There’s so much minutiae to doing this – opening new accounts, changing account information on websites, making it official with the state – but that’s boring stuff. However, if you’re rebranding or launching your first new brand (the steps are quite similar), be sure to include these tedious but necessary tasks on your task list so you don’t forget them.

If you have questions about rebranding I didn’t address, please leave them in the comments below.

Time for a Little Caretaking

As most of you know, not only am I an entrepreneur and CEO of a growing bath + body business, but I’m also a mom and a home educator. My days are often busy, but I don’t declare that to make myself look superior; it just is what it is, and most days, what may look like busy work to some people is productive hobby time for me. With all these responsibilities and duties, there must be time to completely unplug, relax, and unwind away from it all. A little over a week ago, Mary, Vice President of Product Development and COO of Girly Arts Made by ME, and I struck off to the beach for the weekend.

This was exactly what we needed. You may have caught my write-up last week about the impressive guest care skills of Garison at The Winds Resort at Ocean Isle Beach. That whole weekend was exactly what these Corporate Divas needed. Just picture white powder beaches with warm water, lush tropical landscaping, and restful moments reading in a hammock under waving palm trees. Yeah, it was that good. There were cold beverages, good eats, and restful nights’ sleep accented by a friendly, accommodating staff.

That picture-perfect postcard that mocks you with, "It's beautiful. Wish you were here." — That picture-perfect postcard that mocks you with, “It’s beautiful. Wish you were here.”

A peek at some of that luscious tropical landscaping The Winds is known for.

We enjoyed our time immensely and returned home feeling loose and mellow. I truly haven’t experienced that much calm time in forever, and it was amazing!

It’s important, now that we’re home, to maintain that peaceful feeling, to take moments to do things that help promote a calm spirit. Knitting is my mini-vacation of choice these days. Studies have actually shown that knitting helps lower blood pressure. I find having a cat lying beside me also helps me feel incredibly relaxed. Between the two of these things, most nights it’s a serious struggle getting upstairs to bed, because I’m half asleep with my knitting needles in my hand. My current project is a lace shawl. This is it in process:

Sneak peek of the black and sequin lace shawl I'm knitting to go with a red dress. And jeans. And... — Sneak peek of the black and sequin lace shawl I’m knitting to go with a red dress. And jeans. And…

This is our secret for chilling out and relaxing, and in the process, we returned home with grand ideas and fresh energy for taking care of orders going into the busy holiday season. How do you recharge your battery?

Related articles