Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
One Passion to Another
- Is Your Hobby Ready to Be a Business with Kareena Preston
Show Notes
Today’s guest is Kareena Preston and she is the owner and a soap maker at Krieitiviti Natural Handmade Artisan Soaps.
They are a small, artisan business producing small batch, hand made, cold process natural soap, in Perth, Western Australia.
Kri:ei’tiviti was borne out of the need for a skin care product with natural ingredients that is kind to my sensitive skin. After much research and many trials, they have developed a range of all natural soaps that are safe and healthy for our bodies.
Kri:ei’tiviti’s soaps, lip balms, bath salts and bombs are all made in the Kri:ei’tiviti kitchen from local and sustainably sourced plant oils, plant colourants and pure essential oils only. No fillers, no fragrant oils, no artificial ingredients and no artificial preservatives.
Our wish is to make a product that is kind to the earth and kind to your skin.
Why Soap, What Was the Passion With Soap?
One passion to another is your hobby ready to be a business? It took Kareena to get to soap making, she tried a few different crafty things along the way. Kareena knew it needed to be a craft cause she wanted to work with her hands and do something crafty. She just came across a website that had soap making kits. “You could purchase a soap making kit and then over the Easter break one year when I wasn’t traveling, which was quite amazing to have an Easter break, I made my first batch of soap, and it just went from there.” Kareena said
Separate Work From Personal Time
When it’s your own business in your own home is setting those rules about when you will and won’t work and when you will actually switch off. Because a lot of people in the current climate are finding that as well. If they’ve been forced to work from home or choosing to work from home, you really got to set that mindset. It is still a job. You do have to stop. You would stop if you were in a different location and had to turn up. So that can be a real discipline for small business people.
Kareena has just built herself a soap shed in the backyard and it doesn’t yet have power. So when the sun goes down, there is no light in the shed. So at the moment, it’s keeping her honest and bringing her inside at a reasonable time given that it’s summer still here in Australia. So around 5:30 – 6 o’clock, she is well and truly inside and winding down, and her husband will beworking from as of today. “It’s just a bit of an unspoken rule between us that we will stop and have dinner together and then after dinner there’s no more work.” Kareena said.
That’s great because sometimes that home-based businesses, it does blow well into the late evening and sometimes you don’t end up with that me time and that time with your partner and that’s really important.
Ask For Help And Seek Mentors
Kareena has had a lot of help prior to transitioning to full-time into the business. She invested a lot of money into the business. She was fortunate that she had some money to invest and got her branding done by a graphic designer. She had professional photos done, a website made and had a lot of support from the online community of entrepreneurs to get her kick-started in the right direction. She put money into the business and did the right thing from the get-go and that has really helped Kareena particularly now because her main source of selling was in the event community.
As everybody probably knows by now, the event community has been shut down, so no more markets, except small farmers markets do continue to go, but the larger artisan markets, the festivals, the fairs, everything has been put on-hold and the entire event industry is non-operational at the moment. So that was Kareena’s biggest source of selling even though she did have the website. Kareena finds that people like to pick the soap up and smell it, ask you questions and meet the maker. She had a lot of advice, friends saying and trying to be helpful, “Why don’t you get a website? Why don’t you sell online?” “Well, I do have a website, I do sell online but it doesn’t change the fact that people want to pick my product up and smell it and ask questions to me directly. They want to meet me. They want to make sure that I’m legitimate.” Kareena said.
Be Prepared to Flexible In Business
Kareena really stick by her principles that she made for the business when she first started operating and that was to make sure that she retained 100% natural ingredients in her soaps. What this means is that she will not and will never use artificial fragrances or artificial colors in her soap. So the basic ingredients in her soap are oils, plant or earth colours, and essential oils. Kareena does also have a couple of soaps that are unscented for people with problematic skin. This doesn’t just apply to the soaps, it transfers through the entire range to shower steamers, bath bombs, the beard balm, the lip balms, the belly balm. This week is shampoo bar week where Kareena is begining to create my shampoo bars, and the same principles will apply: No artificial fragrances and no artificial colouring.
It is important to keep update what you can offer as far as products go. Expanding your range can attract new customers and help you retain the one you have.
One Passion to Another - Is Your Hobby Ready to Be a Business
Links
Not all soap is created equal! Why 100% Olive Oil Soap could the answer.
Contact Kareena Preston
https://www.krieitiviti.com.au
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