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Gaye Davies & Sari Olsen
Craft Essentials at The Fragrant Mall

Where are you located?
Campbell River BC Canada

When you contacted us about being in our supplier spotlight, you mentioned the unique way you and your sister work together.  Please describe for all of your fellow Soapnuts the unique nature of your business.
My sister and I have a site together called 'The Fragrant Mall'. As with traditional malls, ours contains a variety of stores. Some we own jointly and some are our own. A customer can shop any or all of the stores and check out using one shopping cart. The benefit to us is that we are running multiple businesses on line but paying only one monthly internet service provider fee. One of our stores in the mall sells soap making supplies, but we also have a gift store, a store selling Fruits & Passion products, a store selling Enchanted Meadow products and Whistler Bath and Body Works.

Gaye & I don't even live in the same town but it still works. Any two or more people can do the same, it really saves on overhead. We have also chosen to use one bank account and Merchant account with Mastercard & Visa so this saves even more. We can also add as many other stores as we like at any time, but of course, they have to be 'Fragrant'! Sharing a site is sort of like the concept of sharing a table at a craft fair, except the table can be as big as you like.

How long have you been in business together?
In September we will have been in business for 3 years

Were you good friends while growing up or is this friendship something that came later in life?
There is a 10 year age gap and we have lived in separate cities for all of our adult life but we definitely have similar interests and have always been very supportive of each other. Finding out we can work so well together and forging a close friendship has be the best part of our joining forces in this venture.

How did you decide to start up a business with body care items?
We learned to make soap together taking classes in Vancouver (that's where Gaye lives) and also studied aromatherapy. Here in Campbell River there was no place to buy supplies, so when I opened a retail  store selling  Fruits & Passion I decided to sell soap making supplies as well. Whenever Gaye had a chance she'd come up and help me in the store & it got her thinking about getting back into retail. I already had a bit of a web site but never had the time to maintain it so we decided to do one together.

Do you make any of the soap or body care items that you sell?  
We make everything in the section called Whistler Bath & Bodyworks.   We have also taken custom orders for a few spas & wedding planners. Next month we will be changing Whistler Bath & Body Works over to a new store called Wedding Essentials. We will still make some of the items for Wedding Essentials but will also add packaging, candles, small favor items & gifts.

What item is your top seller?
Since we've opened our site we'd have to say our Melt & Pour soap bases which is surprising because they're the heaviest to ship (although our membership discount does offset the shipping). Since we've gotten more in to packaging, our salt tubes and takeout boxes are up there in sales as well because they tend to get ordered in larger amounts.

What sort of soapmaking supplies do you sell?
A wide variety of Melt & Pour soap bases, fragrance & essential oils, Milky Way Molds, colourants and powders, base oils such as Coconut, Palm, Sweet Almond etc. We also have powdered Citric Acid for what I think are most commonly known as bath fizzies (we call them "bombs" but are very careful not to label them as such on customs forms!), some salts and herbs and a few kits.

Do you have more ideas for possible new "mini stores"?
We're in the process of adding a store featuring wedding favors and gifts as well as do-it-yourself and packaging supplies. If we are able to expand out packaging the way we would like, that may split off into a separate store too. Of course we are always looking for new ideas and products to share with everyone.

You live in different towns- so how do you work the shipping?  Do you have a main warehouse, or do you each ship your own items?
We each ship for our own stores and I usually ship for Craft Essentials because I have the soap making stuff here at the retail store. We get the odd order placed in multiple stores and in that case the order is shipped from two locations and we give a deal on the shipping, usually picking up one of the shipping costs.

What makes you and your business stand above your competitors?
Giving great customer service is a real priority. We get emails from people who are just starting out making body care products and it is satisfying to give advice or offer up a good recipe to get them started. We also have a monthly newsletter which features ideas and recipes as well as highlighting our current sale and bonus items. We also have a Price Group which our customers can join at no cost. All you have to do is sign up for our monthly newsletter and create yourself an ID on the site. We put you in the price group and send you a welcome letter. Once you receive the letter, you just sign in with your ID when you visit the site and all items (including sale items) will come up with a 10% discount. This is a real bonus for local shoppers who join the price group and get their 10% deducted at the register but it also helps defray shipping costs for our out of town customers.

Did you design (and keep updated) your website or is that done by an outside service?
We have a nice young man named Daryl Guthrie who initially helped us build the site and does any major overhauls for us. He has a link in our site. We did the original design and have "redecorated" a couple of times. Gaye posts the monthly newsletter and adds and removes pictures, products etc.

Do you share every responsibility or is each of you in charge of specific areas of the business?    For example,  one of you is the only one that orders supplies, the other is in charge of shipping orders?
In shared areas of the site, I usually do the shipping and then work out the costs of the orders and then Gaye does the bookkeeping. I usually draft the newsletter and then together we tweak it before Gaye posts it and updates the monthly sale items. I also make sure everything is kept in stock but we don't add new product without talking about it first. In our shared stores, we each pay for certain items and are reimbursed as they are sold. It sounds a little complicated but this is was our choice. If someone is sharing a site without sharing stores in the site, it's really just a matter of splitting the overhead.

What is your favorite part of having your business together?
Well, we get to talk to each other almost every day. We enjoy doing the newsletter and coming up with the monthly specials and freebees. The whole process is a lot more enjoyable when you have someone to bounce ideas off or get excited with when you have a new idea or come across a great new product.

What is your least favorite part of having a business like this?
Bookwork is definitely what we like the least. I'm sure that's the same for most businesses.

How would you like to see your business grow in the future?
We're excited about our Wedding Store and would like to expand our packaging and be able to offer better discounts on it. Looking further into the future, I have four years left of my store lease but even I decide to close I'm sure we'll still keep the web site going.

Please share a little about your families with us.
Gaye is second eldest and I am second youngest in a family of six children.   Of course we've all gone forth and multiplied so we're quite a large group and thankful that we still have both our parents and we all have healthy families.

What do you do outside of the business?  Work, interests, hobbies?
Gaye works in accounting, that's how she got stuck as the bookkeeper. We both like to create things and love making gifts etc. Since we both love doing new and different things we have dabbled in everything from leather crafts to candle making over the years and I am just getting into scrap booking. There is never enough time for everything we would like to do. Gaye usually does farmers markets in the summer and the occasional craft fair.

What do you like most about Soapnuts?
I think the best thing about Soapnuts is that it's not all soap talk! A person can ask for advice on almost anything and it will be generously given. There's a great mix of light & not so light discussion and well as good clean soap talk.

Any favorite recipes using your products that you would like to share with your fellow Soapnuts?
Our recipe is more of a tip - it's always the favorite when we have a soap making workshop. Did you know that when you pour two different consistency soap bases into a mold they will self layer? Our opaque goat milk base is a lighter weight than our honey base. So if we fill a mold ½ full of goat milk soap and then fill it the rest of the way with honey soap, the honey soap will sink to the bottom and the goat milk soap will end up on top with some combined layering in between.   (This is in the recipe section of our site) This also works with the goat milk base & coloured glycerin base. You have to be ready with your second pour right away because if the goat milk soap has a chance to get a skin on it the second pour won't sink through nicely.

Anything else you would like to add?
Thanks for doing the Soapnuts monthly newsletter. We're sometimes overwhelmed with doing our monthly two pages. Yours are awesome.

Contact Info:
Gaye Davies & Sari Olsen
Craft Essentials at The Fragrant Mall
Campbell River BC Canada
Phone 250 830 1065 
email info@fragrantmall.com
www.fragrantmall.com

~ Gaye Davies & Sari Olsen & Khadijah Lacina