Appearing in Local News and More
This blog post is coming a little later than expected! March has proven to be an exciting month so far - a lot has happened so let's try to recap. Our application for the Sneinton Vegan Market (http://www.veggies.org.uk/event/sneinton-vegan-market/2017-04-01/) was accepted! In fact, we were all ready to visit the market on the first Saturday of this month. However, we checked the weather forecast 5 days before the market and it told us that it would rain most of the Saturday.. Since soaps are sensitive to moisture (and it would be our first market, didn't want to worry about rain on top of the excitement) we, regrettably, decided not to attend this month's market. The day of the market came and the skies were clear. Well done weatherman!
The Vegan Market is a great event, with a wonderful atmosphere, so we will definitely be aiming to attend future markets. Luckily, we had a response from the marketing team at the University of Nottingham. We were invited to a Love Local event taking place on the 23rd of March, just before Mother's Day! It's an indoor fair and we'll be attending that event, which will be great. When you miss out on one fair it's definitely nice to have another great one to attend in the same month. Since the last blog post, we've also been out selling soaps door-to-door again! Sales continued to be good, but there seemed to be a slight drop since the previous outings. However, the response from local people continued to surprise us - the people of Lady Bay are always so supportive. To this date, we've still only covered half of the neighbourhood, so there's lots more work to be done! (and walking, so much walking) In between the selling and arranging events etc., we tried our hand at some DIY. Until now, our soaps have been cut using a makeshift cheese cutter. It gets the job done, but only allows us to cut one bar at a time and the bars are not typically equal sizes. So, our little project was to make a more professional, multi-bar cutter. The end result is below!
Professional soap cutters can cost over £150 with delivery costs. The one we made cost about £30 after an hours planning and 2 days work. Admittedly, it currently has its flaws. The wires struggle to cut through to the end of the soap log. This is either because they aren't attached firmly enough or the wires themselves aren't sharp enough. For a first attempt, it's not bad and saves a bunch of money! We'll try to better the cutter and keep the blog updated. We managed to sit down for a chat with Patrick who runs the West Bridgford Wire (www.westbridgfordwire.com). We spoke for an hour or so about the business, our experiences with previous work and how we both enjoyed working for ourselves. He wrote an article about the business which can be found by clicking the image below.
The West Bridgford Wire is a great outlet for local news and information, so we recommend following them on Facebook and Twitter, as well as bookmarking their website. Patrick (owner) is a good, hardworking and friendly journalist and supporting the Wire helps local business. The article was a huge milestone for The Nottingham Soapbox. After its release, we've had numerous messages and invitations to local events - as well as our first order through the website! Until now, our sales have come locally and through messages via the site and the Facebook page - so, receiving our first order directly through the website store was fantastic. In light of the article, NottsTV (www.nottstv.com) reached out to us and asked to film a short interview for a TV feature on their 'Notts Tonight' show. This was all very exciting - it's amazing how business can go from quiet to crazy so quickly. We spent the morning and early afternoon of Tuesday 14th filming the feature and it aired that evening around 6:20pm. The feature was great, we couldn't have asked for more and it gave us a wonderful spotlight. We're currently waiting for a copy of the feature so that we can upload it in high quality to the website! So, that's it for this month! Later today, we'll be attending the grand opening of the George Green Library at the University of Nottingham as an alumni. There will be a VIP, who we'll be introduced to and will discuss our experiences at the University and what followed our studies. We'll be sure to write about that in the next blog post! Thanks for reading!
