May 2010 Visionary Soap News - It's Our Birthday!
Apologies for not getting a newsletter out in April! Things are gathering at
HQ are not only trying to keep up with all the enquiries and orders we are r
eceiving but also trying to push forward some big projects! Thanks again
for all of your continued support! We are truly lucky to have such great
customers!Visionary Soap Company was officially founded on May 26, 2005 so hey,its
our fifth birthday! Its quite hard for us to believe as the journey has
been such a roller coaster ride - always manic and challenging but also exciting, stimulating and certainly led first and foremost by a passion for fair
trade and social and economic justice! Big developments are under way
at VSC as we enter our sixth year and it must be said, not much has been
easy with this venture! There have been many challenges in the last couple
of months especially as we manouver the company through a rather large
growth phase. Probably one of the biggest challenges has been the typical
scenario of an entrepreneur struggling to let go of certain tasks and transfer
information. Monica is painfully learning the art of delegating but luckily,
she has a very supportive and understanding team who can deal with her
moments of angst! From starting the company literally on our kitchen stove
5 years ago, things are certainly evolving much faster now and although it
presents many challenges, we are very excited about the future indeed! To
give you a taster, we will be launching exciting new packaging and products
very soon, upgrading our internal systems to help process your orders more
efficiently and also hopefully allow you to see our products increasingly on
Britain's high streets!
Many of you will be interested to know that Rebecca, our Operations
Manager, returned from her month in South Africa and working with
February, Visionary Soap received official approval from the
Fairtrade certified cosmetic products, starting with our organic range of
soaps! We see this as an incredibly groundbreaking achievement within
our industry and we are pleased to announce that Rebecca was there to
oversee our first bars of Fairtrade certified soap being made by the team.
An approximate 9,000 bars of our best selling varieties - Geranium Rose, have been made so far with more being produced shortly. We expect this
soap to be shipped within the next 2-3 weeks and we will let you know once
it arrives. The plan is to increasingly hand over our soap production to
Township Trades as well as explore production of other products. Through
your purchases, not only do you support our various Fairtrade ingredient s
uppliers but also allow us to support job creation for Township Trades'
members! Rebecca had a fantastic time working with the group and she
has put together a slideshow especially so you can see our first bars of Fairtrade certified soap being made in South Africa! Please have a look!
We talk a lot about Township Trades so we also want to give exposure to
some of our Fairtrade ingredient suppliers. We just received word that 1
000 liters of olive oil that we ordered directly from the
Cape Town, ready for delivery to Township Trades. 1000kg of shea butter
loaded on a ship destined for Cape Town as well. The logistics for getting
1000kg of cocoa butter from Conacado in the Dominican Republic continue to challenge us but we think we are almost there. And a very exciting bit of
(along with ground cinnamon, ginger and turmeric) is currently being
arranged for shipment as well. Fairtrade certified coconut oil has just come
on board as a certified ingredient and we are quite possibly the first
Fairtrade certified company to incorporate this into our products. Across
our entire range, our products contain a very high percentage of Fairtrade
ingredients, much more than the minimum requirement for certification. The
minimum percentage for a wash off product is 2% and prior to incorporating
Fairtrade certified coconut oil into our soaps, they contain on average
27% Fairtrade ingredients. Since coconut oil makes up 30% of our soap
formulation, this will now allow us to produce our soaps containing 57%
Fairtrade certified ingredients. We challenge you to find anyone else in our
industry in the UK that compares to that!
completed a 4000 unit handmade gift box order for us which is leaving
Nepal this week. GPI produces gorgeous paper products of amazing
quality and we have worked with them before. Since Oxfam UK has selected us as their gift range for cosmetic products for Christmas 2010,
do look for our gift box sets in an Oxfam shop near you in the coming
months!
We want to remind local residents of our very supportive Hastings/St
Leonards stockists. A beautiful new shop on George Street in Hastings
Old Town, called Soak, is now stocking most of our products. Made in
Hastings on Old Town Hasting High Street, Bio-Five-O on Court House
Street, Eco Magpie on Queens Road and Trinity Wholefoods on Trinity
Street have all been loyal carriers of our products for some time. And of
course, Swan House in the Old Town puts our soaps in their lovely B&B
and has done so for several years now!
Help us celebrate our 5 years of being in business - place any
online order now through the end of May and be guaranteed a free
bar of Fairtrade certified soap made by Township Trades once it
arrives in the UK. Also, regular customers, please take note of Promo
Code - VSC2010. This code is good for 10% off every order with us, all the
way through December 31, 2010. Jot it down and remember to use it every
time you place an order with us!
Fairtrade Fortnight Press Release - 22 February 2010
Visionary Soap and Township Trades Team Up to Produce Fairtrade Certified Soap
Visionary Soap Company is very proud to announce that we have received official approval from the
Fairtrade Foundation to add Township Trades to our supply chain for our Fairtrade certified cosmetic
products, starting with our organic range of soaps! We see this as an incredibly groundbreaking achievement
within our industry and for the past year we have been really pushing to make this happen. Being a 100% fair
trade-dedicated company, the 'vision' for us has always been to take fair trade into the manufacturing arena and
create further jobs and training opportunities for our suppliers.
Township Trades is a not for profit community enterprise serving Khayelitsha township, in South Africa. Their mission to
is lift young adults out of poverty by providing them with real jobs and business skills to become independent through trade.
Township Trades boasts the largest handmade soap production facility in southern Africa and aside from producing their
own range of award-winning soaps, will now increasingly be producing Visionary Soap Company's Fairtrade certified
soaps.
We have been telling the story of our relationship with Township Trades for nearly two years now. There have been many ups
and downs, of course, and grassroots development, along with the increased demands of producing a handcrafted item en
masse (and with various Fairtrade ingredients involved), is a huge enough challenge. Combine that with the task of having our
products appeal commercially in the highly competitive cosmetics industry, achieving economies of scale as a small but rapidly growing
company, constantly having to adapt to the needs and demands of our ever growing customer base AND simultaneously working
tirelessly to get the word out about what we are trying to achieve and how that makes us different...Well, you can probably imagine
that it can feel quite daunting at times! We have worked very hard to establish our partnership with Township Trades, just as
we have with all of our other fair trade suppliers, and this has been one of the the biggest challenges that we would have ever
imagined to experience on both a personal and company level. We take great pride in being able to share this with our customers!
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Press Release - 12 November 2009
Visionary Soap Founder to Present Fair Trade Case Study at Sustainable Cosmetics Summit
Monica Norley, founder of Visionary Soap Company, will be speaking
at the Sustainable Cosmetics Summit (16th – 17th November 2009) in
Frankfurt, Germany. The company has become a leading Fairtrade certified
soap and body care company, with all of its products now carrying the Fairtrade
Mark. A range of Fairtrade certified ingredients in the finished products are
sourced from producers in Palestine, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua,
The Dominican Republic and South Africa.
Monica started Visionary Soap Company as a dedicated fair trade enterprise
in 2005. Her vision has always been for the company to take Fairtrade one
step further through its manufacturing processes and has therefore been the
driving force behind establishing a fair trade partnership with an inspiring
social enterprise in South Africa, called Township Trades.
Monica will present a Fairtrade Case Study of Visionary Soap Company and
discuss the potential to use Fairtrade ingredients in Visionary’s products, what
ingredients and what sources, the opportunities and challenges and will review
the impact of using certified ingredients in Visionary products on third world producers.
To learn more about the summit, visit http://www.sustainablecosmeticssummit.com/.
To learn more about Fairtrade Beauty, visit www.fairtrade.org.uk/beauty.
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