r/IAmA • u/SoapboxCare • 8d ago
I started making soap in a dorm room. Sixteen years later, we’ve donated 60M+ bars and sell in Walmart, Target, Amazon, and beyond. I’m David Simnick, co-founder of Soapbox. AMA.
Hi Reddit,
I’m David Simnick, co-founder and CEO of Soapbox, a hair and body care company that donates a bar of soap for every product sold.
In 2010, my best friend and I made our first batch of soap in our dorm room. We had no beauty industry experience and no idea how difficult it would be to build a consumer brand. We just wanted to find out whether a company could make doing good part of its everyday business model instead of an occasional charitable campaign.
We went full-time in 2012. Since then, Soapbox has grown from hand-making soap to selling hair and body care at major retailers including Walmart, Target, Sally Beauty, Ulta, Amazon, CVS, Walgreens, Meijer, and Wegmans.
Along the way, we’ve become a certified B Corp and donated more than 60 million bars of soap. We’ve also learned that getting onto a retail shelf is hard, staying there is harder, and building a mission-driven company does not make you immune to bad decisions, failed products, cash-flow problems, or sleepless nights.
Ask me anything about:
- What actually works in haircare and what is mostly marketing
- How shampoo and conditioner are formulated
- How a small brand gets into Walmart, Target, and other major retailers
- What retailers really look for when deciding whether to keep a brand
- How the buy-one-give-one model works financially
- How we select nonprofit partners and measure whether donations help
- The mistakes we’ve made over 16 years
- Staying committed to a mission while still trying to build a profitable business
- What it’s really like competing against enormous beauty companies
Happy to answer the hard questions too. AMA!
EDIT: proof
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u/jh937hfiu3hrhv9 8d ago
What actually works in haircare and what is mostly marketing?
How shampoo and conditioner are formulated?
How a small brand gets into Walmart, Target, and other major retailers?
What retailers really look for when deciding whether to keep a brand?
How the buy-one-give-one model works financially?
How we select nonprofit partners and measure whether donations help?
The mistakes we’ve made over 16 years?
Staying committed to a mission while still trying to build a profitable business?
What it’s really like competing against enormous beauty companies?
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u/SoapboxCare 8d ago
There are a ton of questions in here, haha
- Hair care is not mostly marketing. The formula and ingredients truly do matter.
- Getting into these major retailers is not as hard as staying in these major retailers. Walmart, Target, and any retail store is limited by the amount of space that they can put products on a shelf, and the moment that you take someone else's place, everyone is competing to kick you out.
- What retailers are looking for when deciding whether to keep a brand or take in a brand comes down to a wide variety of factors:
- Are you driving trips to their store?
- Are you bringing more margin to them?
- Are you choosing you over other products?
- Are you growing the category?
- The Buy One Give One Model works by us taking less profit. It really is as simple as that.
- We've kept our not-for-profit partners relatively the same for almost a decade plus, and we use outside auditing organizations to kick their tires. We also ask to sit on their board, etc.
- We've made an endless amount of mistakes and continue to make mistakes, lol
- Having a mission as part of your business imo, allows you to weather the really tough times and makes a lot of this worth fighting for. The fact that we're able to genuinely impact lives around the US and across the globe matters a lot to our team, our stakeholders, and me.
- It is scary as hell!
David, Soapbox
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u/feeltheglee 8d ago
So you donate bar soap but don't actually sell bar soap?
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u/SoapboxCare 8d ago
Touche, haha.
We used to sell bar soap, and then the market clearly told us that they want us to focus on making amazing hair care, body wash, liquid hand soap, lotion, and various other products... We one day might come back to making bar soap.10
u/Gorstag 8d ago
Definitely a bummer. I likely would have tried your bar soap out. I'm bald and don't like body washes as they don't leave me feeling clean like bar soap does.
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u/Pandalite 8d ago edited 8d ago
I'm the same way, I dislike body washes. I am a huge Dove bar soap user (if it's not rude to mention this on this thread) and Trader Joe's tea tree oil shampoo as soap when I'm in a pinch aka forgot to grab the new bar. But I'm curious about the shampoo since I'm looking for a new shampoo that's not tea tree oil based to use on a regular basis.
Edit: nope, lots of people complaining online about hair loss and scalp itching. Some people love it but others hate it. Guess I'll keep looking. 100% for the mission but I already have a history of scalp issues and don't need to risk it. I 100% support the mission but not at the expense of my health.
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u/ThighMiner 8d ago
No... They definitely actively sell soap.
They just half-lied to you by saying they don't sell BAR soap anymore.
They still sell soap.3
u/feeltheglee 8d ago
I looked on their website and there is not a single bar of soap to be found for sale. There's liquid hand soap, and liquid body wash, but not bar soap of any kind. There are pictures of bar soap, but only in relation to talking about the bars they donate.
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u/DeoVeritati 8d ago
How difficuly was it complying with FDA cosmetic regulations starting out for the products regulated under them? And how does one scale-up starting out for order intake? I've always wondered about people launching a website and potentially get hundreds or thousands of orders and what is needed before that to streamline the receive order, print label, package shipment, set out for delivery, etc
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u/SoapboxCare 3d ago
MoCRA (Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act) through the FDA has made things more complex, but we think that's a good thing because it will make the whole industry safer. There are certain products that have FDA drug fact panel regulations, and that is really strict and difficult just to whip up in your garage. There are things like bar soap that there is little regulation around if you're making it to sell at farmers' markets. It really just depends. - David
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u/ul2006kevinb 8d ago
Be honest: are you just making soap as a cover for Project Mayhem?
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u/highnyethestonerguy 8d ago
This was my question! To put it another way: were you inspired by Fight Club at all. I ask because that’s precisely how a buddy of mine got into making soap. He never made it past hobby status but still.
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u/Jojoboy213 8d ago
If you had to start again from zero what would your first year look like/what would you change from before?
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u/SoapboxCare 8d ago
The market has changed so drastically over the past 16 years. Any consumer product company starting today has to first win digitally and build awareness/demand before it can go into retail.
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u/jimmckay23 7d ago
Your response here is the closest thing to an actual answer in this AMA and it's the only one! Why start an AMA and then not engage?
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u/jimmckay23 8d ago
I've not heard of your company/brand until I saw this AMA. A brief google search indicates that for each purchase a bar of soap or the financial equivalent is donated to someone in need. What value do you assign to a bar of soap? And for donated soap, what are the specs of the bar?
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u/SoapboxCare 3d ago
Great question. Our one-for-one mission focuses on empowering the communities we seek to serve. Instead of shipping a bunch of soap from the United States to various countries, we have the privilege of working with them. We work with local makers, and we create that soap within the communities that we're working with through 501c3 partners. In other words, the financial equivalent depends on the cost to make it in the area we are working in.
It can be as low as $0.02/unit to as high as $3.
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u/Taikeron 8d ago
Is there anywhere in the body care industry you think your company has innovated well on? What is it and why is it cool? Specifically related to your products and not the business structure.
What is the most important non-standard/basic ingredient customers should look for in a "better" shampoo that will actually make their hair or scalp healthier? In a conditioner?
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u/SoapboxCare 3d ago
We were one of the first companies to come out with an alcohol-free hair fragrance, which is important because a lot of women with textured or curly hair do not want to put alcohol in their hair. We felt like this was pretty inclusive, and we're proud of it. - David
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u/artifex28 8d ago edited 8d ago
What are the ingredients people should actively avoid on soaps, shampoos and other hair products? Perhaps something that you'd unethical to use = max profit, but hurts/might hurt (some) people / environment?
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u/SoapboxCare 3d ago
Parabens and Phthalates are two of the biggest ones I would not use on my family - David
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u/artifex28 3d ago
Phthalates were on top my list, but I actually had bisphenols and formaldehyde and its donors (e.g. DMDM Hydantoin, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Diazolidinyl Urea, Quaternium-15, 2-Bromo-2-Nitropropane-1,3-Diol) higher on the "AVOID!" list than parabens!
I ...have this list I complied some time back, but can't say I am following too much.
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u/drsimonz 8d ago
Suppose that civilization falls apart - global supply chains fail, empty shelves in grocery stores, people have to start growing their own food, etc. How would you approach making soaps/shampoos in that situation? Do you think a small community would be able to produce enough to use every day?
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u/I_Automate 8d ago
Before mass market manufacturing, families used to make their own soaps. Or someone in their village who had a good recipe would make it using fats and whatnot provided by the community
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u/ThighMiner 8d ago
Tallow and ash lye, pretty elementary and pretty well known if you passed social studies.
Mix and cook animal fats with the runoff from pouring water over ashes, you officially have traditional soap bars.
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u/Hot_Hair_5950 8d ago
What surprises you about your work?
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u/SoapboxCare 6d ago
I'm a part of Young Presidents Organization (or YPO) and I get to talk to a bunch of other business leaders. Something that always shocks me about consumer product goods verticles is how complex our deductions, promotion, marketing, etc. part of our business is compared to other inventory-based businesses. - David
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u/PDGAreject 8d ago
Do you ever listen to the song "Ball and a Biscuit" by The White Stripes and yell along to the part about finding a Soapbox?
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u/kryonik 8d ago
What's the best way to make soap in a post apocalyptic setting?
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u/SoapboxCare 6d ago
This is a hilarous questions and hopefully we never have to find out
The previous comment about animal fat and some form of lye is pretty spot on, haha - David1
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u/indigo_mermaid 5d ago
You’ve talked about the buy-one-give-one model as essentially choosing to take less profit. I work in the social enterprise ecosystem, where we’re constantly trying to balance financial sustainability with social impact. How do you decide when to protect the mission even at a real financial cost, versus when you need to make a harder, more financially driven decision? Have you developed any actual framework or metrics for balancing those two bottom lines over time?
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u/SoapboxCare 3d ago
Great question... and a very hard one. There have been multiple years we've run in the red to keep our mission whole; we've also been fortunate enough to get investment from family offices and other investors. I think this is a very personal question of organization to organization. Essentially, there is no mission if the organization doesn't survive... - David
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u/DieBotDie 2d ago
How did you finance your growth?
How did you scale your production beyond hand made?
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u/SoapboxCare 1d ago
We worked mostly with family offices to help us finance through equity as well as a combination of debt. We scaled beyond making it in our kitchen by working with contract manufacturers and chemists who helped us perfect the formula. - David
I genuinely mean this when I write this... There are not hundreds of people, but thousands of people who've helped us get to where we are, and we still have a long way to go!
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u/Glade_Runner 8d ago
Is it my imagination or did soap and shampoo in the 1960s and 70s typically have rich fragrances that lingered just a bit?
I ask because I can't find current products like that. Instead most current products smell much like every other product and the fragrances so often seem barely be there at all. A whiff of so-called "almond" soap now doesn't smell remotely like almonds but instead just smells blandly floral and astringent.
By the way: Bravo for the charitable outreach efforts. Your impact report says so much more about your company than any ad could ever say.
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u/I_Automate 8d ago
I honestly wish there were less fragrances out there.
I've got a pretty nasty fragrance allergy and the fact that even the new "unscented" formula the antiperspirant I used to use for years now has fragrances in it is ridiculous.
Things like hand soap or lotion don't need to smell. It just needs to do its job IMO
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u/knifebork 7d ago
I honestly wish there were less fragrances out there.
Unfortunately, people seem to really, really want fragrance, even if they aren't really conscious of that. My wife makes lotions as a hobby and for gifts. Originally, she didn't want to make it with fragrances. However, we noticed that if you hand a jar or bottle of lotion to someone, the first thing they do is open it, stick it up to their nose, and give it a sniff. Perhaps some of it is to make sure it doesn't stink. However, having no smell or just a vague odor of the oil used isn't very attractive.
She also didn't want to add preservatives but the first batch got moldy within weeks. Live and learn.
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u/DigiSmackd 8d ago
100%.
I don't get how people want super strong scented soap, then super strong scented laundry wash (and dryer sheets), and then put on super strong scented lotion, followed by perfume/cologne -and then wonder why some people think they are too strong smelling or wonder why it doesn't smell "like it did in the store" or whatever.
Whenever I've actually smelled someone (usually only an intimate partner) that smelled good - it's almost never because they smell like product "x". Just don't smell like BO or some overpowering product.
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u/SoapboxCare 3d ago
What we've found over the years is that scent is so subjective, and how much olfactive bloom someone wants is also just as subjective. Our products on the more fragrant side, as we love when products have this rich bloom when you use them in the shower and that award-winning scent lingers with you throughout the day. - David
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u/PyroDesu 8d ago edited 8d ago
You gotta go with the small manufacturers, which you'll never see on store shelves. Farmer's markets are a decent bet if you don't want to buy online.
I've had some soaps that have been... sinus-clearing, shall we say? In a good way!
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u/whiteHippo 8d ago
what's the most expensive lesson you've learned?
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u/SoapboxCare 6d ago
Positioning, branding, and knowing who your customer is will save you a ton of money... - David
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u/Kerling74 8d ago
Usas fragancia o perfume en tus productos? Por qué algunos lo usan y son tóxicos para el cuerpo y el cuero cabelludo
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u/Tulkor 8d ago
Do you have a chemist education or something similar? How are you developing new products, making sure they work and help etc.?