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Support A Small Business

Christmas is around the corner, have you considered purchasing from a small business?

By Nicole McClurePublished 3 years ago 5 min read
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One of best selling Goat Milk Soap Bars

Christmas is right around the corner and a lot of people like to start shopping early. Now, where are you going to buy your presents? Walmart, Target, A Local Shop, Online? Well wherever you are shopping, just remember one thing, small businesses everywhere are dying. Being a small business owner, it is a hard world with all of the bigger businesses and their convenience.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love big stores too! I buy from Walmart all the time! I buy a lot of things online from big stores too, but at the end of the day, I love it when I can support a small business.

Etsy is a huge place online to buy custom items. I myself have an Etsy store that I really try to get business with, and it is really hard. It's hard to get noticed in such a huge online world. That being said, I love trying to sell my products to the world. When people buy from me, they are supporting my selfmade business. They're helping me buy my supplies. They're helping me pay some of my bills. Most importantnly, they're supporting my business that I am running so I can stay at home and raise my beautiful daughter.

Me and my beautiful baby girl

I know a lot of people looks at handmade items and immediately start making comments on pricing. The biggest comments being that they are just too expensive. Now, the biggest thing to remember when looking at a small business. Most of us don't have name brands backing us. Most of us don't have corporate brands sponsoring us and either paying us or giving us products to use and advertise. Most of us use our hard earned money just to start our busninesses out of and don't see much in return, money wise that is. I know I personally purchased all of my soap making supplies and tools while I was still working an 8-5 job in town and had my own income to work with. Now that I don't have that, I rely on my soap sales and my poor Fiance. Who is happy to help, but I would love if he didn't have to and I could pay my own bills with the business I have hand built myself.

Another thing to take into account is how much time they spent making this. Some of the things you buy can take hours to make or days and weeks to make. It all depends on the items. It is hard work to do everything by hand. Almost everything in my soap shop is made by hand. With exceptions of my labels. They all get printed. I still make and design all of my labels and cut and package them the way I want. I also handcut all of our soaps as well. The process to make Cold Process soap takes 4-6 weeks. It takes 2-4 days to actually make the soap, get it out of the mold and cut. Then it has to sit for another 4-6 weeks before it can even be sold. So that's 4-6 weeks without selling those soaps, so we are constantly trying to make soap so we don't have a depleated inventory. It also takes a lot of time if we are making our soaps fancy. I love to design my soaps. I love to make designs, and even try to copy pictures. Which can take me hours and hours to get everything right. I love doing it and the outcome of the soap at the end of it.

A landscape inspired soap that I made

Some of us really do appreciate every single sale we get. I always thanks our customers with a hand written thank you note in all of our shipments, along with a care guide for our soaps, that way they last longer for the customer.

This was my first 5 star review! I cannot even explain how proud it made me to see how much she liked it!

Now another thing to think of is what materials the product is made with. Do they buy the product, do they make it? Is the felting items you're buying handmade? Most likely. It takes a lot of work. All of the goat milk that we use in our soaps come from our goats, right here on our farm. So that means we take time out of our day to milk goats, bring the milk up to the house and filter it, then freeze it so we can use it to make soap. It takes a lot of work to do this. Right now we are only milking one goat, and some months we are milking anywhere from 1-20 goats. It gets to be a lot, but I love doing it. I love being able to use our goat milk to make something that everyone can enjoy. We have made shipments to New York, Wisconsin, Washington, and other states. I can't even explain the excitement I had sending out those orders. Being able to see my product travel that far away. Especially when the customers leave great reviews and how much they loved the hand written note. That is why they love supporting a small business. They know how much it means to us.

A small portion of our Milk Goat herd

All of this being said, check out those products you like on Etsy. Go to the store and ready the description. You can learn about that person and see what you're supporting.

You might be supporting someone like me, with a beautiful little family, that just wants to make a name for herself with a self started business.

If you're interested in our Goat Milk Soaps please visit:

pondfarmgoatmilksoap.etsy.com

Check out our monthly subscription box we will be realeasing in January 2021

Every customer means the world to me, and we would love it if you are willing to be apart of that customer base!

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you find something amazing while you're Christmas shopping!

humanity
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About the Creator

Nicole McClure

I'm a mom, fiancé, CEO, and many others things here on our little farm.

We have goats, chickens, ducks, cats, 1 Dalmatian, and a Great Pyrenees.

Follow us through our amazing journey, I know you'll enoy it!

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