Passing Interest Leads to Full-time Job for Bates

Roberta, Gene Bates have sold thousands of bars of homemade soap since last summer

Like many entrepreneurs these days, Roberta Bates got the idea for her new business from the Internet. But she doesn’t sell software or data systems or services to overloaded workers.

Roberta Bates sells soap.

Bates, a former part-time reporter for the Cherokee Newspaper Group, was examining some candles her children had found at a craft fair when she discovered a page called “Candles & Soap” on the Internet.

“I thought, hey, I’d like to make soap,” says Roberta. When she made her first batch, her coworkers tried it, loved it and wanted more. That was just the beginning.

From hobby to company

Now, Bates has quit her job and makes soap full time. Her husband and partner, Gene, says business is going so well he might be able to quit his job as a farmer for Simmons Foods.

“I was only working two days a week, but it just got to be too much,” Roberta Bates says. “And that was just from showing people. We really haven’t done any advertising.”

The couple makes soap every day in their Morrow home, stewing the formula in the kitchen and cutting, curing and packaging the soaps in a spare room that has been converted for the purpose.

“We’ve worked really hard on our recipe. We really have it down,” she says. “One thing that makes our soaps really good is we put Shea oil in them.” Shea oil comes from West Africa and is used to soften the skin.

“We can’t make any cosmetic claims, but it really does make your skin soft. It is very soothing,” Roberta Bates says. She is also fond of using coconut oils, which add lather, and palm oils, which increase the firmness of the bars.

The Bateses make two bars that use emu oils, which have been known to have healing properties.

“The people that raise emus say that it will do everything, but we use it because it makes nice soap,” says Roberta Bates.

“We have one real good testimonial from a woman we go to church with,” says Gene Bates. “[She] says her hands have been so bad that her husband has been afraid to hold them, and the doctors told her that there was nothing they could do.”

“They gave her one thing, but it would only work if she did not do anything and wore gloves,” Roberta Bates chimes in.

“But when she started washing with our soaps, [her hands] started to heal,” says Gene Bates.

Everybody helps

Everybody in the Bates family helps Living Water grow, and the family has developed a natural division of labor. Roberta Bates, who created the formulas, orders supplies, brews the soap and oversees the whole process; Gene Bates cuts the soaps and helps with packaging, and each of the children helps with different processes along the way.

The mechanism Gene uses to cut the soap was created by his father, Clarence Bates, and by his son, Ty Bates. The machine cuts each block into 24 bars, which are then set out to cure for four weeks before they are shrink-wrapped and labeled for shipping.

Ty Bates lives in Fort Smith but regularly makes the trip to Morrow to help his parents make soap. His sister, Doty Allen, also lives in Fort Smith. She sells the soaps and manages some of the business’ sales accounts. Heather Young, another sister, was a marketing major at the University of Arkansas before she graduated and moved to Plano, Texas. It was Young who prompted the family to use shrink-wrapped bars and who insisted they keep the phrase “Our products were never tested on animals, the dog won’t stand still” on the wrappers.

“We use all of our kids as much as we can,” says Roberta Bates. She even recruits her grandchildren on occasion: Their small fingers are the perfect size to place tiny soap samples in small plastic bags.

Roberta Bates says the biggest challenge her family business faces is finding supplies at reasonable rates. She spends much of her time on the Internet talking to wholesalers and other soap makers, comparing prices and looking for new companies with which to do business.

The family designs and prints their own labels on the laser printer, and they make as many of their supplies as they can.

“They’d make their own shrink wrap if they could,” says Ty Bates.

Bubbling business

Roberta and Gene Bates have done no advertising. Their only publicity to date has been an article by the Cherokee Newspaper Group and a segment on the Channel 5 Noon Show. Most of their business has come from word of mouth or simply by showing people their product. In spite of this, business is growing steadily.

A web page is in the works, and the family plans to have booths at a few more craft festivals this year. Gene Bates is in the process of creating a larger mold that would allow the family to make more than 24 bars at a time, and the Bateses also plan to build a large room on the back of their house specifically for making, curing, packaging and storing their soap.

“We’d like to get it out of the house. It’s taking over every room,” Roberta Bates says.

The company is also expanding its product line: In addition to bars, they sell lotions, “soapourri” and other scent-oriented products. All of these can be purchased individually or in gift baskets.

Roberta Bates says their largest task is to market Living Water products to more retailers. They have a few accounts in Northwest Arkansas and a few more in various parts of the nation, but the majority of their business still comes from individuals and mail orders.

One strategy to boost their retail presence is the creation of scents and wrappers for individual retailers. Red Rock Reflections, a clothing and gift shop in the tourist town of Sodona, Ariz., has a contract for its own “Red Rock Soap,” which contains a red marble pattern that reflects the geography of the area.

Another challenge the company faces is convincing people to actually use their product for its specified purpose.

“A lot of people buy it to set out in their bathrooms just because it looks pretty,” says Roberta Bates. “But it’s really good soap.”

“One person had it sitting there for about six months before she used it, and then she turned around and ordered some,” says Gene Bates.

The name game

The Bateses say that one of the most challenging yet fun aspects of the business is naming the various flavors that they create. The names range from the obvious, such as “Rose” or “Green Apple” to the cute, such as “Peachy Klean” or “Cool Cucumber.”

Many of the other names are more imaginative or invoke certain moods. One of the emu oil soaps is named “Flightless Fantasy,” and Young insisted the spearmint-flavored soap be named “Grandma’s Purse” after her late grandmother’s favorite gum. “Gift of the Magi,” a holiday soap, is made with frankincense and myrrh, while the jasmine-scented “Southern Nights” reminds the family of gentle evenings in the porch swing.

There’s also a soap named for each of the couple’s children, but that may change soon. “Key Lime Tyme” and “Hillside Heather” are selling fine, but “Doty’s Dream” has been a disappointment. Roberta Bates thinks that the name is the problem, but her husband says it could be the scent.

“Sometimes you don’t know if it’s the name or the fragrance,” says Gene Bates. “The gentlemen’s soap didn’t sell, and then we changed its name and it did.”

Other weak selling soaps have included “Wednesday Afternoon,” which was one of Roberta’s favorites, and “Golden Party Time.” Many names never make it to the label stage, tossed aside in the idea process because they are too vague or too strange.

“We just sit around the dinner table sometimes when everybody’s here and throw names out,” Roberta Bates explains.

“Or she’ll cover up a bottle and thrust it under your nose and say ‘Here, what does this smell like?'” Ty Bates says.

The family currently makes more than 50 different kinds of soap although a few of the flavors are made only upon request.

“Everyone agrees the selection needs to be cut back, but no one can decide which ones to eliminate,” says Roberta Bates.