Our Story
One Mother's Story of Starting a Home-Based Business.
Over the years many of you have asked about how Still-Point Soap began. Some of you have inqured about the meaning of the business name. On this page Mary Post, owner of Still-Point Soap, shares with you her story of how the soap business was started, more than 13 years ago, and how Still-Point Soap got its name.
Still-Point Soap started quite by accident. I had no intention of starting my own home-based business when I stirred up that first batch of soap. I was simply looking for a creative outlet to relieve the exhaustion of rearing four young children; twin baby boys and their preschool-aged big brothers.
Encouraged by friends who had made soap one year for Christmas and equipped with a soap making book I tracked down in a used book store, I began. And I never really stopped.
Soap making is not difficult. But it does require a degree of precision, one's undivided attention, and an hour or two of uninterrupted time. That presented some challenges with a house full of busy little boys. I soon learned that the best time for me to make soap was late at night, sometime between the midnight and 3 o'clock feedings. On those nights, when my creative spirit was stronger than my fatigue, I would set to work. After settling the babies back down to sleep, I would clear the kitchen counter, assemble the needed ingredients and supplies, and begin the carefully orchestrated ritual that produces a bar of soap. In the quiet stillness of a sleeping household, I became absolutely mesmerized by the alchemy of soap making: a process whereby a flask of caustic lye solution is wedded with a tepid kettle-full of oil to produce a substance that is at once useful and luxurious.
The chemical reaction that produces soap is fascinating! Functioning chemically as acid and base, the oils and lye combine, under just the right conditions, to form soap. As a soap maker I become both participant and observer in a process that is as ordinary as it is captivating.
Soap making requires a bit of calculated concocting and gentle encouragement while carefully obeying nature's rules. It requires the exercise of good judgment, precise timing, and a good measure of patience as the chemical process, initiated by the soap maker, proceeds at its own pace. It requires faith that the thick, alkaline, greasy substance one pours into the mold will emerge, fully cured, as a delightful bar of sweet-smelling soap. It requires a love of the art of soap making and a desire to share a bit of one's passion.
Soap making became a metaphor for my life as a mother of four sons. It became my time away from the consuming demands of child rearing when I could renew my energies for the tasks at hand and the four children in my keep. It became my Still-Point and the business that grew from it, it's namesake.
Thirteen years later I am still making soap. The business has grown over the years alongside the boys and a few things have changed. I work during the day-time hours now, after the boys head off to school. My workspace is no longer the large walk-in closet in the old Portland-style parsonage that housed my earliest efforts. I now work in a spacious, light-filled studio nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in beautiful Western Oregon. The Internet, which was just emerging when I first began selling my soaps at small holiday sales, has now completely changed the way I do business. The soap collection has expanded to include a wide variety of specialty soaps for personal use as well as for gift giving, harkening perhaps, back to those early days of Christmas sales and holiday bazaars.
Soap making has captured my heart and I am thrilled to still be making soap all these years later. From soap making and product development to packaging design and wrapping, I am still directly involved in every aspect of producing the soap that you will now use.
Hand made soap is a most humble product that has so much to offer. It can be as useful as it is luxurious! It can gently cleanse and refresh. It can also pamper, nuture and delight with its creamy lather and wonderful perfume. It can welcome us into a new day or wash away the worries of the day-gone-by. In our busy, stress-filled world, that is a very good thing indeed!
With every bar of Still-Point Soap comes the sincere wish that you will enjoy using it as much as I have enjoyed making it for you. And may each bar help you, or someone you love, to find a Still-Point amidst your busy days.
Sincerely,
Mary Post
November 29th, 2007
