Jamie Browne

Jamie Browne of Ocklawaha, Florida discusses plans for her future in soaping

SJ -  I’m talking with Jamie Browne, she’s from Ocklawaha, Fl; can you tell me Jamie, a little bit about why you came to the retreat.
JB – Well, I’ve been making soap for my family for about five years, and it just struck me as a good learning tool.  I would really like to learn how to expand and maybe sell some soap, and, especially I’d like to learn how to formulate my own recipes.  Right now I’m making soap from other people’s recipes and it’s really not mine.
SJ – So what are you most interested in as far as the types of recipes that you’re looking for, are you looking for a luxurious type of soap, are you looking for the everyday?
JB – For my own personal use and family use, you know, soap is soap.  But like, there are a lot of people out there that want like the really pretty, luxurious smelly stuff.  So, I mean, I would like to do that because that’s what’s obviously going to sell.
SJ – Right, and do you have any ideas how you’re going to market your soap, are you going to be looking toward the farmer’s market, the festival sort of thing?
JB – Yeah, I’m probably going to start there, but other than that, I really don’t have any idea yet.  So, I’m hoping to get some help with this as well.
SJ – And internet sales, are you thinking anything along those lines?
JB – Um, maybe in the future, the money is a huge issue right now, I mean seriously I scraped up my last $500 to come to this event, I’ve got $3 in my account.  I’m praying I get home on fumes.
SJ – Okay, okay, well I understand that, and I think that, I hope that at the end of the weekend you’ll feel that it was money well spent.  How do you feel about new products, is there anything that you were looking for that we’re not providing now?
JB – Not really, I’m really open to starting to use new products and stuff that I haven’t used before, I just need to you know, do the research and jump into it.
SJ – Okay, and how about the topics that we’ve covered and that are on the agenda; is there anything beyond that you’re looking for?
JB – Not really sure right now, because we’re still kind of in the middle of it;  I don’t want to say, I need this and this and then have it come following.  It’s kind of hard to tell right at this point whether there would be more; and then, like me, I don’t think of things right away so I might think of things tomorrow.
SJ – We will have an exit survey, so you can take a chance to think things over and you can fill it out on that if you think of something that strikes you later on.  And let me just bring up our next retreat, it’s January 23-24-25, same place, the lineup will be different of course, we hope to have, of course we’ll have Catherine, I’m not sure if Kevin Dunn is committed, I think he has.  But we’ll be covering different topics or some other things in depth, so we’re going to try to keep it fresh and keep it new every time we do this.  So that’s something to consider, and then in March it will be the 27th through 29th.  Something to keep in mind.  Also, Derek briefly touched on the private labeling, so if at some point you think that something like that be helpful for your business, it’s something to keep in mind, you know, labeling is very important for your image and everything. It’s a good idea to have a cohesive business identity, of course, at any time, so everything matches and it looks like you’re really serious about the image.  

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