Handmade Beauty Connection
January 21, 2002

This Week's Sponsor:
---> FallenMuse WebWorks <---

PROFESSIONAL, AFFORDABLE WEB SITE SOLUTIONS!

Mention this ad by March 31 to receive a 5% discount on any new Web site design package project. (Project must start by March 31.)

1. HBN Update: Welcome New & Renewing HBN Members & HBN Members On The Move!!
2. HBN Member Success Spotlight: The Soap Fairy, Inc.
3. Handmade Beauty Trivia Question: win a copy of Rosemary Gladstar's Herbs For Natural Beauty with simple yet fun recipes for everything from facial steams to what she calls "Rosemary's Perfect Cream."
4. Create The Life You Love™ Tip: How Long Is Your Wish List, Part IV
5. New At MakeYourCosmetics.com
6. New Create The Life You Love Audio Tape: Learn From A Public Relations Pro!!
7. Handmade Beauty Product Recipe: Tahitian Neroli Cream

~ Welcome New HBN Members!

Dailey Essentials | Shari Dailey | New Jersey
* handmade soaps and toiletries, embroidered towels, soy wax candles

Our Enchanted Cottage | Denise Jacob | Georgia
* using God's creations so that your skin may be nourished with real food (herbs) and not man's chemicals

ESCENTIALS - Botanical Indulgences | Tina Antonelli | Pennsylvania
* bath salts, milk baths, talc-free body powders & etc. Customization available

~ Welcome Renewing HBN Members!

Auroma, LLC | Kevin Coffey | Illinois
Blue Moon Herbals | Debbi Quinn | New Jersey
Briarwood Farm Botanicals | Linn Stillwell | New Hampshire
Chelmsford Herbal Soap Company | Rebecca Lucich | Massachusetts
Essential Restoratives | Vicki Bedell | Massachusetts
Essencia | Juliana & Alison Lipe | Louisiana
Ellen's Essentials | Ellen Peacock | Texas
Gentle Emu Oil Products | Deena Gentle | Wisconsin
Kathleen Lewis Beauty Worldwide | Kathleen Lewis | New York
Sugar Plum Sundries | Karon Adams | Tennessee
Sunshine Garden Soapworks | Stephani Halderman | Wisconsin
Irish Hearth Soaps | Lori Kimble | Illinois
Persimmon Tree Handcrafted Soaps | Revonda Moody | Delaware
Rainbow Meadow, Inc. | Melody Upham | Michigan
ROSEBUD | Sherrylee Govoni | New York
Gambrill Mountain Soap Company | Millette Miller | Maryland

~ HBN Members On The Move!

HBN Member Lena Mae Soaps... Launches New Web Site!

HBN member Lena Mae Soaps... is pleased to announce the launch of her new Web site! Designed by Kiim Baron of HBN member Fallen Muse WebWorks (see today's sponsor), the site boasts an easy to use shopping cart, a list of fairs, festivals and farmer's markets where you can purchase Lena Mae Soaps... products in and around the New York area and the inspirational story of how Lena Mae Soaps... got started. Congratulations Pamela at Lena Mae Soaps...!!

HBN Members' Chocolate & Goat Milk Products Receive Rave Reviews!

The January 2002 issue of The Suds Report features rave reviews on decadent treats for the bath, most of them made by HBN members. Suds Report Editor Debbie Steele contacted me last year requesting information about HBN and wanting to know if it was OK to go through our online member directory to find some products to review for her newsletter. Of course I told her to have at it! That's what it's there for after all!!

So off she went, and with a little help from me by way of an HBN member update announcing her newsletter to the membership, Debbie has found heaven on earth in her bathroom. Her latest rave reviews include these HBN member products: Aromaleigh's Mad for Mocha Body Scrub, Wildhaven Soap Company's Fudge Swirl Bar, The Village Soap Shop's MilkShake Bar, Madame Renaud Naturals' Peppermint Patty Body Butter, Fairies Kiss' Yummy Chocolate Vanilla and Mocha and Caerlon Garden's Mocha Lotion Solid Lotion Stick. Check them out here!! And that's not all! My friend Debbie at The Suds Report has also reviewed several members' goat milk soaps. Check out reviews of goat milk soaps made by HBN members Alabu Soaps, Thimbleberry Hill and Heart's Delight Goat Milk Soapworks (which also had their goat milk lotion reviewed)! Click here to see those reviews!

Learn more about our members and their exciting activities by visiting their Web sites through HBN's Online Member Directory, now with 4 ways to search: (1) by state/country; (2) by member business name; (3) by keyword search; or (4) using our new alphabetical listings!

This week's HBN Member Success Spotlight shines on HBN member The Soap Fairy, Inc., a Delaware-based manufacturer of handmade soaps, lotions, creams and other goodies. In just a few short years, The Soap Fairy has grown from a small kitchen operation to a fast-paced handmade beauty product factory operated out of a renovated historic ice plant. Click here to check out The Soap Fairy's HBN Success Spotlight and enjoy information and inspiration from the owner, Scott Blackson.

Member Success Spotlights are one of the many benefits of HBN membership. To learn more about Scott and all of the other HBN members profiled in HBN's Success Spotlights, click here.

This week, we look at the benefits of Partnering as a way to facilitate the fulfillment of our dreams and the shortening of our wish lists. Research has shown that, in all walks of like, people perform better when they are working in cooperation with others. Haven't we all heard of people having partners to help them quit smoking or exercise and lose weight? Likewise, in business, it is especially important to make sure that you don't go it alone. Whether it's your spouse, a trusted business colleague, your best friend, a hired business coach or some combination of those, building and using a support network can make all the difference between success and failure in business. As niche markets like the handmade soap and toiletries industries become more competitive, it will become increasingly important to find ways to collaborate with others to find practical solutions to the challenges of  small business ownership. These alliances can help you become more competitive and increase sales.

Sure you can think of examples of such successful alliances all around you. Drive by any fast food restaurant and you'll be inundated with opportunities to buy sodas in cups with pictures of stars of the latest movie blockbuster. Take a look at a professional football game and check out the United Way campaign logo that appears next to the NFL one. And we all know that manufacturers of everything from cooking oil to boxed cereal make plenty of it for their competitors to put in their own boxes with their own logos.

But the success of fast alliances are not limited to big companies. Accomplished business owners both large and small rarely achieve success by themselves. Instead, they partner with banks to obtain business loans, with venture capitalists to gain investors in their dream, with partners who contribute sweat equity, money or both ... they partner with business coaches and even with their competitors to find win-win solutions that help both of them prosper. Here are some example of how partnering can help any business grow and become more competitive:

1. Increase Your Ability To Fill Larger Orders.
You're a small soapmaker with the capacity to make only 500 bars of soap each week, yet in order to grow your business, you have decided to go after contracts which require much more than that. What will you do when you land that contract? Certainly you can't turn the business away. But what will you do? If you have an alliance with someone with the capacity to make more soap than you, you have an instant business possibility. Subcontract part of the job to them and it's a win/win situation for all!

2. Contact A New Set Of Potential Customers.
You're a aromatherapy massage therapist in a small, historic district in your town. Your best friend is an accountant. Both of you have small but growing businesses, but you want to get the word out about your services to a larger population. Your accountant friend wants to reach your clientele who have some disposable income. You want to reach your accountant's customers, small business owners, who also have disposable income. Why not place your cards in each other's places of business? Or if you have a newsletter, why not allow your accountant to place an ad in it in exchange for her putting your business cards and a testimonial about how stress relieving your massages are in her tax season mailings?

3. Enlarge Your Support Sphere.
You have a small business making and retailing toiletries, mainly from your Web site. You have plans to grow your business by starting a wholesale side. You even have a prepared Action Plan (see last week's newsletter). The trouble is, no one in your family or network of friends supports what you are doing, so you can't find someone to review your Action Plan and give you feedback on it. Instead, they see you as a little "off your rocker" for thinking that you could leave your full time job and make a living selling lotions and bath salts. There's no one in your immediate circle to hold you accountable and give you that extra nudge you need when you just don't feel like taking the steps to implement your plan. Why not partner with someone else in the industry to review your plan, give you honest feedback, hold you accountable and help you measure your progress toward your goal?

4. Increase Brand Recognition.
You make and sell aromatherapy beeswax candles and you have a solid group of repeat customers. You have tried making soap and toiletries so you can add to your lines of products but you don't like dealing with lye and are not set up to make toiletries and learn about preservatives and FDA regulations. On the other hand, you know that you could sell many more candles if you could reach people who are buying toiletries items from businesses that do not sell candles. Why not ask a toiletries maker to allow you to put a small ad on her site advertising your candles in exchange for some space on your site to advertise her toiletries? The cost is minimal ... just the price to create an ad.

These solutions are admittedly oversimplified and I don't have the space to explore the minutiae involved in each one here. But they do illustrate the point that you can be most creative if you link up with someone else who is also willing to brainstorm and work with you to invent ways to help both of you reach your goals. To help HBN members reach their goals through partnering, HBN will later this month announce the Beauty Buddies™ program. Beauty Buddies™ will work to team up HBN members with other HBN members who have similar and/or complementary goals so they can PARTNER to give birth to win/win situations like the ones described above.

Stay tuned for more on Beauty Buddies™ next week! In the meantime, think of areas where you could benefit from partnering and start forging your own alliances today!!