Handmade Beauty Connection
May 27, 2002

Happy Memorial Day!! Drive & Bar-B-Que Safely!!
The newsletter will not be published on June 3. We will resume publication on June 10.
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---> This Week's Sponsor: Your Business!! <---

If you're looking for a cost effective and economical way to reach handmade beauty product enthusiasts all around the world, look no further!!

Your business could be advertised here!

The Handmade Beauty Connection reaches over 3,000 loyal subscribers each week. Our subscribers are lovers of handmade toiletries and a large percentage of them make their own products using the educational information, raw materials and supplies provided by companies like yours!!

For details on how your can get your message heard by loyal HBC readers, click here.

1. HBN Update: Welcome New HBN Members
2. Handmade Beauty Trivia Question: win a tube of my super fabulous Vitamin E Enriched Shea Butter Lip Balm!!
3. Create The Life You Love™: Making Yourself Memorable, Part I
4. New At MakeYourCosmetics.com: Anoint Me! Solid Perfume
5. Handmade Beauty Product Review: by Donna Maria

~ Welcome New HBN Members!

'O'Shea Butter Products | Omoye Cooper | New York
* shea butter products made with refined shea butter and fruit, vegetable, essential and fragrance oils

Katie's Creations | Katie Young | Colorado
* lightly scented handmade soap made with natural oils, herbs, flower petals, etc., for a sensual bathing escape

Beata Face & Body Spa | Beata Smigiel | Canada
* full service spa using products made with precious certified 100% pure Bulgarian Rose Oil

Milky Way Molds, Inc. | Catherine Failor | Oregon
* The finest selection of craft molds in the galaxy with a variety of different shapes to choose from

Fragrant Blossom Soaps | Lillian Newman | Indiana
* cold process soaps made from the finest ingredients, some grown in our own herb garden

Learn more about our members and their exciting activities by visiting their Web sites through HBN's Online Member Directory!!

Last Week's Question: Plant me in your garden and I'll grow all over the place. Pick me, wash me, dry me and soak me in oil to make a soothing treatment for your dry skin. I am one of the primary ingredients in Donna Maria's Emerald Oil. I grow so easily that if you trample all over me around your garden and yard, I'll spring up everywhere. For this reason, I have been called "The White Man's Footprints". What am I?

Last Week's Answer: Plantain (Plantago major)

This Week's Question: I am a collection of 38 time-tested healing items. The healers in my collection can help you deal with everything from fears and anxieties to unwarranted guilt and lack of confidence.

To win this week, be the first to submit the name of the collection of healers and also, the name of the person who is credited with inventing them, and win a tube of my super fabulous Vitamin E Enriched Shea Butter Lip Balm!!

Please read the contest rules here before submitting your entry.

While time does not permit me to respond personally to all entrants, the winner will be notified by email and their name posted at HBN's home page.

This week, I start a 10-part series on Making Yourself Memorable. If you want to learn 10 sure-fire tips to solidify your brand and increase sales, you won't want to miss this series! The text of the series is taken from remarks I delivered in May 2002 at the Southern California Handcrafted Toiletries Conference hosted by HBN member Charlon Bobo of Utopian Garden. We had a fabulous time so make sure you check it out  next year!!

The topic of being memorable in the minds of your customers and the consuming public is a vital one. After all, you can have a fabulous product, a beautiful retail store and an outstanding Web site. But what does it all mean if people don’t remember them (or if they have an unfavorable memory of them)? Absolutely nothing, that’s what! So, in addition to having a wonderful product, store, Web site, etc., it’s crucial to take the steps necessary to make sure that people actually remember you. 

Statistics show generally that people remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see and 70% of what they see and hear. This means that, unless you’re in a position to either spend millions of dollars on television advertising, or you can be physically seen and heard in about a million places at once, you have a challenge don’t you? And the key to maximizing the chances that people will remember your message – and thus your product – over all of the other messages they receive every day, is to create and utilize a memorable image. 

There are different types of images. There is obviously the product image that is important. But for small businesses, particularly ones in discrete niche markets such as handmade toiletries, it’s just as important (sometimes more important) to make sure that YOU have an image. After all, in small business, it’s you as much as it is the product that is being sold. So if you have spent all of your time creating an image for your product and no time creating one for yourself, now is the time to start! 

In my many years dealing with businesses, both large and small, I have noticed 10 things that are done on a consistent basis that make small companies successful. All are important in and of themselves so if you choose to do only one of them, you are going to enjoy benefits for your business. But if you can find a way to incorporate all of them into your daily life, you will see marked improvement in your business and in your personal life as well.

Making Yourself Memorable, Part I: Be An Expert

Expert: a person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject based on experience or training.

Being an expert is all about taking the time to master you and your product so you can display a reliable and confident attitude about both. For example, if you make and sell soap, you should be an expert on soap and soapmaking ... if you're not an expert, you should hire someone who is so you can learn what you need to know to sell the product to the public. If a new potential customer or magazine editor comes into your store or across your Web site and asks, "Oh, you make the soap yourself ... are you an expert on the subject?" you should be able to confidently answer that you are, without having to hesitate and think about it. As a consumer, I want to buy my handmade soap from an expert! As a magazine editor, I want to interview experts, not amateurs, for my article on soapmaking!

In my travels, I regularly encounter handmade toiletries makers who appear sort of shy and timid about declaring that they are experts. They kind of hem and haw about it, and tell me that it sounds sort of arrogant and conceited to declare that they are experts on the topic of handmade toiletries, even though they make and sell them to the public for a living! I always have one thing to say to them ... "Get Over It!!" If you make good soap with the right proportion of all ingredients to create a fantastic bar of soap, and you know how to properly measure it, stir it, fragrance it, color it, saponify it, mold it, unmold it, stack it, cut it, cure it, package it and sell it, you should be an expert soapmaker!! And if you are one, don't be afraid of saying so!

Looking at the definition of "expert" above (from dictionary.com), it's clear that being an expert is NOT about pretending to be an expert if you're not. If you're not an expert (yet), and you try to represent yourself as one, your lack of candor will shine loudly and clearly to anyone listening and observing your mannerisms. An expert can look a customer in the eye and, with a straight face, say he is an expert and not hesitate. If you're not an expert, and a confident one at that, don't try to fake it ... customers will know and you'll lose them and your reputation in the process. 

So, if you have your own business, whether it's as a soapmaker, a writer, a landscaper or whatever, take the time to become an expert on the subject, and make sure you can declare your expertise as a part of your sales process. People will appreciate and remember that they are buying from an expert, and their confidence in you will translate into increased sales ... from them and also from all the people they will tell about you!

Next Week: Be Consistent

Vitamin E Enriched Shea Butter Lip Balm is one of the newest treats at the site! It's made with some of the creamiest shea butter I've ever used from SunRose Aromatics. It's enriched with Vitamin E and it really easy to  make. Oh so creamy and spreadable ... you'll love it!!

When you visit MakeYourCosmetics.com, it's easy to buy the ingredients you need to make your goodies by clicking on our Partner links:

Essential Wholesale: natural unscented cosmetic bases, pure essential oils, absolutes, carrier oils such as avocado, virgin coconut, sweet almond, jojoba, shea butter and specialty packaging supplies!

Bramble Berry, Inc.: over 80 different, fully tested fragrance oils (including the exclusive "Relaxing" and "Energy" blends), over 250 soap molds, essential oils and unscented bases.

Lynden House International , Canadian supplier of soap and candlemaking supplies such as fixed oils, perfumes, essential oils, molds, powdered milks, colors, pre-made bases, candle wax, wicks, embeds and more!

Anoint Me! Solid Perfume is available in Solace, a light floral blend, and Nimue, a rose fragrance oil and patchouli essential oil blend. Solace has a matching linen spray too! You can order your own Anoint Me! Solid Perfumes from Thyme Wise SpiritWorks. And remember that, Kim is a fantastic Web site designer so if you're in the market for a Web site that helps your products stand out on the Web, contact Kim at Fallen Muse WebWorks!