Founder
I think I first fell in love with handcrafted soap when I lived on Salt Spring Island. At the Saturday market there was a company called Salt Spring Soapworks© I began to start buying natural and homemade soaps and seeing a difference right away. When I moved back to my birth city, Surrey, BC I wanted to try making my own soap, so I could know exactly what went into it. I started making soap for myself, and quickly ended up with too much soap. I made my first batch of soap at the end of March 2018. I thoroughly enjoyed making original soap with no color dyes, or chemical detergents. I had too many soaps and started posting on them for sale on Facebook Market place. The response I got was fantastic. People were very happy to buy soaps that were homemade, that were local, and that had ingredients they could read. I started creating more interesting soaps for these followers, adding fruits and veggies to create colours, as well as avocados and yogurt to add to the fats in the soap. I started collecting olive oil, coconut oil, lard, castor oil and more to test out new recipes. I would try to “soap” almost anything I could get my hands on. Then I started finding friends with skin issues. I started researching articles about natural herbs, oils, clays, or extracts that could help with these, and started putting them in the soap. I had success! Happy customers kept coming back, asking if I had conditioner, and deodorant, and laundry soap. In this first year, I have created over 25 different soaps, including holiday specific ones. I have also started a vegan line, an organic line, a line of deodorant, and laundry soap. In September 2018 I started a webpage, connected to the Facebook page for ordering. It was absolutely exhilarating the first time an order came in. I was able to let them know it was in progress, and later ready for pickup. It was so great to meet people had the same interests that I did, in natural products for the skin. In August 2018, we switched from plastic packaging to all paper, and started to use bags made from recycled newspaper. Customers were thrilled about this. Most recently the company has donated $700, and fundraised $200 to send 38 shoeboxes full of toys, school supplies and hygiene items to third world countries, through Samaritans’ Purse Operation Christmas Child.
“People are always more important than profit”
Esther Halliday, CEO and founder of Esther’s Homemade Soap
