Teach Soap

I have a client who wants an all natural soap w/ rose eo in it. I priced this bottle of "gold" and its not practical to use in cp soap...or any soap for that matter! When I did a search on natural rose soaps, there are soaps(handmade) that are saying "All natural soap w/ rose essential oil. They are selling them from $4- $6 a bar. When I do the figures IT COST $5 to make the soap....If one uses an actual Rose otto which to my understanding is the only "Natural" essential oil of rose. Am I incorrect in understanding that Rose OIL is an absolute? which is chemically extracted with alcohol? If anyone can help me with understanding how they can afford to make their soap & sell it AT OR BELOW Cost...I'd sure like to find their source for "cheap gold"... Rose otto is about $75.00 per 1/16 oz. What gets me, is if they are using rose in another form YET claiming to call it rose essential oil.

They may be using a minute quantity of Rose EO in order to make that claim. If the ingredients list also contains "fragrance" then that's probably the case.

Or they are not telling the truth.

Rose geranium is a less costly alternative if you want to go EO. It's geranium, not rose, but it has a rose-like scent. Mixed with palmarosa, you can get pretty close.

If the soap was made with real, pure rose absolute, it would be selling for at least $25 per bar. There are some less pricey essential oils that one can use to imitate the scent of rose, but it will never smell exactly the same. I'm sorry to say some soapmakers lie about the actual ingredients they use. No such thing as "cheap gold".

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

well thank you. I was racking my brain to figure out how they could possibly do that. I tried figuring it 4x & still came up with a high cost ea. time. I always tell my customers the truth. If it has a small amount of manmade color or fragrance....Then it IS NOT natural. No point in lying. I try to do my research on the ingredients to make sure that what Im using doesn't contain something I am unaware of. Though, sometimes the sellers of ingred. don't always fill in the blanks either. Thanks

Buttercup, I admire your integrity in not wanting to mislead, much less outright deceive, your customers.

I don't know if you experimented with making any soap with natural rose otto, and I have not myself, but I did receive a small sample of it earlier this year, and I can tell you that it is STRONG ---- STRONG STRONG STRONG!!! Much stronger, proportionately, than any other essential oil or floral absolute that I have yet encountered. I can possibly just imagine that one might be able to make soap using only very small amounts of it while still getting a reasonable level of aroma, and keeping the cost down to maybe only $8 or $10 per bar, if your customer would be willing to pay proportionally for the finished product --- which, realistically, is rather doubtful.

Well thank you. I kinda gathered it would be strong from some of the carriers of the oil & their descriptions made it sound that way. I love your description better! No doubt in my mind now....LOL your price is about what I figured. I don't think this client will go for that price. So I need to come up with good alternatives. Looks like it might be, rose geranium &/or palmerosa. I wouldn't mind mixing the two. But again I've never used either. Only E. Geranium & thats not a rose fragrance!