New focus, new packaging

by Fiona McBryde February 24, 2021 2 min read

As a small business our experience of Covid has shone a light on what really matters to us and to you - our community, whether that’s our local community here in Stroud, or our wider community of suppliers, makers and retailers and you our customers.

We are on a renewed mission to focus on the ‘folk’ in Soap Folk, from championing the causes our customers care about to working more closely with local makers and suppliers.

At the beginning of the year, we asked our customers what ethical and environmental factors were important to them. Thank you to the huge number of you who took the time to tell us what you thought.

This year, we are going to focus more on the ethical values which matter to our customers; using the best natural ingredients, reducing single-use plastic and remaining committed to being palm oil-free, whilst delivering great products.

Here's what you can expect in 2021:

Some of our packaging may look a little different.

We are replacing our COSMOS stamp on our soap packaging with new labelling.

Certified organic ingredients will always be our go-to option, but by increasing the number of ingredients we can source locally, the COSMOS-organic certification scheme is no longer quite the right fit for us.

This new simpler text based approach, focussed on core values, was created by our designer, Susie. We like the thumbprint shape, which Susie said evoked "the identity of Soap Folk, a light touch on the planet."

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We will start introducing more locally sourced ingredients

This will help support our local community, improves traceability and with less demands on transportation, our carbon footprint will be smaller.

We already have some interesting and exciting deas about how to make this happen and the types of ingredients this could involve. We look forward to sharing these behind the scenes stories with you.

Finding more ways to reduce, reuse and recycle

As well as doing more behind the scenes in the workshop to cut our use of plastic, we will continue to strive for ways to make our business and products even more sustainable. We have listed some of these on our new sustainability page, where will continue to share our targets.

And finally, we’ll keep listening

We love getting to know you and finding out what you think about our products. We're always amazed by how much support you give us, and we're so grateful. We hope to find even more ways for you to get involved in shaping our small business. (yes, we're finally putting in that phone line!)

Inspiring times ahead!