The Soap Challenge

Aimed at secondary school pupils, The Soap Challenge is an interactive product development workshop that will see students work in teams to create a brand new, hand-crafted, natural soap company.

The day will begin with each team allocating job roles and responsibilities, deciding on a corporate name and choosing a target audience for their product to be sold to. With their target audience in mind, students will then move on to selecting the essential oils and other ingredients for their unique hand crafted natural soap.Each team is provided with detailed ingredient information cards which will provide many facts and figures that could help a team find a Unique Selling Point, or a Transport Carbon Footprint advantage over their competitors. Although a natural soap can be purchased locally, many of the ingredients used to produce the soap travel from around the world. Teams will be able to make a conscious decision to source their ingredients closer to home, or from Europe. Those teams who do not give consideration to the amount of miles an ingredient has to travel, may want to consider different ways to ‘off set’ their Eco ‘unfriendliness’.

Teams will also be provided with a set of 20 test tubes which contain a few drops of essential oil, which enable the students to smell the different aromas. The essential oils have various properties, some may have a calming effect whilst others are energizing. Students have to create their own unique blend of oils and ingredients to appeal to their target audience. The provision of test tubes also provides students with an opportunity for some impromptu market research, as the students ask teachers who fit their target audience, if their aromatic blend appeals to them. They will also be able to select colours and textures from flower petals to poppy seeds for exfoliation.

Following product development, students will also need to calculate the cost of producing their soap along with setting their retail price and profit margin. Other tasks to complete will include the design of their corporate logo, developing a realistic sales and marketing strategy, designing a sales leaflet/poster and creating a five minute presentation to promote their enterprise and product.

Once a winner has been chosen, natural soap producer CocoMango will then produce upto 50 bars of natural hand crafted soap to the winning team's recipe. All the regulatory safety assessments and labelling requirements will be completed by CocoMango and the winning team’s logo will be used on the soap designs.

The soap challenge can be delivered for up to 250 studentsand aims to provideinsight into running a small business as well as developing skills such as confidence, team working, time management, communication, organisation, planning and presenting.