How To Start a Successful Bath Bomb Business

If you’re thinking about building a bath bomb business, or if you’re already doing it and have some questions, you’re in the right place! Jerika Zimmerman, founder of Quench Soap, shares with us her 10-step process to building a bath bomb business. Read on to learn how you can do it yourself.

1. Perfect Your Bath Bomb Recipe (And Don’t Be Afraid To Fail)

Before you even think about building a business, you have to learn how to make a bath bomb.

Making bath bombs is tough, which is why it's important to figure out whether or not making bath bombs is for you in the first place. Jerika shared that she went through many failed batches before settling on a good recipe. Then, she tweaked that recipe to make it her own.

During this discovery (and failing) phase, build your skills and become your business’s subject matter expert. Because once you launch, your customers are going to ask a lot of questions and they’ll be expecting you to know the answers!

2. Source Your Suppliers Smartly To Make a Profit

Once you’ve moved your bath bomb making from a hobby to a business, you're going to need the right suppliers to be able to make a profit. Instead of buying supplies in small amounts from a place like Amazon, buy in big enough bulk so that you’re able to price your products competitively and make a decent profit.

As a general guideline, price your product at 4 times the cost of making it. That'll include all your ingredients, packaging, shipping costs, and any taxes. Recording all of your expenses is the only way you’ll know how much money your business is making!

Also consider your shipping and packaging suppliers. Jerika gets her shipping boxes from Staples and my packaging from OnlineLabels.

3. Find Out Who Your Target Customer Is

The next thing you'll need to do is to find out who your target customer is. The more specific you are, the better. It will make all of your other business decisions faster and easier. You're going to be so busy as a business owner that you’ll appreciate anything you can do to make your decision making quicker!

4. Put in The Work To Decide on a Company Name

Choosing a company name is where a lot of people get stuck. Your target customer will somewhat inform your direction, but there are some general practices that you can keep in mind, no matter who your target customer is:

• Keep it short at one to two syllables, three max (and three is pushing it). This will free up space on your labels and make your company more memorable.
• Imagine how your company name will look on t-shirts, hats, banners, business cards, etc.
• Think about whether any of the words in your name have any negative associations with certain terms or phrases, like something inappropriate or that could be made into a joke.
• Certain letters like "Q", "K", "S", and "T" can help make your company name stand out more and be more memorable.
• Find out if someone is already using that name by typing it into Google, Instagram, and TikTok. You want to try to be as unique as possible!

5. Get Social (Even if You Don’t Like Social Media!)

There’s no getting around it - if you have a small business, you have to do social media.

I know you might hate it - Jerika hates it, too. She shared that social media will be one of the first things she’ll delegate to someone else if she ever hires more people. But unless you do it, no one will know about your company other than you.

To make social media easier, start documenting your journey the second you think about starting a business. By the time you do launch, you’ll have built up a small audience and a whole archive of your journey, so that people can see you as an expert.

6. Get Your Website and Business Email Up and Running

You can easily create a website either on Shopify or by creating an Etsy shop. Jerika has both, and shared that she thinks it’s worth the upkeep for getting those few extra sales from Etsy that she wouldn’t have gotten through her website.

While you’re at it, make sure to snag the website URL of your company name and create a business email address that’s separate from your personal email. Jerika gets a free email address through Gmail that’s basically mybusiness@gmail.com. You can also create an email address with your company domain, for example, yourname@yourbusiness.com.

7. Capture Beautiful Photos of Your Bath & Body Products

You’ll need photos of your products for your website and social media. Jerika takes her photos through a DSLR camera because it really brings out the beauty of handmade bath and body products. Many people feel that an iPhone is sufficient. Jerika shared that she personally prefers the DSLR, but it’s highly debated.

8. Legitimize Your Business

Do your research and obtain any permits or licenses that you need to make your business official with whatever state, province, or country that you live in. In Canada, Jerika has to register her business through her province in Alberta and submit her product recipes to Health Canada for approval. You've gone through all this trouble to create a business, you should make it official!

9. Create Stylish Packaging for Your Bath Bombs

Branding and packaging play a huge role in selling bath bombs. Jerika encourages everyone to experiment with different sizes, shapes, and designs on your own before outsourcing to a box supplier. Suppliers may be faster, but they usually require you to order thousands of units at a time. Nail down your packaging before making such a huge investment!

Jerika wraps her back bears in a biodegradable film, then places them inside boxes that she makes using her Cricut machine with a peep hole for the bears to look out of and a cute little handle on top. The look is completed with labels that beautifully display her company name, Quench Bear, the product name, and the ingredients information.

"Labels are where the magic is at, and I absolutely adore using Online Labels. They’re the only labels I’ll use and I highly recommend them to anybody who wants to create a professional, beautiful product" Jerika shared.

For her bath bear boxes, she uses 0.5" x 2" White Gloss Laser labels, which are perfectly sized to the spaces on the box. For other products, she uses all kinds of sizes, shapes and materials, including white gloss, clear gloss, square, circle, and even lip balm stickers.

She also uses Maestro Label Designer to create and save her designs. You get a code for free year-long access with each order of labels you buy. Once she has my labels set up, she clicks the print labels button, which downloads a PDF version that she’ll send to her printer.

10. Get Your Products in Front of a Local Customer Base, In-Person!

Jerika’s products look pretty impressive online, but where they truly shine is when she sells them in person. Getting your products in front of a local customer base is key to getting your bath bomb business off the ground. A great way to meet your local customers is to participate in vendor shows or farmer's markets.

She shared that in-person selling was the change her business needed to get to the next level. She got to see in real time what people did and didn’t like, which helped her grow as a business owner and improve products over time. It’s also where she was able to meet a lot of her wholesale customers who wanted her products in their shops.

Make A Business Around Your Passion

Building your own bath bomb business can be a scary journey full of unknowns. But if you take one thing away from all of this, know that making a business around bath bombs will only work if you truly love making bath bombs. So get out there, make some bath bombs, and get passionate about what you're doing! It’s that passion that is so infectious and will make people want to buy your products.

Need bath bomb labels? Browse our selection of bath bomb labels for the most popular sizes!