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Soap Quarry
Stacey Center
By Melissa Miller
When Soap Quarry owner Stacey Center received such a wonderful
response to the soaps she made for her friends and family, she
began selling her products online. During her first year an
English cosmetic company approached her about distributing her
soaps in the UK market.
For her first large order she stayed
up all night to make 1000 bars of soap. The feedback was
fabulous and she learned that many of the UK customers
initially thought that her scrumptious scented soap bars were
desserts and were going to eat them.
Thanks to word-of-mouth her company bloomed. She began with 15
fragrances and soon expanded to over 100 that she uses to
custom-scent her impressive selection of bath and body items.
Last year Alexandrea Power featured Center and Soap Quarry in
her book Passion Rules: Inspiring Women In Business,
along with business giants such as Mrs. Fields and Mary Kay. Center continues to formulate new products and create new
scents.
She recently had a famous perfumer develop a Crème Brulée fragrance and sent it to a group of customers to
sample. The feedback was phenomenal; all told her they’d buy
anything available in the scent. She’s also a wiz at matching
designer fragrances such as Annick Goutal Petite Cherie and
Comptoir Sud Pacifique Pamplemousse.
I had the pleasure of sampling Soap Quarry Sugar Scrub
($10 for 8oz.) composed of sugar, coconut, sweet almond and
vitamin E oils in a refreshing Mango Kiwi scent. It
 contains
just the right amount of exfoliating particles and natural
oils and left my skin satiny smooth, without the need for a
moisturizer.
I’m a fan of Dream Cake Body Lotion ($7.25
for 8oz.), a heavenly, foody vanilla treat for the skin.
Fairy Dust Powder ($7.50 for 3.5oz) is a silky-soft
talc-free powder with mica for a bit of glitter. It comes in a
shaker container with a puff, scented in Mon Cherie, Soap
Quarry’s brilliant knockoff of Annick Goutal Petite Cherie.
Another Soap Quarry favorite is Solid Perfume, made of
almond oil, beeswax, fragrance and vitamin E and packaged in a
little tin. These are less expensive than L’Occitane Solid
Perfumes, and Soap Quarry offers a much larger scent
selection.
Chocolate Milk Bath ($7.90 for 8oz) is a
delicious skin-softening treat with loads of cocoa butter.
Another bestseller is the SLS-free (sodium laurel sulfate)
Shower Gel, which I sampled in Tiare, a glorious Hawaiian
gardenia fragrance.
Body Butter ($12.48 for 8oz)
contains a rejuvenating blend of olive, castor and coconut
oils, and shea and avocado butter to deep condition the hair
and banish dry skin on the hands, elbows, knees and feet. Try
this one in Cinnamon Buns for a calorie-free treat.
Glimmer
Body Lotion ($12.50 for 8oz), which may be
custom-scented, contains pearlescent gold mica for a
moisturizing shimmer. Popular Soap Quarry scents are Amber
Mystique (a dead-on Victoria’s Secret Amber Romance), Midnight
in Tunisia (described as like walking through an Arabian
market with the aroma of olives packed in brine, Arabian
spices, exotic perfumes and night blooming jasmine), Happiness
(like Clinique Happy perfume), Tidel Wash (think sheets-just-washed-in-Tide
fresh scent), Sugar Cookie, Pumpkin Pie, Citrus
Linen, Oceania, Rosemary Mint, Coconut Cream and Lemon
Meringue.
Soap Quarry also has Cold-Process Soaps, Bath Melts, Milk Bath
and Massage Oil, all of which may be custom-scented.
They also offer a birthday club where members receive a
present during their birthday month.
Periodic newsletters, a
message board and polls regarding product packaging, scent
choices and shipping options are a way for customers to
contribute to the way Soap Quarry grows and changes.
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