The gorgeous artistry of this cake makes me want to get married again. And the description of the flavor (orange zest filled with dulce de leche with guava) is making me starry eyed.
Search Results for: www.brambleberry.com
How everyone makes their money
I don’t know if you’re guilty of this, but I’m forever going into a shop, looking at a company and then assuming I know how much they are making. My mind is often tallying up the purchases of the customers in line at my local juice bar and trying to figure out their overhead, margins and ultimately, their net profit.
In my head, everyone is making more money than they are in reality.
And now, someone has proven that! The New Yorker has a really interesting breakdown of what the real life pay of different businesses and occupations in NYC make. Check it out here. Being a high-end drug dealer makes pretty incredible money per hour if you can get over the whole illegal and jail part of the business. Being a yoga studio isn’t all it’s cracked up to be though the lifestyle benefits are pretty hard to beat.
Great soap by Jude at Aussie Soap Supplies
Jude from Aussie Soap Supplies sent me photos of her latest (amazing!) cold process soap batches. In the Black Lavender & Amber on the right, she actually discounted the water by 25% and the entire batch came out very smooth, hard and extremely even looking. Her double pour is a beautiful sight to behold. She used Ultramarine Violet and Black Oxide with a white pearl mica strip in the middle. The bars have a sophisticated dramatic look.
On the fun blend she’s got on the left, she used Tomato Leaf and Pineapple Cilantroand says that it’s a “fabbo blend.” I especially like how she whipped the top part of the soap into a nice frosting look completely with little sprinkles.
I’m back from Arizona
I’m back from Arizona safe and sound. And very tired. I changed my flight this morning so that I could get back to work and Bramble Berry sooner and get a half day of work in. I got to the gate just as the 6:25 a.m. flight was loading and was not able to make that flight but I easily made the 8 a.m. flight.
I was so happy when I boarded the Alaska flight because they serve Seattle’s Best Coffee, which was significantly stronger than the brown water I was served in the airport!
I learned how to make deodorant at the gathering. I’m looking forward to trying out my newfoundknowledge in the upcoming months and posting the results and recipes.
Phew, the talk is over
I just gave the Arizona Soap Gathering Conference Keynote and I am so happy that it’s done and over with.
The reality of speaking in front of a packed room of 160 people is very different than what I envisioned when I was writing my speech! Ack!
The group was appropriately warmed up though and they laughed at my jokes (thank you thank you thank you) and even asked questions. I think it helped that Deborah from Wild Woman Soaps gave out our soapmaking DVD’s and lotion booklet to people who asked questions. I wish I could claim that idea as my own but no, that was her idea!
Right now, we’re watching some really interesting demonstrations on melt and pour and making room sprays. I love learning new techniques and tricks. It’s amazing how many ways there are to make a bar of soap!
On the way to Arizona Soap Conference
I’m headed to the Arizona Soap Conference today! I can’t wait to meet Trina from Snowdrift Farms, Suz from Oregon Trails and Kelley from Soapie’s Supplies!
The gathering fun starts tonight with a Welcome Reception at 6 p.m. at the conference hotel and then, bright and early tomorrow at 9 a.m!
It’s going to be a jam packed day. I really want to go to the soap sculpting class and the mineral make up class in the afternoon. Kelley and Cherie did a great job packing in a large amount of content into a small amount of time.
It’s sure to be all soap all the time this weekend and I’m looking forward to learning new techniques and tricks for making a better bar of soap or batch of lotion.
Humane Rat Trapping
We caught a big rat at our house. It doesn’t look big but it was large enough to scare away our chipmunks and our squirrels. Chris drove our pet rat 7 miles away and let it spring and sproing merrily away in a field, happy as can be (or scared, tired, hungry and discombobulated. We’re going with the latter.).
Fun question of the day
This email is copied below in all its glory, grammatical errors included. This was the only thing in the email. Nothing else. It’s a bit cryptic. I did my best to answer it in a professional and courteous manner. My expanded answer is below her note.
can i just put these items in the oven the cocoa butter ,canola and olive
oil to make the soap
No, you cannot put the three ingredients into the oven to make soap. There are a variety of steps and major safety considerations to take into account. I would highly recommend getting the DVD Learn to Make Cold Process Soap (https://www.brambleberry.com/books.html) or the book The Soapmaker’s Companion by Susan Mill Cavitch before you go any further in trying to make soap.
It’s a complex process that is easily learned, just like cooking, but it does take some time and research to learn it and ensure the safety of you and the people that use your soap.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
The Reign of Erik!
I got up this morning and started making a delicious bowl of pasta salad. That alone would qualify for a herculean effort (cooking, before work!? Craziness!) but what makes this even better is that I was cooking at 3:11 a.m. in the morning. Ouch!
I suspect that anyone who is an entrepreneur knows this particular type of insomnia. The framework of my brain would just not turn off! The buzzing about my businesses was loud and incessant.
I was worried about our new start-up that’s 6 weeks behind and way over budget. I analyzed the Otion staff meeting; which, was a bit fuzzy given that I did a tequila tasting for them. I’m still wondering if I really invited them over to my house to play the board game “Settler’s of Catan” or if that was part of a somewhat ill-advised dream. Then, I re-wrote the speech for the Keynote Address for the Arizona Soaper’s Conference, all in my head, lying prone in bed.
That’s all pretty par for the course for thoughts and worries. I can usually sleep through that neural net of business woes and concerns. The really big thing occupying my brain is that my brother is moving in. Today! With his dog. And his fiance. Into our small house.
So, after much tossing and turning, I decided to be productive. Thus, the 3:11 a.m. pasta salad foray. Followed by washing dishes. And then reading 55 pages of the book “I was a Good Mother Until I had Kids” (yes, it’s as funny as it sounds).
Erik and the dog (Sam, in the photograph above, a purebred Boxer) and Cheriss arrive in about an hour. They are moving from California and will be staying with us until they find a home of their own. It will be a treat to have them with us, for probably about the first four days. After that, I suspect everyone (Erik included) will be highly motivated to find them a house of their own.
After four years of Otion running under my “leadership” and a parade of managers that came and went, I feel confident that we’ve hit upon a winning strategy: family. Erik is smart, motivated, talented and best of all, shares in the same gene pool that spawned me. Some of that work ethic and entrepreneurial bent had to have gotten into him through osmosis or indoctrination from my parents! To back up that mesh of learned and inherited traits, he has a business degree to boot! So, the reign of Erik will start at Otion in the next few weeks.
I’m excited to welcome him to the self-employed life. His goal is to get Otion Bellingham healthy enough to fund an expansion into Seattle and become an owner/operator of the Seattle store. So, if you’re in the area, please stop into Otion and say “Hi.” He’ll be the newbie so you experienced soapmakers, please be gentle!
New Favorite Online Shop
I just stumbled on the Savannah College of Art & Design online gift shop and I just love it! They feature products made by students, teachers and alumni. Based on the incredible range they offer, it must be a school inhabited by extremely talented folks.
The card to the right is from the ‘Frames’ collection in the stationery section. It is a particularly good example of the nice color choices and interesting juxtaposition of shapes and items.
The packaging of the candles and soaps in the beauty section is very
inspiring! As usual, packaging really does make a difference in elevating the usual to the un-usual and sublime. And remember, unusual and sublime means that you can charge a premium. For small businesses, charging a premium is often the difference between being one of the 3% of small businessesthat are still open 10 years after founding versus the 97% that fade away.
Our pet squirrel
Our pet squirrel is very large and grizzled and absolutely dwarfs our friendly chipmunk. We enjoy watching him at our morning coffee. He fills his cheeks with peanuts until they are practically bursting and then scampers off to hide or eat his hoard.
I might even garden!
If Seattle Urban Farm Company was up in Bellingham, I might be tempted to garden.
Seattle Urban Farm Company will come to your house, plant your garden, come once a week to maintain your garden and best of all? They will even harvest the bounty for you as well!
Talk about a great business for the owners of SUFC. They’re doing what they love, they’re being paid top dollar (after all, only the truly lazy and excess-wealth-impaired have the privilege of extra land in Seattle that they then pay someone else to farm), and it’s a niche market. They’ll be able to pick their own clients and gradually keep raising their prices to ensure the laws of economics kick in to keep their client list manageable.
Bravo to the inspired souls that thought this business plan up!
Pepsi is run by a woman
Full disclosure: I own stock in Pepsi
The big business news on Friday was that Coca-Cola purchased Glaceau brands. You probably know Glaceau as the makers of Vitamin Water, the ultra yummy, vitamin and flavor infused gulp of goodness that started showing up on shelves a few years back. I was introduced to VitaminWater at the local dollar store when their lessor favored flavors showed up for $.19, a bargain for bottled water.
According to press reports, Glaceau has 35% of the water market in the US. That’s an impressive percentage for a company that was founded in 1996. They did $350 or $700 million last year (depending on which “unidentified source” you believe) in gross sales with no mention of what net profits are (that’s the nice thing about being a private company – you don’t have to report your earnings to anyone but the IRS). Their growth in 2006, supposedly, was 103%, an exceedingly aggressive trajectory which speaks to the strength of the non-carbonated drink category.
Coca-Cola purchased their company for a cool $4.1 billion dollars. That’s right, 11.7 (or 6, depending on which source you believe for revenue dollars) times gross earnings. Coca-Cola runs a much larger company than I do, with light years more of management experience so while I criticize this deal, just picture a little 2 year old kicking an 8 foot tall basketball player.
Coca-Cola’s net income was 21.09% last year. That is one impressively high number! Pepsi’s, by comparison, is only 5.24%. Hm, maybe I own stock in the wrong company!? If the average corporation makes 14.2% net profit, Cocoa-Cola is knocking it out of the park and Pepsi is lagging badly. Averaging out these three numbers (5.24 + 14.2 + 21.09= 40.53/3 = 13.51%), gets 13.51%. Glaceau is in a similar industry to both Coca-Cola and Pepsi but not exactly the same, which is why I tossed average corporate profits into the mix. Taking this speculation through to its logical conclusion, if Glaceau’s net profit ranges from 47 to 94 million, Coca-Cola paid 87 to 174 times net profit for Glaceau – an insane overpayment by any measure.
$4.1 billion collars for a company that did ($350 million or) $700 million in sales, which values the company at 10 to 11 times the trailing 12 month revenue. That’s a huge premium, massive by any of the buyout offer calculations I learned in business school. The normal median multiple for a public nonalcoholic drink company is 1.2 times, so not even a measly $1 billion dollars.
One theory is that they had to pay that much because of their late entry into the enhanced water market. Pepsi’s Propel is the number one in the enhanced water market. The enhanced water market is rapidly becoming a major force for profits, sales and acquiring new customers. Coca-Cola had no such operation and with Glaceau’s cult-like status, celebrity fans and wide distribution unit, Glaceau probably looks uniquely position for Coca-Cola and an antidote to Pepsi’s star, Propel.
An interesting side note is that Pepsi just purchased IZZE beverages for 3.8 times revenues – again, a far cry from what Coca-Cola paid for Glaceau.
Tata Tea/Group’s 30% shares in Glaceau are also being acquired. Supposedly, they are being paid $1.2 billion their shares; those same shares that Tata Tea bought for $677 million just last year. Last August, when Tata acquired their 30%, they valued Glaceau at $2billion. Hm, over 100% growth in value in just a year? They must be selling a lot of water!
“We see the deal as a question mark for Coke,” said J.P. Morgan analyst John
Faucher in a research note. “We think Coke will need to prove it is beneficial
to shareholders to spend $4 billion for the latest “hot” beverage brand.”
This deal brings to mind the massive overpayment for Snapple. Snapple was purchased by Quaker Oats for $1.7billion in 1994 and then sold a quick 3 years later for just $300million. At the time, Snapple was the popular brand du jour with the “big guys” chasing the new, hot market then as well. One can only hope that Coca-Cola manages their new hot brand with better adroitness than Quaker Oats did.
Wasabi Soap!
Making these soaps was a fun experiment in color and scent. I used clear melt and pour soap base, and our new Wasabi Fragrance Oil (light, airy, green, fresh with a hint of spice), and Sage Mist and Countryside Moss (discontinued) and a touch of either Kelp Powder or Apricot Seed Powder (discontinued).