We were lucky to catch up with Christopher Ketchum recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Christopher thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

Are we happy as business owners? Oh, absolutely! I mean, it certainly has its challenges and some days we feel like pulling out
all of our hair or striking a match and burning the whole thing to the ground, but that’s the joy of ownership, isn’t it? Haha. Owning the business has allowed us to do things that we wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise. Owning the business allows us to decide how it’s run and where the money goes, and it’s the latter that’s most important to us. We love our community and love to give back! Whether it’s sponsoring ball teams, beauty pageants or music festivals, gift baskets to the elderly or donations for raffles, trivia or door prizes, we’re always ready to chip in and help, and that’s not to mention our Soap For Hope Project!

Christopher , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Old Goat Soap Company was started as a way for my wife to put her creativity to work. Crafty by nature, she is always making something from nothing. We wanted to create a true Artisan soap that used all natural products with the benefits of essential oils and real goat’s milk; a soap that was good for people. While we can’t make any claims, because we use essential oil instead of fragrance, many of our customers find that our products help with different skin conditions. Real Soap. Real Simple. It’s not just our motto; it’s our promise.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

I hate to say it, but we didn’t have any initial capital, and I mean that. Starting a business was such an unplanned event. It went from a conversational, “Oh! I’d like to own a business, one day,” to Old Goat Soap Company in about 2 weeks. We ordered what materials we could afford online and bought a basket of stuff like moulds and mica, from a lady off marketplace. We made our wraps in house on our laptop and printed them in the bedroom. I don’t know that we had $600 to get started, but a few weeks later, we had a website and about 7 loaves of soap. Haha. We just kept folding our profits into the company and loaf by loaf, we grew our products. It was tough, but we managed. It’s funny now, but all the little things we did because we were broke, have become cherished by our customers. Our customers would be sad if fancy packaging and plastic, custom printed bags replaced our hand stamped bags and homemade wraps.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

We have our own website and a Facebook store. We love it because it makes it super easy to run promotions and interact with our customers. Plus, there’s no competition on our website, which is why we stay away from online marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon. That being said, it certainly has its disadvantages. When people buy soap, it’s usually a spur of the moment purchase. It’s either on a stand at a boutique and smells good as they walk by, so they grab it OR it’s a reach for a bar when you need it and not have one situation and they call their spouse to pick up a bar on the way home. There’s no impulse buy. To bridge that gap, we’ve been doing pop up markets for the last 3 years and have reached the point where we are considering a brick and mortar.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.oldgoatsoapco.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oldgoatsoapcompany/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OldGoatSoapCompany