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Visionary Soap Bulletin - August 23-31, 2010 New Distributors Named We are excited to announce that we have formalised distributor relationships with Both have placed initial orders and our products will be appearing in their catalogues in September. We have been working towards this for some time so this is a great development for us! Please drop us an email with any Visionary Soap sightings in a shop near you! Teaming Up With Ethical Superstore feature this autumn season. Visionary Soap Company will appear on the front cover of approximately 400,000 of their catalogues due to go out in September. Products will be available through the catalogue as well as online and their first order went out this week. This will be super exposure for us so please help spread the word! Introducing Township Trades' Nurture Range... Another shipment of Fairtrade certified soap arrived this week from Township Trades. In a previous bulletin we announced that we were also ordering an initial quantity of the group's award winning Nurture Range. Well, two varieties have now arrived, Freedom and Energy. As an introductory offer, order three bars of Nurture and get one bar FREE until August 31st. No promo code is necessary as we will automatically add this on to all qualifying orders. Let's show these guys some great support as they are keen to see what our customers think of their soap! Do You Live In Brighton Or Canterbury? We have teamed up with two Shared Earth shops in Brighton and Canterbury to trial our products. Our soaps, lip balms and gardener's hand salve will be on offer starting this coming bank holiday weekend so if you live in the area, pop into either of these great locations - 33 Burgate
Canterbury
CT1 2HA 20 Sydney Street
Brighton
BN1 4EN Oxfam 'All Nighter' It was 'all hands on deck' to get our latest Oxfam order out these last couple of weeks. The Visionary Soap team put in a tremendous effort and we just managed to get everything to Oxfam before it was due to go to their shops as well as Oxfam Online. Both soap and gift boxes were delayed from South Africa and Nepal, but after pulling long hours and even an all nighter, we did it! It all ended with Rebecca and Monica loading several pallets onto a van with a dodgy tail lift, over dosing on coffee and personally driving everything to Bicester. So hey, if you purchase our products this Christmas through Oxfam, you now have a story to go along with them. :) Events & Donations 26th in London. Visionary Soap Company is sponsoring Emmanuel's goodie bags at his events this year and will be collaborating with him on various projects (to October 27th. Quick Reminder Regular customers, please remember to take note of Promo Code - VSC2010. This code is good for 10% off every order with us, all the way through December 31, 2010. Jot it down and use it every time you place an order with us!
Visionary Soap Bulletin - August 2-8, 2010 Apologies for slipping off the radar lately! Amongst a flurry of big sales presentations and getting more and more orders out the door, time has become a very precious commodity. Some of us thought it wise to also sneak away on holiday before our busiest time of the y ear - and by the looks of it, we are going to be very busy indeed! Quite honestly, a weekly bulletin was maybe a bit ambitious. While most of you have appreciated the weekly updates, some of you simply have not. So hey, we realize we won't be able to please everyone ALL the time so we will send these out as and when we can - sometimes weekly, sometimes not. We hope that sounds fair. Incidentally, there is some exciting news to share this time, so please read on... New Packaging Has Arrived! After months of liaising with designers and printers and most critically, finding money to invest in new packaging in the first place, our new look is finally here. We have started with existing products (and some new ones) will be phased in shortly. Feedback has been tremendously positive so far. The new packaging has been absolutely critical to the success of our recent sales drive - so money well spent, we think! Thanks again to all of you for your long standing support and patience. The days of printing & sticking labels in house are almost behind us and boy oh boy does that feel good! Fairtrade Certified Soap From Township Trades Has Arrived! Despite labour strikes at the Port of Cape Town, our first shipment of Fairtrade certified soap are relieved to receive it! The quality of soap the group is making for us is absolutely superb and we are very proud of their efforts. More Fairtrade certified soap is now on its way to us (as well as initial quantities of Township Trades' signature Nurture Range). Due to increasing demand for Visionary's soaps, we have recently placed larger orders with them. We have ordered an additional 25,000 bars within the last month and are doing all that we can to offer support as times have been particularly challenging for Township Trades lately. Your continued support, as always, is most appreciated and ultimately, what keeps this endeavour rolling on. Those of you waiting for your first bar of Fairtrade certified soaps from our promo a while back, these will be with you shortly. Speaking of Township Trades... Director of The Fairtrade Foundation Visits Township Trades various projects there and we are honoured to announce that she paid a special visit to Township Trades. You can read all about her visit to the group here. A poignant experience that mirrors our own when we have visited, this is a must read and vital support for what V isionary Soap and Township Trades are trying to do! Shea Butter Bath Melts Now Carry The Fairtrade Mark -This Week's Special Offer in Ghana in all of our shea butter bath melts for months now but have just now found the time these now carry the Fairtrade Mark, with remaining varieties to be phased in shortly. Incredibly moisturising and luxurious, if you haven't yet tried these, we definitely recommend doing so. Spend a mimimum order of £20 this week and get a bag of six for free (retail value £8.99). No need for a promo code as this will automatically be added to all qualifying orders. This offer is exclusive of postage cost and good for Aug 2-8, 2010 only. On The Sales Front... We are eager to share some exciting sales news but all will be revealed in a couple of weeks' time. Suffice it to say that Monica and Rebecca have been hitting the sales front quite hard and we are proud of what they have accomplished. Across the UK, more and more people are wanting to know where they can find our products. We hope to soon deliver on that demand! Recent Reviews/Media July, as Visionary Soap Company is sponsoring his goody bags this year. Both women were keen to sample and review our products, which you can read here. We particularly love how our lip balms have been referred to as 'little pots of ethical heaven.' Fantastic!
Visionary Soap Weekly Bulletin - June 28-July 4, 2010 Announcing Our Partnership With Socialite Evenings! Visionary Soap Company has been selected by London Socialite and Fashionisto, Emmanuel Ray, as the brand he would like to our ethics and depth of commitment to Fairtrade, as well as the Emmanuel's events this year. We officially launch our partnership at Knightbridge Hotel. We will be presenting the Visionary Soap story in a special speech to those in attendance on the evening and doing product sampling as well. And hey, we also get to glam ourselves up a bit (much easier for the rest of the team than Monica!) and have some fun as well! For a full press release, please email us at Update On Our Fairtrade Certified Soap Arriving From South Africa Several of you have been in contact about our first shipment of you are excited to get your hands on it! Unfortunately, there has been a delay due to labour strikes at the Port of Cape Town and this has held things up a bit. The soap is now in transit and we will keep you informed! Oh, the joys of international logistics! New Products On The Horizon We are developing new products that we plan to launch in the coming months. Stay tuned for lovely sugar scrubs made with Fairtrade certified sugar from Malawi, olive oil from Palestine and various others scrumptious ingredients. We are also considering bath salts and a face cream. New and improved versions of our bath & body oils will follow shortly as well. Marula and baobab oils are both in the process of becoming Fairtrade certified and we plan on incorporating these oils from these new suppliers, if at all possible. Donation News Thanks to all of you who have given us names of worthy organisations that would welcome donations of soap offcuts. We have an ever growing pile of offcuts and never let them go to waste! In addition to donating these to a local women's refuge, we would like to hear from you! If you know of an organisation in your area, whether it be a homeless shelter, women's refuge, refugee center, church outreach progamme, etc., and are happy to cover the shipping cost, do get in touch and we'll see what we can do. Confidentiality is often key for these organisations so rest assured, utmost discretion will be used! This Week's Special Offer Order any two bars of either variety and get one FREE! No promo code needed - we know what to do! Offer good this week - June 28 through July 4, 2010. Retail orders only. Also, regular customers, please take note of Promo Code - VSC2010. This code is good for 10% off every order with us, all the way through December 31, 2010. Jot it down and remember to use it every time you place an order with us! Until Next Week...The Visionary Soap Team May 2010 Visionary Soap News - It's Our Birthday! Apologies for not getting a newsletter out in April! Things are gathering at HQ are not only trying to keep up with all the enquiries and orders we are r eceiving but also trying to push forward some big projects! Thanks again for all of your continued support! We are truly lucky to have such great customers!Visionary Soap Company was officially founded on May 26, 2005 so hey,its our fifth birthday! Its quite hard for us to believe as the journey has been such a roller coaster ride - always manic and challenging but also exciting, stimulating and certainly led first and foremost by a passion for fair trade and social and economic justice! Big developments are under way at VSC as we enter our sixth year and it must be said, not much has been easy with this venture! There have been many challenges in the last couple of months especially as we manouver the company through a rather large growth phase. Probably one of the biggest challenges has been the typical scenario of an entrepreneur struggling to let go of certain tasks and transfer information. Monica is painfully learning the art of delegating but luckily, she has a very supportive and understanding team who can deal with her moments of angst! From starting the company literally on our kitchen stove 5 years ago, things are certainly evolving much faster now and although it presents many challenges, we are very excited about the future indeed! To give you a taster, we will be launching exciting new packaging and products very soon, upgrading our internal systems to help process your orders more efficiently and also hopefully allow you to see our products increasingly on Britain's high streets! Many of you will be interested to know that Rebecca, our Operations Manager, returned from her month in South Africa and working with February, Visionary Soap received official approval from the Fairtrade certified cosmetic products, starting with our organic range of soaps! We see this as an incredibly groundbreaking achievement within our industry and we are pleased to announce that Rebecca was there to oversee our first bars of Fairtrade certified soap being made by the team. An approximate 9,000 bars of our best selling varieties - Geranium Rose, have been made so far with more being produced shortly. We expect this soap to be shipped within the next 2-3 weeks and we will let you know once it arrives. The plan is to increasingly hand over our soap production to Township Trades as well as explore production of other products. Through your purchases, not only do you support our various Fairtrade ingredient s uppliers but also allow us to support job creation for Township Trades' members! Rebecca had a fantastic time working with the group and she has put together a slideshow especially so you can see our first bars of Fairtrade certified soap being made in South Africa! Please have a look! We talk a lot about Township Trades so we also want to give exposure to some of our Fairtrade ingredient suppliers. We just received word that 1 000 liters of olive oil that we ordered directly from the Cape Town, ready for delivery to Township Trades. 1000kg of shea butter loaded on a ship destined for Cape Town as well. The logistics for getting 1000kg of cocoa butter from Conacado in the Dominican Republic continue to challenge us but we think we are almost there. And a very exciting bit of (along with ground cinnamon, ginger and turmeric) is currently being arranged for shipment as well. Fairtrade certified coconut oil has just come on board as a certified ingredient and we are quite possibly the first Fairtrade certified company to incorporate this into our products. Across our entire range, our products contain a very high percentage of Fairtrade ingredients, much more than the minimum requirement for certification. The minimum percentage for a wash off product is 2% and prior to incorporating Fairtrade certified coconut oil into our soaps, they contain on average 27% Fairtrade ingredients. Since coconut oil makes up 30% of our soap formulation, this will now allow us to produce our soaps containing 57% Fairtrade certified ingredients. We challenge you to find anyone else in our industry in the UK that compares to that! completed a 4000 unit handmade gift box order for us which is leaving Nepal this week. GPI produces gorgeous paper products of amazing quality and we have worked with them before. Since Oxfam UK has selected us as their gift range for cosmetic products for Christmas 2010, do look for our gift box sets in an Oxfam shop near you in the coming months! We want to remind local residents of our very supportive Hastings/St Leonards stockists. A beautiful new shop on George Street in Hastings Old Town, called Soak, is now stocking most of our products. Made in Hastings on Old Town Hasting High Street, Bio-Five-O on Court House Street, Eco Magpie on Queens Road and Trinity Wholefoods on Trinity Street have all been loyal carriers of our products for some time. And of course, Swan House in the Old Town puts our soaps in their lovely B&B and has done so for several years now! Help us celebrate our 5 years of being in business - place any online order now through the end of May and be guaranteed a free bar of Fairtrade certified soap made by Township Trades once it arrives in the UK. Also, regular customers, please take note of Promo Code - VSC2010. This code is good for 10% off every order with us, all the way through December 31, 2010. Jot it down and remember to use it every time you place an order with us!
Fairtrade Fortnight Press Release - 22 February 2010 Visionary Soap and Township Trades Team Up to Produce Fairtrade Certified Soap Visionary Soap Company is very proud to announce that we have received official approval from the Fairtrade Foundation to add Township Trades to our supply chain for our Fairtrade certified cosmetic products, starting with our organic range of soaps! We see this as an incredibly groundbreaking achievement within our industry and for the past year we have been really pushing to make this happen. Being a 100% fair trade-dedicated company, the 'vision' for us has always been to take fair trade into the manufacturing arena and create further jobs and training opportunities for our suppliers. Township Trades is a not for profit community enterprise serving Khayelitsha township, in South Africa. Their mission to is lift young adults out of poverty by providing them with real jobs and business skills to become independent through trade. Township Trades boasts the largest handmade soap production facility in southern Africa and aside from producing their own range of award-winning soaps, will now increasingly be producing Visionary Soap Company's Fairtrade certified soaps. We have been telling the story of our relationship with Township Trades for nearly two years now. There have been many ups and downs, of course, and grassroots development, along with the increased demands of producing a handcrafted item en masse (and with various Fairtrade ingredients involved), is a huge enough challenge. Combine that with the task of having our products appeal commercially in the highly competitive cosmetics industry, achieving economies of scale as a small but rapidly growing company, constantly having to adapt to the needs and demands of our ever growing customer base AND simultaneously working tirelessly to get the word out about what we are trying to achieve and how that makes us different...Well, you can probably imagine that it can feel quite daunting at times! We have worked very hard to establish our partnership with Township Trades, just as we have with all of our other fair trade suppliers, and this has been one of the the biggest challenges that we would have ever imagined to experience on both a personal and company level. We take great pride in being able to share this with our customers! .jpg) .jpg) (1).jpg)
Press Release - 12 November 2009 Visionary Soap Founder to Present Fair Trade Case Study at Sustainable Cosmetics Summit Monica Norley, founder of Visionary Soap Company, will be speaking at the Sustainable Cosmetics Summit (16th – 17th November 2009) in Frankfurt, Germany. The company has become a leading Fairtrade certified soap and body care company, with all of its products now carrying the Fairtrade Mark. A range of Fairtrade certified ingredients in the finished products are sourced from producers in Palestine, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua, The Dominican Republic and South Africa.
Monica started Visionary Soap Company as a dedicated fair trade enterprise
in 2005. Her vision has always been for the company to take Fairtrade one step further through its manufacturing processes and has therefore been the driving force behind establishing a fair trade partnership with an inspiring social enterprise in South Africa, called Township Trades.
Monica will present a Fairtrade Case Study of Visionary Soap Company and
discuss the potential to use Fairtrade ingredients in Visionary’s products, what ingredients and what sources, the opportunities and challenges and will review the impact of using certified ingredients in Visionary products on third world producers.
To learn more about the summit, visit http://www.sustainablecosmeticssummit.com/. To learn more about Fairtrade Beauty, visit www.fairtrade.org.uk/beauty.
Recent Media/Articles/Newsletters Ethics Girls Fairtrade Office Christmas Party Article Ethics Girls - From Bedroom to Big Time Ethical Consumer Natural Products Online Green My Style Ethics Girls - First Fairtrade Marked Beauty Products All Voices TriodosNews - Spring 2009
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