Any professional crafter will tell you that running the summer and fall show circuit can be grueling. Professional crafter's venues are an excellent way to meet face to face with customers and potential customers, discuss your product, and market your company. However, the preparation that goes into the presentation of your display, travel to, setting up, manning the booth, packing up and traveling back home, only to have to unload, reload, and do it all over again the following weekend, well...it can be downright brutal if done consistently. Thanks to my team and my family, Linda, Donna, Mark, Kim, Mom and Dad & my Aunt Betty, we've been able to pull off these events week in and week out.

Since relocating the company in 2008 from Parsons, WV in the northeastern part of the state, to Hamlin, WV in the southwest, we have made some interesting observations. For years our founders Donna and Alby Cunningham, ran the show circuits in the upper part of the state of West Virginia. Folks there and in parts of western Maryland are very familiar with Appalachian Milk Soap and the trademark pitcher and basin. Very little selling or consumer educating is necessary when we visit shows in those areas of the state. In most cases, customers simply walk up to the booth and place their order...they already know the product and exactly what they want. There are many times where it becomes difficult to wait on so many people at once lined up at the booth. Since moving the company we have tried to visit more of these crafters venues in the southern part of the state and in eastern Kentucky, in order to introduce our products and our company to a broader market. We have often come home with scratchy voices from talking to customers about our company, it's history, and our milk soap products. More and more though, as our customer base grows here in the south, and we consistently travel these venues spreading the news, we are starting to notice customers coming up to the booth saying things like, "Oh, Appalachian Milk Soap! Great! I know exactly what I want!" We've had to increase our booth size for some venues in order to service everyone visiting us. Its a wonderful problem to have and makes all the hard work involved, in putting on these presentations, worth it.

We just finished up in Ashland, Kentucky with Poage Landing Days. We're going to take this coming weekend off from the show circuit to rest-up and prepare for two separate crafters venues the first week of October: The Pumpkin Festival in Milton, WV and the Forrest Festival in Elkins, WV. Both are large, quality events for crafters, and Appalachian Milk Soap will have a presence at both. Please come visit with us as we take our show...On The Road Again!

We are in the process of giving our homepage an extensive face-lift. Although we've been around since 1996, and many of you already knew about us and our wonderful milk soap products, we did not have a website available until earlier this year. We felt it important in the beginning, to introduce ourselves to those unfamiliar with The Appalachian Milk Soap Company.

Now that we've accomplished that, we will be revising the homepage to include more color photos and video of our products and how they are made. We will also run weekly/monthly specials, AND introduce you to a variety of new and exciting products and services that we will be offering.

Please save our homepage www.appalachianmilksoap.com to your favorites and check back often to see the many changes we will be making.

Our President, my partner and dear friend Susan, likes to call me "The Production Guru" or "The Mad Scientist". I am the one responsible for creating that wonderful, creamy, bar of handmade natural goatsmilk soap we all love.

Lately I've focused much of the production on our Hunter's Earth Soap. Why Hunter's Earth, and why now? Well, hunting is extremely popular in West Virginia and most of it's surrounding states. We tried the Hunter's Earth Soap last year, just to test the market, and it was a big hit for us. We produce the soap early because we like for it to cure approximately 6 - 8 weeks before packaging it for sale. Archery season starts here in West Virginia in mid-October, and even earlier in Ohio, so due to the curing time, we have to get it made early.

Our Hunter's Earth Soap is 100% all-natural so there's nothing artificial in it that the game being hunted may detect. It smells just like dirt and leaves and even has a natural ingredient in it that insects don't like. Bottom line - It's fantastic for masking human scent and helps keep those pesky knats and bugs away so you can concentrate on the hunt.

We package these soaps a little differently than our others. Each bar is packaged in a handmade, mesh camo baggie with a drawstring. You simply remove the label, leaving the soap in the baggie, and use it as a scrubbie. If you're an outdoor sportsman or sportswoman, you really need to try this product.

        =        

A little BAG of Hunter's Earth Soap

will help you to BAG a Big One!

Linda kicked off the summer show season by making an appearance at the Verizon Building in Charleston last Friday. Festivities were to celebrate West Virginia's Birthday. Then we were off to Madison, West Virginia for The Coal Heritage Festival.

Linda washing hands at the West Virginia's Birthday Celebration. We like our customers to experience the use and feel of our products first hand. Once tried, the product usually sells itself.

Upcoming event we will be participating in:

July 4th & 5th - "Summer Motion" Ashland, Kentucky

See you there!

Ok, so I'm already giving away my age with my first blog posting... well, somewhat anyway. At least I didn't claim to be 29...again. I will admit that maybe I’m just a little behind the times on some of this modern technology stuff, BUT better late than never right? Running a company in today’s world requires one to keep up with technology. I joke about it, but it is critical to success today.

When I took over The Appalachian Milk Soap Company in February of 2008, there were no technology systems in place. Since that time, we have developed our own website to include a shopping cart, we’ve incorporated QuickBooks Financial and Merchant Services systems, we have a soapmaker program that helps us with our recipes and costs associated with production, we have analytical systems, we do electronic marketing on occasion, and now we have a blog. I’m also on Twitter by the way. Yes, I just had to see what all the buzz was about in regards to “tweeting” someone. You can find me on Twitter at MilkSoapLady. My partner Linda says that the next thing for us is Facebook so I guess I’ll have to burn some more brain cells trying to figure that one out too. 

As far as texting goes, I don’t do it much. One reason is that I don’t really like punching in all those little letters. As mentioned before, I‘m forty-something now and the eyes seem to be one of the first things to go. Secondly, once my friends text me a few times and receive my brief and choppy responses, they don’t text me again very much. I guess they get the message - no pun intended. I’ve always been perplexed in watching my 18 year-old nephew walk around with a cell phone permanently affixed to his hand at all times, rarely looking up, and punching in text, after text, after text. I say to him, “Why don’t you just call them? It’s a lot easier than punching in all those letters.” The response to those two sentences will almost always receive a certain look from young people, as to say, “Ok Cavelady, thanks for the advice. Don’t you have a rock to hammer on or something?” On the other hand, I CAN see a good purpose for texting. For example; Maybe you're sitting in an important meeting or maybe in church, and someone really needs to contact you with critical or emergency-type information. Well then, texting is your answer. You can get all the important information you need without disturbing others or disrupting a meeting. But texting a conversation back and forth, over and over and over again…sorry, but I’ll pass on that and return to my cave to hammer on rocks.

Seriously though, the technology systems that we do use are fantastic, AND they are critical to our day-to-day operations now. Keep checking in with our website. It will continue to grow and expand over the months and years to come. If you have visited before, I’m sure you will already see new and recent additions. We have always taken great pride in our customer service and the relationship with have with our customer base. Please feel free to post comments and/or suggestions to this blog. We want to hear from you! Until next time…Cavelady signing off.