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Interview: Bar man turned soap maker
Matthew Lepp is cleaning up after leaving his job in the pub trade to set up his own business – making soap.
Despite having had a massive career change Matthew Lepp is still a bar man. But today, rather than making a living tending bars in and around his home town of Formby, Matthew is the owner of a burgeoning business manufacturing hand-made bars of soap.
Since launching Tiger Muffin Soaps, with his sister Becky, it has become a staple at most of Lancashire's farmers markets, craft fairs and other marketplaces, and has blossomed offering not just soap, but home-made shower gels and hand creams too.
Matthew got the idea to branch out in to this unusual line of business while he was working in the pub trade.
"In my last job my bosses used to have soap made for them. When the person who did this left, I got lumbered with the job," he says.
"I actually started to enjoy it, but soon got fed up with making it for somebody else. So I decided to do it for myself."
So he converted the garage of his house in to a laboratory and soon began making his own products.
At first he offered just five different flavoured soaps, but over the years has added many other flavours and products, including shower gel, bubble bath and hand cream. They now aim to add five or six new products a year.
"We are quite a small scale operation," Matthew admits. "We operate in a similar way to bigger soap-making companies, but on a smaller scale."
Matthew buys in a base, containing palm oil, vegetable oil and glycerine, and then adds the products to it, which transform it from this non-descript substance to a sweet-smelling soap, shower gel or bubble bath.
Flavours on offer include raspberry, blueberry, geranium, blackberry and vanilla.
"The base I use is quite tough," Matthew explains. "It comes as a solid, and I will heat it up until it becomes a liquid. It's not as easy as it sounds. If you heat it up too much it goes funny.
"Once it is a liquid it is then just a case of adding oils, or fragrances and colours.
"Although we offer soaps in a wide range of colours I only work from a base pallette of five. It is hard mixing them correctly to get the perfect colour. This is actually the part I find most difficult.
"If you put too much colour, or all of them in, you just end up with brown soap. I found that out the hard way at first!
"It is a delicate process where just one or two drops are required to colour 3kg blocks of soap."
While Matthew is responsible for manufacturing the soaps, his mum has stepped in to help him produce hand creams.
"Luckily my mum is a pharmacist, so she has the skills to make the hand creams and bubble baths."
Matthew's sister, Becky, does not work in the business full-time, but helps when she is not at her 9-5 job. She handles marketing and helps with research.
Tiger Muffin Soaps is always keeping an eye on the competition, both small-scale producers and high street stores to see what they are up to.
Matthew has found that many of the flavours they have offered for years, like geranium, are slowly filtering down on to the high street.
"Sometimes I think we are a bit ahead of our time with some of the flavours," he says. "We started doing a passion flower range about three years ago, and nobody was interested in it. Now somebody has just started selling it on the high street and it seems to be going well.
"We have also been making violet soaps since day one. These have been really successful for us. Last year high street chain Lush introduced them."
One of the keys to Tiger Muffin's success has been innovation in flavour and scent, and the ability to make bespoke products on demand.
"In the run up to Christmas we always get quite a lot of people coming to us to ask if we can make this flavour or that, and we will make whatever people want."
The business is currently focusing on developing a strong market in Lancashire.
It regularly holds stalls at Clitheroe Farmers Market, Southport Farmers Market, and the craft fairs at Samlesbury Hall, Samlesbury, near Preston, and Lowther Pavilion, Lytham St Annes.
Its products are also on offer at Billingtons in Catforth, near Preston and the gallery shop at Martin Mere.
Matthew is pleased with the way the business is progressing, as he is well aware that starting up on your own is no picnic.
"It was quite lucky really, both myself, having worked in the pub trade, and my mum, as a pharmacist who manages her own pharmacy, have experience of running our own businesses. We know what we are doing.
"Although I can't say it has been really easy to set up on our own . . . I think we have been lucky that people have been so responsive to us and the product."
Leaving the comfort of a regular pay cheque is never easy. But moving in to a profession, which is, rightly or wrongly, seen as feminine one must have been even trickier.
Matthew has found a few people ready to rib him about it.
"In Formby people know me from when I used to work in the pubs, so a lot of them have commented about my soap making. Especially, as when I go down to the pub after I have been working I usually smell a bit girly!"
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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