One of the fun parts about building a small business is building it the way we want. The foundation of Simon’s Soapbox is to demonstrate the value of people with and without developmental disabilities working together.
As a manufacturer, we get to decide how we will make soap (hint – we make it together) and what we will use to make our soap. Great soap begins with great ingredients. And all soap begins with oil. We use olive oil because it is oh-so-gentle and coconut oil to make soap with lots of bubbles, but the star of the show is shea butter.
Shea butter is a well-loved ingredient in skin products. Shea butter comes from shea nuts grown in West Africa. It has a light creamy colour and absorbs into the skin beautifully. Shea butter is an amazing moisturizer and is frequently used in lotions.
This makes shea butter an easy choice for making a luxurious bar of soap. But beyond that, we are proud use a supplier that is a social enterprise committed to fair wages and environmental practices in Ghana. Caroline met the founder, Wayne, at a conference in 2023 and heard about their work with the women in Ghana to harvest shea nuts and manufacture unrefined shea butter. It is this unrefined shea butter that you will find in our scented bar soap.
When you use our bar soap, you are supporting dignified work here in BC and across the world in Ghana.