On Twitter, Sweet Soaps hawks everything from bacon soap to personalized gifts
Everyone from new moms looking to set up play dates to large retail corporations trying to sell a product has embraced the website as one of the most powerful megaphones of the cyberworld. Even President Obama “tweets.”
Ellen Cagnassola of Fanwood is no exception. When faced with the choice 12 years ago of entering the work force or staying home with her young daughter, Cagnassola, founder of Sweet Soaps, chose both personalized gifts.
Now she’s literally bringing home the bacon with her bacon-inspired soap (no, it’s not made with bacon fat, and its scent is like maple syrup). She does custom-made photo-embedded soaps and other poured and molded glycerin soaps.
She does it all while using Twitter and the internet to promote the products she makes in her small, home-based soap factory. With the help of two part-timers, she operates SweetSoaps from her basement, transforming a sparse cinderblock and concrete room into what she calls “something like a mad scientist lab” filled to the brim with tables, molds, containers full of supplies and a giant wax melting pot.
Mitsu Yasukawa/ The Star-Ledger
Cagnassola talked with The Star-Ledger recently about how she manages her home-based business and uses social networking sites to make it what it is today. She has lots of ideas for how others can become entrepreneurs without ever leaving home.
Research as much as you can online and find a need and address it. Be unique and fill a niche. And don’t feel like you have to know that much about business. When I started I didn’t have a business degree I had never taken a marketing class, but you really don’t need all that. Be patient, learn and listen and utilize all the technology out there. I worked hard at doing it for 12 years, and now I finally feel like I know a little something.
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