Good Karma Soaps is having a contest exclusively for our creative readers.
My friend Blaire Borthayre, a marketer by trade but also Head Soapmaking Woman at Good Karma, is scouting out an idea for a unique soap. Blaire makes every soap by hand using all natural ingredients and none of that yucky, gummy stuff you find in commercial soaps. The Lego soap pictured here, for example, is made from goat’s milk, organic color and scent — meaning that each block is safe for sensitive skin.
Blaire says that coming up with ideas for soaps isn’t an easy task, so she’s looking for your help.
What’s in it for you? Blaire is offering a $20 $50 gift certificate (!) for Good Karma Soaps. Plus free shipping. (Okay, now we’re talking!) Blaire says, “The good news is that even if you don’t win, you still win.” Translation: If you participate, you automatically get a gift certificate for “Buy One Get One Free” for anything in the store until May 30,2009.
Here’s the nitty gritty.
In order to play, all you have to do is:
1. Take a peek at Good Karma Soaps website. Then come back here and post your favorite item in the shop.
2. Here, in the comment section, tell us your idea for a new soap.
3. Tweet about this contest and using this post’s URL: http://bit.ly/yB9eZ
How simple is that? The contest starts today and ends a week from now, next Tuesday, when Blaire picks the winner!
And by the way, 50 percent of all proceeds from Good Karma sales are donated to local animal shelters in Raleigh, where Blaire lives and works. As Blaire says, “A combo of art, common sense and Karma. What’s not to love?”
Thanks for playing!
These soaps are amazing… I absolutely love the “Looks Like Lego” soaps. These are great for older kids. My idea is a gift for baby showers (especially since the soaps are all natural and organic, safe for sensitive skin). How about soaps shaped like alphabet blocks? You could do simple B, A, B, Y blocks in pink blue and yellow, or go crazy and make every letter available so folks could order whole names!
Thanks, Ann, for bringing these great soaps to my attention!
Love love love these soaps - my son is going crazy over the lego soaps - thinks they are super cool. We talked about cool soaps together and he though it would be cool to see soaps in the shape of body parts (thats a 5 year old talking!!) such as lips, or eyeballs or hands. We also thought it would be fun to have a ring soap since you have one thats a necklace already.
These are fantastic for gifts and really nice to look at as well.
I love these soaps! I’m not sure that I can pick just one favorite. I love the legos, the pigs in chocolate and the hostess cupcakes. They are SO cute!
I love the fire opal soap - very decorative as well as useful.
How about doing soaps aimed at boys e.g. embed baseball/football mementoes or do them in team colours and the shape of the team logo? (Royalties, of course, need paying.) A royalty-free version of the same idea would be sports-shaped soaps e.g baseball bat, football, icehockey stick…
Check out this contest to win some free soap! [link to post] They are great for kids!
- Posted using Chat Catcher
Sea star
legos are my fave
idea - soaps in sealife forms: starfish, sea horses, scallop shells, turtles
How about producing a line of dog/cat soaps, and naming them for the animal shelters (or specific cats and dogs at the shelters) Good Karma donates half its proceeds to? Perhaps the shelter can include them in their newsletter or gift shop (our local SPCA has a gift area).
I like the braclets and the cupcakes.
My nieces live off frozen breakfast foods, and I have come to learn that girls like semi-gross stuff as much as boys. So I’d suggest waffles, pancakes, sausage and egg biscuit or anything from this page:
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/catalog.gsp?cat=1001417
Nothing like washing yourself with food, I always say.
Adore the Cupcake soaps - they look good enough to eat! Ann Handley beat me to the same idea: making soaps like the dogs and cats at the shelter. So how about some animals with accessories soaps: pet beds, bones, toy mouse, dog house, cat climbing/scratch pole, etc. Good luck to you and thank you for looking out for homeless animals. (Love my adopted dog, my second.)
Love, Love, Love these soaps!! The peeps are my fav - adorable. And, as mom to 3 boys - the legos rock. I feel the collection would not be complete, however, without a red stiletto heel! Or, perhaps, a pink pair of ballet slippers. But I’d love the high heel!!
I love the lego soaps, transformers and the cupcakes ones. I have two ideas: one for adults: martini glasses–filled with all different types, wine glasses with red and white, champagne glasses; one for boys: star war clone figures. My son is addicted to anything star wars!
OK — one more: Twitter Fail Whales! “Soap for Dirty Social Media Types.” It’ll sell. Trust me.
I have many soap samples from Good Karma, and I can attest to their quality and fun factor. The Peeps look real! And the scent of ALL of these soaps are intoxicating.
Love the idea of doing soaps shaped like dog/cat toys. Dog biscuits? I’ll keep thinking…
Holy cats, these are awesome! I love the Hostess Cupcakes, but maybe the yumminess would be confusing on an early morning empty stomach… better go with my first love, , the Lego-esque ones: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22334309
My additional soap design suggestion is a lemon-scented tennis ball. Or a ball that’s like a gobstopper, w/ different colors coming through as it gets smaller.
All of your soaps are amazing–my daughter and I really loved the hidden treasure soap! What fun is that!! As for a new idea, what about food?! Sushi soap would be fun! Or desserts?? Anything that is yummy and pretty at the same time.
My girls like the diamond soap best (so do I–almost too pretty to use), but my little boy really prefers the transformers.
My husband looked the site over and started waxing really nostalgic about Formula One race car soap from his childhood…said he still remembers them! (would make a really good stocking stuffer for him)…
Maybe you could have a line of soap for the holidays…black cat or pumpkin for Halloween–stocking, candy cane, star, snowflake for winter, hearts for Valentine’s Day, shamrock for St. Pat’s, bunnies for Easter, and so on…
Very unique site…Thanks for sharing!
I love the cupcake soaps
And for my idea I like Ann Handley’s Twitter soap idea!
Hey just a heads up, I wanted to let everyone know that Xio Dibin speaks English. I hope I posted in the right location?
I think the peeps are super cute!
What a fun contest and fun ideas. I’ll second the idea bout the failwhale. That’s funny stuff.
My idea is “ribbon” soaps. Like the red ribbon for AIDS awareness, and yellow ribbons for our solidiers, pink ribbons for breast cancer and blue for testicular cancer, etc. I do a lot of fundrasising/activisim for kids with HIV and AIDS and I think that would be a fun gift for our volunteers.
Love the exploding frogs.
There may be issues with brand names but an Oreo Cookie soap would be fun. Or famous places soap with shapes of famous places like the Eiffel Tower or the White House.
Great soaps, and great way to promote your business also. I mention givewaways and contests in my Website Promotion class, and this is one of the best examples i’ve seen! Mind if I use your contest as a case study in my next class?
My fave soaps are the ones that look like legos.
My ideas - (1) recycle logo (keeping with your company’s theme) (2) breast cancer ribbon, heart disease ribbon, AIDS awareness ribbons, etc. (3) Something techy - laptop, mouse, etc? I can see myself giving those away. I agree with Ann H. about the twitter soaps.
Can’t wait to get the coupon.
Wow, these soaps are awesome! My little cousins would LOVE the legos. They have about every variety. But I have to say my favorite ones are the crystal geodes. I had mnay collections of these as a kid.
I really like the gobstopper idea above (not sure I can top it). My suggestion is big Scrabble tiles. It would be really pretty if you were able to create a wood grain effect with the soap with different shades of brown (kind of like the Azurite Malachite Crystal Soap which is gorgeous, but one color). And then people could choose their letter, probably their initial. I was proposed to on a Scrabble board, so I always find fun uses for the little tiles!
I’m off to admire your soaps now, so creative and beautiful!
All the soaps are wonderful! Especially love the Hostess cupcake and the Legos.
Think the breast cancer logo idea is good one, too.
How about puzzle pieces that fit together to form a picture?
I think the Peep soaps are my favorite and they were actually my inspiration for my suggestion: what about lines of holiday-inspired soaps that you could bring out at different times of year. A fall line might include leaves, pumpkins, acorns, etc. A winter line could have snow flakes and ice skates and candy canes. I would absolutely buy them to put in my guest bathroom but I also think little packages of them would be great favors to give to guests at parties. It would be wonderful to tell my guests that I’m passing on the good karma to them with your donations to the animal shelters and encourage them to plant the paper for pretty flowers in the spring.
I love all the soaps — with the “Legos” being my favorite.
I may be too late for the contest, but thought this was a fun project and wanted to still throw out some ideas…
I was thinking that since your company name is “Good Karma” - that evokes a sort-of neo-hippie feel. I think that’s a fun thing, and you could play off of that. For example, soaps in the symbol of the yin/yang, another one you could call “Peace-nik” and it’s a giant peace symbol, another called “tree hugger” - where it’s in the shape of a tree, and someone’s hugging it with a heart around it, another one called “flower child” - little girls dressed as flowers, etc. You have the ideas on the soaps, of course, and there’s probably a lot more you could create.
Anyhow, hope that’s not too weird, but I’d totally buy soaps like this — I think they’d be fun!!
Best of luck in your business. You have a great product!
I love the lego soap, it’s eye catching and identifiable. What about Yoga soaps? You could have different yoga poses and maybe sell stem to yoga studios.
Why not do some sports soaps: do tennis balls in yellow and pink (for breast cancer– that’s good karma)
Taking summer further: baseballs? Go total summer and do beach balls, badminton shuttlecocks, kites.
Also doggie chew toys– the mailman, dog bones complete with the air hole in the back?
Also a line of soaps to wash out the mouths of hysterical media talking heads– make one for Nancy Grace and Rush, for goshsakes
Thanks to everyone for your kind feedback and soap suggestions.. Before I announce the winner, I would like to explain why I didnt’ choose some of your ideas. (just dont want anyone to feel that a good idea was ignored)
They definitely were wonderful ideas but the problem is that many of them have already been done and are being sold on the market currently. (I guess great minds do think alike!)
For example:
Baby Blocks
Puzzle Pieces
Frozen breakfast soap
Dessert soap
(In fact anAny kind of food you can possibly imagine from walnuts to fortune cookies, hamburgers, pretzels and frenchfries)
Ballet Slippers
Red Stilleto heels
Awareness ribbon soaps (very popular)
Seaforms and seashells (in fact I just added seashells to my shop)
Sports soaps
Holiday soaps
Computer, mouse (and even gameboy soaps)
Dog and cat toy soaps
Peace symbols (and happy faces too)
racecar (and many other kinds of cars)
Alcoholic beverage soaps (although I have been working on my own versions of those)
Bodypart soaps (even the unmentionables)
And another issue was trademark. These two ideas “oreo Soaps” and “Starwars” have image trademarks. I just got busted by the Peeps attorneys who made me take down my Peeps Soap.
So as you can see, it’s tough to come up with fresh ideas. Although I have created and posted these new soaps since we set up the contest:
Cheese soap with toy mice
Baby Turtle emerging from an egg
Baby Dragon emerging from an egg
White chocolate soap with dark chocolate drizzle
Pecan Pie soap
Paint brush soap with soap jelly
Bubblegum soap
Failwhale soap (anne wasn’t eligible to win the contest but I took her idea anyway!)
Banana Peppers on a string
Milk and Honey Mirage soap
Apple Granola Bar Soap
So please visit my soap because everyone who participated will get a Buy One Get One Free deal for the next thirty days. When you order, simply put in the note to seller that you participated in this contest and write the type of soap that you want as your freebie.
Without further adieu, the winner is Shelley with the Gobstopper Soap idea. Believe it or not, no one else is offering this one and it may be somewhat of a challenge to make. But that’s okay, I like challenges and its a great, unique idea. CONGRATS SHELLEY! I also liked her expression “Holy Cats!”. The tennis ball soap has already been done but I may try that also anyway with my own twist (putting them in a tennis ball can)
Shelley, you have $50 in free soap coming to you so visit my site and purchase whenver you like (no expiration date) you can buy it all at once or a little at a time. When you get to check out, just mark Money Order for payment. (but dont send one of course) then write in the note to seller that you are the contest winner.
Again, thanks to all of you.
Blaire