Event Review: Soap With Vision

Bath & Body Oil

Lavender Body Butter

Tea Tree Soap

Here at The Fair Traders Co-operative we are proud to stock the fabulous Visionary Soap Company range, which includes luscious lip balms, superb soaps, and beautifully scented body oils and bath melts. These luxurious products are all crammed with vegan, organic and fair trade ingredients, a fact that has made them very popular and launched the Visionary Soap Company to the status of being the leading ethical body care company in the UK.  Imagine our delight then, when Monica Norley, Founder and CEO of the company, agreed to come and speak at The Fair Traders Co-operative during Fairtrade Fortnight this year about the development of her company, her personal journey and the positive impact that Visionary Soap products have on communities in some of the poorest parts of the world.

The evening was well attended, with our Community Room almost full with people keen to hear more about how Monica went from making soaps on her kitchen stove to sell at the local farmers’ market, to selling thousands of bars of soap each year and drawing in contracts from major high street retailers. Fairtrade wine was of course available for those who wanted it, helping to create a relaxed yet buzzing atmosphere.

Listening to Monica speak, it was clear that she really has developed her company through sheer hard work and determination, and an unwavering commitment to environmental values and to fair and ethical trade. She explained how her early career in the US Peace Corps and then later working for a voluntary sector group which supported the development of women’s co-operatives for immigrants to the US, furnished her with the skills, knowledge, passion and vision that led to the development of The Visionary Soap Company. One very successful women’s co-operative that she supported provided cleaning services using only chemical- free, environmentally friendly cleaning methods. This sparked a real interest in Monica in Earth- and body-friendly ingredients for cleaning and body care products, and prompted her to take a course in cold process natural soap-making.

Then, personal circumstances led to a huge life change for Monica – she moved from bustling San Francisco, to comparatively sleepy Hastings in the UK. It didn’t take her long to work out that there were going to be few available jobs that would utilise her skills and experience at the same time as allowing her to pursue her passions for human development, fair trade and environmental improvement – so she decided to do something of her own, that would allow her to combine all of these elements into her new life here in England.

And so The Visionary Soap Company was born. Whilst renovating her Victorian house, Monica hand-made luxury soaps containing fair trade and organic ingredients, using a make- shift stove in her crumbling kitchen. She sold these at local farmers markets, and found that demand for her products was growing all the time. What was unique at the time, and still marks Visionary Soaps out as different to other natural, organic and fair trade body care products, are the percentages of fair trade ingredients that Monica uses in her range. She explained in her presentation that her soaps tend to be about 60% fair trade ingredients, compared to the 2% required for Fairtrade certification. Some of the body butters in the Visionary Soap Company’s range are as high as 99-100% Fairtrade ingredients. At the time Monica set up her company, the Fairtrade Foundation hadn’t begun to certify body care products, and she described how she was one of the pioneers, who kept up the pressure to ensure that body care ingredients ultimately became Fairtrade certified. Her commitment to ethical trading meant that she was unearthing a growing number of fair trade ingredients, enabling her to develop The Visionary Soap Company’s product range, and ensuring that she became one of the most informed experts on fair trade body care in the country. She explained how this expertise, along with the understanding that comes from years spent hand-making the products she sells, led to some unique collaborations in the areas of the world where her ingredients are produced.

Many of Monica’s ingredients come from South Africa, and she showed a short film (available to view at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atlEvW6mIB8) which tells the story of The Visionary Soap Company’s Township Trades initiative. Through this project, The Visionary Soap Company supported the start-up of a social enterprise manufacturing soap in Khayelitsha Township in South Africa, using as many locally sourced, fairly traded ingredients as possible. The township has been devastated by AIDS/HIV, and many of the young people given the chance to gain skills through the project are AIDS orphans. Monica explained how cold process soap-making is an excellent business for areas of the world where resources are limited, as it requires only very small inputs of energy and water, and many of the ingredients are available locally.

Throughout the presentation, Monica invited contributions and questions from the audience, which made for a lively evening and a great deal of interesting discussion. We are very grateful to Monica for travelling all the way from Hastings to join us during Fairtrade Fortnight, and for her open and engaging approach to sharing with us her passion for fair trade and her journey to becoming an ethical entrepreneur and fair trade pioneer. You can buy The Visionary Soap Company’s products in The Fair Traders Co-operative shop or through our online store. To find out more about The Visionary Soap products, see the range in our online shop.