Great news from the new product front is that we’re in the process of making a new liquid soap with bacteria destroying capabilities. It’s been laboratory tested and kills everything- well, they they don’t actually test for every single sort of bacteria on the planet, but they’ve tested the main ones that cause problems like e. coli and MRSA and all that sort of stuff.
The labels should be arriving soon so hopefully we’ll have it up on the website before too long.
We’re also thinking of doing a limited run of PC49 and I’ve been researching gold paint for his buttons and hat badge. According to AP Danischewsky, who was running the factory at the time, the hand painting was a highly streamlined operation. All the unpainted PC’s were lined up on our wooden trays and one of the girls (these days it might be boys or girls, but then it was definitely a woman’s job) would arm herself with a paintbrush and pot of gold paint and start painting, but not as you might think, each PC at a time (3 buttons and hat badge if memory serves). No, you started at the back row and painted left to right (or the other way depending on personal preference, but basically across), first doing all the hat badges, then each top button and so on, then on to the next row. So it’ll be interesting to see how today’s soap elves manage!
Interestingly we have had two recent communications regarding Droyt figure soaps, last made by us in the 1960’s.
The first is a nice story. A lady rang to say that she had a nice example of Droyt No 91 “Hen, Chickens and Eggs” which had been given to her by my colleague’s great-uncle in the 1950’s when she was girl. It was in very good condition and did we want to buy it from her for our display cabinet? We agreed to have a look at it and sure enough it was in very nice condition and was also in its original box. We were very happy to buy it as all our examples are rather poor and I’m not even sure if we have a box. Anyway the price was set at £25. This may be of interest to anyone who has an old Droyt figure soap. The most popular one by far wasPC49 and another lady contacted us to say that how happy she was to see PC49 on our website she had a He sold in his hundreds of thousands. He was made from our ‘Tah’ soap base with single colour and painting, (gold on his buttons and helmet badge) and packed into a nice box which is so typical of the packing on the time. So I imagine that a good example of him could be worth about £15. Somewhere I’ve got an old price list so I’ll see if I can find it and scan it in.
So I actually took this picture last month but what with one thing and another etc., etc.. A vast improvement, I think you’ll agree. I give it a month.
There are a couple of things left to do. Basically those piles that were on the desk have been moved to the floor, so you can’t see them in the picture. Some might call that self-defeating but I call it an efficient use of my time.
In the photo, there’s a small white thing top right of the desk pad. I’ve no idea what it is. Paracetamol? Odd reflection? All I can say is - it’s not there now. The next thing I have to do is work out where I put my calculator….
This is the time of year when I start thinking about tidying up my desk. I think for the last couple of years I have thought about it in an abstract sort of way, which, while indicating some positive force of renewal and rebirth associated with the turn of the year, didn’t have enough force to actually make me do anything. But this year will be different. Here us a picture of my desk before. Let me assure you that this is not some comedy setup - some exaggerated posturing for effect. This is this. It has reached a stage where I am actually embarrassed by it. There are many potential sources of embarrassment, which I thought about starting to list but then thought that it might trigger some unfortunate memories, so I won’t. Suffice to say that of all the potential sources of embarrassment, I only have personal experience of some of them. Some might say that is still an unfeasibly large number, but certainly not me. Anyway, the point is that I am now embarrassed by a desk, which is possibly a first.
So I have laid down my intentions in print and I will now retire to consider the ticking time bomb I have ill-advisedly thrown into the ether.
Although it may not seem like it, we have been busy here at Soap Mansions, and our new documentary project uses the power of the internet to subtly disseminate Droyt-based propaganda as part of our continuing quest for world domination. Or something like that. Anyway, here’s the first one. More to follow.
With the weather like this I’ve been wistfully casting my mind back to sunny drought-ridden summers of the past and so, in this historical frame of mind I thought I’d share this from the dim and distant past of Droyt Soap Factory.
In the d and d past we had some really interesting products, like moulded soaps and lemon shapes and all sorts. In Germany we used to have a whole department making wooden cartons for shipment by rail all over Europe. I’ve got some photos somewhere which I must scan. That’s on the same list as my videos of Droyt’s manufacturing techniques on You Tube project. Then, of course, there’s the rationalising of lists of unlikely projects project. Maybe that should be in capitals. The ROLOUP project.
Here’s a scan of an old price list from when the factory was in Berlin. I think it must been after the end of hyperinflation as it doesn’t look too expensive.
After Euro 2008 and Wimbledon (not to mention the one day series against NZ, which I’m not going to mention), it’s 30 days to the Olympics, so more than enough time for pollution control in the Beijing area by closing factories and banning cars from the roads. Apparently the world shortage of synthetic Vitamin E (which we use in our soap as an anti-oxidant) has been caused by factory relocation for the Olympics. Some ridiculous figure like 80 percent of the world’s Vitamin E comes from the Beijing area. The price has gone by more than 10 times in the last few months.
My next post may well be about raw material increases, so prepare to be bored as I rant on about biofuels and sustainable palm oil.
Alistair
It’s Tuesday morning after the Bank Holiday and of course the weather is now beautiful. I hope you all had a lovely relaxing time and are facing the week with a spring in your step and a song in your heart. A lot like me in fact. My song is ‘Whole wide world’ by Wreckless Eric, for reasons too complicated to go into in a blog. That’s more of an essay.
Anyway, business has been a bit slow since the New Year but this month we’re very busy, so that’s encouraging. We had a great visit to the Natural and Organics Show 2008 and while we didn’t take lots of orders on the stand, we did have some very interesting discussions which we hope will turn into business. I always say that it takes us about 3 months to discover if a show has been a success or not. By that I mean whether it has paid for itself through increased sales through contacts made at the show. Sometimes you can have a quiet show but meet one good new customer which makes it all worthwhile. Mind you, the reverse is also true and we did have a busy show!
Kensington Olympia is a really great place to exhibit. It’s very light and airy and we were well served by food outlets, including a really good cafe in the middle of the hall. Hopefully we’ll be back next year. It’s only two days as well which means you don’t have a chance to get really bored and fed up with standing all day. I enjoyed wandering around the other stands - there’s such a lot of enthusiasm and interest in this sector. Loads of food suppliers with great emphasis on quality sustainability and sourcing.
All this talk of food is making me hungry so I’m stopping typing to eat something.
My new year resolution was to try to be a lot more disciplined about writing my blog. So first entry for 2008 is March. Excellent result.
I am in the middle of new product development and helping to plan a stand for us at the Natural Products Europe show in April at Olympia and since we haven’t been to a trade show in 4 years, I’m trying to get back into the trade show mindset. I think I remember hours of standing around, with the occasional passer-by wandering in to pick up a piece of free soap before getting back to buying the thing they really want - plates with animal pictures on them, or candles shaped like bananas or whatever, but certainly not soap. Fortunately this one is only two days - not some NEC Spring Fair five day marathon, so even I should be able to keep awake that long. And of course there is almost bound to be nice coffee to drink lots of, never mind the occasional wander round the food stands offering samples of delicious little titbits.
I think our favourite all time show was Cosmoprof in Bologna. One year we stayed just inside the city walls to the east (the show ground is in the north). Every day we would leave the hotel, go to the tiny dark bar next door for our due cappucine and danish pastries, which we drank and ate standing up at a shelf, like the local business types, and then go for a brisk 40 minute walk across town to the show. After 4 days of this I felt quite fit. We found some wonderful bars. One we went to provided huge platters of Friday night food for the happy customers ready to kick of the weekend in style. It was all good fun
So, anyway, the blogs will be flowing from my keyboard with the monotonous regularity of a metronome from now on.
I’ve had a couple of enquiries recently asking about Droyt’s company structure and I thought it might be informative to write a short piece about this. We are an independent, privately owned limited company with four main shareholders, three of whom are from the founding family.There are three directors, two of whom are involved in the day to day running of the company. We have about 15 factory employees and three supervisors.The history of the name Droyt is quite interesting in that it means nothing! It was bought ‘off-the-shelf’ in 1937 when the company relocated to England after leaving Berlin and needed a new name, which, according to the rules at the time, needed to be 50% owned by an established UK business. The partner firm was called Peter Lunt and was based in Liverpool. I don’t know exactly when their share was bought out, but it was sometime before 1950.This was the time when soap rationing ended and soap production at the factory increased rapidly, with the launch of our best seller PC49. I’ve been lookin through some old records recently and found some great old pictures of the factory workers when we were in Berlin. I must scan them some time and post them up here.Tomorrow is our Christmas bash so watch out Chorley! Hope I don’t feel to bad on Saturday and a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at Droyt’s!
while we didn’t take lots of orders on the stand, we did have some very interesting discussions which we hope will turn into business. I always say that it takes us about 3 months to discover if a show has been a success or not. By that I mean whether it has paid for itself through increased sales through contacts made at the show. Sometimes you can have a quiet show but meet one good new customer which makes it all worthwhile. Mind you, the reverse is also true and we did have a busy show!
really bored and fed up with standing all day. I enjoyed wandering around the other stands - there’s such a lot of enthusiasm and interest in this sector. Loads of food suppliers with great emphasis on quality sustainability and sourcing.
