Soap makers find niche for sensitive skin

The Goat Spirit owner Deanna Outsen pours colored soap into a mold Monday afternoon.

LOGAN – The people at The Spirit Goat, located at 28 Federal Avenue, have developed an enterprising business out of goat’s milk. At any given time there are four or five employees mixing ingredients and scents to make a mild concoction of soap.

The Spirit Goat located at 28 Federal Avenue, sells an artisan soap made out of goat’s milk for people with sensitive.

Soap made from goats milk is easy on the skin with colorful mesmerizing fragrances and oils. The whole time customers are coming and going.

“We have 10 employees and the owner Deanna Outsen is here every day,” store manager and daughter Sydney Outsen said. “We work as team as well as helping customers at the store front.”

The business was born in Becky Yeager’s kitchen. She started making goat soap because her kids had sensitive skin. The goat soap worked well. Then her friends started wanting her to make some soap for them.

The business took off. As interest grew, she began taking her wares to the Gardner’s Market and craft shows. The product’s popularity grew and Yeager found a place on Federal Avenue in 2012.

When Outsens took over the store in July of 2018 they updated the online store and the customer base continued to grow.

The Spirit Goat employee Fawn Michel rearranges products in the front of store.

“Our online store distributes our soap throughout the U.S.,” Sydney said. “We also developed some wholesale accounts, some local, and all throughout the U.S.”

The store is unique because they make all kinds of products, not just soap.

“We have a big range of customers. Some people are looking for natural products,” she said. “Some of our customers want to shop local, some want to support small business and others have sensitive skin that need the help our soap offers.”

The soap is all hand-made works of art. Colors are mixed with the highest quality scents and oils giving each bar a unique look and scent using all natural ingredients. No two bars are alike. They start with a base mix and mix it using kitchen tools, like spatulas, beaters, mixing bowls, etc.

The Spirit Goat owner Deanna Outsen is at the store every day work with a team making soap while customers browse the store.

“We have different molds and slabs. One of the common ones is the one that makes 24 bars at a time,” Sydney said. “We also have a 48 bar mold, log molds, round molds and when they are done we cut them up into separate bars.”

There are also decorative molds like hearts, trees, and snowflakes. Most of the soap takes over three days to make from start to shelf.

“We pour the liquid in a mold and let it sit overnight, then flip it and stamp it and let it sit again,” Sydney said. “It is s a three-day process from the beginning until it ends up on the shelf, but technically the soap is curing for a while as it sits on the shelves.”

The soap shop uses social and other electronic media as well as radio advertising and word mouth for the best exposure.

Fleur de Lis soap is one of the more popular items for sale at The Spirit Goat in Logan

“We carry over a 150 varieties of  products,” Deanna said. “Our biggest five sellers are Bear Lake Raspberry, Green Tweed, Energy, Fleur de Lis and the Happy Hippie.”

Christmas is one of their busiest times of the year. They start getting ready for the holidays in September and it gets crazy from November on.

“We call it ‘Christmas Crazy,’ it gets busy with a large range of customers,” she said.

“Even though we continue to grow every year, we still try to keep the small shop feel,” Deanna said. “People like seeing us make the soap because of our open kitchen from the front end.”

Store owner Deanna Outsen pours a mix of goats milk and other ingredients for a batch Monday afternoon.

People seem to like shopping at the local soap store. There is generally a steady flow of customer traffic in their shop.

The Spirit Goat has a local supplier of milk. A customer just came into the store on a whim and mentioned she had goats milk and that’s all it took.

“We try to find local suppliers,” Deanna said. Rebecca Wigington of Beaver Dam has a couple of goats that produce milk and they buy from her.

 

Free News Delivery by Email

Would you like to have the day's news stories delivered right to your inbox every evening? Enter your email below to start!

1 Comment

  • Deedee March 3, 2020 at 9:31 pm Reply

    I used to buy all sorts of yummy smelling gentle products from Becky. She was always professional and so creative. Glad to see the business is thriving with new owners. The spirit goat is a unique place to shop. Next time I travel through The Valley I’ll have to stop and fill up on products.

Leave a Reply to Deedee Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

I agree to these terms.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.