Melbourne business The Australian Natural Soap Company makes $3.7m in three years

The Melbourne woman is on a mission to change the image of an common item used in every Australian home after starting her business in the kitchen.

An “experiment” in the kitchen has turned into a $3.7 million success story for Emma Cook.

That's the turnover the Melbourne mum has made in the past three years with her business The Australian Natural Soap Company.

She previously worked as a video journalist travelling around the Australian outback where she was exposed to “amazing” Australian natural plants, while her doctor husband also did stints in the bush where he met many patients with skin problems.

The duo thought their should be a way to harness the natural ingredients to use in a very common product – soap.

Ms Cook remembers the “really happy” times experimenting with essential oils and natural ingredients to create soaps in their kitchen in 2013.

“There were some disasters, soap is an exact process and you otherwise end up with a mushy liquid,” she told news.com.au.

So when a redundancy round came up in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade she decided to throw in her speechwriting job and take a risk.

Emma said they bootstrapped the business with cash flow and personal funding. Picture: Supplied

It saw her set up a Christmas pop-up shop in Melbourne and tip around $50,000 in to get the business running.

Back then she admits it was a real challenge “to fill up a whole shop with soap concoctions” and the couple had also created one of the first shampoo soap bars that they had been using on their hair, but had no idea how to market it.

“This was in 2013 when shampoo bars weren’t a thing … it was right up there at back of shelves and we would get talking to customers who would ask if we were really putting soap in our hair,” she said.

“They said that sounds ridiculous but people were willing to give it good hot go and it become more and more popular. By the end of the pop-up it was front and centre in a prime position.

“People had a very different perception of soap and still have a particular perception of soap that they buy from supermarket, which is very drying for skin and very basic.

“I see soap can do so much and the sort of soap that we produce is just about using good quality plant oil and if you look at your household anything you use to clean can be replaced with good quality soaps, so for your face, body, dogs, washing or laundry.”

The shampoo bar was one of their bestsellers for a long time but since then others have gained popularity, including the brand’s olive oil soap, peppermint and pumice soap, lemon myrtle liquid soap and even their shaving bar.

They take a different approach to others. A solid conditioner bar for the hair. Natural soap flakes for washing clothes. A shampoo bar for washing your dog. A pink clay bar for the face. Picture: Supplied

Soap flakes that can be used in the dishwasher or washing machine have also become incredibly popular, according to Ms Cook.

Ms Cook said she is proud that 95 per cent of their ingredients are from Australian producers.

“We work directly with farmers to source the ingredients. There is some great essential oil producers and they are amazing to work with and they have all the native essential oils,” she explained.

“These are essential oils that should be world famous as they are native ingredients from Australia that most people have never heard of but have incredible aromatherapy benefits that rival lavender or lemongrass.

“We are also using the plant oils like olive and avocado and work with farmers that have perfectly amazing olive oil that they can’t sell because it may be that its got a taste that is a little different or colour or texture where it won’t be classed as food grade.

“It’s olive oil that may have been discarded and we now reuse or repurpose it.”

The Australian Natural Soap Company is a Melbourne based, naturally-formulated personal care brand that is handcrafted in Australia, harnessing the power of natural high-quality Australian ingredients and essential oils. Picture: Supplied

Some of the native ingredients include rosalina which is similar to lavender and has “amazing calming properties” and other such as lemon myrtle leaf, wattle seed and sandalwood bark.

In 2019, the business was gaining particular momentum having been ranged in Myer and its dog shampoo had won an award, while Ms Cook had her eyes on expanding overseas. Then the pandemic hit.

“We had an exporter on board and a distributor overseas and that all fell apart in 2020 with Covid,” she said.

“So the last two years, I would say I would have thought I would have been in much better position and further down our journey but it has given us the opportunity to really focus more on Australia and that’s what has been great. We have got really amazing customer base that love what we do and we made the decision to do a significant rebrand.”

However, Ms Cook still can’t believe the business had grown from her kitchen to a manufacturing facility in Dandenong producing 40 tonnes of solid and liquid soap a week, with 500 stockists across Australia.

During 2020, the company secured $104,000 Manufacturing Modernisation Grant to upscale all manufacturing facilities and have quadrupled the amount of soap they could produce to now 40 tonnes of solid and liquid soap a week. Picture: Supplied

The Australian Natural Soap Co has also gone on a keen environmental journey too.

“We really do believe that the soap should be the only thing you use in your household and the amount of plastic bottles that can be reduced by swapping things like your dishwashing detergent to a dishwashing bar,” Ms Cook added.

“A lot of products came from our personal journey of being plastic free and it’s great to see the movement is only getting bigger and better and people are wanting to reduce the amount of plastic they use.

“Soap is one of the easiest ways you can reduce your plastic usage because it is just such a simple swap, it’s amazing how much plastic you could save.”

It has seen the business save more than 1.3 million plastic bottles from landfill, Ms Cook said.

The business doesn’t use micro-plastics as exfoliants in any products either.

Instead ingredients such include pumice, lavender buds, coffee, seaweed, salt, activated charcoal and pink clay are put into products.

They don’t use palm oil or animal fats that are used in many other commercial soaps and by using only plant oils, they don’t have to use preservatives such as parabens. Picture: Supplied

The 43-year-old said they are also “passionate” about being completely palm oil free.

“When I began and I was doing my research so many people were saying you can’t make soap without using palm oil and I thought that can’t be the case. I used to live in Indonesia and saw first hand what cutting down the trees for palm oil had done to the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra,” she said.

“It makes sense that it’s a big part of a lot of products as its used to produce cheap ingredients but we have been proudly palm oil free and help to preserve the habitats of orang-utans.”

Emma Cook, co-founder of The Australian Natural Soap Co. Picture: Supplied

The company donates 3 per cent of every online sale to the Orang-utan Project, which works on conservation projects, as well as providing habitat protection and land acquisition through its own programs to deter wildlife poaching, illegal logging and land clearing in Indonesia.

Next up for the business is creating more products including body oils and cleansers and getting into the gifting space for big holidays like Christmas and Mother’s Day.

“Our dream is to be the soap of choice for Australian households and redefine the way people think and feel about soap,” Ms Cook said.