This spring, Niverville’s Candace Alarie, founder and CEO of SOAK Bath Co, was given a special opportunity to attend an exclusive conference in Toronto hosted by lifestyle influencer Jillian Harris. SOAK was selected as one of only seven vendors to participate in an intimate pop-up market called Academy in the City.
“We were selected to showcase the SOAK Bath Co brand amongst an applicant pool of over 100 applications across Canada,” says Alarie. “The event garnered national attention among a highly engaged Instagram community.”
When Alarie learned about Harris’s online community, she saw how the Canadian influencer uses her platform to showcase unique, primarily Canadian, women-owned brands that have a focus on sustainability, giving back, and a commitment to making a positive impact in their local communities.
Harris was previously a host on the television show Love It or List It Vancouver, and a contestant on both The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, as well as other reality TV shows.
“I first discovered Jillian Harris on Instagram, just as many of us these days are discovering new brands, products, and incredible people on social media,” says Alarie. “I quickly fell in love with Jillian’s down-to-earth personality and day-to-day updates on running multiple businesses, creating new things, and taking business risks all while navigating life as a mom.”
As a fellow woman-owned Canadian brand, Alarie says it’s refreshing to find someone who shares the real experience of creating and building a concrete business from a vision in the mind.
“Building a brand or business using social media platforms, like Instagram, allows us brands and creators to bring new and beautiful communities of people together to form new connections and relationships we may have never had the opportunity to create.”
Applying for the exclusive Academy in the City pop-up market was quite rigorous. The selection process was based on the quality of the actual products, overall online presence, branding and aesthetics, as well as any eco-friendly initiatives undertaken by the business.
SOAK is committed to using all-natural, vegan-friendly ingredients and their soap bar labels are made of plantable seed paper—you can plant the soap bar label and it will grow into wildflowers—so they met the criteria.
However, Alarie also knew there were hundreds of Canadian brands applying. She kept her expectations low.
When she received the email that they had gotten in, it was a dream come true.
“It has been a business goal of mine since I started the business in 2019 to work with Jillian and her team to showcase the SOAK Bath Co brand,” Alarie says. “I didn’t even wait 30 seconds to share the news with the team, it was such an incredible moment and all our hard work had got us there!”
Since Alarie built the business by attending markets, she is a pro at doing tradeshows, but she says this particular event came with challenges. The first was guessing how much product to send to Toronto.
“We have never been part of an event like this, so trying to figure out how much product to send is always quite the guessing game,” says Alarie. “The biggest challenge was our actual set up. The event took place at the gorgeous Fairmont Royal York hotel in Toronto. And while beautiful, navigating the hotel with a 700-pound skid full of product and booth supplies was quite tricky.”
Due to logistics and timing, the invited businesses were asked to set up their booths only after other events had finished up at the site, which ended up being quite late at night.
“We could only begin our booth set up at midnight and finished up around 3:00 a.m. A quick four-hour nap and we had to be up to showcase the brand on conference day!”
The event saw 400 attendees come in from across Canada. Many who came were fellow entrepreneurs and influencers from across Canada. The conference portion of the day was filled learning, lessons, and inspirational stories of women in business sharing the challenges and highlights of building their entrepreneurial visions into reality.
While it was a challenging setup, the business owner says the experience was entirely worth it.
“Attendees loved our set up, the product line, and obviously the highlight was having Jillian visit our booth. Jillian had a chance to shop our booth, smell our incredible soap bars, and grab a photo with me on conference day! It was quite the whirlwind.”
Overall Alarie was very happy with the event. The majority of their business is supplying soap bars to gift boutiques and flower shops, like The Community General Store in Niverville. At the Academy in the City event, the small business was able both sell SOAK products and simultaneously introduce the brand to a new audience, which may open doors to new markets.
“We were able to showcase the brand to prospective B2B shops and opened new store accounts with Canadian boutique owners who buy our soaps to sell within their stores.”
Bath Business Changes
SOAK began as a home-based business, with Alarie making all the products herself out of her small space. They did well, securing a major contract with Hudson’s Bay in 2020. Despite the normal challenges facing small business entrepreneurs, as well as some exceptional challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, SOAK Bath Co has now existed for five years and seen some major changes.
“I moved the SOAK Bath Co brand to our very first commercial space at 290 Main Street in May 2021,” says Alarie. “We don’t have a storefront at this address. It is simply our incredibly creative space where we make and ship the product line from. In town, we supply our product line to The Community General Store across the parking lot at 10 Cedar Drive for the community of Niverville to shop our line in person.”
In addition to The Community General Store, SOAK supplies more than 500 boutique shops across Canada and the United States with handmade soaps and bath bombs.
“The team has grown from ‘just me’ in 2019 to a team of seven incredible local humans that help to make and ship the product line from our space in Niverville,” she adds. “I truly could not imagine this business without the help and support of our incredible team. It takes a village to make this vision come to life day in and day out.”
Alarie is also the face of SOAK Bath Co on social media, noting that supporting her business in-person and online is integral to business management in today’s economy.
“If you’d like to follow along on the day-to-day behind the scenes of a fun, creative business, you can follow us on instagram @cksoakbathco.”
