Handmade vs. Natural (and why they aren’t the same thing!)

Thanks, in great part, to the young GenXers and older Millennials who now have more spending power than ever, we have seen a huge shift in the last several years away from the mass-produced, cookie cutter, products of the big-box stores, and back toward the family heritage and quaintly humble offerings of skilled craftsmen and creative artists. We love people who are makers and the handmade movement is alive and well in America, which is great news for a family like ours who has been hand-making making all natural and chemical free soap and skincare for 250 years!

But, if you’re looking to buy handmade, especially something handmade within the soap and skincare arena, let me offer one simple caution. It’s something many of you already know, but may not think about when choosing what handmade soaps and lotions to buy.

Handmade and All Natural or Chemical Free are not, in and of themselves, remotely, the same thing.

There is something mysterious about handmade items. This seems to be especially true for things that, we ourselves are unfamiliar with or have no knowledge of how to make, and thus the ideology that handmade items are always better than their mass-produced counterparts is something that many hold fast. Do I personally believe that items which are handmade are better? Sometimes, yes! All the time? No.

This is especially true when it comes to health and beauty products, and becomes an even more important issue to examine when we start talking about the world of natural skincare.

The act of simply hand-making a product, like soap, for example, doesn’t guarantee that product to be non-toxic, all natural, chemical free, or gentle on the skin. These are things that are all determined by the quality of the ingredients that the craftsmen may choose to use when making the product.

For example, here at the Amish Country Soap Company one of our top selling lines is our Lavender line. It’s such a hit with our customer’s in fact, that for Christmas of 2016 we are extending the line to include an anti-aging moisturizer and body scrub. As you might imagine, the soap in this line smells like, well, lavender. Because we are committed to being a totally natural and chemical free company our products are scented with only 100% certified pure essential oils. We never use any chemical fragrance of any kind…no matter how realistic is smells or how inexpensive it may be! The same can be said for the colorants that are added to our products. They are all 100% pure, chemical free, colorants like mica powder, clay, or herbs and spices.

Contrast our methods with other handmade soapers who may elect to use budget-friendly fragrance oils, chemical colorants, or nasty preservatives in their products to save time and money and you can quickly see where the problem lies. In the end, you still have two products that have been handmade. They probably use many of the same buzz words on their packaging and they will indeed share many of the same base ingredients, but are they the same? Certainly not!

The most tragic thing about these kinds of handmade skincare products is that it’s often the case that many of the good ingredients that are initially included are tainted and rendered significantly less effective when combined and mixed with these other nasty chemicals. One of the most frequent offenders are products that contain things like cocoa butter, shea butter of goat’s milk. Pretty packaging that claims a product has All Natural Moisturizers or is made with Organic Goat’s Milk may seem tempting but upon a closer look what they really mean is that these ingredients were natural or organic before we mixed them in with the chemical cocktail of fragrances, colorants, and preservatives that we’ve also chosen to add!

In our family’s business plan here at the Amish Country Soap Company there is simply no reason to compromise the integrity of our products or the value to our customers by using ingredients that are not natural. But, let’s be clear. These other handmade products are not necessarily all bad products. The intention of this article is not to shame all soapers into becoming natural soapers like us, but merely to educate you, as the consumer, on the kinds of products that you may be tempted to buy and how they can often, misleadingly, be marketed.At our handmade company, we always strive be the premier supplier of 100% All Natural and Chemical Free skin care products, from our family’s hands straight to yours!

For more information or to shop online simply visit www.amishcountrysoapco.com. Like this article…learn something new? Share it with your friends and tag us @amishcountrysoapco