Like for many across the country, lots of soap is getting Helen Platts through the pandemic. But for Platts, it’s a bit different.
When Platts started Bowen Island Soap Co. as a side business a little more than a year ago, she didn’t know what was coming. But now, laid off from two jobs due to COVID, she’s turning full-time to what was once a weekend endeavour.
Platts grew up in a small mining town in Yorkshire before moving to Edinburgh and then Canada in 2012.
“I think change is good for you and so it was time to do something else and be somewhere else,” she said.
While living in North Vancouver, Platts began searching for somewhere she could buy a house, fell in love with Bowen Island and a little home on the West side of the island.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this place is amazing––I wish I could afford to live here,’ because I didn’t have two pennies to rub together to buy a house.”
In a bittersweet twist of circumstance, all of Platts’ grandparents died in a six-month period, one leaving her with enough money to put a deposit down on the house she’d eyed. She moved to the island in 2012.
“It is hard work,” said Platts. “It’s hard work to stay here and to look after a house. I’m having to look after it by myself now and that’s hard.”
Platts took on three part-time jobs to be able to pay her mortgage, including starting the soap company in late 2018.
Beyond bars of soap, Bowen Island Soap Co. does skin care, a series of balms, body butter, shampoo bars and conditioner, soon-to-come liquid hand soap and more. The products are organic, small-batch, often vegan and free of palm oil, detergents, artificial colours or artificial fragrances.
Platts taught herself to make soap after coming to the island.
“It was really just because there was a huge gap in the market,” said Platts. “All of our soap makers were gone.
“I mean, I wanted, you know, decent soap that wasn’t full of all kinds of awfulness and there just wasn’t any.”
So Platts got to reading about soap and researching on well-established soap makers.
“Then just jump[ed] in and [made] it,” said Platts. “I mean, that’s really how you learn to do anything that’s hands on.”
Through trial and error she created and honed her recipe––the early efforts she describes as utterly hilarious. “I go and look at them every now and again…they look like blue cheese,” she laughed.
Though what started out of opportunity turned to passion.
“I really do love my business,” said Platts. “Even when I’m…so exhausted and I can barely put one foot in front of the other. I just love it so much.”
When COVID hit, most of Platts’ sales were in-person and wholesale, and those sales have decreased, she said. But she’s thrown a lot of effort into online sales, which have increased.
“I couldn’t say if [the increase in online is] as a result of COVID? Or if it’s just because I’ve made a concerted effort to grow that market,” she said.
In early May, Platts organized a virtual craft fair.
“[It’s] just to do something a bit new and to sort of pull people out of comfort zone…to show them that there are other options,” said Platts at the time. “Because it’s tricky in this kind of situation when you’re a small business and you wonder what the heck you’re going to do and how you’re going to pivot.”
Now laid off from both of her other jobs, Platts is pivoting to full-time soap making, which luckily is in demand during a pandemic.
“I’m really grateful that I am doing this and that people seem to like it and they just keep coming back,” she said.
