Time to tinker for Fall 2026

As we enter the hottest part of the year, we have fewer market events that we do, and more experimentation and preparation for fall. Every year, we add a few new scents to our line up for the holidays, and the more popular the scent is, the more likely it will be added permanently. Last year, we had Bergamot, Peppermint, Ginger Pumpkin, and Evergreen. All of them have proven to be incredibly popular, actually outperforming our standard lineup in sales in a couple of cases. We have also learned that some of them are more susceptible to ambient moisture damage than others as well.

Starting with the moisture damage:

We participated in the Route 66 Roadfest Market, as part of the Made In Oklahoma collective. It was an indoor event at the SageNet center in Tulsa, OK which is a venue we have worked before, but in winter, when moisture isn’t really an issue. It was a hot day in the upper 90’s, and the large bay doors into the event center were open for several hours with the AC turned off while all of the vendors and exhibitors brought stuff in and got set up for the next day. At the end of the day, the closed the bay doors and turned the AC on to bring the temp down for the event on the following day. All standard stuff, but the result was that all the muggy air that got into the event center during the load in came down overnight while the AC was on, and it overwhelmed the desiccants in my crates causing the labels to get saturated and stick to the soap. This caused the ink to leech onto the surface of some of the bars, and in the absolute worst cases, allowed mold to bloom on the labels. I was able to salvage most of the bars (the ones that only had blurred ink or discoloration from the moisture), but in the case of the ginger pumpkin, we lost over half of our product to mold and moisture damage.

Performance:

Our standard items continue to perform well, with Red Apple still being our far-and-above most popular seller. Our second most popular in 2025 was the Rosemary Lavender, but so far in 2026, it has been supplanted by the Peppermint. The Ginger Pumpkin has performed well, but it did not perform as well as I had hoped, and with the loss of so much inventory due to moisture and mold, I have made the decision not to add it permanently to our line up, and will instead make a small for each fall, and when it is gone, its gone until the next fall.

New Products:

I have been paying attention to the feedback from all of our events and the emails from customers, and the number one requested addition to our lineup is Charcoal soap. I have begun testing on this, and I will have a Fragrance Free Charcoal bar ready to go for Fall this year, as a permanent item. I am also testing for scent retention of the charcoal bar, and to see if charcoal can work as a stabilizing agent for some of our more finicky scent oils. Cinnamon has a tendency to generate way more heat than necessary, which makes cause a phenomenon known as “tunneling” which looks like the following photo:

This is called Tunneling and Scaffolding. and can happen when your oils generate too much heat.

As you can see in the above photo, when oils generate too much heat, it prevents the soap from saponifying correctly as the soap cools. Cinnamon and clove oil together caused the soap to tunnel, and they can do so on their own as well, if the temperature is not controlled throughout the entire soapmaking process. In my first charcoal test, I used cinnamon leaf oil in a decently high concentration, and so far, everything looks nice, and the scent is holding, as you can see below:

I will be cutting into a few of the test bars in a day or two to see if it had any tunneling issues. I have also experimented with the Grubby Goblin soap in charcoal, which look like this:

This first test, I simply put the dice into the mold and poured directly on top of them to see how they would shift on their own. In my next test, I will be setting the dice like we normally would and will post a few photos of the difference in appearances. I don’t know if anyone actually reads the blog, but if you do, please let me know which appearance you guys prefer.

Also, I need to determine if anyone would even be interested in a charcoal version of our normal soap varieties. I have no way of doing an interactive poll on this blog, but you should be able to comment on this blog, or email me and let me know.

New Products for Fall:

Our holiday varieties have been partly decided on, and this year’s holiday varieties are as follows:

1) Chocolate Peppermint

2) Cinnamon Clove

3) TBD

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. you can email me and make sure that the subject line is “2026 Holiday Scent Suggestions” if you want to make sure I see it.