m.soap
"I’m Maggs and I live in the Scottish Highlands with my husband and two children.
The story behind m.soap starts with my mum….. She and my step father lived off-grid in rural Spain for 15 years on a large piece of land that included a large number of olive trees.
One year there was a fabulous harvest that produced more olive oil than they could sell, use or give away to friends and family so they decided to have a go at making soap to use up some of the olive oil.
My mum did a lot of research and learned that all the good stuff is taken out of commercial soap and used for other, often more expensive products. She wanted a soap that she could use on her face without it drying her skin.
From there grew a skincare business that included serums, balms, creams, liquid shampoo and, of course, soap.
Sadly my mum died from breast cancer in April 2020 just after the first national lockdown.
It took me a while to work up the courage to learn about what she did and hone my skills to make her soap. I experimented for a while on friends and family, asking them to test my recipe, which I had tweaked a bit from my mum’s original recipe. I also changed all the scents and made my own essential oil blends to use.
For me, the smell of the ingredients and the essential oils in my soap cupboard are very emotive. They remind me of days gone by in my mum’s ‘production shed’ behind her house in Spain. Watching her make her products, package them and send them off to her customers. Right back at the start of my soap journey it was a painful memory, but now I find it quite comforting.
I hope she would be pleased that I have carried on, but not imitated what she started. I’ve made her soap and business my own, but with her core ethos and values.
She is one part of the ‘m’ in m.soap, and me, as Maggs, is the other."
