West Coast gorse soap goes global
Joanne Carroll talks to a West Coast woman inspired into business by learning from her grandmother.
Andrea Rogers’ grandmother taught her how to make soap when she was a child. Now she’s turned it into a successful business.
‘‘It all started with myself and my grandmother when I was 13. She and I used to get together and make soap. I call it manky old farm soap. It’s all the ends of soap, we’d grate them all down and add flower petals then mould them into a container and try to make something pretty out of it. She really was the one that started my love affair with soap,’’ she says.
Rogers now runs The Crafty Chook soap-making business from her home up the Arahura Valley near Hokitika, on the wild West Coast.
Her soaps, or ‘‘Wild Child Scrub Bars’’ are all created in her home kitchen and have been sold in more than 60 shops around the country.
Rogers, known to everyone as Chook, moved to the West Coast five years ago from a remote West Australian town.
She has worked in mining, where she met her husband Pete, a Kiwi miner originally from Whataroa on the West Coast.
Pete still works in Australia in an iron ore mine and is home in New Zealand for only six weeks every six months.
‘‘It’s not perfect, it’s not ideal but I grew up in a mining family. My dad did it, my grandfather did it. I did it, that’s how I met Pete. We made it work and that was 20 years ago. And we’re still doing it. That’s part of the reason the soap came about,’’ she said.
Inspired by the colour of gorse and the memory of her grandmother Edith, who died at 99 in October, Rogers began making soap in 2016.
Rogers who worked since she was 14, struggled to adapt to life in New Zealand without a job.
‘‘I can’t sit still for long. I was looking for something to do. I was working on the property, cutting trees, clearing gorse. All the bush and shrub was all over the house. When I was cutting gorse, it reminded me of hanging out with Grandma when we used to pick flowers for the soap. It has such a beautiful mustard-yellow colour,’’ she said.
She poured hot water on the gorse flowers and dried them in the oven before adding them to coconut oil, and other ingredients.
‘‘I experimented and it worked. So I thought this could be something. I had $200 egg money from selling eggs from my chickens and I thought ‘let’s use this’. I was adamant I was going to fund this myself. I got online, ordered supplies, put together some recipes and that $200 went so far. There are so many really cool oils and ingredients you can get now, like cocoa butter, shea butter, mango butter, so I was excited,’’ she said.
She then made up a couple of batches for friends.
‘‘Some of them thought it was great, some of them said I was mental. I made lots and lots of gorse soap. The whole lot disappeared. I haven’t stopped. It was a practical joke really to see if I could do it and I’m still doing it today,’’ she said.
From humble beginnings at the Hokitika market she was soon selling to more than 60 retailers around the country.
She created her own labels and took to naming the soaps and writing descriptions of them, like writing poetry.
‘‘I like words that roll off your tongue. It didn’t take me long. I wanted to make people smile. I thought of the Wild West Coast, the people that I know, what people love about the West Coast. Driftwood, glacial melt, outdoorsman, salt earth, hippy stink, tree hugger, good bastard for my father-in-law, mint chick,’’ she said.
She has since scaled back the wholesale retail business, and now concentrates on online sales and markets. Her soaps have been sent all over the world, to a Chinese tourism expo with a delegation from Hokitika, Australia, Mexico, Alaska, and Oslo.
‘‘I was absolutely exhausted. I put everything into it but I couldn’t do it all by myself. I’ve got great friends and family that helped out but I was up to 2 o’clock in the morning, the housework wasn’t getting done. I was getting tired and ended up getting really crook with the worse influenza,’’ she said.
‘‘Completely burned out so I scaled back and I’m only in about 12 shops now. I’m still busy but in a different way. I never got sick of making soap, not once. I still wake up and think what am I going to make today.’’
‘‘Some of them thought it was great, some of them said I was mental.’’ Andrea ‘‘Chook’’ Rogers