about soap & Stone

Hello.
Welcome to Soap & Stone.
We are a small family run business with big aspirations.
We sell a large range of crystals, fossils, soaps, bath bombs, gifts and much more. (We even wholesale too!).
High quality products, with a friendly personal service, delivered straight to your doorstep.
Here's our story:
Soap & Stone is comprised of two separate businesses
(JJ's Fossils and Oh My Soap!).

John has always had a passion for dinosaurs, fossils and rocks. When looking to the future and what to do after completing sixth form, it was the perfect opportunity to trial running his own business with his interests at heart.
In November 2016, John (age 17) placed his first order of stock, set up his own stall at a local craft fair and JJ's Fossils was created.

After quite a few successful local events and market stalls, girlfriend Kelly was keen to set up her own business to sell items alongside John at the market stalls. 

Whilst on holiday in Cornwall in May 2017, Kelly (age 19) and her sister Alice (age 15) planned and pitched their business idea to their parents and borrowed the money to place their first order of stock. Oh My Soap! was created and a childhood dream of starting a business together was about to begin. Oh My Soap!'s first market stall took place in June 2017 on Dudley Market.
In September 2017 after a few months of doing market stalls and events together, we took the leap and opened our very own/very first shop in Dudley town center.

The Mayor of Dudley, Councillor Dave Tyler and Dudley North MP Ian Austin attended our grand opening on 2nd November 2017. Here's the link to the Dudley News article:
https://www.dudleynews.co.uk/news/15643236.new-store-for-the-fountain-arcade/

It was lovely to have a place to keep all of our ever growing lines of stock and somewhere for our customers to find us.
We all took turns running the shop on different days alongside part time jobs, uni work and college.

In 2018 John and Kelly got engaged and in 2019 they welcomed a baby girl. We were so lucky to have family step in to help run the shop. Kelly and Alice's mum, Emma covered most Saturdays so Kelly could take maternity leave and spend time with Lily.
Alice moved across the country to do her degree at university.

In September 2020 we made the difficult decision to close our shop due to COVID-19. Shops were being forced to close during lockdowns as an attempt to stop the spread of the virus, which meant that sales took a huge hit but we still had to pay full rent for the shop. As our lease was coming to an end, we saw this as an opportunity to move our business online.
During the pandemic we moved all of our stock to our home and our shop fittings to a temporary storage unit. But our business had grown so much that there was not enough space to run the business and be able to live our day to day lives.

So we went searching for our next business venture. Introducing "Soap & Stone HQ". From March 2021, we moved into our own storage unit/showroom. A space larger than our old shop, based in Cradley, West Midlands (a 5 minute drive from Merry Hill shopping center) with room to complete all tasks involved in running a small business from paperwork to photographing items to packing online orders and having the public visit to browse/purchase items. (To visit us please contact us to book an appointment. We would love to see you!).

With a good base to operate online and have people visit without being a high street store - it also allows us to attend markets and events like we used to when we were starting out. We managed to do a few Christmas fairs in 2021, (just before our second daughter, Phoebe was born) and are really hoping to fill our diary with events as COVID restrictions ease.

It's amazing how far our business has come and it's so exciting to see what the future holds for us! Thank you for all your support!
Family really is at the heart of Soap & Stone. Not only are we now a husband and wife team whose business supports our young family but with the help and support of our parents, family and friends, they made running our business possible.
From lending us money to start up, giving us advice, transporting us & our stock backwards & forth to markets, giving us confidence to open our shop, giving us business ideas, helping us run our shop & market stalls and supporting us by purchasing items - we just wanted to say a HUGE thank you! Behind every small business is a family.

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