Cost of Items (part 1)

Hey all.  Just wanted to write a quick blog about this, since a few people have touched on this subject lately.  The one that comes to mind was someone who was here and used our bathroom, where we have one of our chinchilla soaps.  In case you're unfamiliar, these are our soaps:

The person commented that they were neat, to which I replied, they are for sale!  They asked how much, I responded ($5), and they said something along the lines of, "that's kind of a lot for a bar of soap, maybe next time."

Now, that's fine, we all choose what to spend our money on.  But I wanted to do a quick blog post talking about prices and whatnot, so you all can see how this goes.

The soap is $10 for 2 pounds.  Each pound of soap makes about 4ish chinchilla bars, as there is some waste (which we use to mold mini soaps, but unfortunately cannot use for my chin soap) as it's impossible to get exactly the right amount of soap melted.  We also use coloring and scent for these soaps.  The coloring is $8 for 3 teeny tiny bottles.  Those bottles will last for the 2 pounds of soap, and then some.  Then fragrance -- these little containers are $5-7 for another teeny tiny bottle, of one scent.  Finally, the soap mold.  The chinchilla soap mold costs about $22 with shipping.

So, to make 8ish bars:

$10 soap itself
$8 coloring
$6 (average) fragrance
$22 soap mold (obviously can be used again)
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$46
divided by 8
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$5.75 per bar

Now, of course I can use the soap mold again, and hopefully the fragrance lasts longer than 8 bars of soap (though, it may not, if I'm using the same one for that many bars in a row, it's going to go quicker than making various fragranced soaps).  Same goes for the coloring.... hopefully I still have some left after those 8 bars of soap, but I may not.

Even if we forget the cost of the soap mold (which... I mean... it's kinda necessary, but whatever)... we're then at $24 (cost) for me to make 8 bars.  That means each chin soap costs me $3 to make.  Each one of these requires cutting the soap, heating it, melting it, adding the correct amounts of color  and fragrance, pouring it, and then letting it cure for 1.5+ hours.  Then de-molding it, getting the flash off, and storing it / getting it ready for shipping or selling.  That's assuming I'm making $2 on each bar of soap.  I mean... is that really too much profit for a small business to make?