Desktop Engraving Opens the Market for Say it with Soap

Say it with Soap is cleaning up in a niche market: using a Roland EGX-350 engraving machine, this Belgian business creates personalised messages and slogans on bars of soap. 

"Soap carrying a message – that's what we make. We call it message soap," explains Françoise Descheemaeker. Her business, Say it with Soap, embodies the spirit of imagination and creativity that all Roland Heroes have in common. Based in Jabbeke, Belgium, Say it with Soap is probably the first company in Benelux to offer custom-designed bars of soap to customers looking for that special gift.

With her husband Pierre Marécaux, she runs a shop selling soaps decorated with messages like 'I love you' and 'You're the sweetest' to tourists on the Belgian coast, but she also serves customers further afield. You can find their personalised bars of soap in Alsace in Eastern France, tourist shops in Scotland and even at family events like weddings. 
 
Françoise uses a Roland EGX-350 digital engraving machine to create these message soaps. Once she has chosen the perfect font for each message, she uses her EGX-350 to engrave an embossing stamp from plexiglass which she then uses to press her design onto the soap while it is still hot and malleable.

“In the past, trying things out was tricky. Now we can experiment ourselves and create examples for our customers."

According to Françoise, her Roland EGX-350 has given her much more freedom to design the perfect personalised soaps. Better still, the investment has generated an impressive return.
 
"In the past, we asked the soap manufacturer or third parties to make the impression stamps, but it was expensive and very limited in terms of creativity. Trying things out was tricky. Now we can experiment ourselves and create examples for our customers.

"The font is very important to the message – one font works better on a bar of soap than another. The Roland EngraveStudio software installed on the machine is very user-friendly and contains many different fonts, which allows us to see what works best on a bar of soap and then to produce small batches quickly."

With this flexible solution in place, Say it with Soap can turn around products in no time, meeting trends like 'You only live once' and newsworthy phrases like 'Je suis Charlie'. Since the cost and lead time of creating embossing stamps have been dramatically lowered, Say it with Soap are now able to quickly make soaps in batches as small as 20 bars. This opens the market, letting Françoise create message soaps as unique wedding favours and gifts.