Honua Bars – they smell amazing and they get the job done, even on the trickiest of hair. These ergonomic little wonder-bars are formulated and made on the Gold Coast from high quality, sustainably sourced ingredients that will totally revolutionise your shower experience.
Founded by Sophie Thwaites, each bar is completely soap-free and they’re chock-full of nourishing ingredients like coconut oil, cacao butter, hydrolysed oats and panthenol (Provitamin B5) to make your hair silky soft and beautifully detangled.
Tell us about Honua Bars.
Honua Bars makes soap-free shampoo bars, conditioner bars, and a range of travel and storage solutions. The purpose of the brand is to alleviate the plastic crisis, and we formulate using mild, sustainably sourced ingredients of the highest quality. We use no sulfates, parabens, phthalates or silicones and the bars are vegan and cruelty free. Our packaging is cute and quirky, and the bars are shaped like pineapples; we are appealing to a younger audience than most other brands out there. The bars contain a raft of beneficial active ingredients like coconut oil, argan oil and hydrolysed oats to make your hair soft, strong and shiny!
What inspired you to start Honua Bars?
I’ve watched a lot of shocking documentaries about the plastic crisis, the effect of plastic waste on wildlife, and the inefficient plastic recycling process in Australia; these made me upset and determined to do something about it. I surf frequently and found myself frustrated by the amount of plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles I was churning through, knowing how little of it would actually be recycled into something new and the ultimate impact on marine life.
I loved using shampoo bars as they are so travel friendly and plastic free, but I felt most bars available on the market at the time seemed predominantly aimed at an older audience, and weren’t very attractively shaped, packaged or scented. Or worse, they weren’t shampoo at all but were just soap (yet misleadingly called ‘shampoo’), and thus were detrimental to your hair. I sensed a gap in the market and an opportunity to allow a younger, more eco-minded audience a way to reduce their plastic consumption while still having a fun, awesome smelling product that gives them radiantly healthy hair.
Tell us about your career and background.
I have a maths degree, and was working as a commercial analyst in the city in Sydney for four years until early 2019, but I didn’t find my work very fulfilling. I’ve had the feelers out for a business with a social purpose for about three years; I was just waiting for the right idea to come along. Getting my hours reduced at the start of covid was the final push I needed to just take the leap, move to sunny Queensland and start a shampoo bar company!
Describe a typical work day for you (if there is such a thing).
I get up around 5 with the light (wish we had daylight savings!), and generally start work around 6. I’ll start with easy stuff like packing orders, folding product boxes while listening to entrepreneurial podcasts or planning out the next formulations to test. I’ll then attack my mega to do list: marketing takes up a lot of my time; making and managing ads on FB, Insta and Google, working with influencers or planning collaborations; website optimisation, accounting, wholesaler fulfilment, answering DMs on Insta. Quick cycle to the post office to post orders at around 4, then another few hours of doing easier tasks like planning social media on Later or responding to emails. If it’s a weekend then I will generally spend all day making shampoo or conditioner.
Has COVID-19 affected your business? How are you navigating that?
I only launched a month ago so I’ve not seen much of an effect, but I know it’s a good time to be in ecommerce, from the experience of friends with online stores. People have been forced to become more savvy at shopping online; are bored and thus turn to shopping; and I definitely feel there is a movement towards buying more locally and sustainably.
What advice do you have for those wanting to start a business?
Definitely go for it, but do a ton of research first to check your idea actually solves real problems, or that there is a market for it. I’ve found it’s very simple to set up a Shopify site yourself, and you can teach yourself anything from marketing to SEO pretty easily from YouTube. And whatever your forecasted start up budget is, double it. Look up the government NEIS scheme, which helps people start small businesses. You need a product ready to sell, and need to commit to working on your business full time, but can’t have started yet, to be eligible.
What’s next for you, and Honua Bars?
I’m working on my next range of formulas now; the bars will be in a new shape, will come in a range of different formulations for dry, normal and oily hair, and will have complimentary travel tins. The scents are my favourite part to develop; I’ve probably tested over 50 different scent combos now and have narrowed it down to 4; I’m so excited to launch them in a few months! Eventually I’d love to branch out into solid deodorant, solid face wash, solid pet shampoo and other eco-friendly plastic-free products.
For more info on Honua Bars, please visit www.honuabars.com.au
