Closed due to family bereavement

It’s with great sadness that we announce that Sarah’s Mom died yesterday.

As some of you will know, she was recently diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and during the last 5 weeks we have spent most of our time with her at the hospital.  She was a lovely, generous and very brave lady who fought her illness with great courage and dignity. 

In the coming days The Natural Soapworks will remain closed, as we come to terms with our grief.

Scam emails

We've received a few e-mails suggesting we have sent an e-mail with an invoice attachment.

We want to confirm this appears to be a scam e-mail, and was never sent by us - it would be impossible since the e-mail address does not exist.  The person mentioned in the e-mail does not work for us.

This has to be a scam, so we can only suggest that you do not open the attachment (it's likely to be a virus) or reply to the message.

Changes to our opening hours

Due to a serious family illness, we have decided to reduce the opening hours of our Stourbridge shop.  We're still spending lots of time at the hospital, so we're going to try opening most afternoons until the end of August.  Exact hours may change occasionally, so we're sorry for any inconvenience.  We won't be accepting appointments for Aromatherapy treatments in the coming weeks, but may be able to arrange some Sports and Swedish Massage appointments.

This change in our shop opening hours will have no impact on website orders - these will be processed as normal.

25/8/14 UPDATE
We'll be closed on Tuesday 26th August, and at the moment do not know if we'll be open this week.  For urgent queries, it will be best to contact us by e-mail. 

Off to the Shrewsbury Flower Show

This week we've been busy preparing loads of hampers and soaps ready for the Shrewsbury Flower Show.  We'll be setting up our stand on Thursday this week, and exhibiting at the show on Friday and Saturday.  This means our Stourbridge shop will be closed from Wednesday onwards.

After attending such a busy show, we're expecting to be pretty tired!  So we'll be taking a weeks leave, returning to re-open our shop from Tuesday 19th August 2014.   During this time, our websites will continue to accept orders and these will be processed in date order once we return.

Limited opening hours this week

Unfortunately we have a family illness again, which means more trips to the doctors and hospital.  We're going to try to open our Stourbridge shop as often as we can, but it's likely that our normal opening hours will vary each day.  As things become clearer, we'll keep updating our opening hours on this blog and hope it helps customers in planning their visits.

For urgent order queries and if Stourbridge customers would like to arrange a specific time to call in to make purchases, it will be best if you send us an e-mail.  We'll be picking up messages regularly and will try to get back to you asap.

Feeling hot, hot, hot...

Unfortunately the workshop is causing us problems again.  Today was unbearably hot, so in view of tomorrow's weather forecast we've decided it will be best to close the workshop for tomorrow.  We'll be open again on Saturday, but will be closing a little earlier than usual.

We apologise for any inconvenience, but we'll continue to work on finalising this years Christmas range somewhere cool!  The Ruskin Glass Centre was very quiet today so we're sure that tomorrows closure won't cause any problems.

While the weather is hot, we'd recommend that local customers keep checking this blog since we'll continue to update our shop opening hours to try to prevent any wasted journeys.  If you need anything urgent, just drop us an e-mail and we'll see what we can do.  Rest assured it is business as usual, and we'll ensure that internet orders continue to be processed within our usual delivery timescales.  

Keep cool everyone!

Final preparations for Royal Three Counties

Later this week, The Natural Soapworks will be heading off to the Royal Three Counties Show at Malvern.  We'll have our stand in the Eden Crafts marquee which is near to the main ring. 

Natural Soapworks - Gardener's Gift Buckets

As you can imagine, the workshop has been a hive of activity during the last few weeks, making loads of lovely fresh bathing products and wrapping lots of soaps and gift hampers.

Enville - Natural Soapworks real ale soap in aid of Prostate Cancer UK

For these events we often produce new special edition items, and for this show we've created some pretty Gardener's Tins - cute little galvanised buckets containing Gardener's soaps, our new Gardener's Balm and hand care products that are perfect for green fingers!

We'll also be showcasing Enville, our brand new charity real ale soap, which was launched last week.  This is a special edition soap, created to support Prostate Cancer UK and would be a nice choice for Father's Day.

Our Stourbridge shop will be closed from Thursday 12th June (2pm) until Tuesday 17th June.  Our websites will continue to accept orders while we're away, and these will be processed in the date order they arrived as soon as we return.  For more updates on the show, visit our Facebook page.