Students in the READY program (a program for students with disabilities) are taking their soap bar business at DGN to the next level. The soap business began at the start of the 2024 school year with prepping and planning. They started selling soaps in October. The scents this holiday season are pine tree farm, hot cocoa gingerbread man, and peppermint snowflake. All soaps are three dollars each. The students began by operating at a lower capacity to get things going, but now have opened up to more customers.
“In the past, the program has done a lot of household chores, but we decided we wanted to do something more fun and interactive, so that’s why we started the soap bar business,” special services teacher Frances Cade said. “It was something different we hadn’t done before and switched things up in a fun way.”
Cade played a big role in the soap bar business, such as helping carry out the details, getting the word out that orders are open, and sharing the info with teachers. Outside of that, the students did the majority of the work and learned what it’s like to operate a business.
“I send out all the emails and then the students do the rest. I do assist in making some of the soap,” Cade said. “They take care of all the soap deliveries and most of the soap making so they have a chance to learn more about what it’s like to make the soap and other handmade products.”
By operating the soap business at a smaller capacity, students can get a feel for running a buisness before the stakes become higher. Cade hopes the students will continue on with this business to T99 (Transition 99), a center for post-high school adults with disabilities to continue their education and learn life skills. It would be ideal for the students to be able to integrate it into their daily lives as an adult, possibly giving them a stable source of income.
“I would love for the skills that they learned in my class to be carried onto T99 and after,” Cade said. “My goal for this was to give them a head start on it since they do similar things there, and if they kept the business going after that, I would be super happy.”
With the business up and running, the student-entrepreneurs have endured the most difficult portion of their business journey: getting it started. From now on, it is going to be in the hands of the students to continue expanding their business.
“We originally only sold to special services and that fall selection of scents did very well, so we decided to open it up to all DGN teachers with the holiday season scents,” Cade said. “The entire holiday store ended up selling out within the first 24 hours.”
After continuous success by releasing more scents, the READY program is just scraping the surface for what they believe is to come of this student-run business. The soap bars sold out so fast that a handful of soaps ended up on a backorder.
“We have not gotten to the point of selling to students just yet, but I think it would be really fun and our students would enjoy doing something like that,” Cade said. “Even after selling 90 soap bars to staff, we still have 20 teachers on our waiting list, which truly shows the businesses possibilities if we keep adding more and more.”
The possibilities are endless for the business that the READY students are just getting off the ground. It is going to come down to how much students can absorb throughout high school and the work that they are willing to put in during their time in the T99 center and beyond.
