ReadyMade: Instructions for everyday life

Mondays suck. Especially if you hate your job. But the day doesn’t have to be a total waste. You can now look forward to reading about ReadyMakers who have worked their way into f*&%ing awesome jobs—and maybe find a little inspiration to jumpstart your own career in the process—right here, every Monday.

VITAL STATS
Name: Sarah Ryhanen
Occupation: Oh, I never thought about how to describe it! I guess I’m a floral designer and soap maker for Saipua.
Location: Red Hook, Brooklyn
Age: 29
First Job: Working at a Carvel ice cream store at age 16.
Best Job: What I do now.
Salary During 20s: $25-35K
Greatest professional challenge: Time management (my work is my life) and staying focused.

1.     Hi, Sarah Rhyanen. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job?
I had another career in Manhattan, as a curator of contemporary art. But my mom started making soap about 11 years ago—just in her basement with a cardboard box for a mold and a bottle of Bertolli olive oil from Costco. She was selling it locally, and my boyfriend Eric and I would help her on the weekends. Then we designed some new packaging about five years ago that got a lot of attention and decided to take the soap on the road to some trade shows, and the business grew very slowly and organically from there.

We opened a shop about three years ago, and then flowers came along for the ride about a year after that, when I decided that I liked flowers and wanted an excuse to play with them on a daily basis. Now we do about 30 to 40 weddings a year, and have just expanded into a new, bigger store.

2.     How did your mom get so into soap?
My mom was a home economics teacher for 30 years, so when my sister and I were growing up, we were always doing different craft projects together, like little wood garden ornaments and whatnot. We would take them to craft shows, but they were always pretty unsuccessful. And then when I was about 15, we had a booth next to this woman who made the most beautiful soaps and my mom loved it and went home and figured out how to make it. So she would send me soap care packages when I was away at college and it was like, yeah, this is what my mom does. It’s so funny, I never thought it would be my career!

3.     And what’s with you and flowers?
There used to be an amazing flower shop in our neighborhood and when it closed, I was so sad because I didn’t have anywhere nearby to go and buy unusual flowers. So when we first opened our retail shop, I thought, well, maybe soap and flowers go together. I started with a really modest flower budget. I had about $200 a week to spend at the flower market and it didn’t really go anywhere the first year because it turns out people in Red Hook don’t really want to buy flowers. Also, when I look back on what I did that first year, some of those arrangements were really embarrassing. You will never see them, nobody will! I was just making it up. I do have a background in art and an eye for color, but there was a definite learning curve and it took me about a year to start making things look how I wanted them to look.

But I kept playing around with arrangements and then started taking photos and posting them on my blog. People started noticing them and we started booking weddings.

4.     So what’s Saipua (pronounced Sigh-POO-Ah) all about now?
I think what ties soap and flowers together is that everything we do is inspired by nature. I spend a lot of time looking at flowers and how colors work together in nature—that definitely inspires my arrangements, which are pretty wild. And then we make this really, really excellent soap (which is sold in stores all over the country). Every bar is at least 40 to 60 percent olive oil; when you look at other olive oil soap, that’s often the second to last ingredient. And the scents are all essential oils and plant extracts. We make a really simple product—sometimes we’ll joke, oh, we should find out what scents are trendy this year, but we are just not that savvy! We don’t have a blood orange soap, or whatever the trend is now. I don’t even know what it is.

And, we’re still a very small, family-owned and operated business. I think that’s pretty special —everyone I work with knows my mom and my boyfriend! And the three of us pour every bar and wrap them up by ourselves. We’ve said no to some things because we want to preserve that and keep everything handmade.

5.     What’s a typical day like for you?
I have to go to the flower market about three times a week during wedding season, so I wake up pretty early to walk the dog and then get to the market by 6:30 AM. I scope out the best flowers, bring them back, and prep them—I usually try to get all that done before lunch. But my days go so fast and there’s not a lot of structure. We live two blocks away from the shop, so it’s a lot of back and forth; I’ll run home to do email and eat lunch, then it’s where did I leave the good scissors? Has the dog been walked? Okay, let’s go get her. I work really hard and really long hours, but I love it.

6.     Tell us about the new store!
We just moved out of our tiny retail shop into this bigger warehouse type place, and it’s a much better set-up for making the soap and flowers. Our good friend from college, Jeremy Barbour, designed it. He runs his own architecture firm, Tackle Box. His design concept was a “box within a box;” it’s sort of a metaphor for a toolbox or a sewing box, since we do these handcrafted things. He found this guy on the web who helps Amish people take down dilapidated barns and repurpose the wood, and we had all this wood trucked out from Michigan, where it used to be a barn built in the 1890s. Then Jeremy and Eric spent the past three months building the space. (You can read more about the design here and here.

7.     Have you had any role models along the way?
My mom, definitely. You run into a lot of crazy people in business, and both my parents taught me how to be reasonable. It can be really difficult but it’s certainly the biggest lesson I’ve learned for how to run a business. In terms of flowers, there are so many florists who are inspirational to me; Ariella Chezar is probably number one.

8.     What do you love about your job? What could you do without?
I love getting to meet so many different people in terms of all the different shop owners that we sell soap to, and all the couples getting married. I get to spend time with them in this important phase of their life, and it’s a really lovely thing to watch that happen. I also love the flexibility; I work all the time, but if I want to take a day off, I can and I don’t have to answer to anyone.

I just can’t think of anything I could do without—I love every part of this. Don’t get me wrong, I complain a lot. I live my work and the distinction between our home life and our work life is very fuzzy. Sometimes it can be challenging to have your boyfriend be your business partner, but there are also so many advantages to that; Eric is the best partner ever.

9.     What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you’re doing?
If you want to run your own business, you have to start with something you’re absolutely passionate about. When I hear people say, “This is an idea I could really make money with,” that just sounds wrong. I think the right attitude is to say, “all I want to do in the world is bake!” Then you can have a business baking. Sure, I’d like to be making more money, but I wouldn’t be very good at a lot of the ways you can go about doing that. It sounds so cheesy, but if you do what you love to do and work really hard, nothing can stop you.

Also, if you want to make soap, you do have to be very good at measuring things. And have a good nose. And if you want to arrange flowers, an eye for color is the most important thing; anyone can learn the technical stuff.

10.  What’s your favorite flower?
Too many! People are always asking when Eric and I will get married, and I always say we can’t get married because I could never decide on the flowers for my wedding. In the spring, I get excited about peonies. Then two months later, it’s dahlias. Every time a new season rolls around and I see a flower that I haven’t seen in six months, that’s my favorite.

Virginia Sole-Smith is a writer based in Beacon, New York. Her website is www.virginiasolesmith.com.