Buck Ridge Soap Company
Buck Ridge Mountain is located in the tiny community of Springfield, Arkansas. We tend to say that if you are driving north on Highway 92, if you blink you'll miss the town. It is that small. Population is around 1300. Yes, thirteen hundred not thousand. We don't even have high speed internet, thankfully cell phones provide internet service via mobile hot spot and satellite internet is available. It enables folks here to work online or work from home.
Our Soap Making Journey
We started making soaps for anyone back in 2012. Of course we started like most with melt and pour and for just the owner herself or family. Then the owner started learning more about cold processed soaps and when her husband came home from his job working near the Arkansas river with huge mosquito bites all over him, she started looking into a soap that might help.
At first it was to alleviate the itching he was having from the bites after showering, but then discovered a recipe for an insect repellent soap, which she then improved upon after some research. It became the first cold processed soap and the recipe has gone through some changes over the years to what it is now.
So after that she started making more "manly soaps" because men were kind of left out of the personal care industry as a whole at the time. Now everyone is doing it but this was before the ones you hear of on TV all the time. Not that they are all natural or vegan. (Duke Cannon uses tallow -- eww who wants to bathe in meat fat? Dove for Men isn't natural it uses all sorts of detergents and chemicals. We could go on.) After that we were asked for beard oils and things just kept progressing.
We are also one of the few companies that offer several options for sensitive skins. Many soap makers don't offer a lot of unadulterated soaps that are completely free of scents or colors but we do have several varieties for those who just need something for sensitive skin or noses.
Every one of our soaps is made in the USA, they are made by hand, hand poured and hand cut. No factories, no machinery, just old fashioned soap making. So of course some of our bars look a little 'rustic' they may not always be perfectly 'square' or exactly 4 ounces. They are generally anywhere from a 4 ounce bar up to 5 ounces because of their handmade nature. It's why we put 'approximately 4 ounces' on the labels.
Some of our soaps are vegan friendly, some are organic and all are all natural. Our palm oil is always organic RSPO certified sustainable.
You will also find our soaps, bath, body and beard care products as well as candles on a number of retailer websites and in small local stores throughout the US and Canada. We sell on Ebay and Etsy as well, and some of our distributors sell on Walmart and Amazon.
Buck Ridge also sells private label (we help others start their business by putting their label on products we make. If you'd like to become part of the Buck Ridge retail or wholesale family click on the 'sell our products' button at the top of the page.
About the Owner
Tammie, better known as Tam McClure is a graphic artist who fell in love with the craft of soap making and then Tam turned her hobby into a business combining her love of crafting handmade soaps and bath products and her more than 27 years experience designing websites and logos into a business.
Tam first started making soaps for her late husband, Scott, with Camper's Friend being her first cold process soap blend to help keep the bugs off him at his job near the Arkansas river. Scott, her husband of 27 years passed suddenly in November of 2018 and she has dedicated herself to keep and grow Buck Ridge Soap in his memory.