SFIC Soap History

Our Soap History 

Our soap making business began with Alex Sr., our Founder, developing his soaps at his home-based business in San Francisco in the 1960s. He kept on experimenting with tiny soap batches in attempt to create a superior glycerin soap bar to sell to local businesses. After making every type of soap imaginable, he perfected a multi-oil vegetable formula high in glycerin and continued experimenting until he felt he had the right balance of lather, emolliency, rinseability, durability, and after feel.

Once he had created an excellent product, he began marketing it throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. His Crystal® Glycerine soaps started to be sold in the early natural food stores and grocery chains, while soap bars with exotic scents from the East appeared in the “flower power” shops in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury hippy district. The 1960s brought forth many artists and crafters who began a hand-made product revival, and of some of them began asking Alex Sr. for his Glycerine soap in bulk. The artists could then make unusual shapes or figurines by molding the soap along with their own preferred scents and colors. As Alex Sr. was always sympathetic to small enterprises like his own, he complied and offered helpful suggestions. This was the birth of melt and pour soap.

By the 1970s, SFIC, as the business became known, had relocated to Concord (thirty miles east of San Francisco) and was now a small factory with a few employees. Soon, SFIC expanded from soaps for home consumers and crafters to hotel amenities and custom products for large clientele. Today, we pride ourselves on a large customer fan base that reaches around the globe.