About Us

Hi everyone, Ellen & Dave Watson here.

We're the couple behind Ellen April Luxurious Handcrafted Soap, a family owned company located in beautiful Chester County, PA.

The company was officially born in 2003, but the story actually began in 1998 when Ellen got the itch to do something big in her life. So she kissed her family goodbye and went off to hike the Appalachian Trail. Three months and five hundred miles later, she missed her family and decided the bigness goal had been achieved. She came home.

Now, this is where soap comes in. Ellen needed a new creative outlet and decided to learn the art of soap making. Inspired by her lengthy adventure in a natural environment, she determined it wasn't going to be just any ordinary soap. She wanted to make luxurious and beautiful soap using only the finest vegetable oils and butters. She wanted to scent her creations with essential oils distilled from plants and color it with natural colorants. In short, she wanted to make the purest and best soap ever. She spent months voraciously reading and researching before she donned the gloves and goggles to make her first batch of soap. There is no denying that an abiding obsession was born that day.

Two years of experimentation and thousands of bars later, Ellen was ready to share her soap with family and friends. They unanimously agreed that Ellen had indeed succeeded in making the best soap... ever! Now it was only fair that she share her luxurious soaps with everyone.

And so, Ellen April Luxurious Handcrafted Soap was born.

Staying true to the original vision for the company, we still personally handle every aspect of every process, from creating new blended scents to hand cutting and wrapping each bar. Each bar tells a little story about its birth on the wrapper.

Over the years we've turned down some flattering offers to place our soaps in some mighty amazing stores, grow bigger to sell wholesale, or even sell the whole business. But that isn't our vision or our joy. We love to sell our products in person at farmers markets in our community and on the internet to those people we can't meet personally. No matter how you find us, our personal care and passion resides in every product we make.

Yes it's a lot of work, but every time a customer tells us how much they love our soap, we know we made the right decision.