Where is the original Buff City Soap?

Welcome to Buff City Soap

Frustrated by commercial soaps’ harsh chemicals, detergents, and animal fats, we set out to create a better way! Buff City Soap — delightfully scented plant based soaps, handmade daily, in each of our local Soap Makeries.

We're on a mission to create handmade products that are free of harsh ingredients and full of nourishing plant based goodness.

We take tremendous pride in handcrafting each and every bar of soap in our Soap Makery. Each one is truly unique. 1 of 1. Just like you!

Our Makers are whipping up delightfully fragrant creations to share with you no matter how you choose to shop: online or in our Soap Makeries.

WORK WITH US

Explore our Careers page for more information about current openings near you!

TREAT YOURSELF TUESDAY: 4 FOR $20

Includes our handmade Soap Bars, Bath Bombs, Shower Fizzies, & Bath Truffles!

★★★★★

Excellent products!!! Love love love the shower steamers and the whipped soap. The bath truffles are great for the winter as they have an oil content that helps keep my skin from drying out after a bath.

Vanessa B

★★★★★

Bought my first order online months ago and been enjoying the variety ever since. Got many coworkers hooked on it, makes your skin feel clean and does not dry out like a lizard... laundry soap is also amazing! Just be warned you'll be hooked if you try it.

Aaron M

Plant Based Brilliance

You deserve the very best. That’s why we say “no” to harsh chemicals and animal fats, and “yes” to plant based ingredients that go easy on the skin.

Magic for Every Moment

We handmake items ranging from Soap Bars and Bath Bombs to Epsom Salts and Laundry Soap so that you can enjoy the magic of Buff City Soap all day long.

VISIT A MAKERY

to grab your very favorite Buff City Soap scent today

Brad Kellum wasn't planning to build a soap empire.

But six years after he launched the company, Buff City Soap is on track to open its 21st location and projects to bring in about $20 million in revenue this year. Starting out mixing ingredients by hand in his Bartlett garage, Kellum's vision for the future of his company is now to become "the Starbucks of soap."

The day Kellum sold his first bar of soap, then under the name Bartlett Soap Company, he was in his early 40s. He had recently resigned from the career as a medic for Memphis Fire Department and enrolled in law school.

After years working in public service, he saw the next phase of his career in the public defender's office.

Back then, when it came to soap, Kellum gave it little thought. He bought whatever happened to be on sale at his local grocer.

But during his second year of law school something changed: Kellum learned many of soaps made by large manufacturers contained animal fats and harsh chemicals that left his skin dry, tight and irritated.

"One of the ingredients you will see is sodium tallowate," he said. "That's beef tallow. That's how they make soap to this day. They take an animal fat and put it with lye ... That's why a bar of Dial or Dove or Ivory, when you use it and you get out of the shower you feel tight, there's nothing moisturizing in it. It's detergent.

"I felt like that made them vulnerable to a guy that was willing to point that out."

No longer pulling in his salary as a full-time fire medic, Kellum saw an opportunity to make a better product for himself while also bringing in a bit of extra cash.

He spent months in his Bartlett garage experimenting. He was looking to make a soap that could clean just as well as any of the store-bought brands, but he wanted to do it with gentle, plant-based ingredients.

Eventually, his street started to smell like a light mix of coconut oil and shea butter and his first creation, an oatmeal- and honey-scented soap, and his neighbors wanted to know what was going on in that garage. 

In 2013, they became this first customers. 

From there, Kellum sold his soaps at farmers markets and to anyone who happened to hear about his products. His time was split between law school classes and driving all over town to meet customers in parking lots, at home and at work to drop off soap orders. 

By the end of his first year in business, he had raked in $75,000 in sales.

Kellum opened his first location as Bartlett Soap Co. in a tiny 600-square foot storefront at 3000 Kirby Whitten Road. That store was quickly overwhelmed with orders.

Soon after, he opened a second location in Olive Branch, then a factory in Bartlett to make the soap bases for both stores. But businesses was growing so fast they couldn't keep up either.

Soon after, a friend who knew him from his fire medic days told him she was planning to move to Colorado and she wanted to open a Buff City Soap location there. That store took off, too.

That's when Kellum knew he had something special.

Buff City Soap is 'Open on Main'

Kellum did manage to finish law school as his business was growing. He even got two law internships, but he never practiced as a professional lawyer. The soap just took over.

After the success of his first few stores made him believe he had a model that could be replicated, Kellum said he started considering a formal franchising system. Buff City is ready to do business in 49 states with the last one — California — expected to be cleared soon.

Several new stores are already open in Kentucky, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee.

The Downtown Memphis location launched in 2017 as part of a popup shop program organized by the Downtown Memphis Commission meant to bring life back to vacant Main Street storefronts.

The DMC looks for a mix of tiny companies ready to try out a store for the first time and established companies like Buff City that have already tested their concepts but want to see if they can succeed Downtown, said Brett Roler of the DMC.

More than 50 other businesses have set up shop under the Open on Main program. While business owners have to pay for their own decor and other expenses, the DMC covers the rent while the business is in the popup location, usually about one month, to make opening more accessible.

"It activates ground-floor space and changes the reality and perception of what it's like to walk around Downtown," Roler said. "It's amazing what new paint and adding merchandise can change."

After participating in the program, Buff City opened a permanent location Downtown and later, another on Cooper Street in Midtown.

'The Starbucks of soap'

Although the company will have just shy of two dozen stores by the end of March, they aren't pumping the brakes on growth after that.

Kellum said dozens more are already being planned in east of Nashville and east of Denver. And those don't include the 500 applications the company has already gotten from people interested in opening a Buff City Soap franchise of their own, Kellum said.

That kind of growth potential makes the path to becoming "the Starbucks of soap" more clear.

But Kellum doesn't just mean that in a store-on-every-corner kind of way. He wants to mimic Starbucks' ubiquity but more importantly, he wants to achieve Starbucks' position as a lifestyle staple — not a special occasion treat — for his customers.

"It's sort of a benign product," Kellum said. "A lot of of people can make coffee. ... But that's a part of a person's lifestyle, and (Starbucks) making it accessible the way they have, in a simple fashion, makes me want to emulate that model. But I think soap is even more important. ...

"We're not a boutique. It can't be online. It can't be cute. That's not us at all. We're accessible to any member of any American family. ... It's all priced where real people can buy it."

The average 5.5-ounce bar of Buff City Soap costs $7. "Premium" bars like the shea butter-infused version of the company's best-selling soap "Narcissist," which has a golden streak running through its center and is scented with peaches, raspberries and patchouli sandalwood, goes for $8.50.

Most products in the store are under $15 with a few items like a facial serum and a brightening eye cream costing between $18 and $25.

Kellum said the affordability is what gives his stores a shot at the accessibility necessary to recreate the Starbucks model in the soap industry. 

"What you put on your skin absorbs in seconds so I feel like providing an alternative to the chemical-riddled products that are out there now is for us as a company the way to go," Kellum said. "And to provide that alternative, you have to be accessible."

Desiree Stennett can be reached at , 901-529-2738 or on Twitter: @desi_stennett.

Where was the first Buff City Soap?

Did Buff City Soap change their name?

Who invented Buff City Soap?

Where is Buff City Soap headquarters?