A Fun Hobby Becomes 'Addicting' for Mom

We’re highlighting small businesses from around the country as nominated by you, our readers. If your favorite small business is using Twitter to communicate with customers, let us know about it @fbsmallbiz with the hashtag #mysbc, and it may be featured as an upcoming Small Business of the Day.

Small Business of the Day: Sweet Soaps

Who: Ellen Cagnassola, 44, @sweetsoaps

What: Specialty soaps and candles

How: Cagnassola starting making soaps while she was raising her children in the late 1990s.

"In 1998 my oldest daughter was three years old, and I did a soap-making thing with her for fun and became really addicted to it," she said. "At the time people were starting to hop onto the idea of building Websites. I thought, 'I could build a site and make a consistent product at home,' and that's what I did."

Today she continues to market and design all of her products, but as the company has grown, she has outsourced the product manufacturing to Vermont, with CarvedSolutions.com. She has also licensed her designs to sell in big box stores through Horizon Group USA.

Where: Fanwood, N.J.

Biggest lesson learned from a customer: "Everything comes back to listening to what people want," she said. "Giving your customer something that is custom and fits a niche."

To view more Small Businesses of the Day, click our interactive map.