At the same time, station producers invited Antonetti to talk on the weekly program Life Line, where she soon became a frequent guest. Her role on the program involves answering callers' questions and dishing out tips on how to cope with common little problems. Want to take the sting out of a bee sting? "Mix spit with dirt," she advises. Looking for a painless way to pull out splinters? "Tape: the stickier the better." Listeners can't get enough of it, says Life Line producer Wanda L. Sanchez. "When she's on, the phones are ringing off the hook. The show is over and we still have callers on hold." By propelling her into local stardom and attracting attention from other media such as the San Jose Mercury News and Time, Antonetti's $6,500 KFAX advertising outlay has proved invaluable for SoapWorks.
In order to meet payroll for her 52 employees and eke out a profit that she admits is on the low end for the industry, Antonetti says she budgets no more than $60,000 a year for advertising. That's less than the cost of a single 30-second commercial on prime-time network television, which can run anywhere from $80,000 to $400,000. And it's minuscule compared with the $119 million that brand giant Clorox reports as its advertising expenses just for the first quarter of 2000.
But as Antonetti sees it, pouring lots of money into advertising would be not only a financial mistake but also ineffective. "I can't compete against Procter & Gamble and Clorox when they're right after Sesame Street and right before Mister Rogers," she says. "I had to find a different way to let people know who I am."
Antonetti's solution has been to interact constantly with current and prospective customers, forming a bond that she perceives as intensely personal. Eager to tap into the same sorts of frustrations that put her on the soap trail in the first place, she has positioned her products as empowering, all-natural alternatives for female shoppers fed up with a barrage of advertising hype. She has vowed that customers won't have to pay a premium for choosing SoapWorks. She personally accepts many of the 75-odd calls that come into SoapWorks daily. She hands out free samples (100,000 a year) in children's hospital wards and women's shelters. And she invites all the people she meets to share with her their problems and their needs. "They feel like they know me, and so they speak on my behalf," Antonetti says.
Another incentive for Antonetti's customers to promote her products is their genuine need. After a year-end sales slump, for example, the Albertson's supermarket chain pulled SoapWorks products, only to be confronted by customers "who went back in droves, saying, 'Where is this product? We really need this product," says SoapWorks broker Tom Oneto, president of Adobe Sales, based in Pleasanton, Calif. The upshot: at press time, Albertson's had begun restocking SoapWorks products.
"Our customers fit into a niche that was not being served by Tide and Cheer and All," says Antonetti. A black binder chock-full of customers' letters and e-mail messages attests to that. A few gripes do jump out from the correspondence: dishwasher powder left undissolved and weak grease-cutting agents. But most of the missives read like this: "After meeting you in Children's Hospital, we began using the products you gave us, and they are wonderful. We no longer need to leave the house after cleaning, and we all breathe much easier." Another writer credits SoapWorks laundry and bar soap with ridding them all of "painful, dry, flaky skin." Then there are those who simply seem smitten with Antonetti: "Thank you for caring about me and my children."
Now that she's gained a foothold in the market, Antonetti is more aggressively taking on the mainstream competition. She has a new label with a much bigger brand name and bold-colored bubbles. She's also formulated a more upscale product line based on cold-processed whole-leaf aloe.
SoapWorks has doubled its revenues each year since its launch, but, as is typical at growing companies, Antonetti and husband Karp, who serves as chief financial officer, are grappling with chronic cash-flow problems. Moreover, with every advance Antonetti makes in the market, she runs into new demands for costly promotions, such as a buy-one-get-one-free campaign she agreed to do as part of SoapWorks' planned entry into 100 Walgreens stores. To step up production -- and thereby increase profit margins without boosting prices -- Antonetti has decided she needs to bring in outside investors. It's just that she hasn't yet found the right ones.
If SoapWorks does get capital, the challenge for Antonetti will be staying true to her vision. "Customers are buying into the concept and the message of the company as much as they are buying the product," observes Debra Lynn Dadd, author of the book Home Safe Home, and a SoapWorks endorser. "Amilya's concept originated from within herself, from her problems with her son. That has resonated with other mothers and other women who have been attracted to joining her cause."
D.M. Osborne is a senior writer at Inc.
For more tips on customer-oriented marketing like Antonetti's, try our guide to customer-driven marketing.
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