Working on her soap recipe for more than 12 months, Vanessa created and refined ingredients until she had the perfect natural product — a soap that smells amazing, is great for the skin and is free of any nasty chemicals and additives.
“It was a lot of trial and error at the start. I would cure soap for four weeks and it would be too bubbly or it would melt in my hands so I would go back to the drawing board.
“I would change some elements and eventually I got to the point where I was making a soap that would work and then I started out selling Pink Posy (soap) and it all went from there really.’’
She said Soap Bar Co had always been about selling an all-natural product and it didn’t take long before demand caused her to outgrow her kitchen workspace and her office. She has now moved into her own dedicated workshop space.
One of the keys to Vanessa’s success has been the establishment of a strong social media presence, particularly on Instagram where she has spent countless hours building her profile and engaging with her audience.
In fact Vanessa’s social media campaign had been so successful in a bit over 12 months she had attracted 25,000 followers on Instagram and business was booming.
She thought she had all the right security protections in place. So when she started to receive some emails from Instagram saying there was a complaint against her account she thought it was just a scam and she continued to ignore them.
“We are told day-in, day-out to be safe online and be aware of scammers and I honestly thought that was what was happening to me,” she said.
Vanessa had looked into verifying her account with a blue tick, but based on her following, the cost was about $400 a month, which was just too expensive for a small family business.
Although she had two-factor authentication in place, she has now since realised she needed to activate the second option on her phone (the one where the password changes every minute and is texted to your phone) which would have provided more security.
Regardless, this wouldn’t have stopped the hacker from placing false copyright reports on her account which resulted in Instagram deactivating her account.
Unbeknownst to Vanessa, her Instagram account had been hacked. The first thing she knew about it was when she woke up a few weeks ago, while she was on holiday and tried to access her account — basically the hacker had bypassed her security settings and taken control of her account.
“I tried to jump on my page and I was told it was no longer accessible and due to copyright had been closed down — to say I was devastated is an understatement,” Vanessa said.
She then heard from the hacker who demanded she pay $300 immediately and he would return the Instagram page — something she did consider.
“In the end there were 1000 reasons why I shouldn’t pay the money and ultimately I would have the worry he would do it again, so I refused and stopped contact with him altogether.”
Vanessa has lodged a complaint with Instagram and as the days pass she has resigned herself to the fact her old account is most likely lost.
But that hasn’t stopped her from moving forward and with a new account Soapbarco_ Vanessa is back on social media.
“I made a reel explaining what had happened to my account and I was blown away by all the support I received.”
“Some days I think about all the time and effort I put into my old account and I get really upset but I have to move forward and try to use this situation to my advantage as best as I can.”
She said people can still order soaps online and that she was moving toward setting up an email database at www.soapbarco.com.au
