12 year old Rachyl started her own soap making business! She lives on a farm with 6 siblings and tons of animals. Ten years ago she was milking 5 gallons of goat’s milk a day. Her family can’t drink that much milk but she didn’t want it to go to waste. She read that you can make soap with it and taught herself how.
Rachyl says in the very beginning, she went through a lot of trial-and-error trying to find just the right soap recipe on the internet. She tinkered with several of them to come up with her own concoction. Rachyl saw this was a way she could do her part to help on the farm. She has developed 15 different soap scents and has taken ownership of her business from milking the goats to wrapping the soap bars, to selling them at the farmer’s markets and online.
Jodi HenkeI, Living the Country Life
Rachyl is Lillian and Dave Travis’ second youngest child, and the soap experiment started when she wanted to do her part to help out on the farm. With the help of her big sister motivating her to look up the formula for the five ingredient goat milk soap with the help of her big sister. At first she gave it away as gifts, then sold it at farmers’ markets and soon after, she was marketing it on the internet.
Walt Buteau, WPRI
The first year, only one farmers’ market was interested. “The next year we had, what?” Rachyl turns and asks her mother, “Four different farmers’ markets call us and ask us to be in there. It was such a shock to me because the year before we were begging everybody just to let me in.”
Donna McGarry, Providence Journal
At first, with the exception of the local Scituate Farmers Market, no one would sell Rachyl's goat milk soap for her. Merchants looked askance at a little girl selling soap. But she persevered, selling on the Internet and at local fairs and festivals, eventually building up a clientele that convinced places to stock her wares. But today the tables have turned. The skeptics now, Jaklyn says, "ask us to go to (their) events."
Denise Perreault, The Valley Breeze