Our custom holster soap boxes are basically a printed band that hugs the bar, with the ends (or a window on the front) left open so people can actually see the soap and get a sniff. Kraft or paperboard. We cut them to your bar size, and they use hardly any board.
Your time is very important to us so we have kept it short.
Soap shoppers sniff. They pick up the bar, turn it over, bring it to their nose. A fully closed box blocks all of that, and a naked bar gets dusty and handled. Custom holster soap boxes sit in between. Think of a holster on a belt, except it’s board wrapped round your bar, and either the ends are left open or there’s a hole cut in the front, so the soap stays put but people can still see it and smell it.
Mostly we make these for handmade soap makers and the farmers market crowd, plus a few hotels and gift shops. If your bars have swirls or bits of lavender in them, or a stamped logo on top, it’d be kind of a shame to hide that in a closed box.
A holster is a printed band of board folded around the bar with a locked seam. Some cover three sides and leave both ends open. Some cover all four sides and add a die-cut window on the face. Others have a small tab at one end so the bar can’t slide out. The tightness of the fit does most of the work, so size matters a lot.
Handmade bars vary, which is the tricky part. Cure them and they shrink a little. Cut them by hand and every bar is slightly different. We usually suggest sizing to your biggest typical bar and testing a sample, because a holster that’s too loose drops the soap on the floor, and one that’s too tight tears when you slide the bar in. Our soap box dimensions guide covers common bar sizes.
Kraft is the favorite for natural and handmade soaps. One or two colors on brown board look right on a natural soap, and most kraft can be recycled anyway. Want photos or bright colors? Then SBS paperboard, it just prints cleaner. Both of them use way less board than a full carton (that’s a few cents back on every bar).
Oily bars are the thing to watch. Glycerin soaps and high-oil recipes slowly leave marks on plain paper, so if your soap feels even a little greasy when you pick it up, we’d put matte or gloss lamination on the inside face.
The band is narrow, so plan it. Front: brand and scent name. Back: ingredients and weight. Sides get whatever’s left, maybe a scent note. And go big on the type. Soap shoppers look from a couple of feet away before they ever reach for a bar.
Doing a gift line? A foil logo or an embossed crest is a nice touch there. We’ll draw the dieline and do the artwork layout at no charge, look over your files for anything that won’t print well, and then you see a digital proof before we run anything. For a closed box with a window instead, see our kraft soap boxes, or browse the full soap packaging range.
It shouldn’t, if we’ve got the size right, because friction does the holding. Slippery bars or really uneven ones can get a little tab on one end as backup.
We wouldn’t. A round bar wants its own wrap, so we size each shape on its own.
Often around 50 depending on the style, and the more you order the cheaper each one gets. We need 10 to 12 business days after you approve the proof, then ground shipping anywhere in the USA is free. Get in touch with your bar size for a quote.
Plenty of customers order this alongside custom handmade soap boxes, luxury soap boxes, kraft soap boxes and custom soap boxes. More styles are in custom soap boxes & packaging, and soap box dimensions covers the common sizes.
