Wayland students help developmentally disabled launch soap business

PLAINVIEW—Wayland Baptist University business students are helping Plainview residents with intellectual and developmental disabilities create and sell a line of fragrant soaps.

The Wayland chapter of Enactus, an international student business organization focused on changing lives through entrepreneurial action, developed the project in partnership with Central Plains Center in Plainview. The center’s clients create, package and sell the Diamond Suds product.

Students develop business and marketing plans

Wayland’s Enactus group looks for new projects each year that meet community needs, and students then develop a business plan and marketing and management objectives necessary to meet those needs. The Central Plains Center, an organization that assists intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals, needed a project or program to raise funds and employ clients.

Obet Medina, a sophomore business major from Plainview, displays some of the soaps that are being made at the Central Plains Center in Plainview. Medina and other member of Wayland Baptist University’s Enactus team developed the business model used by the CPC to employ its clientele in a soap-making business.“The project we developed is to make hand-made soap and let the clients at CPC make it and sell it,” said Obet Medina, a Wayland sophomore from Plainview. “The profits made from the soap will benefit the CPC, and the clients also get paid to do this.”

The project means a lot to the clients working in the business, said Brenda Garcia with the Central Plains Center.

“They love it when we make soap,” she said. “They love the new product. It brings worth to them. It’s something they enjoy doing. They get to take home a paycheck, and that means something to them.”

Simple process

Making the soap is fairly simple, said Medina, the Enactus chapter’s social media and marketing officer. After determining the best production method, Wayland students developed a poster that explains the process, then spent each Friday afternoon for about five weeks working with clients to teach them the soap-making technique.

“We taught them how to mix it up and put it in the molds,” Medina said.

The soaps come in a variety of fragrances including lavender, green tea and ginger, lemon, pumpkin and brown sugar, mint chocolate chip, hot cocoa, cinnamon and sugar, and rustic winter and rum. Some of the fragrances are seasonal and were developed for the holiday season.

Wayland students also developed a website, www.diamondsuds.com, where potential customers can view the inventory and order the soap. The cost is $7 per bar on the website, which includes shipping costs, or $4 when purchased at the Central Plains Center. All proceeds benefit the Central Plains Center and its clients.

Students gain educational benefit

Projects like this not only benefit clients, but also provide priceless educational benefit to students, said Barry Evans, dean of the School of Business at Wayland.

“Wayland students get to see and work with a start-up business created from scratch. The students are integrally involved in starting a brand-new business,” Evans said. “They do everything that anybody starting a new business in Plainview will do.”

Students are in charge of everything from determining a need and target market to delivering the product, Evans explained. Students developed a business plan that included securing appropriate facilities, securing raw materials, purchasing production equipment, determining cost and resale, deciding how to market the product, and working through the logistics of shipping the product to meet the needs of those who order it.

Enactus students also gained unique management experience in training individuals with disabilities to produce the soap.

“You could put together seven or eight classes in the School of Business, and the students get real-world experience on how it all works,” Evans said.

The Wayland Enactus team consists of 11 business students. The group will present its project analysis at regional and national competitions next May.