Former poker player builds million-bar soap business
While poker enthusiasts often risk everything on a strong hand, John Larkin’s most daring wager turned out to be a simple bar of soap.
The newest installment of Business Plus Talks, partnered with Nostra, recounts how a former poker player converted a pandemic pastime into a global enterprise that now manufactures one million soap bars annually.
From the Felt to the Kitchen
Larkin explains that he rejected his initial employment offer so he could rise at 4 a.m. and collect stakes from unwary American players engaged in online poker after a marathon session. For him, the draw lay more in outthinking rivals than in profit. He sometimes remained at the table for up to 40 hours, unwilling to depart until he had bested the game’s primary competitor.
When the poker environment shifted, Larkin redirected his focus toward e-commerce, eventually launching and later divesting a venture of his own. By the onset of Covid-19, he had already left that company and found himself restricted to his residence, allowed only a single outing each day inside a five-kilometre circle.
During that confinement he revisited a catalog of concepts he had drafted years earlier while residing in China. One entry, hand-crafted soap, appealed to him as a repeat-buy item that could also serve as a gateway to related merchandise.
Read Also: Union opposes AI in public sector jobs
Testing various formulas, he travelled to Sandymount Strand, gathering Irish seawater along with sand for his concoctions. His quest for a signature element eventually introduced Guinness, which became a cornerstone of the soap.
Within a few months, he introduced the brand called The Black Stuff. Though neighbours chuckled and stared as he exchanged socially-distanced drinks beside a street lamppost, the soap soon caught the eye of the worldwide handmade-soap scene, aided by a soap aficionado who happened to be touring Dublin.
Larkin outlines the swift growth, moving production from his home kitchen to a dedicated facility and hiring the first team members. The transition from high-stakes poker tables to a manufacturing line shows a broader truth in contemporary entrepreneurship: recognizing a chance in unforeseen settings can outweigh the relevance of the sector itself.
Business Plus Talks, in partnership with Nostra, releases new episodes each Wednesday, with every installment from Series 1 and 2 accessible via the major podcast services.
