House of soap opens at Mariana Resort

Mariana Resort & Spa will unveil tonight the latest addition to its growing family—Mariana Ocean.

The Marpi landmark’s general manager, Gloria Cavanagh, said the new retail store will exclusively sell soap, bath salts, body and facial lotions, facial scrubs, lip balms and lip butter, liquid body soap, body creams, and body and hair mist.

However, what sets Mariana Ocean apart from other outlets selling soap and other beauty products on island is that everything they sell at the newly opened store will be made on Saipan.

Cavanagh said the vision for Mariana Ocean came from no less than Mariana Resort’s owner Yushihiro Kitami.

“Our president travels a lot and he gets ideas from different stores he’s been to. He got the idea of a natural soap shop from a store in California. He went to a class in Japan to learn soap making. He actually made some soap also and some of the lip butter. This is the first time we’re actually doing something retail other than Marianas Salt. Our president is the type of person that if he has an idea he wants everyone consumed in it until it’s done.”

Cavanagh said one of the first steps in making Kitami’s dream for Mariana Ocean a reality was sending Mandi Asia Spa manager Miki Sato Ordonez to Japan for training in soap-making.

“We sent her to school to make her learn how to make soap and she found real interest. Miki trained three weeks and we also brought her teacher to Saipan for a week. The past two months Miki and her staff started developing different recipes and gave us samples. She even gave samples to me and I’m allergic to everything but everything was very good. They’ve so far developed 50 different kinds of scents.”

Marianas Ocean’s target market is all women, both local and tourists. All English signs at the two stores—they will also be opening another outlet in Garapan soon—will be in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Russian.

Cavanagh said some of the soap scents that have had great feedback are their ylang-ylang, plumeria, coconut, hibiscus, papaya, and lemon grass concoctions as well as those made from dried herbs and dried flowers imported from off-island.

“They are all handmade and it takes about a month or month and a half to cure the soap. I hope they really like it. I hope it’s something they actually want to share with their families from off-island and buy them as gifts. It’s kind of a novelty item and touristy gift.”

Aside from the $300,000 infusion to the local economy and the possible birth of another signature local item—soap—Mariana House will also be employing up to eight new workers to man its two locations.