His business is based on dollars and scents.

• Position: People

Victor Taylor's earliest memories are of his great-grandmother making soap on the family farm near Candler after the Thanks-giving hog killing. As an adult, nostalgia washed over him. He wanted his son and daughter to experience their family heritage.

Recreating the past meant buying pig fat from a butcher--Taylor thought the kids would get the idea without him having to slaughter a hog--melting the fat over a fire in a cast-iron kettle and mixing it with lye. The family poured the mixture into pans, let it dry, then cracked it with spoons to form bars of soap. That was 10 years ago. Today Taylor's company, Asheville-based Appalachian Natural Soaps Inc., makes 3,700 bars of soap a week in 18 aromas. They are stocked in nearly 400 shops around the country.

Taylor, 42, got an associate's degree in culinary arts from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in 1981 and went to work for the Biltmore Estate as a cook. By 1993, he was Biltmore's director of meeting-and-convention sales. He wasn't looking for a new job when he revived his family's soap-making tradition.

But when he tried the recipe, friends raved about the soaps. On a whim, Taylor and his wife Pam put labels on the 4.5-ounce bars and took some over to T.S. Morrison & Co., Asheville's oldest store, which ordered 30 and sold them within two weeks. That encouraged Taylor to peddle the soaps at craft fairs on weekends. The bars attracted wholesale customers. Taylor snagged retail customers when he started making sales calls at specialty...