Post #657 Combe Email Confirming Williams Mug Shave Soap Discontinued

[nickm]

Is there a Williams mug soap replacement? The closest I can find is the Stirling Electric Sheep. Dr. Jon's might have a note with lemongrass germanium.

Williams can be moisturizing when used every day. Some days the lather wanted to hide away so I tripled the amount of soap, loaded it into one dish and used a larger 26-28mm knot to get it going again.

 

[Jim99]

I still have 7 pucks sitting under the bathroom sink. I’m not sure when I’ll be using it as I have other soaps in the den yet to use. I found the best way to get a good lather with Williams is to soak it in some warm water for a few minutes and then lather it with a boar brush.

 

[SlimChicken]

I have a puck of Williams I bought for 89 cents then forgot about. It smells like citronella to me…which is not my thing. Not sure I’ll ever use it…

 

[nickm]

Let's just all use the world supply of Williams Mug Soap up so then we have to solve the problem of making more. Anyone interested in starting a petition to Combe? I think we could get 2000 people to sign it.

 

[bright09]

been using Arko for a replacement a vdh as well still no replacement for Williams my 90 year old grandpa only uses this

 

[Lane101]

The best alternatives I've found to Williams that are still on the market include:

• Arko, similar "old school" class of tallow soap at a budget price. Stronger aroma and does load more easily. Great lather
• Razorock What the Puck, Great budget soap $2.50/stick & $2.99 per 100 gram puck when on sale. Price per gram similar to Williams for a more premium shaving experience. While vegan it loads easily to quickly produce great lather with a nice scent.
• Mitchell's Wool Fat, Same top three ingredients. Does load more easily (larger puck surface) to produce great lather with a nice mild scent and better post shave feel. More premium pricing at $12-$15 for a 125 gram puck in the U.S. Can be bought in bulk (for free air shipping) from Connaught Shaving for around $7 per puck in U.S. dollars that translates to around $3 for a Williams puck (50 grams) amount of shaving soap so very reasonably priced. Closest available soap to Williams based on my experience.

 

[Steve56]

Williams soap is gone for good unless someone buys the rights to the name, which would be difficult since it’s still used by overseas manufacturers. 2000 people wouldn’t even get Coombe’s attention.

The first thing is to do in finding a replacement is to figure out what people want, other than just the Williams name on the box, which is all the last version had in common with vintage Williams. It was not the same soap or the same company as vintage Williams, but the box was the same except for maybe barcodes.

As far as I can tell from my limited use of MODERN Williams here are some of the desired traits:

It’s cheap - I’d put the replacement bar at about $12/year except as noted below.
Ease of lathering doesn’t matter
It’s slick
Scent doesn’t matter much
Could get it at the drugstore or supermarket.

Starting from there, here are some alternatives.

Williams shave soap - yes you can still get it. If nothing else will do, pay $20/puck and get on with it. The problem is of course, even the stoutest Williams fans won’t pay very much for it. Which is why that it’s gone.

Van der Hagen - can get it at the supermarket/drugstore. Cheap enough. If your ‘musts’ include cheap and local, this is about it.

Arko - it’s cheap, and has the scent, a bit better scent IMO. Arko lathers more easily than modern Williams. Cheap enough, $1 for 75g in bulk, $2 a stick almost every day. Squash a stick into grandpa’s mug and he won’t notice the difference. You won’t either except that Arko is better.

A brick of Italian croap, about $2 for 50g. Lathers easily, performs well. If you can find a brick of 3P, it will spank most everything regardless of price.

Stirling - Great value, slick, many scents, can get refills and samples. Not a dollar but great value, about $12 for 5oz.

MWF - has lanolin so post shave doesn’t feel like modern Williams. Not a dollar but good soap if you like lanolin.

3T hard soaps except for T&H Apsley, which is a different base. Slick, difficult to lather, smells great, but definitely not cheap. But they perform like modern Williams.

La Toja stick - slick, easy to lather, clean laundry scent, not a dollar but not bad either, especially of you order a dozen from an EU vendor.

Pre de Provence - slick, quad-milled soap, and you can get it for about $12/150g, or $4 for a William’s sized amount, if you keep your eyes peeled and shop the sales. Easy to lather, but the scents are simple. You’ll burn through a puck of Williams or 3 sticks of Arko before you wear the writing off a PdP puck, which will last about a year.

Edit: @Lane101 - I haven’t tried those Razorock soaps yet, I’ve been meaning to. Joe does an excellent job with value soaps.

 

[Lane101]

Williams soap is gone for good unless someone buys the rights to the name, which would be difficult since it’s still used by overseas manufacturers. 2000 people wouldn’t even get Coombe’s attention.

The first thing is to do in finding a replacement is to figure out what people want, other than just the Williams name on the box, which is all the last version had in common with vintage Williams. It was not the same soap or the same company as vintage Williams, but the box was the same except for maybe barcodes.

As far as I can tell from my limited use of MODERN Williams here are some of the desired traits:

It’s cheap - I’d put the replacement bar at about $12/year except as noted below.
Ease of lathering doesn’t matter
It’s slick
Scent doesn’t matter much
Could get it at the drugstore or supermarket.

Starting from there, here are some alternatives.

Williams shave soap - yes you can still get it. If nothing else will do, pay $20/puck and get on with it. The problem is of course, even the stoutest Williams fans won’t pay very much for it. Which is why that it’s gone.

Van der Hagen - can get it at the supermarket/drugstore. Cheap enough. If your ‘musts’ include cheap and local, this is about it.

Arko - it’s cheap, and has the scent, a bit better scent IMO. Arko lathers more easily than modern Williams. Cheap enough, $1 for 75g in bulk, $2 a stick almost every day. Squash a stick into grandpa’s mug and he won’t notice the difference. You won’t either except that Arko is better.

A brick of Italian croap, about $2 for 50g. Lathers easily, performs well. If you can find a brick of 3P, it will spank most everything regardless of price.

Stirling - Great value, slick, many scents, can get refills and samples. Not a dollar but great value, about $12 for 5oz.

MWF - has lanolin so post shave doesn’t feel like modern Williams. Not a dollar but good soap if you like lanolin.

3T hard soaps except for T&H Apsley, which is a different base. Slick, difficult to lather, smells great, but definitely not cheap. But they perform like modern Williams.

La Toja stick - slick, easy to lather, clean laundry scent, not a dollar but not bad either, especially of you order a dozen from an EU vendor.

Pre de Provence - slick, quad-milled soap, and you can get it for about $12/150g, or $4 for a William’s sized amount, if you keep your eyes peeled and shop the sales. Easy to lather, but the scents are simple. You’ll burn through a puck of Williams or 3 sticks of Arko before you wear the writing off a PdP puck, which will last about a year.

Edit: @Lane101 - I haven’t tried those Razorock soaps yet, I’ve been meaning to. Joe does an excellent job with value soaps.

Nice overview.

Hopefully Italian Barber gets back in stock for those who want to try What the Puck. All the pucks are sold out - just WTP shaving sticks for now though currently on sale with a pack of four for $9.99 through tomorrow morning.

 

[GaryTha]

I still have 27 pucks of Williams and 24 sticks of ARKO.

 

[Rosseforp]

I still have 27 pucks of Williams and 24 sticks of ARKO.

Do you keep them in a safe? Hermetically sealed I presume.

~doug~

 

[Chandu]

I think a Williams replacement should be made in USA, at a commercial level by that I mean more than a few hundred or thousand units per year. So in my mind, only VdH and Clubman would be replacements. There is a thread on here somewhere about the Clubman being and excellent soap.

 

[VerbaVolant]

Petition, you say?
There are 891, wait... 892 posts in this thread, and over 136,000 views. Best petition is right here.

 

[Steve56]

Petition, you say?
There are 891, wait... 892 posts in this thread, and over 136,000 views. Best petition is right here.

We tend to think that’s a large number because we are a small brotherhood, but to a company like Coombe, 136,000 is tiny. Start thinking millions.

 

[Owen Bawn]

136,000 guys who would buy a 99 cent soap once every 17 years because they have a rotation of 47 other soaps so each soap gets used 3 or 4 times a year..

 

[Steve56]

136,000 guys who would buy a 99 cent soap once every 17 years because they have a rotation of 47 other soaps so each soap gets used 3 or 4 times a year..

Yeah, the perspective is not apparent to the faithful.

A quick googling says that there are about 25k drugstores and 40k supermarkets in the US (65k stores total). If each of them sold 10 50g pucks a year, that means manufacturing over 15 MILLION pounds of soap every year, 15,138,330. So every one of our 136,000 viewers would have to buy 111 pounds of Williams every year to support that. And that’s only 10 pucks a year per store.

Not going to happen.

My guess is that Coombe can no longer make it for $1 a puck, much less sell it for that. Given the current economic times, I’d guess that Williams, if they made another batch, would be priced on the shelf like VdH at about $4-5 per 50g puck. I don’t think people would pay that for it. Companies like Coombe aren’t clueless, they know what the demand is and what people will pay for their products.

 

[Rosseforp]

Yeah, the perspective is not apparent to the faithful.

A quick googling says that there are about 25k drugstores and 40k supermarkets in the US (65k stores total). If each of them sold 10 50g pucks a year, that means manufacturing over 15 MILLION pounds of soap every year, 15,138,330. So every one of our 136,000 viewers would have to buy 111 pounds of Williams every year to support that. And that’s only 10 pucks a year per store.

Not going to happen.

My guess is that Coombe can no longer make it for $1 a puck, much less sell it for that. Given the current economic times, I’d guess that Williams, if they made another batch, would be priced on the shelf like VdH at about $4-5 per 50g puck. I don’t think people would pay that for it. Companies like Coombe aren’t clueless, they know what the demand is and what people will pay for their products.

People will pay more than 99 cents for a bottle of water.

 

[VerbaVolant]

Yeah, the perspective is not apparent to the faithful.

A quick googling says that there are about 25k drugstores and 40k supermarkets in the US (65k stores total). If each of them sold 10 50g pucks a year, that means manufacturing over 15 MILLION pounds of soap every year, 15,138,330. So every one of our 136,000 viewers would have to buy 111 pounds of Williams every year to support that. And that’s only 10 pucks a year per store...

My brain is hurting already. I will let Combe Inc brilliant minds do the math.

 

[StewB]

I know it has many fans, but it is very difficult for me to lather Williams in it's most recent formulation. Even if it sells for as low as $1 to $2/puck there are other soaps that are easier for me to use. (I only bought some because it's been discontinued.)

 

[Steve56]

My brain is hurting already. I will let Combe Inc brilliant minds do the math.

I understand, lol. The intent of my post was to show that keeping Williams shave soap, or any individual cosmetic product for that matter, in production at scale is not a small or inexpensive undertaking. There has to be a large market.

 

[Lane101]

Out of curiosity I took a look at Williams on Amazon and Ebay. Far fewer listing than the middle of last year when I last looked and a lot of the listings are now in the $25 to as much as $40 per puck range - similar pricing the some vintage pucks listed for sale. Based on another discontinued product I've followed there are likely a few people buying at these price points though, as @Steve56 stated above, the soap isn't worth it given all the other options.

As noted on an old post of mine, I've seen this scarcity effect on Amazon before on discontinued products. Sony had a now discontinued ICF-S10MK2 pocket radio that, prior to the shift to digital signal processing (DSP), was considered one of the best radios of this type out there with a bit of a cult following. We have one in our camping kit that cost us $10 in a Walgreens over a dozen years ago. Once it was discontinued the price jumped up to around $200 on Amazon where it's stayed over the years for new in-box units. Even used ones are listed for $49. Looking at the comments most of the recent ones are from folks who purchased prior to discontinuation for $10-$20 noting that they like the radio but that it's not worth the current price points.

There are a few who appear to have purchased this radio recently at the heavily marked up prices. A typical purchaser profile is someone acquiring the now expensive radio for an elderly parent who likely is most comfortable with this type of basic radio. Recall a Williams comment from a while ago where the purchaser was buying the soap for his 90+ year old Dad who had always used Williams his whole life for shaving. Interesting how a global on-line market works for discontinued products versus how it usually helps the DE shaving community by providing easier and often more economical access to products, such as DE blades, that are not available in stores.

P.S. Totally off-topic outside the Barbershop forum but with DSP a pocket radio, like the Sangean SR-35, can have better reception than some of the older fully analogue component system receivers out there.