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$23 Shaving Factory starter Set

This looks like a great deal for a starter set from Shaving Factory on Amazon. Nothing in there is great quality, but it's just the thing to get a newbie startef for $23 shipped.

10 Derby Extra Double Edge Razor Blades
1 Shaving Factory Double Edge Razor
1 Arko Shaving Soap Stick
1 Jaguar Hand Made Shaving Brush (#236)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0032QZXXS/ref=s9_simh_gw_p121_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0FEX9MT1TGWVTQNVK3SK&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

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If only you could depend on Shaving Factory to actually ship or fulfill the actual order... ever!

I try to buy things on Amazon that are actually shipped from Amazon after dealing with Shaving Factory!

Good luck getting it if you order it!
Joe.
 
Personally I wasn't planning to order that. I'm all set with brush and soap, and recently took care of the razor and blades end of things, but I did think it looked like a very decent deal.

I don't know Shaving Factory's reputation, but if they are known for being slow to ship, that'd be good to know in case I do feel inclined to order from them in the future. What was your experience with them?
 
I bought that exact package 2.5 weeks ago. It arrived in 6 postal working days... a little slow, but honestly not as bad as others are reporting.

The razor is very mild and didn't work for me combined with the Derby blades. It lighter than you might expect, but doesn't feel overly cheap. The mechanism seemed smooth enough It has more play than a vintage Gillette while open, but closes tightly. I replaced it with a Super Adjustable after only a few shaves, but mainly because a B&B member offered me a great deal. With some blade sampling I'm convinced I could find a combo that works.

The brush was small, coarse at first, and had horrible funk. 3 nights of the drying lather break-in method took care of 90% of the funk, and 1.5 weeks of use have pretty much eliminated the rest. It's also starting to soften up is becoming a very serviceable boar brush with a bit more use to split the tips. I was worried at first, but it just needs some break-in It will probably become my travel brush once I get a Badger of some sort on down the road.

Derby blades seem to be love/hate, but definitely YMMV. I thought their rep as smooth and forgiving would be great for me as a newbie, but the combo was way too mild for me. You really do need to sample, even if your technique is still developing and you end up circling back to blades you've dismissed early on.

I can't really comment on the Arko as I made the mistake of trying to melt it to press into a bowl and, in turn, dried out the tallow.

All said, I would pass on this package if I had it to do over again, mainly because I think I could piece together a better starter package by spending more on a $10-$20 vintage Gillette, entry level Merkur, or even a 3-piece Parker and going with the $7 CVS/VDH starter kit (boar brush, bowl, puck of VDH Select), even if the brush is a small step down. The CVS/VDH kit is also locally available for many, which is always nice.

If someone is interested in just the razor, PM me and I'll pass it along for a good price along with a small blade sample pack (4 or 5 types, 2-5 blades each).
 
One quick remark... Shaving Factory was selling an identical kit with the Shaving Factory XS Boar brush. The XS Boar is identical to the Jaguar #236, the only difference being the Shaving Factory logo on the handle instead of the Jaguar logo. I have the Shaving Factory XS version which is currently not listed and, as such, my Amazon review is no longer visible either (I think I gave the whole kit a 4* but commented on the razor and/or blades being too mild for me).
 
This looks like a great deal for a starter set from Shaving Factory on Amazon. Nothing in there is great quality, but it's just the thing to get a newbie startef for $23 shipped.

I would beg to differ on "nothing in there is great quality": Arko Shaving Stick is widely regarded as a top notch tallow based soap.

The Shaving Factory is the official US Derby distributor by the way. I have received a few shipments from them, and they are in general slow to ship, but I have not heard of issues with them actually not shipping product altogether.

The Ming Shi razor is a decent Superspeed clone. It's not great quality, but it will get the job done.

Derby blades seem to get more hate than they deserve.
 

OldSaw

The wife's investment
I bought that exact package 2.5 weeks ago. It arrived in 6 postal working days... a little slow, but honestly not as bad as others are reporting.

The razor is very mild and didn't work for me combined with the Derby blades. It lighter than you might expect, but doesn't feel overly cheap. The mechanism seemed smooth enough It has more play than a vintage Gillette while open, but closes tightly. I replaced it with a Super Adjustable after only a few shaves, but mainly because a B&B member offered me a great deal. With some blade sampling I'm convinced I could find a combo that works.

The brush was small, coarse at first, and had horrible funk. 3 nights of the drying lather break-in method took care of 90% of the funk, and 1.5 weeks of use have pretty much eliminated the rest. It's also starting to soften up is becoming a very serviceable boar brush with a bit more use to split the tips. I was worried at first, but it just needs some break-in It will probably become my travel brush once I get a Badger of some sort on down the road.

Derby blades seem to be love/hate, but definitely YMMV. I thought their rep as smooth and forgiving would be great for me as a newbie, but the combo was way too mild for me. You really do need to sample, even if your technique is still developing and you end up circling back to blades you've dismissed early on.

I can't really comment on the Arko as I made the mistake of trying to melt it to press into a bowl and, in turn, dried out the tallow.

All said, I would pass on this package if I had it to do over again, mainly because I think I could piece together a better starter package by spending more on a $10-$20 vintage Gillette, entry level Merkur, or even a 3-piece Parker and going with the $7 CVS/VDH starter kit (boar brush, bowl, puck of VDH Select), even if the brush is a small step down. The CVS/VDH kit is also locally available for many, which is always nice.

If someone is interested in just the razor, PM me and I'll pass it along for a good price along with a small blade sample pack (4 or 5 types, 2-5 blades each).

For future reference, you only need to warm Arko in your hands, like children's art clay, and then it can be pressed into just about any container.
 
23 dollars invested for A bunch of cheap items might as well save up 35 more and get italianbarbers kit. Now that's a good kit. That will last.
 
Care to link? I have friends starting to get interested... otherwise I'll probably recomend they grab a CVS/VDH kit and try to help them track down a cheap Super Speed.
 
Care to link? I have friends starting to get interested... otherwise I'll probably recomend they grab a CVS/VDH kit and try to help them track down a cheap Super Speed.

Ulitimate Wet Shaving Starter Kit $60.01 w/ free shipping

Note that Joe is in Canada, so shipping can take upwards of two weeks, but he is an excellent vendor to do business with! I think this is by far the absolute best starter kit I have ever seen put together. :drool::drool:

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I would beg to differ on "nothing in there is great quality": Arko Shaving Stick is widely regarded as a top notch tallow based soap.

The Shaving Factory is the official US Derby distributor by the way. I have received a few shipments from them, and they are in general slow to ship, but I have not heard of issues with them actually not shipping product altogether.

The Ming Shi razor is a decent Superspeed clone. It's not great quality, but it will get the job done.

Derby blades seem to get more hate than they deserve.

Derby blades actually get a lot of good reviews. I'm hoping they are good, because I recently ordered a hundred of them, but for the price of a 10 pack from the drug store, if I don't like them I can always pass them on to someone who does.
 
Ulitimate Wet Shaving Starter Kit $60.01 w/ free shipping

Note that Joe is in Canada, so shipping can take upwards of two weeks, but he is an excellent vendor to do business with! I think this is by far the absolute best starter kit I have ever seen put together. :drool::drool:

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Honestly, I think it would be a better Newbie set if they dropped the Razor Rock Creme and Alum Block and sold it for $50... or droped the Proraso Pre/Post as well and sell it for $40. Over $50 and it's a little too much to outlay on trying something completely new and, for most coming from carts, a little scary. Even though looking at that kit now I know it's an awesome combo, $60 would be hard for any of my friends to swallow not know what-is-what and still thinking they may dump it all and go back to goo-carts within a week.

I went with the $23 Shaving Factory kit because I knew if I hated the whole DE concept, I could trash it all and not worry about the loss. Luckily it was good enough to keep me interested, but I've already replaced the razor, I'm sampling other blades, and I'm looking for a Badger brush. The Jaguar brush will become a travel/soap brush, and I'll revisit the Derby blades on down the road as my technique improves, but the razor just didn't work for me. I'm keeping things practical and don't think I'll be a RAD kind of person, but the Ming Shi probably won't be a long term razor for anyone... they'll either replace it with something better within a month or two, or tuck tail and run back to their M3.
 
I found the Jaguar #236 as a very good starter boar...in fact I used it like 2 months daily in row just because it performed so well...it is true that you need 15-20 uses to break in the bristles and get rid of the odor, but that's not a sacrifice when you get a good to very good shave brush for ~$6usd.

Because of that great first impression I quickly bought the XS version with the Shaving Factory logo, but I hadn't used it yet. This version seems more decent, with a more polished handle than the original Jaguar #236.
 
I found the Jaguar #236 as a very good starter boar...in fact I used it like 2 months daily in row just because it performed so well...it is true that you need 15-20 uses to break in the bristles and get rid of the odor, but that's not a sacrifice when you get a good to very good shave brush for ~$6usd.

Because of that great first impression I quickly bought the XS version with the Shaving Factory logo, but I hadn't used it yet. This version seems more decent, with a more polished handle than the original Jaguar #236.

I have no real complaints on the Shaving Factory XS boar, other than it was smaller than I expected from looking at the pictures on Amazon. It did have horrible funk... most people are reporting a single night of dried-lather break in is curing the funk on other brushes, but this one took THREE nights of break in just to get rid of MOST of the funk. :crying:
 
Yup that's the one, now there's a good value. shipping times aren't that bad. now that Xmas is over I would say you should get your stuff in a week.

I LOVE that RazoRock shave cream.

Ulitimate Wet Shaving Starter Kit $60.01 w/ free shipping

Note that Joe is in Canada, so shipping can take upwards of two weeks, but he is an excellent vendor to do business with! I think this is by far the absolute best starter kit I have ever seen put together. :drool::drool:

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I just wish there was some middle-ground between the $23 Shaving Factory kit and the $60 + SH Italian Barber kit... though I think Shaveabuck might be working on something a step up from his current sampler (after I reccomended it in another thread).
 
Yes that would be good, I was also thinking a DE shaver starter kit which includes a few razor choices, along with a blade sampler pack would be good for those of us who are new to DE shaving, but have already been using our preferred brushes, soaps, creams and aftershaves for years or decades.

Of course it is really not that hard to assemble your own sampler pack. I did it backwards from how most people do. I only have 3 different blades so far, but 5 different razors to sample. I assembled all this for around $60: $30 Edwin Jagger DE89l razor with 10 Lord blades off the BST + $7.93 pack of 100 Derby's from Amazon, + $18.50 3 razor lot off ebay (2 different generation SS and a New) coincidentally frnm another B&B member, +very beat, but usable Old type for $7 shipped from a B&B member off the WTB board, + $1.33 pack of Wilkinson Sword Classics from the local drug store = 5 new razors and 3 different blades (115 total) to try for 64.76, and I never coulda done it without B&B

Overkill on the razors? Sure, but as collecting hobbies go it's actually very inexpensive compared to most, and if I subtract the $20+ I didn't just spend when I ran out of cartridge blades, not to mention the $20+ I won't have to spend the next time and the next time, it's even better. I'm also not counting the $15 shipped Lady Gillette that I payed too much for off ebay, as that was a gift for my sweetie, and she's VERY pleased with it, so that expenditure is priceless, and I also stopped her from picking up a pack of Fusion blades at the supermarket on Wednesday. :D
 
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One thing that scares a lot of buyers off is the shear number of options. Even with blade sampler packs, there are usually 5-10 different packages to chose from, and new folks have no idea what to base a choice on. I did a custom sampler from RazorBladesAndMore, but I was going mainly on cost and sticking to blades fairly well regarded here on B&B.

A sampler with choice of a few razors (probably Parkers with updated 2010 head) and a 3-5 blade sampler pack (a few Lords, Astras, Personnas, etc) is probably what you're looking for. Add a stainless bowl, sub-$10 boar, cheap soap (VDH or Arko), cheap creme (Godrej or Arko), and cheap AS/Balm (Bea or similar) and you have a kit that is turn-key with some high-value products along with the ability to do some sampling & experimenting for somewhere around $40.

The Italian Barber kit is nice, but something turn-key in the $40 range would probably be a lot more palatable for folks who are afraid they might be throwing it all away on a lark. To spend anything over $50, for me at least, seems like too much to spend on something as DE probably seems to most newbies. I still had to prepare myself that the $23 I spent on the Shaving Factory kit might be down-the-drain if I cut my face up horribly... it still might be because when my new brush arrives next week I won't have anything from that kit still in rotations, but it showed me that I did want to pursue DE and the rest will probably be PIFed or traded in the not-to-distant future.

Those who find B&B before they buy something like the Shaving Factory kit would likely step up to something like my $40 idea and be much happier and use it much longer term.
 
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The Shaving Factory is the official US Derby distributor by the way. I have received a few shipments from them, and they are in general slow to ship, but I have not heard of issues with them actually not shipping product altogether.

I never received my shipment as discussed in the other thread which seems to be gaining more comments on their tarnishing reputation.

Their communication is just horrible, but at least I finally got my money back, but only after months of trying to get them to respond via Amazon and direct emails and after "suggesting" that I come to their address only about a dozen or so miles away from me in NJ. I also indicated that I was going to discuss my experience on 4 different shave boards.

If you remember, we discussed via PM that I ordered the Orange Derby blades around the same time you did, but I never got mine.

If they work for you and you like them, you're ahead of the game. I can also get Derby blades from Turkey and they seem to arrive faster:tongue_sm

BUYER BEWARE

Joe.
 
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The FS forums here always have great 'starter kits'. Even though the starter kits you can get at retail are good, they are generally low end products that you will want to upgrade in the near future.
 
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