Is there a correlation between the cost of H/W & S/W and the quality of the shave?

[Boar Fighter]

True enough, but it wasn't really the end. The Romans were never able to subdue the bearded Germans (or Celts, or Parthians). In fact, the Pax Romana had barely begun under Augustus when three Roman legions were annihilated by Arminius' German warriors at Teutoburg Forest, and the German border of the empire was pretty well established. And when Rome finally fell centuries later, who triumphed? A bunch of guys with beards! And who preserved classical culture for Western Europeans to rediscover centuries later? Other guys with beards!

But that wasn't the end either. The Teutoburg Forest was an ambush, in an unknown terrain to the Romans, while the germanic tribes were commanded by an ex roman army officer, who know the roman tactics and most important, the forest didn't allow for proper battle formations for a regular army, but favoured irregulars. Rome, after a few years, realized, like all intelligent people should do, that what was to be gained by taking a land with poor resources, was not worth the effort. And at the end, the clean shaved Romans, spread their civilization without further combat, by neighbouring relations.

You are mistaken. The clean shaved Italians, repeated the feat for the second time. Rennaissance was based upon humanism, founded by clean shaved Italians. The main push for Rennaissance, was made again by clean shaved Italians, in Florence.

Renaissance | Definition, Meaning, & Facts

This man, along with other Byzantines (bearded because of greek origin), passed the torch to the Florentine Italians (clean shaved) after the fall of Constantinople, like this clean shaved gentleman, who made the first public library in western Europe and he is responsible for spreading again neo-platonism in the catholic world. This, because, the Roman empire, after its division into the empire of the west and of the east, later was divided further because of the Schism of
the Church. And in the eastern roman empire, the orthodox church was more tolerant and nobles kept having access to ancient texts, while in the catholic world, the access was limited within the power of the church. With the fall of Constantinople, precious manuscripts were ported to Italy from Constantinople, which was also the source for manuscripts for the muslims, when often such manuscripts were given as gifts of courtesy or allowed to be copied in the library of Constantinople, but they weren't really employed to make a muslim Enlightenment. And this is why the Rennaissance's heart is Florence, Italy, after the fall of Constantinople and based on the humanism, developed by clean shaved Italians earlier.

And what happened at the end to the bearded germanic tribes? They shaved their beards and adopted many latin origin words too and were educated by the new wave of clean shaved italian Rennaissance pioneers. So we win again!

 

[Boar Fighter]

Addendum: If only the Celts and the Germanic tribes, weren't so stubborn refusing to shave their beards, put down their helmets with horns and wear a stylish roman helmet, red tunic and take the great roman citizenship, we would all have been one happy, united roman family with a single language and would have avoided 2 world wars. Poor Romans, how much could one empire do singlehanded, surrounded by ungrateful tribesmen who wouldn't listen to reason and civilization...

 

[Junker Jörg]

...Byzantines (bearded because of greek origin), passed the torch...

Yes, and regardless of origen, the point is that the learned Byzantines and Saracens (and most of the Roman emperors after the First Century, and many great Renaissance figures for that matter) were bearded, no? This is all good fun, but considerably off-topic. It would probably be good to start a new thread or continue by private message.

 

[Vespasian]

Back to the question. My shaves cost a few pennies each, once I have amortized the initial costs of razor, blades, and soaps over the years. (I've had the same brush 47 years, so it's pretty much paid for itself.) I'm entering my second sabbatical year Jan. 1; free shaves!

 

[Boar Fighter]

Yes, and regardless of origen, the point is that the learned Byzantines and Saracens (and most of the Roman emperors after the First Century, and many great Renaissance figures for that matter) were bearded, no? This is all good fun, but considerably off-topic. It would probably be good to start a new thread or continue by private message.

I think i covered everything. Bearded men still exist as there are always people who want to look different than most or are plain lazy to shave, but a look at the street or a comparison of the supermarket lanes for shaving vs beard grooming is telling.

 

[Clay S]

I am working hard at becoming strategos.

But you implied the solution in post #26 ...


AA

A board game? Must be bored

op: Better shave soaps do seem to cost more. Bad, hyped shave soaps do tend to cost more as well

 

[ShavingPanda]

Motivated by @ThatDaveCh's spreadsheet I added the daily cost of hardware (brush, razor, blade) & software (pre-shave, soap/cream) used in my shaves to the spreadsheet I use to track everything and thought it would be interesting to see if there's a relationship of those costs to how I scored each shave.

Some background on the methodology.

• Dataset is from the start of February to the end of November so should be statistically valid with 201 entries.
• The calculation of software and blade costs is straight forward being:

Unit Price = Purchase Price ÷ Total Number of Uses From New​

• For brushes and razors it's similar but with an arbitrary value of 500 used for Total Number of Uses. This could be any value if it’s consistent for each item and the Unit Price for the hardware is comparable to that of software; a large delta between the two would artificially skew the results for one category or another.
• The score is a subjective value based on my thoughts how each component (pre-shave, soap/cream, brush, razor & blade) performed for each shave plus an overall value that I would describe as my experiential rating of each shave. While I normally weight each of these based on my perceived importance of one category vs. another (i.e. in my opinion how a pre-shave performs is less important to how a blade performs so I weight the pre-shave by 0.5x and the blade by 1.25x) for the sake of this exercise everything has been weighted at 1.0x.

So, does a premium product provide a better shave….or specifically, do I get a better shave (as the saying goes YMMV)? Here’s the results:
View attachment 933992
View attachment 933993
View attachment 933994

If you're looking for a definitive display of increased cost = increased quality the trendline should move markedly higher from left to right (i.e. positive).

Based on the total cost/shave there's a slight positive trendline but when looking at the respective hardware and software plots its clear that its the software that's providing that positive movement and the hardware is actually bringing it down slightly. Given the reasonably tight clustering and only a moderate number of outliers I'd consider the data to be credible.

This does support my anecdotal experience of the day to day shaves and how I notice a more significant difference with a more expensive soap/cream and a value brand vs. the difference between an inexpensive razor and a more expensive one.

Take it for what you will

I love data and graphs. Interesting there is actually a negative correlation for hardware cost per shave (albeit that correlation is essentially straight and the dataset is a shotgun blast).

I have to ask though, what software setup cost nearly $1.25 per shave? Assuming you're using 2 grams of software per shave, that's similar to the cost of silver per gram!

 

[Canadian Mountain Man]

I have to ask though, what software setup cost nearly $1.25 per shave? Assuming you're using 2 grams of software per shave, that's similar to the cost of silver per gram!

Here's how I've decided to calculate cost based on product family.

As an example here's the pre-shave section from the Inventory worksheet (anything with a blue background is automatically calculated):
Item - Name of the item.
Replace When Empty? - Nothing to do with tracking costs, however if the box is checked the Item will highlight in red when close to being exhausted serving as a visual indication to repurchase; or if not checked fade & strike through the text indicating no need to repurchase.
Qty Purchased - Also nothing to do with tracking individual cost/shave but I want to capture what I'm spending.
Date To Start Using New - Most items are set to Jan 1/18 since this is roughly when I started tracking daily shaves. As years pass this will dial in the accuracy of the number of uses for each unique product.
Number of Uses Since Purchased - Automatically updates based on what I enter in the Log worksheet for each day's shave.
Qty On Hand - Also automatically updates based on Qty Purchased less Number of Uses & Uses Per Unit.
Unit Cost & Extended Cost - Self-explanatory
Uses Per Unit - Currently a manually selected value based on an estimate of how many uses I'll get per item purchased. Once an item is exhausted I'll update this value with the actual number for a more accurate calculation going forward.
Cost Per Use - Unit Cost/Uses Per Unit
Qty Fully Consumed - Currently manually tracked, as with Uses Per Unit this will become an automatically updated item as time passes.
Consumed Cost - Cost of items fully exhausted.
Current Inventory Value - Cost of items still in inventory.

Soap/cream costs are calculated in the same manner.


Per shave costs for Brushes and Razors are calculated differently. Presently using a 1:500 factor to derive the cost per use which on consideration is likely too low.

However, even if I adjust it to a 1:1000 factor it doesn't have a material difference in the annual costs since in relative terms the Brushes & Razors have less of an impact than do consumables like soft goods and blades

Here's a monthly and annual summary using a 1:500 factor (daily average for 2018 is $0.75).

And here it is with a 1:1000 factor (daily average for 2018 is $0.69).

The unit costing for blades shows a fair bit of variability and thats largely do to my behavior vs. the cost of the blades and the number of uses that could/should be able to be obtained from each blade (again, anything with a blue background is automatically calculated). I'll toss a blade if I've been travelling and have only used it once or twice since I don't like reusing one if its been left in the razor and put back in the the dopp kit where it can be damaged. Also tossed open blades en masse when I went through my shelf experimenting earlier in the year as it wasn't convenient to have a collection of loose blades around. The per unit cost should drop as now that I'm happy with the shelves and how I'm storing my active blades.

So, with all that here are some examples of how the least and most expensive shaves are calculated (both are using the 1:500 factor).

Hope that makes sense

 

[ShavingPanda]

Here's how I've decided to calculate cost based on product family.

As an example here's the pre-shave section from the Inventory worksheet (anything with a blue background is automatically calculated):
Item - Name of the item.
Replace When Empty? - Nothing to do with tracking costs, however if the box is checked the Item will highlight in red when close to being exhausted serving as a visual indication to repurchase; or if not checked fade & strike through the text indicating no need to repurchase.
Qty Purchased - Also nothing to do with tracking individual cost/shave but I want to capture what I'm spending.
Date To Start Using New - Most items are set to Jan 1/18 since this is roughly when I started tracking daily shaves. As years pass this will dial in the accuracy of the number of uses for each unique product.
Number of Uses Since Purchased - Automatically updates based on what I enter in the Log worksheet for each day's shave.
Qty On Hand - Also automatically updates based on Qty Purchased less Number of Uses & Uses Per Unit.
Unit Cost & Extended Cost - Self-explanatory
Uses Per Unit - Currently a manually selected value based on an estimate of how many uses I'll get per item purchased. Once an item is exhausted I'll update this value with the actual number for a more accurate calculation going forward.
Cost Per Use - Unit Cost/Uses Per Unit
Qty Fully Consumed - Currently manually tracked, as with Uses Per Unit this will become an automatically updated item as time passes.
Consumed Cost - Cost of items fully exhausted.
Current Inventory Value - Cost of items still in inventory.
View attachment 935811
Soap/cream costs are calculated in the same manner.


Per shave costs for Brushes and Razors are calculated differently. Presently using a 1:500 factor to derive the cost per use which on consideration is likely too low.
View attachment 935812

However, even if I adjust it to a 1:1000 factor it doesn't have a material difference in the annual costs since in relative terms the Brushes & Razors have less of an impact than do consumables like soft goods and blades

Here's a monthly and annual summary using a 1:500 factor (daily average for 2018 is $0.75).
View attachment 935813

And here it is with a 1:1000 factor (daily average for 2018 is $0.69).
View attachment 935815

The unit costing for blades shows a fair bit of variability and thats largely do to my behavior vs. the cost of the blades and the number of uses that could/should be able to be obtained from each blade (again, anything with a blue background is automatically calculated). I'll toss a blade if I've been travelling and have only used it once or twice since I don't like reusing one if its been left in the razor and put back in the the dopp kit where it can be damaged. Also tossed open blades en masse when I went through my shelf experimenting earlier in the year as it wasn't convenient to have a collection of loose blades around. The per unit cost should drop as now that I'm happy with the shelves and how I'm storing my active blades.
View attachment 935816

So, with all that here are some examples of how the least and most expensive shaves are calculated (both are using the 1:500 factor).
View attachment 935817

View attachment 935818



Hope that makes sense

Wowzas! That all makes sense and like the data.

I realized everytime I don’t shave I save money now. So maybe I should buy some expensive gear and get the cost per shave up to $2 then make $2 per day I don’t shave. Don’t bother fact checking the efficacy of this idea.

 

[Macfrommichigan]

I got lost somewhere between Greece, beards, and Rome. But in the end the Italian Fatip and Schone razors conquered the world, yes?

 

[Razorcan]

The (always bearded) ancient Greeks were awesome, and knew so much ... But didn't (clean-shaven) Alexander the Great kinda run them over?

Wonder if there are any Macedonian shave soaps?

AA

Alexander the Great WAS Greek.
So a clean shaven Greek ruled over the REST of the Greeks,just like the bearded Spartans and Athenians did before him.

The main difference is that he also run over half of Asia and Northern Africa too.

No in the Greek part of today's "Macedonia" (no country with that name actually exists since the name of the southern Greek part is simply Greece and the name of the Northern part is FYROM ) there are no shaving soaps made.

 

[FarmerTan]

I got lost somewhere between Greece, beards, and Rome. But in the end the Italian Fatip and Schone razors conquered the world, yes?

I've got a headache. I think I'll save some money and grow a beard.

 

[Ad Astra]

I've got a headache. I think I'll save some money and grow a beard.

@Razorcan

Grow a beard, and know everything.

Shave, and conquer the world.

Either way you win!

AA