Cyril Salter is about as dense as Forbes, and about half the price.
Myth of the Internet Bargain: Unit Pricing of ~30 'Bargain' Creams (and Soaps)
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The OP's chart, and these comparisons, are worlds away from my thinking as a fan of hard soaps.
The point is not cost per ounce, but cost per shave. Or bang-for-the-buck, as was said earlier. Not to mention long shelf life if I maintain a big soap rotation.
Pre de Provence is a great example. It comes as a 150gm puck of triple-milled soap that I bought for $10.50 including shipping. Usage varies a lot from person to person, but I use about .75gm per shave. Doing the math yields 10.50/200 shaves = 5.25 certs per shave as an average.
I might have to pay shipping for MWF. One 125gm puck from Connaught's with shipping might run $10. Doing the math yields 10.00/167 = 5.98 cents per shave. That is assuming I didn't put anything else in my shopping cart which would reduce the effective shipping cost for that soap.
At this rate, I can shave for a year at a cost of less than $20; maybe more than a year.
The primary ingredient in most creams is water. If you ship a cream somewhere, you are paying a lot of money to ship water. Or, you could add that yourself when you lather up. The end result is similar -- a good shave.
PdP and MWF have great skin conditioning properites. Arko and Derby do not compare in any way to these.
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Neither of those are the sort of shave soaps I tried. I've tried Crabtree and Evelyn's shave soaps (which were made in England), and they were unimpressive. In fact I found Williams shave soap to generally be just as good. All of them, however, produced relatively harsh lathers and aren't even half as good as other shave products that are easier to use and more widely available.
I'm not an automatic hater on shave soaps- I've had decent results with at least one inexpensive glycerin shave soap, and I can use Williams if I had to.
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I don't know if they were ever that good. The stock I bought in 2008 produced a harsh lather with less glide than Van Der Hagen or many shave creams. Proraso was really good in comparison, I remember, as was Tom's of Maine and lots of other creams I could get in stores.
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I'm not hating on creams, either. I like them just fine and have a couple on hand.
The big "names" in English shaving products do a lot better with creams as a general rule. DR Harris soaps are good, but not the best available.
Soaps like Pre de Provence, Haslinger, MWF to name a few, are great products that are economical on a cost/shave basis but also give great results. Not harsh, but fantastic lather. You might revise your opinion if you tried them.
PdP appears to be a reasonable price and a quality, well-manufactured product. But I don't know much about it other than that. It seems to be seldom discussed.
From everything I have read, TOBS, Trumper, and T&H make better creams than soaps and DR Harris makes a better soap than a cream. I have creams from the first three and a soap from the later. However, current versions of these creams and soap are no where near as good as some other products available at similar costs.
I have also heard great things about the Haslinger tallow based soaps, but the current vegan version of Schafmilch that I have is not that great.
I personally prefer harder soaps with mild scents. That is not the mainstream today. People tend to like the softer artisan soaps with really strong scents. These artisan soaps tend to be expensive on cost/shave basis with a few exceptions.
Soaps like Pre de Provence, Provence Sante Green Tea, Osma Traditional don't get the attention they deserve but I don't care too much what is popular at the moment as long as it works well for me.
Try adding more water. Haslinger Schafmilch is fantastic, with tallow or without. My boar brush loads up enough Haslinger in fifteen seconds for an entire three-pass shave.
Steve56
Ask me about shaving naked!
Pre de Provence is a house brand of the European Soap Co of Seattle, Washington. It is made in France by a co-op according to ESCo website. The fragrance is a mild green sage (not the cooking sage) that’s common in France. The shaving soap is 150g and a hard, quad-milled, almost translucent white soap. It’s palm oil based, lathers readily but makes a little thinner lather than others, similar to I Coloniali Mango Oil soap. Like IC Mango, it’s very slick making it an ideal straight razor soap. The PSF is outstanding.
You can find it in a range of prices but $14 is about normal. Grab a puck at 20% off on Black Friday sales, and give me a call at the old folks home when you finish off a puck.When you've burned through a stick of Arko, the writing will still be visible on the PdP puck. It is an excellent value.
You can find it in a range of prices but $14 is about normal. Grab a puck at 20% off on Black Friday sales, and give me a call at the old folks home when you finish off a puck.When you've burned through a stick of Arko, the writing will still be visible on the PdP puck. It is an excellent value.
I can understand wanting mild scents. I tried Sterling Barbershop and the scent was almost overpowering, it was like rubbing one of those scented candles all over your face, even after washing it off. It did not remind me of a barbershop scent, in that manner. Most barbershop products aren't as strong.
That's also a recipe for potentially sensitizing your skin.
Do you use a boar brush with Pre de Provence?
Yes, usually a Semogue 620 or 1250, for lathering directly on the face. A synthetic will work, but PdP is a pretty hard soap, so a brush with some backbone will load faster.
I pick up Kapo and D'Amaris as well as Nivea sensitive when in Romania and Bulgaria. About a buck a tube. That's fills the carry-on.
