...is putting out some damn fine product. I ordered the Woody Lavender last Saturday evening and considering I live in New England was not expecting to see anything until at least a week. Monday morning I received an e-mail saying it had shipped and Wednesday afternoon it was on my doorstep, pretty impressive... I was a little leery ordering a vegan soap considering I have had some negative experiences using them in the past. I have around 40 or soaps and 85% of them have tallow added because I feel the cushion is superior to the melt and pour pucks out there. Opening up the tub my initial reaction was "holy cow this smells good" and "how the heck is this vegan"? It looked pretty much identical to some of my superfat soaps ( just like Strop Shoppe Special Edition actually) in terms of consistency, more like a croap, not the hard as a rock pucks I've come to expect from all natural soaps, again very impressed, I was itching to lather it up right then and there. The scent I thought was an interesting mix, woody, herbaceous with a touch of bay running down the spine, something different for sure but very pleasant.
The next day I grabbed my brush and face lathered it up and wow does this stuff generate some serious lather! Since switching to straights I have learned the importance of having good lather that both cushions and glides and this does both in spades. It normally takes me a few days to dial a new soap in but this was perfect right from the start, it has a very wide sweet spot and generates thick yogurty lather that still allows the blade to glide. The scent while lathering was stronger than in the tub and much more sophisticated than I had initially thought. This was a fantastic shave, I could not feel the blade on my face at all and the post shave left my face irritation free and feeling clean not slightly oily like quite a few of my tallow soaps do. I have now been using this for almost a week with a different brush each day and each shave seems better than the last, I am going to have a heck of time getting it out of my rotation. Overall this is fantastic stuff, great scent, awesome lather, excellent customer service. I'm not sure how the owner created a soap that creates such a rich lather with so few ingredients, but I am a believer!
The next day I grabbed my brush and face lathered it up and wow does this stuff generate some serious lather! Since switching to straights I have learned the importance of having good lather that both cushions and glides and this does both in spades. It normally takes me a few days to dial a new soap in but this was perfect right from the start, it has a very wide sweet spot and generates thick yogurty lather that still allows the blade to glide. The scent while lathering was stronger than in the tub and much more sophisticated than I had initially thought. This was a fantastic shave, I could not feel the blade on my face at all and the post shave left my face irritation free and feeling clean not slightly oily like quite a few of my tallow soaps do. I have now been using this for almost a week with a different brush each day and each shave seems better than the last, I am going to have a heck of time getting it out of my rotation. Overall this is fantastic stuff, great scent, awesome lather, excellent customer service. I'm not sure how the owner created a soap that creates such a rich lather with so few ingredients, but I am a believer!
I don't think $17 is expensive at all, it's less than what I have to pay some Norwegian retailers for shipping (admittedly that's with tracking, but since few offer untracked shipping there aren't any options to choose). There aren't a lot of well-performing unscented vegan soaps. While the vegan part isn't what interests me personally, I assume that it will be closer to "scentless" than unscented tallow soaps, since coconut oil has close to no scent in my experience. It doesn't seem like everyone can detect the "tallow scent" in unscented soaps, but I find it quite prominent and unpleasant.
