Time for a new soap?

I can't see how anybody can not get Arko to provide lather, you can say many things about Arko but it will lather just at the sight of a brush! :)
I certainly didn't get any problems getting it to lather, I tend to use it when I don't want a scented soap to conflict with a delicate AS, it just smells neutral to me. Why pay £10+ for a unscented soap when Akro provides a good performance at £1.30 is the question to myself.
 
Arko is at least worth a try. It's a £1.50 or something on the A'Zon. I don't think it is tops, but it does well and you may love it.

That said, in a similar price range is the Lea stick which I think is THE best performer/value proposition out there, and many love the La Toja stick even though it has no tallow.

Gemstone Trading will do you a LaToya stick, a Lea Stick and an Arko stick for £5 plus postage. Guaranteed at least one of them will appeal to you.

This is at the budget end of the range, so you can work as high as you want in terms of price options. I will always have a Lea stick on my deck, but a quality soap will last you months and months for £10-£15, so it is still value. OSP is on my hit list.
 
I've got two sticks of Arko winging their way to me.....should receive them in the post today. I will open and use one of them and if it doesn't work for me then I will offer the other one as a passaround. (We'll....as a freebie gift....I realise that using it as a passaround would be rather unhygienic, lol)
 
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The passaround/freebie gift is a nice thought. However, given it costs £1.50 including postage to order it from Amazon, you may find that it costs you more to post it directly to someone yourself!
 
The passaround/freebie gift is a nice thought. However, given it costs £1.50 including postage to order it from Amazon, you may find that it costs you more to post it directly to someone yourself!
I don't mind the cost if it allows a fellow (or indeed a lady) member to experience an Arko shaving stick. Of course....if I DO like it then I won't be posting!
 
İ think some of you guys being too harsh on Arko. Yes it may dry ur skin a bit after the shave but who cares when u have all those aftershave products. Arko lathers like hell and provides good cushion for the blade also slickness there too. what else you want from a soap it cost £1.50 including postage.



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İ think some of you guys being too harsh on Arko. Yes it may dry ur skin a bit after the shave but who cares when u have all those aftershave products. Arko lathers like hell and provides good cushion for the blade also slickness there too. what else you want from a soap it cost £1.50 including postage.

You know what else provides me the same performance? Any kind of soap. Not shaving soap. A random bar of hand soap will be slick enough so I can shave with. It might not have enough cushion, but it will be slick enough.
But why would I want to use that, when I have so many other options available? I don't see too many people shaving with hand soap, even if it offers great value. You can probably get one for £0,5.
If it's something that I've learned after trying Williams, is that you can pack any kind of soap as "shaving soap", as long as you sell it cheap, people will eat it up.

Arko is one step up towards shaving soaps when compared with Williams. It does lather better. But that's about all there is to it. Not great performance, not too good of a scent, it's just soap. Pay a bit extra, you can get an excellent soap. We're talking about pennies per shave, not such a big price difference.

As I like to joke about some people obsession with cheap stuff, if I truly feel the need to save £0,1/day with shaving, maybe I should stop shaving, as there might be things that I need more, like food.

With a few exceptions, shaving soap is cheap. No matter if we're talking about Arko or Saponificio Varesino, the price per shave on the long run will be small, almost negligible. A Saponificio Varesino is £15, but you can probably get 6 months of daily shaves from it. We're talking about £0,1/day worth of shaving soap. With Arko, that value might go down a bit, something like £0,08 probably.

I'm usually cost-efficient, but when we're talking pennies, I rarely see the point. £0,02 it's the price of few crumbs of bread. Getting a top performing soap it's not a budget breaker. It might seem a lot when compared with a puck of Arko, but it's advisable to take into consideration price per shave, and not the price of the whole puck. Arko sticks are weighted at 75 grams, and they are more on the soft side. For a triple milled soap, you get more efficiency for the same quantity.

Being this economical might make sense if you are running a business. If you have a barbershop, saving those pennies each shave will translate into higher profit margin. But as a hobby, I don't really see the point.
 
@SmurfK
Ä° think you have got the wrong idea from what i said. I said for a cheap shaving soap it does the job thats all. I didnt mean buy the arko and save lots of money that is not my point.
Myself I have 40+ soap in my den also tried many more. I never think of my budget when it comes to my shaving soaps because i just love the variety. Yes arko isnt great but it can do the job no problem. I understand your point of view because in the forum there is people who hates mwf aswell, they say they cant lather. So i guess it all depends personal expectations.


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Must admit I would never complain about Arko's lathering properties. For me it's a veritable soap bomb with any type of water in any kind of conditions or humidy I've used it in. I just don't like the smell or the severe bleaching it seems to undergo in preparation which dries my skin. As has been said, LEA or La Toja would be what I spent my bawbees on.

JohnnyO. o/
 
arko can make lather, but the horrible painful burning sensation is the reason that a whole industry of skin care products can have 500 billion in pure profit every year.
 
@SmurfK
Yes arko isnt great but it can do the job no problem.

I think that we should raise our expectations. At this point, you can't find a single soap that that will not get the job done. Even those that don't lather well, like Williams, will get the job done, you will be able to shave with them, if your technique is good, the actual shave shouldn't be much more different than if you are using a better soap.
But, we take this as a hobby. We like to enjoy our shaves, we like a good performing soap, and I don't see why wouldn't we like to use top-notch products every single time.

I'm very critical with soaps because I feel that there is a big enough market, that offers so many great products, but people sometimes get stuck by using products that do not perform exceptionally, but just ok.
And this is the worst for beginners. Because they are never recommended the top notch stuff. It's like people want to keep their favorite soap hidden, so no one else will buy it. Beginners will get Williams, Arko, Derby, all these soaps that do not really excel, but they are recommended very often.
 
I think that we should raise our expectations. At this point, you can't find a single soap that that will not get the job done. Even those that don't lather well, like Williams, will get the job done, you will be able to shave with them, if your technique is good, the actual shave shouldn't be much more different than if you are using a better soap.
But, we take this as a hobby. We like to enjoy our shaves, we like a good performing soap, and I don't see why wouldn't we like to use top-notch products every single time.

I'm very critical with soaps because I feel that there is a big enough market, that offers so many great products, but people sometimes get stuck by using products that do not perform exceptionally, but just ok.
And this is the worst for beginners. Because they are never recommended the top notch stuff. It's like people want to keep their favorite soap hidden, so no one else will buy it. Beginners will get Williams, Arko, Derby, all these soaps that do not really excel, but they are recommended very often.

Crabtree and Evelyn hard soap and Armani are pretty useless to be fair even as a hand soap
 
I tend to agree that as we're doing this more out of pleasure than the pure mechanics of shaving and so yes we all want the best we can afford.

Every soap and cream I have works, they do a great job. But for me, personally (and I get this isn't eveyones opinion) I buy a soap for the scent. They all pretty much perform but its the scent that makes soap A more of a favourite than B.

So when I want a soap thats without a scent then I don't see the point spending £10+ for a unscent version on my favourite scented soap. I'll just use Arko.

Before I get a barrage of replies saying "It's not unscented it smells like toilets" then thats the age old battle of my opinion against yours on a subjective point that no one can actually be correct or incorrect.

So lets all sit back and raise a glass to Arko! Salute its brilliance or drink to wish it a good riddance! :D
 
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