OP
- Messages
- 15,913
- Location
- Halifax, Republic of Yorkshire
- Thread Starter
- #81
My head hurts now ...
Deeper dive on Floris as owner of Broad Oak Toiletries and I'm seeing something like five or even six core formulations across a decade, but it boils down to:
Tallowate
Stearate-first
Potassium Palmate ... Stearate
Potassium Palmate ... no Stearate
Sodium Palmate (all Sodium) < the "Dark Age"
Potassium Palmate ... Shea Butter
Getting this nailed down has been the key to understanding TOBS, who were the beneficiary of the Floris/Broad Oak formulation in the mainline products with their Traditional line suffering the Standard Company derailment and subsequent reformulation to something that I just can't pin anywhere else ... hence the constant questions in the posts above.
I still don't know if TOBS suffered a "Dark Age" like Floris, Pen's & C&E or T&H & GFT but they do get bracketed into "the three T's" and so we have to assume they did although I'm not seeing it (yet) on paper or finding direct evidence in period posts. We do know that Pen's and C&E were beneficiaries of the Broad Oak formulation as well, but it appears to be a subtle twist on the Floris formulation.
Once Broad Oak was retired by Floris (subsequently bought by Potter & Moore - stock and equipment with no human resource noted and then dissolved in 2019), Pen's & C&E pretty much chucked in the towel after one or two rounds with the poor performing Soapworks formulation, which appears to be the blight across the certainly two of the three T's being T&H & GFT. Floris themselves came up with a formulation that made for very scant reading and then reformulated in or around 2018 to the delight of customers who know a good shaving soap and that's the shea-enriched formulation selling today.
That shea-enriched formulation appears to be shared by T&H in a second line (Apsley) while their mainstream line moved to a new Sodium Palmate first (but good) formulation that brushes very close to the pre-2011 Standard Company formulation and that was picked up by TOBS in their Traditional line.
I have tried to list out the most important features of the formulations below the main table so that folks hunting this stuff down can get a very clear idea of what they're buying when they find "vintage soap" out there. Notice that I've guided the colouring back to traffic lights, so green is good (dark green somewhat better), amber is kinda still a dunno and red is to be avoided - I've also given the tallowate soaps recognition through changing the text to white.
Finally, I still have a notion that the vintage Boots line is in some way connection to Broad Oak but there does appear to be fork pre-2011 and Boots remain consistent with what we see in more European formulations (Muhle, Edwin Jagger, DVH, etc) than how Floris, Pen's, C&E & TOBS panned out through the 2010s ... and their (Boots, Muhle, etc) formulations ran straight through the Broak Oak closure without issue. Still pondering this one ...
Deeper dive on Floris as owner of Broad Oak Toiletries and I'm seeing something like five or even six core formulations across a decade, but it boils down to:
Tallowate
Stearate-first
Potassium Palmate ... Stearate
Potassium Palmate ... no Stearate
Sodium Palmate (all Sodium) < the "Dark Age"
Potassium Palmate ... Shea Butter
Getting this nailed down has been the key to understanding TOBS, who were the beneficiary of the Floris/Broad Oak formulation in the mainline products with their Traditional line suffering the Standard Company derailment and subsequent reformulation to something that I just can't pin anywhere else ... hence the constant questions in the posts above.
I still don't know if TOBS suffered a "Dark Age" like Floris, Pen's & C&E or T&H & GFT but they do get bracketed into "the three T's" and so we have to assume they did although I'm not seeing it (yet) on paper or finding direct evidence in period posts. We do know that Pen's and C&E were beneficiaries of the Broad Oak formulation as well, but it appears to be a subtle twist on the Floris formulation.
Once Broad Oak was retired by Floris (subsequently bought by Potter & Moore - stock and equipment with no human resource noted and then dissolved in 2019), Pen's & C&E pretty much chucked in the towel after one or two rounds with the poor performing Soapworks formulation, which appears to be the blight across the certainly two of the three T's being T&H & GFT. Floris themselves came up with a formulation that made for very scant reading and then reformulated in or around 2018 to the delight of customers who know a good shaving soap and that's the shea-enriched formulation selling today.
That shea-enriched formulation appears to be shared by T&H in a second line (Apsley) while their mainstream line moved to a new Sodium Palmate first (but good) formulation that brushes very close to the pre-2011 Standard Company formulation and that was picked up by TOBS in their Traditional line.
I have tried to list out the most important features of the formulations below the main table so that folks hunting this stuff down can get a very clear idea of what they're buying when they find "vintage soap" out there. Notice that I've guided the colouring back to traffic lights, so green is good (dark green somewhat better), amber is kinda still a dunno and red is to be avoided - I've also given the tallowate soaps recognition through changing the text to white.
Finally, I still have a notion that the vintage Boots line is in some way connection to Broad Oak but there does appear to be fork pre-2011 and Boots remain consistent with what we see in more European formulations (Muhle, Edwin Jagger, DVH, etc) than how Floris, Pen's, C&E & TOBS panned out through the 2010s ... and their (Boots, Muhle, etc) formulations ran straight through the Broak Oak closure without issue. Still pondering this one ...
