Barrister & Mann AMA, July 17th, 2016

the new Latha packaging (which I have yet to unveil)

could Latha "Soapy" be the first to sport the new packaging?

Will, your last post on perfume scents here prompts me to ask, do you think that many, if not most, of todays fragrances can be successfully worn by both sexes? Two of my favorites, Hermès Concentré d'Orange Verte and Annick Goutal Eau du Sud are openly marketed as unisex but so many others seem to be marketed to one or the other sex. I wear one or two that are marketed to women but I like them. I have introduced one or two scents for men to a female friend and she liked them and now wears them. Why don't fragrance houses open more of their scents to both genders? I should think this would push their bottom lines up. I realize that some scents seem to be more exclusively addressed to one sex rather than another. For example, another favorite of mine, Hermès Terre d'Hermès is one I would think of as distinctly masculine.

Hi, I have had a few of you products which I have thoroughly enjoyed but is not able to enjoy your aftershaves due to the alcohol in them. Is there plans to find a distributor in the UK.

Will,
I have publicly and privately trolled you over the yrs, and I appreciate you playing along with my games. As said previously, you take it all in stride and keep innovating in ways that keep you in the top echelon of soapers.

So I have some suggestions, or things to ponder and comment on.

1. If containers are a distinct portion of the overall price of a soap, what would be the limitations and setbacks to have us, the consumers of your products, refill soap tubs/containers originally purchased from you? This would also consider the considerable lag time for you to mfr, fill, cure, and reship the soap.

2. We are well aware of LE soaps that some soapers make for a site. (ie the DFS soap you made for us here) I have personally lobbied you for a re-issue of the Vanille soap that I have never been able to get my hands on. Then, I find that B&M did an LE Vanille for the reddit site, or another venue of which I was not a member, and therefore lost out on. I keep an eye on your site with regular checks for things like this. Some of your LE issues never showed up there, and that makes me grumpy. Suggestion 1a., using the preorder methodology you used successfully, create a tab on your site where consumers, using their login, can vote or request a specific soap (1 time per specific login) for discontinued or LE soaps. This would allow you as the mfr to gauge interest with people actually pledging their wallet for a specific soap. This would prevent you from losing money as you have a ready made list of pledged buyers. 2a. Make the specific soap request list results blind to us consumers. This would prevent robo voting, and mob rules that members dogpile on, hopefully giving you a valid survey of actual request/interest into a soap.

3. I have been on a fruit kick for a while now. I have your Tangerine/ylang ylang, Nocturne, and Limon. I want more fruit for scurvy prevention. Either combos of fruits, or singular fruits with loud pronounced scents.

4. I know you have seasonal sales, and some closeout sale. I suggest a specific area or tab for all sales and closeouts. Rather than looking through the entire site for closeouts, damaged items, or final seasonal sales, at least they would all be collected on one page and not scattered throughout the site.

In closing, I appreciate your hard work and trial and error process you endure to give us a good product. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

...the new Latha packaging (which I have yet to unveil)...

Care to unveil it? :-P

Not yet. Sorry.

Thanks fr your time spent in this AMA and for making soaps that change the industry.  Your products are so good I have no questions about them but My questions refer more to the business side of things and how do we as a community avoid losing quality mfgs like B&M like we have several other quality soap mfgs.

Making and developing quality products takes time and money.  What margins do you need and how do you go about pricing a new product.  

And how do you feel about us shavers selling used products back and forth between each other? (In a perfect world, what would you want your customers to know about keeping enough cash in your coffers to keep mfgs your awesome products?)

The general margin for a manufactured product (at least, in order for it to be viable as a retail product from outlets OTHER than that manufacturer) is at least 5-6 times its cost to produce, or Cost of Goods Sold (COGS). When you work on your own time, it can be a bit difficult to calculate, but it's otherwise a fairly simple concept. There's also the question of what the market will bear and what people are willing to pay vs. the benefit and efficacy of the product, which is unique from item to item. I can tell you that many manufacturers have much higher profit margins than that, and some have lower ones as well. It becomes extremely difficult when there's no economy of scale, as with artisan soap manufacture. We don't have the equipment that big soaphouses use (which costs hundreds of thousands if not millions), or even what Martin de Candre uses (I would almost guarantee you that MdC had considerably more startup capital than I did). Shaving soap is a hard thing to come by in the industrial world at any reasonable minimum; the lowest I've found is from Valobra, whose minimum manufacturing quantity is 1,000 units. However, the fragrances must be full IFRA-compliant and EU certified, which can be expensive and very time consuming to do. On the other end of the spectrum, when I approached several American manufacturers about the idea, the minimums ranged from 25,000 to 100,000, depending on the company. That's in no way feasible for a micro-startup in a niche market.

The problem is that we get caught in the space between small-company-that-can't-keep-up-but-gets-a-pass and medium-company-that-gets-no-pass-because-they've-been-doing-it-long-enough-that-they-ought-to-have-gotten-better-at-it-by-now. There are lots of good reasons to go out and try to raise venture capital, but this kind of business is not really something venture capitalists want to see. So we had to figure out a way around the problem, which will become more and more apparent as B&M grows larger.

I don't have any issue with people selling products back and forth so long as they don't try to scalp on limited edition stuff, which I find rather crass. It's in the nature of what we do that people will trade/sell our products amongst themselves.

the new Latha packaging (which I have yet to unveil)

could Latha "Soapy" be the first to sport the new packaging?

No, it will be much later than that, likely the first half of next year at the earliest. New packaging requires LOTS of money and it's very difficult to do one-at-a-time, especially because we often take a hit from people who can't understand why we didn't just overhaul the entire line all at once (because they simply don't understand how much time and capital investment are required). And, as I've mentioned, we have quite a few other projects to complete first. Because the market is so crowded and the audience so small, wet shavers as a community do not generate enough revenue to allow us to expand or upgrade that rapidly. And, because of the weirdly volatile nature of the business model, most banks and loan agencies have refused to give us any money to make the whole thing go faster.

Will, your last post on perfume scents here prompts me to ask, do you think that many, if not most, of todays fragrances can be successfully worn by both sexes?  Two of my favorites, Hermès Concentré d'Orange Verte and Annick Goutal Eau du Sud are openly marketed as unisex but so many others seem to be marketed to one or the other sex.  I wear one or two that are marketed to women but I like them.  I have introduced one or two scents for men to a female friend and she liked them and now wears them.  Why don't fragrance houses open more of their scents to both genders?  I should think this would push their bottom lines up.  I realize that some scents seem to be more exclusively addressed to one sex rather than another.  For example, another favorite of mine, Hermès Terre d'Hermès is one I would think of as distinctly masculine.

That's mostly marketing nonsense and a play on the gender binary. Straight men, who constitute the majority of the masculine purchasing public, are often not comfortable with the idea of wearing a fragrance that they think was intended for women. But, on the flip side of that coin, I find that many women are rather more willing to wear "men's" fragrances (just as they are willing to wear clothing traditionally marketed to men, like football jerseys), but the binary is so hard-wired into our society that it has proven to be far more productive for the fragrance houses to simply play on the idea rather than fight the convention.

But, to answer your question more succinctly, Freddy, yes, I do think that most fragrances can be worn quite easily by anyone. I knew a guy in law school who wore Chanel No.5 every day. He smelled absolutely amazing.

Hi, I have had a few of you products which I have thoroughly enjoyed but is not able to enjoy your aftershaves due to the alcohol in them. Is there plans to find a distributor in the UK.

For Barrister's Reserve, yes (though it will take awhile for them to be certified). The rest of my work is not IFRA-compliant (which is required to wholesale to UK/EU retailers), and to bring it into compliance would probably destroy it, so everything else is fairly unlikely.

However, Italian Barber is kind enough to ship our non-compliant aftershaves internationally. razorock has been a big help on that front.

Will,
I have publicly and privately trolled you over the yrs, and I appreciate you playing along with my games. As said previously, you take it all in stride and keep innovating in ways that keep you in the top echelon of soapers.

So I have some suggestions, or things to ponder and comment on.

1.  If containers are a distinct portion of the overall price of a soap, what would be the limitations and setbacks to have us, the consumers of your products, refill soap tubs/containers originally purchased from you? This would also consider the considerable lag time for you to mfr, fill, cure, and reship the soap.

2.  We are well aware of LE soaps that some soapers make for a site. (ie the DFS soap you made for us here) I have personally lobbied you for a re-issue of the Vanille soap that I have never been able to get my hands on. Then, I find that B&M did an LE Vanille for the reddit site, or another venue of which I was not a member, and therefore lost out on. I keep an eye on your site with regular checks for things like this. Some of your LE issues never showed up there, and that makes me grumpy. Suggestion 1a., using the preorder methodology you used successfully, create a tab on your site where consumers, using their login, can vote or request a specific soap (1 time per specific login) for discontinued or LE soaps. This would allow you as the mfr to gauge interest with people actually pledging their wallet for a specific soap. This would prevent you from losing money as you have a ready made list of pledged buyers. 2a.  Make the specific soap request list results blind to us consumers. This would prevent robo voting, and mob rules that members dogpile on, hopefully giving you a valid survey of actual request/interest into a soap.

3.  I have been on a fruit kick for a while now. I have your Tangerine/ylang ylang, Nocturne, and Limon. I want more fruit for scurvy prevention. Either combos of fruits, or singular fruits with loud pronounced scents.

4.  I know you have seasonal sales, and some closeout sale. I suggest a specific area or tab for all sales and closeouts. Rather than looking through the entire site for closeouts, damaged items, or final seasonal sales, at least they would all be collected on one page and not scattered throughout the site.

In closing, I appreciate your hard work and trial and error process you endure to give us a good product. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

1) The logistics would be nightmarish. I have absolutely no wish to take on that kind of project. I would have to set up an entire manufacturing line and management team to take on that workload, and there are not enough wet shavers in the world for me to justify such a massive expenditure, even if I could raise the money.

Edit: It occurs to me that I didn't entirely answer your question. The limitations would be quite considerable. We'd have to have a way to intake all of those containers (and what happens if one gets lost), make the soap, keep each one separate from each other jar in order to prevent cross-contamination (which would require that every one of them have a unique identifier or tracking code), refill them (which presents production problems), refinish them, and send them back out. We are not set up for that kind of work and it would cost us a lot more than it would save us. I can see it becoming a money pit very quickly.

2) Actually, that was done for a bunch of guys on Facebook and RAPIDLY grew out of hand. It was originally only supposed to be 14 soaps, owing largely to the fact that vanilla absolute is now even MORE expensive than it was when Vanille was originally released ($150/ounce, and we need one ounce per 7-8 soaps). But what you're suggesting would require a lot of coding/technical stuff on my end, and I am simply not well-educated enough to implement such a system, nor do I have the kind of freely available capital necessary to hire someone to do the work. Sorry.

3) Loud, pronounced scents are not my style. But I will consider more fruits.

4) I actually tried that for a bit and ended up receiving emails from people telling me how much it disappointed them that we had "sold out." I suppose it's that old maxim: "You can't please everyone all the time." I'll consider revisiting the idea, though.

Will,

First, thanks for taking the time and agreeing to do the AMA!

Do you have any plans to try to get your products in any big box stores? I think the biggest thing that keeps wet shaving in a 'niche market' right now is because it's not sold in really any big brick & mortar stores.

Will,

First, thanks for taking the time and agreeing to do the AMA!

Do you have any plans to try to get your products in any big box stores?  I think the biggest thing that keeps wet shaving a 'niche market' right now is because it's not sold in really any brick & mortar stores.

That and a preference for convenience over comfort.

But no, big box stores are not really my thing. I'd love to get into a major chain like Sephora or something, but I would never sell to WalMart or Target. It wouldn't feel right to me.

Will,

First, thanks for taking the time and agreeing to do the AMA!

Do you have any plans to try to get your products in any big box stores?  I think the biggest thing that keeps wet shaving a 'niche market' right now is because it's not sold in really any brick & mortar stores.

That and a preference for convenience over comfort.

But no, big box stores are not really my thing. I'd love to get into a major chain like Sephora or something, but I would never sell to WalMart or Target. It wouldn't feel right to me.

Sephora is a start..there's plenty of them around the country..

Will,

First, thanks for taking the time and agreeing to do the AMA!

Do you have any plans to try to get your products in any big box stores?  I think the biggest thing that keeps wet shaving a 'niche market' right now is because it's not sold in really any brick & mortar stores.

That and a preference for convenience over comfort.

But no, big box stores are not really my thing. I'd love to get into a major chain like Sephora or something, but I would never sell to WalMart or Target. It wouldn't feel right to me.

With the new packaging for Cologne Russe I could see your soaps sold in high end stores. The new jars are by far the best I've ever seen or felt. I have no idea what you pay for them but surely they have to be significantly more than the old jars.