Antique Hoosier
“Aircooled”
On second thought, I would have to agree due to the population of India, China, et all. Scratch my vote for Williams.... We may never know a definative answer.
What is the best selling shaving soap worldwide?
- Thread starter Augustiner
- Start date
On second thought, I would have to agree due to the population of India, China, et all. Scratch my vote for Williams.... We may never know a definative answer.
I've just come back from a trip to India.
30 Indian Rupees will give you a tube of shaving cream that is as good as any English top shelf cream. To the average Indian working man, 30 rupees will feed his family for a day. I didn't ask what he uses to shave but the man is cleanly shaven and respectable.
But lets have a poll of the rich the meek and the humble and believe we know what we are talking about because we took a poll.
My oh my, how naive we are. Get real.
PS if you don't know what 30 rupees is in your currency, sorry but I gave up hand holding many years ago.
30 Indian Rupees will give you a tube of shaving cream that is as good as any English top shelf cream. To the average Indian working man, 30 rupees will feed his family for a day. I didn't ask what he uses to shave but the man is cleanly shaven and respectable.
But lets have a poll of the rich the meek and the humble and believe we know what we are talking about because we took a poll.
My oh my, how naive we are. Get real.
PS if you don't know what 30 rupees is in your currency, sorry but I gave up hand holding many years ago.
wow, I couldn't tell if English was offended or being snotty... 
pretty funny to get worked up over trying to figure the worlds most used soap.
This does make me wonder, what do they use in China and India where the larger populations are... The Chinese have been shaving for centuries, but I have no clue what they were using for razors or if they even used soaps? (maybe they used to use animal fats like the Romans?)
I wonder if anyone that has been to the far east and shaving would be willing to post up?
would be nice to find a chinese "Mitchell's wool fat" !!! (maybe Mitchell's silk fat soap?)
pretty funny to get worked up over trying to figure the worlds most used soap.
This does make me wonder, what do they use in China and India where the larger populations are... The Chinese have been shaving for centuries, but I have no clue what they were using for razors or if they even used soaps? (maybe they used to use animal fats like the Romans?)
I wonder if anyone that has been to the far east and shaving would be willing to post up?
would be nice to find a chinese "Mitchell's wool fat" !!! (maybe Mitchell's silk fat soap?)
Actually, if you don't count the people on these forums, none of whom I've ever really met face to face, I know exactly two people besides myself who use shaving soap. Of course, there must be a substantial number of soap shavers in the US; otherwise they wouldn't sell the VDH at Wal-Mart. And since wallyworld dropped Williams, it's become hard to find around here. I found some at a small country store in Scotts Hill, Tennessee recently, and the owner of the store told me he used to carry the Colgate shave soap as well in years past, but the Williams always sold better than Colgate.
I lived in China for a year and never saw shaving soap nor shaving brushes in urban areas. As has been remarked in another thread, electric razors have been popular there for some time, at least 10-20 years (my first trip there was about 20 years ago).
To the best of my knowledge, Chinese using razors are mostly using shaving cream. At this point in time Japanese brands and Western brands are probably very common. But for the urban market I would have to venture that using a brush and soap is even more of a niche market than here.
Things may be different in rural areas. I imagine with the income differences between city and country they may very well be wetshaving out there.
Now, they are worth to watch. At 1:13 you can see a cream tube but the resolution is too low to decipher anything.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/863486/barbershop_politics_part_1/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/864300/barbershop_politics_part_2/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/863486/barbershop_politics_part_1/
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/864300/barbershop_politics_part_2/
Just a guess....Williams?
we in India haven't been Talebanised as yet, so we do manage a shave. As per tradition (since the vedic times) barbers never worked on Tuesdays and that continues today. But as per habit, and I remember reading a thread, I do rest my skin one day a week. It would be interesting though to read up on how my forefathers shaved. Let's see what I can find. Perhaps a new movement could be started; Vedic Shaving-the next big thing after transcendental meditation, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and The Beatles
Gillette cans are not popular. Costs an arm and a leg. wet shaving is the way to go. pig hair brush, old spice, palmolive or godrej creams (not too much of the rounds) and disposable blade straights. I'd say palmolive since Colgate has one of the largest distribution networks.
Neither is the M3 market big. Gillette last year had a target of 500,000 M3 razors, which they did, but had a "repeat" purchase of only 250,000 "two pack" M3 blades. The Indian consumer stays resilient. Only DE or straight for him.
That is interesting to know, that M3 blades are sold by the two pack in India. I had purchased some Gillette Vector Blades (The Atra for the Asian/Indian markets), and was surprised to find they were only available in two packs.
So half the people who try the M3 found it to be a total piece of garbage, and not worthy of buying replacement blades for..........interesting.....
I don't know either. I think we need a poll to be certain of the correct answer . . . . .
FTFY
That is interesting to know, that M3 blades are sold by the two pack in India. I had purchased some Gillette Vector Blades (The Atra for the Asian/Indian markets), and was surprised to find they were only available in two packs.
So half the people who try the M3 found it to be a total piece of garbage, and not worthy of buying replacement blades for..........interesting.....
Perhaps, but the main thing is the cost involved. Even I would cringe every time I had to buy the blades. This info comes from a friend who headed sales at Gillette here. No matter how much he tried he couldn't wean his father off the DE.
As an aside, packaging is a revolution in this country. Have you ever seen one ounce shampoo sachets? Costs about Rs. 2. Thats like .04 cents. Now a family of four with an income of about Rs. 4000 per month can wash their hair every Sunday for under twenty cents!
Excellent question, but it is without a readily obtainable answer. I would imagine that a few companies are very aware of their respective market shares in a couple of nationwide markets. However, I wonder if any soap is distributed to numerous primary world markets such as India, China, North and South America, and Europe. If one was, that soap would have to be a favorite in answering the original question of this thread. In fact, if any one soap just made it to any market plus either China or India, with over 1 billion people each, that one would have to be a favorite. Maybe I misread, but a previous poster indicated Arko was marketed in either India or China or both. If so, Arko may be it just because of such a wide market availability.
