AoS Lemon: I was wrong, I'm sorry and I love you.

Was up in MPLS for work last week and a friend who lives there met me at Mall of America. Had a few beverages at the Hard Rock Cafe, then walked around a little. Between seeing my friend and the effects of the beers, I was feeling rather great. I happened to be discussing my shaving obsession with him right as we walked by the Art of Shaving. I'd read about them, but had never been in one, so I decided we should stop in. We looked around a bit, then I remembered I had an empty soap bowl at home that I'd been meaning to fill with something, so I grabbed the small box of AoS Lemon soap and checked out. I never looked for a price; I just swiped, signed and left. Later that night in my hotel room, I took the soap out of the bag for a sniff. Not bad, even though wrapped in plastic. Next, I fished out the receipt, and was disappointed to learn I had forked over $30 for this little innocuous puck. Wow. For that price, I could have had just about any soap out there. I wondered whether I should go to the trouble of returning it, or listing it on the Buy and Sell here. But, I decided that I'd take it home and give it a go. It was, after all, a memento of a good day and a long-overdue reunion with an old pal.

Fast forward to Saturday morning. I had returned home Friday, trimmed the puck a bit so it fit in the bowl, grabbed my Simpson's Commodore and went to work. Within about 5 or 6 swirls, I could tell I was onto something. The brush loaded beautifully, I added water, face-lathered and was treated to a truly wonderful shave. It was so good, in fact, that I eschewed my regular soap rotation and used it Sunday and again today. In the end, it may not be the best value in soapdom, but it's certainly more than a keeper. I was wrong, AoS Lemon. I was wrong, I'm sorry and I love you.

I've never tried the soap but their lemon scent could be my favorite of all time. I also really like their ocean kelp. Personally, I think you should order the AS balm to go with it. It's truly an incredible scent and the bottle lasts a long time. Enjoy!

You're forgiven!

sarimento1 said:

You're forgiven!

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Beautiful pic!

I love this thread

Congratulations. You've stumbled into a very good thing. AoS takes heat for being too pricey but a quick gander at some other brands like C&S, Castle Forbes, MdC, Pen's, and a few others are actually a good deal more money. Irrespective, any of these good soaps are a good price per shave. I remember being in the Salt Lake City AoS in 2012 just after the change in formula and I was grilling the manager about it. He got a wry smile on his face and asked me to step to the sink.

He had a well used cake of the new stuff and proceeded to whip up a lather in no time with a store brand brush. He then squeezed it out of the brush and handed the blob of lather to me and said to work it up in hand and see what I thought. Well let me tell you, that was some nice lather. Ultra creamy, dense, and had a fantastic feel. And the lemon scent had been punched up as well. I would not hesitate to buy a cake.

vickywally said:

Beautiful pic!

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Thankyou!

AOS gets a bad rap for some of their pricing. A lot of this is justified and the reputation is well earned, however some things in the store like their soaps I happen to believe to be an excellent value.

For example, if you were to take three tubs of RazoRock soap that many believe to be an excellent value at around $10 and use them back to back you'd likely get about 4 months of shaves out of them (or at least I would). While if you picked up one AOS soap puck I'd bet that you could use it every day and get 4 or 5 months of shaves from it. Some of the guys in the store will tell you that you can get a year from it but that's not happening with the brush I use. The point is that it's a hard puck and it lasts longer which makes it as good if not a better value than RazoRock and many other inexpensive soft soaps that we don't think twice about buying.

The AOS soaps performance wise are excellent, I slightly prefer the old version tallow ones but the newer version soaps are quite nice as well. The older version has a bit of a clay note to it, as a lot of the Valobra soaps do, but the performance is outstanding. The new version has a little cleaner scent but the soap can be slightly more drying than the old version. I use and enjoy all of the scents in both versions.

Now if you sign up for their mailing list twice a year they will send you coupons that will save you 20%. So now the $30 soap goes to $24 and becomes an even sweeter deal.

I won't be buying any $90 fancy fusion handles from AOS but I'll definitely be replacing the soaps as I finish them.