Hi Everybody!

Barrister & Mann

Barrister & Mann

Trusted Vendor
Joined
Oct 21, 2014
Hello there everyone!

My name is Will and I'm a soap addict, so much so that I've begun to feed the addictions of others. I own Barrister & Mann Fine Shaving Products in the US and am looking forward to being a part of this fine community! Feel free to send me any questions/concerns/dirty jokes/death threats (though I prefer that these accompany the dirty jokes).

Hope everyone is well!
 
Hiya Will.

It looks like there are a few punters keen to try your products already.

Do you have a website link?
 
Welcome aboard Will!

I just have too much soap ....
 
I'm familiar with that problem, believe me. It's worse when you make it; I have so many prototypes floating around that I haven't seen my bathroom counter in months.
 
Welcome Will. Nice to have another vendor on board.
 
Welcome Will, nice of you to step DownUnder. [emoji4]
I've heard a lot about your soap on Reddit and the interwebs.
How do you see your soap standing out compared to other artisan offerings?
 
Hi Will, welcome to Australia and our forum.

Are you likely to send a few samples over for us to review?
 
filobiblic said:
Welcome Will, nice of you to step DownUnder. [emoji4]
I've heard a lot about your soap on Reddit and the interwebs.
How do you see your soap standing out compared to other artisan offerings?
Click to expand...

I place considerable emphasis upon developing fragrances that are considerably outside normal scent construction. Many of my scents are divisive and unusual and are deliberately constructed in such a way that they bear little resemblance to anything else available. For instance, Leviathan, one of my current seasonal scents (it's Autumn up here in the States) is a blend of sandalwood, coffee, and a Russian leather accord I discovered in a long-forgotten perfume formulary. Because the accord contains a castoreum reconstitution (not the real thing), the soap has a deep, animalic scent beneath the wood and the coffee. Some love it and some loathe it, which is to be expected. But let it never be said that I do not strive to be interesting.
 
JugV2 said:
Hi Will, welcome to Australia and our forum.

Are you likely to send a few samples over for us to review?
Click to expand...

That depends on where I would be sending them, specifically to how many separate places. There is that exorbitant shipping problem.

If someone would be kind enough to accept a shipment for distribution across the continent, I'd be happy to send a few of our new Black Label soaps down. We actually discontinued selling samples of our regular line today because it's so labor-intensive and have instead handed that responsibility exclusively over to Maggard Razors.
 
Barrister & Mann said:
I place considerable emphasis upon developing fragrances that are considerably outside normal scent construction. Many of my scents are divisive and unusual and are deliberately constructed in such a way that they bear little resemblance to anything else available. For instance, Leviathan, one of my current seasonal scents (it's Autumn up here in the States) is a blend of sandalwood, coffee, and a Russian leather accord I discovered in a long-forgotten perfume formulary. Because the accord contains a castoreum reconstitution (not the real thing), the soap has a deep, animalic scent beneath the wood and the coffee. Some love it and some loathe it, which is to be expected. But let it never be said that I do not strive to be interesting.
Click to expand...
Ignore that strange repetition of "considerable." It's rather late here.
 
Barrister & Mann said:
I place considerable emphasis upon developing fragrances that are considerably outside normal scent construction. Many of my scents are divisive and unusual and are deliberately constructed in such a way that they bear little resemblance to anything else available. For instance, Leviathan, one of my current seasonal scents (it's Autumn up here in the States) is a blend of sandalwood, coffee, and a Russian leather accord I discovered in a long-forgotten perfume formulary. Because the accord contains a castoreum reconstitution (not the real thing), the soap has a deep, animalic scent beneath the wood and the coffee. Some love it and some loathe it, which is to be expected. But let it never be said that I do not strive to be interesting.
Click to expand...

Thanks Will. It's great to hear directly from the soap maker himself. I like that you go out on a limb and venture into a new world of scents.
 
I am pleased you are here. I do like the sound of a few of your scents, but for me the performance of the soap itself is paramount.

The Anise/Vetiver combo interests me, only as I have a bottle of Lolita Lempicka Au Masulin which runs the Anise/Vanilla accord. If you could get something 'tributory' to that, I'd be all over it like a fat kid on cake.
 
Oh man I love da cake.

Barrister & Mann said:
That depends on where I would be sending them, specifically to how many separate places. There is that exorbitant shipping problem.

If someone would be kind enough to accept a shipment for distribution across the continent, I'd be happy to send a few of our new Black Label soaps down. We actually discontinued selling samples of our regular line today because it's so labor-intensive and have instead handed that responsibility exclusively over to Maggard Razors.
Click to expand...
Ok cool, I think we could work something out here.
 
Firstly, welcome Will and I'm glad you accepted my invitation, even if it was only upon a personal level.
So you can imagine my surprise when @Monsta_AU promptly facilitated your Vendor membership here.
I do hope you find value here upon both aspects, enjoy your stay and hang around for the long haul, as both a Vendor and as a traditional shaver.

Barrister & Mann said:
I'm familiar with that problem, believe me. It's worse when you make it; I have so many prototypes floating around that I haven't seen my bathroom counter in months.
Click to expand...
You and @Mark1966 would make quite an interesting collaboration of hardware/software collections :)
If you find the time, pictures are always welcome of your collection.
Viewing his collection of razors is also quite an eye opener.
Which raises a question or three,..
What do you actually use hardware and software wise ?
How long have you been traditional/wet shaving and what drew you to it ?

I note you've mentioned somewhere the price of postage for Otako to you, have you had a chance to try it as yet ?

Barrister & Mann said:
That depends on where I would be sending them, specifically to how many separate places. There is that exorbitant shipping problem.

If someone would be kind enough to accept a shipment for distribution across the continent, I'd be happy to send a few of our new Black Label soaps down. We actually discontinued selling samples of our regular line today because it's so labor-intensive and have instead handed that responsibility exclusively over to Maggard Razors.
Click to expand...
I am happy to have them included in my impending purchase if @Mark1966 is ok with organising them from that point for another round of the travelling box.
Is it too late for others to purchase a sample pack off you ?

SmallYetDeadly said:
For the love of god don't send it to Borked first!! :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
Click to expand...
Too late ?

Monsta_AU said:
I am pleased you are here. I do like the sound of a few of your scents, but for me the performance of the soap itself is paramount.

The Anise/Vetiver combo interests me, only as I have a bottle of Lolita Lempicka Au Masulin which runs the Anise/Vanilla accord. If you could get something 'tributory' to that, I'd be all over it like a fat kid on cake.
Click to expand...
I've only heard rave reviews of both the tallow and non tallow versions, so it will be interesting to try them out.
 
Monsta_AU said:
I am pleased you are here. I do like the sound of a few of your scents, but for me the performance of the soap itself is paramount.

The Anise/Vetiver combo interests me, only as I have a bottle of Lolita Lempicka Au Masulin which runs the Anise/Vanilla accord. If you could get something 'tributory' to that, I'd be all over it like a fat kid on cake.
Click to expand...

You have fine taste! Anise & Vetiver has been discontinued due to somewhat flat sales, but my upcoming Fireside scent is a little bit along those lines. However, it's really meant to showcase the anise, vanilla, and woody characters of fine cognac than it is to show off anise and vanilla, I'm afraid.
 
borked said:
Firstly, welcome Will and I'm glad you accepted my invitation, even if it was only upon a personal level.
So you can imagine my surprise when @Monsta_AU promptly facilitated your Vendor membership here.
I do hope you find value here upon both aspects, enjoy your stay and hang around for the long haul, as both a Vendor and as a traditional shaver.


You and @Mark1966 would make quite an interesting collaboration of hardware/software collections :)
If you find the time, pictures are always welcome of your collection.
Viewing his collection of razors is also quite an eye opener.
Which raises a question or three,..
What do you actually use hardware and software wise ?
How long have you been traditional/wet shaving and what drew you to it ?

I note you've mentioned somewhere the price of postage for Otako to you, have you had a chance to try it as yet ?


I am happy to have them included in my impending purchase if @Mark1966 is ok with organising them from that point for another round of the travelling box.
Is it too late for others to purchase a sample pack off you ?


Too late ?


I've only heard rave reviews of both the tallow and non tallow versions, so it will be interesting to try them out.
Click to expand...


Right then, I'll answer these in order:

1) I use a variety of things, but prefer tallow soaps because they are much kinder to my skin. I originally got into soapmaking because my skin is INTENSELY sensitive and I needed something that would work reliably every time. The fragrance obsession just sort of took it from there.

2) I've been wet shaving for a little over 2.5 years. As with soapmaking, I started because my skin is so sensitive that I cannot shave with cartridges or gel. My first shaving soap was Van Der Hagen Deluxe and, while I saw improvement, it wasn't until I started shaving with true soaps that I really started to see serious improvement.

3) I have not yet had the chance, no. I've wanted to try Otoko and Occam's Shaving Cream for quite some time, but have been trying to work through the vast collection of soaps/creams I've acquired through research first. I eventually decided that I need to sell a bunch of them, but haven't quite gotten around to that yet. And I'd be lying if I said that shipping price is not a factor. Between the two of them, it would cost me upward of $120 USD.

4) Re sample packs: I'm afraid it is. We removed the listing last night and have begun using the samples we have left to fill remaining sample orders. It's TREMENDOUSLY labor intensive to make samples as they all have to be cut, wrapped, bagged, and labeled by hand. It takes hours to put together a mere 20 packages. Maggard is far better equipped to handle it than we are. However, I'm happy to discuss including some samples of our Black Label soaps (which are a rather special case and will not otherwise be sampled) with your package for folks to try out. :)
 
Barrister & Mann said:
Right then, I'll answer these in order:

1) I use a variety of things, but prefer tallow soaps because they are much kinder to my skin. I originally got into soapmaking because my skin is INTENSELY sensitive and I needed something that would work reliably every time. The fragrance obsession just sort of took it from there.

2) I've been wet shaving for a little over 2.5 years. As with soapmaking, I started because my skin is so sensitive that I cannot shave with cartridges or gel. My first shaving soap was Van Der Hagen Deluxe and, while I saw improvement, it wasn't until I started shaving with true soaps that I really started to see serious improvement.

3) I have not yet had the chance, no. I've wanted to try Otoko and Occam's Shaving Cream for quite some time, but have been trying to work through the vast collection of soaps/creams I've acquired through research first. I eventually decided that I need to sell a bunch of them, but haven't quite gotten around to that yet. And I'd be lying if I said that shipping price is not a factor. Between the two of them, it would cost me upward of $120 USD.

4) Re sample packs: I'm afraid it is. We removed the listing last night and have begun using the samples we have left to fill remaining sample orders. It's TREMENDOUSLY labor intensive to make samples as they all have to be cut, wrapped, bagged, and labeled by hand. It takes hours to put together a mere 20 packages. Maggard is far better equipped to handle it than we are. However, I'm happy to discuss including some samples of our Black Label soaps (which are a rather special case and will not otherwise be sampled) with your package for folks to try out. :)
Click to expand...

At least in that instance we should see one soap maker retain tallow in their product :)
A positive for tallow advocates and interesting to hear that your venture is inspired directly via personal experiences and a need for an improved product.

@Occams , for a 100% vegan olive oil based product is interesting and I look forward to further experimenting with the sample they provided for the traveling box http://paste-and-cut.com.au/communi...ng-box-no-2-reviews-and-comments-thread.1076/.
I hope you get a chance to experience it as well.

Feel free to let us know what you're clearing out ;)

Do you have a preference when it comes to razors/blades/brushes ?
As for fragrances, have you managed to recreate your signature scent in your lineup yet ?
 
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