Do try these ones if you have the opportunity to so so: Strop Shoppe SE w/tallow soaps - has to be the SE tallow version though. I really like Barbershop and Baker Street Petal Pusher Fancies - the coconut one is excellent. Black Tea is great too. RazoRock - the new soaps are really great. Mudder Focker and XXX are my favorites. Freedburg and P.160 are great too. Catie's Bubbles - excellent stuff, the LPV is becoming quite popular Tiki - I really like their "The Captain" one which is a cherry tobacco type scent. PannaCrema - scents are ok but the lather is excellent Calani - harder to get but the soaps are excellent. Stirling and Mike's soaps are both very good but I'd consider everything in my list above to be better.
'Better' in regards to…scent? lather performance? lubricity? cost? I've used a number of those on that list, and although each had its own good characteristics, I'd be hard pressed to find any that consistently outperformed the Mike's or similar 'artisan' soaps. Those are all quality soaps, mind you, and I'm not being trying to be critical, but our postings here simply show how subjective our opinions are with regards to these products.
Don't get me wrong I own and enjoy both Mike's and Striling soaps but I do enjoy the soaps in my list better and sure there's always the YMMV thing to consider. I base my grading of soaps on lather, slickness, after shave feel and scent. I'm going for quality so not so much price but it may come into play if a soap is an exceptional value or an exceptionally poor deal. I've tried a whole lot of soaps before narrowing my favorites down and have tried a lot in looking for my favorites. For example, for me the Strop Shoppe SE soaps are excellent. They are above average in slickness, offer very good protection and really excel in after shave face feel. The scents are great as well. Cost is about $20. I'd consider these soaps to be excellent and some of the very best I've tried. Stirling soaps are some that I enjoy as well but I don't rate them quite as high. Some people don't get a great lather from Stirling and it does tend to leave a sticky face feel behind. Between samples and full pucks I've tried about 20 Stirling soaps. Rod at Stirling is a really great guy and I recommend his soaps along with Mikes to anyone new starting out because they are very inexpensive, offer generous samples, give good protection and are just a great soap at an excellent price. I really enjoy the MITA and the COOL soaps from Stirling. I really enjoy mixing half of each together for a Cooler MITA soap. I used stirling just about every day for months a while back and every time I use Stirling I wonder why I don't use it more often. I so prefer the other soaps listed above but will continue to buy and use Stirling soaps. Mike's soaps I enjoy as well. I've tried 8 soaps from Mike's 5 were samples and three were full bars. My favorites are the Orange Cedar and Black Pepper one and the Barbershoppe one. Mike's soaps are great. I love the scents and they are quite inexpensive as well. However they so lack some of the slickness and after shave face feel of the RazoRock Mudder Focker soap for example. While they are very good they aren't nearly as good for me as some of the new RazoRock soaps like Mudder Focker. This is one of the very best soaps I've found in the 300 or so that I've tried so far. If you haven't tried it I'd highly recommend this one. Mike's is above average, especially in scents. I think I used his barbershoppe one for almost a month straight and there's good reason why he's selling out of items all the time. But in my opinion it's not nearly as good as the some of the others I've tried. This is always a YMMV thing and I've seen people say negative things about soaps that I think are excellent like MdC and XPEC so you never know how someone will take to a particular soap or if they are lathering it properly to get the best performance from it. My goal wasn't to degrade Mike's or Stirling as I do really like both of them but more to use them as a gauge for comparison and introduce some soaps that might be new to some people here. More of a there are great but these I think are even better thing. I'm not sure which ones you've tried so far but maybe pick up a tub of the RazoRock Mudder Focker for about $10 if you're open to it and let me know what you think of it after using it for a week or two.
My experience with shaving soaps is limited. I have used Tabac, MWF, and Mike's unscented. All three work well for me. My bride does not enjoy the Tabac scent. I had the steepest learning curve with the MWF. I finally grated the MWF into a stick, and now it works great for me. Of the three, Mike's is my favorite based on (1) overall peformance, which for me, amounts to protection and slickness, (2) no strong scent, and (3) Mike answered all my questions and treated me well. I very much like the idea of supporting a skilled artisan like Mike who makes a great product. I am sure there are better soaps out there, and I can't wait to try them! I hope to learn from everyone's experience. That is just part of the fun.
Personally I enjoy artisan soaps over commercial soaps. There are some outstanding soaps such as Barrister and Mann, RazoRock, Cold River, Petal Pushers etc. They are certainly not made by amateurs, they take great pride in both their craft of soapmaking and their final product. I support small business. Have I used artisan soaps that were not that great sure, just as I have used commercial soaps that were not great others that were not. To lump all products from one group or another and say that they are sub par is not giving them a fair chance. The great thing about wet shaving is the choice of products to choose from.
Thanks fram773 for the link. How neat to see where my MWF comes from. Perhaps we've come to see MWF as so "established" in the wet shaving world that we lose sight of their actual scale. Commercial vs artisan vs amateur. We've all seen (in the broader business world) that some amateurs are CEOs of major corporations. Meanwhile, most artisans do wish to be commercially viable (they expect, or dream, to make a living at it).
Artisanal soaps are the only thing that I use. I have one principal soap, but there are so many choices to choose from! I think they are fantastic!
