No harm no foul but sheez man that's bordering on fanboi territory....."AGH negative comment on my product!!!", shoot first, actually read the post later!
Your point regarding labels or perhaps more specifically as packaging is one that enters interesting territory. I won't dwell on it too much BUT I've been doing a lot of reading over at SMF and a few other places and a number of things have become relatively evident, atleast IMHO anyway. And this holds firm, albeit with some caveats for shaving soaps although I've derived it from discussions/overview of artisan soaps (non-shaving specific).
Essentially it's not that hard to come up with a very good base soap formula. It's pretty simple and even very high end shaving soap formulas using the absolute latest HP (hot processed) high stearic acid mixes that B&M etc do (and recently the majority of the 'general best' shaving soaps are now HP along this line) - are freely available and with a very small amount of tweaking I'd be surprised if not on par for usage performance in a very short time.
So it's a pretty level playing field......so how do the players differentiate themselves???
For bath/general use soaps it's aesthetics - which personally I think is somewhat crazy but as someone here said, look at the store 'Lush' and the variety of soaps they sell - ironically I am amused by the buyer's desire to have additives free soap/organic etc - and yet all those colours and the additives needed to allow the designs to be done to them are while certainly non-toxic are going all over them. Thankfully shaving soap doesn't really rely on aesthetics.
Scent is a BIG ONE. And it's absolutely alarming out of the total cost of a given batch of soap the % of the cost thats devoted to the IMHO relatively optional/low priority aspect of it's scent. It can easily be 20-50% of the overall batch cost! And while HP soaps tend to use less it's still perhaps the largest overall cost area! And while I know it's lovely to have a well scented soap (shaving or otherwise) very few of them will really linger on you that much/long after you've washed off and then put several other differently scented products on top over them e.g ASB, moisturiser, cologne. Don't get me wrong but this is a real area where a seller can differentiate themselves, as Will @B&M has - but (and I plead guilty) to this - I think consumers again somewhat disproportionately weight this relatively lightweight factor into their decision making. Oh and if you have a reaction/irritation to the soap it's almost certainly the scent (EO or FO) that caused it.
Ingredient label appeal is also one that is alarmingly strong in soap making. Now I'm sorry to pop anyone's bubbles but soap makers will openly discuss how they just have felt compelled to put certain things in their soaps despite them either having no real benefit to the end soap over the standard/old formulation for the vast majority of users....or sometimes even making it worse but almost all the time making the actual cost of the soap higher! Case in point, MdC is remarkably simple and the most commonly copied shaving soap recipe. Why? It's apparently a wonderful soap. However modern consumers want all kinds of exotic butters and oils in their soap as they perceive it will make it better. Reality is that these are often much of a muchness with simple base ingredients e.g tallow, stearic acid, glycerine but many times more expensive - but the consumer is always right and so in they go as it sells better and thats the bottomline.
And packaging for artisans is really the last variable one - though multi-nats etc have marketing to rely on as well.
Anyway forgive me for blabbing on but it's a somewhat curious area, though one can see similarities to many other product areas and the sometimes irrational behaviour & purchase motivators that consumers exhibit within them. Haha the funny thing is I make no claims to have no been absolutely as bad as anyone in this area before myself, so please don't take this as me attacking anyone's priorities or decisions as it's absolutely not.
