PAA General Thoughts?

IMO, is not cost effective compared to much better products!

I find PAA's latest formula to be a step up from the past iterations which were ok, nothing spectacular. I enjoy some of the scents but at times some feel like a bunch of oils were put into a barrel then a trip was made to a thesaurus to come up with a witty name for a product that had no direction from the start. And I say this because when you come out with a new scent every other day it starts to feel this way. I don't mention value because like most of us this is a hobby for me and I probably have enough soaps and AS to last a couple lifetimes so really value only means something on re-buys which I probably wont re-buy many of my PAA products after I use up what I have because there are other products I fancy more.

I think PAA is good for the wet shaving industry. Douglas gets his products out there and strikes interest with folks looking for a new way to shave. He's like a gateway drug to wetshaving. Yes there are other better alternatives, but he markets his products more than any other artisan I've seen and if that brings more folks into wet shaving then I see that as a benefit. Like CDB I find reading the scent descriptions almost painful on PAA's website. I walk away not feeling like I really have a clue what it will smell like. To sum up how I think I really feel about PAA overall I have to admit I died a little inside when I was watching Paul H a few weeks ago and a box showed up from PAA. For me Paul H is a a shaver that seems isolated from the drama of the wet shaving community. He just loves to shave and share his enthusiasm for shaving and the products he's using. Give him an old razor and a stick of Arko and he's happier than a pig in shit. To have PAA's stink on it so to speak just kind of felt like a violation to me which I guess really speaks for how I feel about this brand.

BadDad I'm not disagreeing with the fact other companies may review negative reviews and remove them, that hardly makes the practice right. One only need to look at Maggards to see how a review process should be run, ethically and openly. This maker even has gone to the length to email individuals leaving a bad review and tell them why they are wrong in their assessment and then not post that review..... for a maker to tell a customer they are "wrong" and "naïve" to me is not only unprofessional, it's downright absurd.

Andyshaves right with you on price. If you are going to be priced that much higher on software it better deliver much better or at least better than your competitors and frankly, I don't think this software fits the bill.

I won't ever question this companies passion for wet shaving and they do make some quality products. You all have made some excellent points here both as to the strength of the line of their products and the detriments as well.


Good discussion thus far. I could care less about past "controversies" and hopefully this thread isn't hijacked into that realm.

Find their prices high, products mediocre and scents muddled. Much better out there for the money

Find their prices high, products mediocre and scents muddled. Much better out there for the money

This was a much more succinct way of saying what I said. Nicely done there, I gotta work on my wordiness and get to the point like that.

BadDad I'm not disagreeing with the fact other companies may review negative reviews and remove them, that hardly makes the practice right. One only need to look at Maggards to see how a review process should be run, ethically and openly. This maker even has gone to the length to email individuals leaving a bad review and tell them why they are wrong in their assessment and then not post that review..... for a maker to tell a customer they are "wrong" and "naïve" to me is not only unprofessional, it's downright absurd.

Andyshaves right with you on price. If you are going to be priced that much higher on software it better deliver much better or at least better than your competitors and frankly, I don't think this software fits the bill.

I won't ever question this companies passion for wet shaving and they do make some quality products. You all have made some excellent points here both as to the strength of the line of their products and the detriments as well.


Good discussion thus far. I could care less about past "controversies" and hopefully this thread isn't hijacked into that realm.

Im right with you on removing bad reviews. I think if you are going to have a review process in your site for customers to leave opinions, than those shoukd be left as they are, and not moderated. But it is a very common practuce, which is why publications like Consumer Reports and Yelp exist. Outside and independant review databases would not exist if everyone had an open review system in place. Thats a failing of the market, not the individual comoanies, in my opinion.

What bothers me more than that is the process of specifically giving people free product in exchange for a "professional review". Amazon has a process where professional reviewers are giving products with thw promise to provide a review after rwceilt. These people get a lot of free products from a lot of different places. If they provide positive reviews, they get more free products. It has incentivized positive reviews, and hurts the validity of the review process. Unlike a youtuber getting a single sample to review, these people are actually profiting from the review process.

And I definitely agree that any company should not be proactively disrupting negative review sources witb emails chastising the individual providing the review. Obviously this is something yku are close to. I have never heard of it, but I have no reason not to take your word for it. As long as it is an accurate and respectable review, I think a company would actually benefit by allowing a public display of it. It shows they arent afraid of public input...

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My experience with PAA is quite personal & that is why they will never receive a penny of my money. Without getting into that I have experienced a couple iterations of their products & will comment on that alone.

Synergy soaps from the HTGAM days were dreadful for me. In my experience they lathered exactly like melt & pour soaps (Colonel Conk, TSD, etc) despite Hodges' explaining to me how his process differed from melt & pour. I'm not here to bash melt & pour soaps; they've just never given me a good lather. I've tried exhaustively to get these soaps to generate a dense & creamy lather but all I get is an airy foam with worse performance characteristics than aerosol foam. To Hodges' credit he sent me the soap for free to try (which I then passed on to someone else also for free) and he spent some time trying to help me get a better lather. Sadly, not even direct one on one help from the soap maker could coerce a better lather out of it for me. The scent was The Beach and the frequent lathering shot so much scent in the air that my wife and I were both coughing. Not a well blended scent in our opinion.

After HTGAM disappeared for a while to rebrand into PAA I was fortunate enough to win a contest here on DFS that was put on by TSE (or CDB as I like to refer to him). I mainly entered the contest to give the stuff to a friend who recently converted to proper shaving. However, I wanted to try the new soap & as which was called Vloid by PAA. This soap definitely was latherable which was a huge improvement over the Synergy formulation. From memory it performed similarly to the budget RazoRock offerings & things like De Vergulde Hand. Again, however, the scent was not enjoyable. I was pretty surprised by this because I thought I would really like it based on the scent description. Unfortunately it seemed more like fragrance chaos; the individual scents did not mesh well but rather seemed to be fighting each other for dominance. I understand what Owba is saying about just throwing oils in a barrel & seeing what emerges.

The Vloid aftershave continued the disjointed scent but with an overwhelming strength which actually got me coughing again. The skincare of this aftershave was also quite poor for me, which I can most likely attribute to the alum included. Alum is bad for my skin & I still can't comprehend why so many shavers rub that devil stone across their face after a shave.

All of this is more than enough to keep me away regardless of the price they command. They are definitely proud of their products. However, as others have mentioned there are many other better performing soaps & aftershaves for less money. I've never enjoyed all of his marketing tactics but like scent that is subjective. However, marketing costs money & that is obviously showing up in the cost to the consumer. I agree that his passion is there but I'm not decided yet on whether this is a good or bad thing for traditional shaving at this point.

After HTGAM disappeared for a while to rebrand into PAA I was fortunate enough to win a contest here on DFS that was put on by TSE (or CDB as I like to refer to him). I mainly entered the contest to give the stuff to a friend who recently converted to proper shaving. However, I wanted to try the new soap & as which was called Vloid by PAA. This soap definitely was latherable which was a huge improvement over the Synergy formulation. From memory it performed similarly to the budget RazoRock offerings & things like De Vergulde Hand. Again, however, the scent was not enjoyable. I was pretty surprised by this because I thought I would really like it based on the scent description. Unfortunately it seemed more like fragrance chaos; the individual scents did not mesh well but rather seemed to be fighting each other for dominance. I understand what Owba is saying about just throwing oils in a barrel & seeing what emerges.

The Vloid aftershave continued the disjointed scent but with an overwhelming strength which actually got me coughing again. The skincare of this aftershave was also quite poor for me, which I can most likely attribute to the alum included. Alum is bad for my skin & I still can't comprehend why so many shavers rub that devil stone across their face after a shave.

point.

Same here with the Aftershaves. For a $25 aftershave, I want some skincare. I dont mind paying 21.99$ for Floid aftershave (the aftershave Vloid is copying I believe) because it has classic scents that aren't muddled, and the skin care on them is very nice. Plus, you get 180ml for 21.99. It BLOWS away PAA aftershave in every conceivable way, therefore, Floid gets my dollars there. PAA aftershaves just burned and left my skin very dry. Granted I have dry skin but this was definitely one of the worst splashes I've tried along with a handful of others for my dry skin use case. I think the PAA aftershaves should be 15.99, perhaps as much as the Fine aftershaves, which I feel also outperform PAA for much much less.

In my very out-dated opinion, PAA is pretty much an all-show, no-go (maybe limited-go) product line. I say out-dated because my only foray into his product line was back in the Synergy days. I admittedly enjoyed the scent of his soap back then but the performance wasn't up-to-par. I know that he has upgraded his entire product line and tweaked the formulations (possibly for the better) but it hasn't crossed my mind to buy anymore because I rather spend my money on first chances as opposed to a second chance.

Since you asked: a past history of sock puppet reviews, the use of a "mascot", and unoriginal products with cheesy presentation make PAA unappealing to me. "Douglas Smythe" is the equivalent of Ronald McDonald of the shaving world: see http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrau...b0c894104d