Wet Shaving Database?

While maybe relegated to only the highest degree of shaving enthusiasts, I have always thought that a feed similar to something like gamified sports tracking platforms (e.g strava) could drive engagement, whether housed in a dedicated platform/app or externally as an API service. You could get SOTD with tagging, performance metrics (e.g. User X just hit 7 shaves in a row),  various shaving milestones, badges, etc.  All the while the service or platform would be collecting various analytics that could be used to inform market participants ( e.g. allow shaving artisans and vendors to gauge popularity of wares)

A question is how would you monetize / cover expenses of that service. It would be nice if you had a one stop service that would not only capture your shaves but also host images to serve up a combined SOTD post or deliver analytics on your shaving journey.

The issue I have run into with this type of scenario is the tension between how a customer/user wants to classify and layout a data “taxonomy” vs what a centralized service might want, so they can harmonize the data inputs and structures from a broad user base. The other challenge is getting the type of analytics or “questions” answered from your shaving data vs what the service chooses to provide. Invariably, I end up just rolling my own solution. But I am probably in a small population that is comfortable deploying and managing all of the IT components, along with app code or query playgrounds to extract the analytics I want to see.

I only recently became serious about logging shaves. I am temporarily storing everything in a spreadsheet, while duplicating the data in a database. This allows me to evaluate how and what I am logging and whether I can extract the analytics I want. I am currently, out of convenience, using a cloud app/platform called Airtable for the database side. But I don’t recommend that given its pricing and query limitations. It’s just a convenient place to prototype ideas. Ultimately I will likely just self host a document oriented database and one of the open source database management tools for data entry and analytics / queries.

Nice ideas!

Before starting Grooming Dept, I created a website that resembled a now-defunct platform and a recently launched DB. This project allowed me to gather an impressive collection of over 10,000 product profiles. Users could track and access statistics for their wetshaving products, as well as follow other users and discover who else was using the same products. The website performed exceptionally well and served as a valuable learning experience for me, as I familiarized myself with various technologies utilized in its framework. Moreover, I utilized the site to secure several contract development projects.

However, as I delved deeper into the project, I realized that effectively monetizing it, covering its expenses, and earning a reasonable income for my efforts was not feasible. Consequently, I had to make the difficult decision to abandon the venture.

Thanks Mo. Sounds like you have had some interesting experiences outside of building the Grooming Dept. It is never an easy decision to step away from a potential venture, with so much personal effort invested. Hopefully there was a silver lining in your decision, that in some way lead to the formation or expansion of the Grooming Dept.

Did the owner or trythatsoap say why they closed shop?

I had reached out to them a few years back about possibly hooking into their site via an API for a new shaving website I thought to build out but the owner wasn't into it, if I recall correctly.

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There was a lot of discussion about it on Reddit (including from the guy running TTS whose name I’m blanking on), I think all the subs are blacked out until tomorrow or Thursday with the Reddit issues but if it’s ok to post those threads and

info here I’m happy to do it.

post away.

Found the thread from TTS’s creator, text pasted below and here’s the link (https://www.reddit.com/r/Wetshaving/comm...to_an_end/)

tl;dr TTS is ded at the end of the year

As you all have probably noticed, Try That Soap has not been updated in awhile, and more recently, has had several pieces of functionality stop working. I have not spent meaningful time on the site in over 2 years. Despite that, I kept the site up, because for the most part, it was still serving a purpose and "worked". Unfortunately, over the past month or so, that is no longer the case and I don't have the time or energy to make the necessary changes to keep it functional.

... which brings us to the post. I will be shutting down Try That Soap at the end of the year. I've mulled several options, but unfortunately this is the one that makes the most sense. I want to thank all of you for your support over the years. TTS started out as a way for me to not only explore wet shaving, but also to learn more about web development. While the site was far from perfect, the learnings I got from building it from the ground up have been invaluable. I didn't build this alone though; TTS would not have been possible without the support from you all. The feedback, the word of mouth, friendships, product submissions, and yes, even the tts-- were critical to its success.

I plan to shut down the site on December 31. Please save off any personal information you would like to keep such as your ratings. You can copy the table from the "My Ratings" page and paste it in a spreadsheet.

To head off a likely question, yes I considered selling/transferring the site to someone else to run, but there are various reasons why that wasn't a great option. I appreciate those that reached out offering to help!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you all.