edit: If you're stumbling across this post now, the site, trythatsoap.com has launched. You can see the full announcement thread here.

Hey everyone.

I started wet shaving in December and one of the biggest hurdles was, and still is, deciphering all the different soaps and scents that are out there. There are so many wonderful soaps out there that it can be completely overwhelming for those that have been wet shaving for a while, let alone those that are new to the hobby.

Knowing how overwhelmed I was when I started, and seeing the steady stream of “Can anyone recommend a soap?” posts, I decided to try my hand at a soap recommendation tool. If there’s already one out there, I haven’t seen it recommended or referred to with any frequency. I’ve been working on this for a few months now in my free time (which is virtually non existent with a toddler and an infant) and I think I have a decent enough prototype that I wanted to reach out for some user feedback (more on that in a bit!)

The concept is pretty straight forward. Users will create an account and start rating soaps (or in the case of those brand new to wet shaving, rate some common scents to get started). Based on these ratings, the tool will come up with a personalized scent profile for you and begin recommending soaps based on how your scent profile compares to the soap’s scent profile.

So far, I’ve populated the database with just under 50 soaps from some of our favorite artisans such as Barrister and Mann, Chiseled Face Groomatorium, Dapper Dragon, Maggard Razors, and Mickey Lee Soapworks. I tried to stick with soaps with samples available from Maggard’s for the initial population since that is where people are commonly referred. I have not tried all the soaps I added, and even the ones I have, I’m still not great at identifying scents, especially subtle ones, so a number of the soap scent profiles used in the recommendation calculators are a guess, at best, based on the soaps description.

As mentioned above, I’m at a point where I would love to get some initial feedback to confirm (hopefully!) that this is a useful tool and worth continuing with. I’m primarily looking for major bugs, must have features/data that are missing, general usability issues, and if you think the recommendations are accurate. Right now, the UI is VERY plain and basic. I’m not a professional front end web developer, so I figured I’d verify the validity of the project before I spend a ton of time learning advanced HTML. (If anyone cares, the project is being done with Django). I'm looking for about 10 people to give the tool a try and provide me feedback. If interested, please post here or PM me and I'll get you can account to try.

A note to the artisans: Scents and soap descriptions found on your sites are included, but the scent profile (even if wildly inaccurate) will not be publicly available. I have a lot of respect for the work you are doing to make this hobby enjoyable for all of us, and I certainly don’t want to do anything to jeopardize your livelihood. The only information that will be publicly available is information that I’ve found on your sites, such as ingredients and descriptions. If there are concerns about this (or the project in general), I’d love to hear them so that I don’t unintentionally cause any damage to you or your brand. I hope this project can be mutually beneficial for shavers and artisans alike.

Hopefully this can be a valuable tool for the community! Feel free to ask any questions or make suggestions.

Here are a couple of screen shots of what I have right now

Thanks for reading and happy shaving!