He Put Guinness in his Soap Like an Eejit. Now 125,000 People Won't Use Anything Else.

This is the one I hear the most. And the frustrating thing is — it's half true. Most soap does leave your skin feeling dry. But the problem isn't soap itself. It's the ingredients inside the soap. Commercial bars are loaded with Sodium Lauryl Sulphate — the same compound used in industrial degreasers. That tight, dry feeling isn't "clean." It's damage. Real cold-processed soap with olive oil, shea butter, and retained glycerin does the opposite — it cleans without stripping.

The word "fragrance" (or "parfum") is legally allowed to hide hundreds of undisclosed chemicals. It's treated as a trade secret. Some of those materials include phthalates — classified as endocrine disruptors, linked to hormonal disruption and skin sensitivities. There's no legal definition of "natural" when it comes to fragrance. We chose a different path entirely: we don't use fragrance. We blend our scent profiles from pure essential oils — actual plant extracts, every one listed on the label.

This one's fair. A lot of handmade soap does disintegrate quickly. But there's a specific reason for that — and it comes down to a step most soap makers skip: curing. After we cut our bars, they go into our cure room for 3–4 weeks. During that time, excess water slowly evaporates. The soap molecules rearrange into a tighter crystalline structure. The result is a harder, denser bar that lasts 21+ daily showers. Most soap companies skip this step. It's expensive — you're sitting on stock for weeks. But we'd rather make something good than something that runs out fast.

We made over a million bars last year. Every single one was made by hand, 54 at a time. We have 35 people in our workshop in Sandyford, Dublin. We haven't automated. We haven't outsourced. We haven't bought a single machine that replaces a person. Instead, we've grown by hiring, training, and passing on our soapmaking techniques to a team that cares about the craft as much as I do. When you open a bar of The Black Stuff, a person made that — not a machine.

Essential oils cost roughly 10 times more than synthetic fragrance oils. That's just one ingredient. We could use fragrance oils, swap out olive oil and shea butter for cheaper fillers, skip the 4-week cure, and automate production. Every one of those decisions would make our soap cheaper. Every one of them would also make it worse. When you factor in how long a properly made bar lasts versus a cheap one that disintegrates in a week, the cost per shower is often comparable — or lower. But beyond the maths, it comes down to what you're comfortable putting on your skin every day.