June 28, 2024 – LG24 Day 28 - Frugal Friday
- Brush: No Brand Cheap Brush
- Bowl: Daiso Soup Bowl
- Razor: Kingever Refillable Razor
- Blade: Kingever Stainless Steel
- Prep: Stirling Soap Co. – Unscented Preshave Soap
- Lather: RazoRock – Classic
- Post Shave: Thayers - Unscented Witch Hazel Facial Toner
- Fragrance: No Brand - 21Men2 EdP
Daily Theme, Special Challenge & Relevant Post/Frag: Last year I hunted down the cheapest ~~crap~~ hardware I could find on AliExpress and was rewarded with "absolutely the worst shaving pass I have ever experienced". Not to be outdone, this year I went ~~dumpster diving~~ shopping at Lazada.ph (the Philippines version of AliExpress) and found even cheaper stuff. The relevancy between each item I used in today's shave is that it is the cheapest I currently possess (by category) in my collection. Here they are:
a. No Brand Cheap Brush - 46 pesos / 0.79 USD. The Lazada product page listed it as "Hot Badger Hair Great Mustache Wood Men Barber Cheap Beard Tool Brush". The only descriptive words they got right were "Cheap" and "Brush". I've never seen bristles like this in any beauty brush I've encountered in my six decades of living. Quality-wise, they're not even good enough for a toilet brush.
b. Kingever Refillable Razor & Blade - 15.19 pesos / 0.26 USD. This Lazada special is a cheap Chinese knockoff of razor/blade sets sold by Gillette, Wilkinson, and Dorco, amongst others. I've used the Gillette Rubie set and was impressed with its shave quality. Would the Kingever favorably compare? Considering how much effort it took to load the blade and get it properly aligned, probably not.
c. Daiso Soup Bowl - 66 pesos / 1.13 USD. I purchased this at Daiso Philippines. The price may be cheap, but the bowl is anything but. I need my bowl to facilitate precision loading my brush with the scooped shaving soap, and it is the perfect size, shape and texture for that task, thus it's now my daily driver shaving bowl.
d. Stirling Unscented Preshave Soap - 5.00 USD for 156 g / $0.0321 per gram. I purchased this directly from Stirling. It is half the price of other preshaves I've used yet it's better than the rest. I love this stuff. Well done Stirling!
e. RazoRock Classic shaving soap - 5.99 USD for 150 ml / $0.0399 per gram. I purchased this directly from Italian Barber. It is half the price of Stirling (per gram) and 40% cheaper than my Proraso and Cella tubs. The soap is descent enough, but I'll take Stirling over this any day of the week.
f. Thayers Unscented Witch Hazel Facial Toner - 10.95 USD for 355 ml / $0.0308 per gram. I purchase this from Amazon. Thayers is by far the cheapest post I own (it's 40% cheaper than Stirling's fantastically priced witch hazel!). Even when I'm using a scented post, I use Thayers first because my skin reacts well to this stuff.
g. No Brand - 21Men2 EdP - 45 pesos for 35 ml / $0.0220 USD per gram. I purchased this at a local budget department store which specializes in selling cheap China crap. A dupe of Carolina Herrera 212 Men, the borderline IP theft of the label would normally chase me away, but its price made it a must-purchase for Frugal Friday.
| Hardware Cost Breakdown |
PHP Cost |
USD Cost |
| Brush |
₽46.00 |
$00.79 |
| Bowl |
₽66.00 |
$01.13 |
| Razor |
₽13.67 |
$00.23 |
| Blade |
₽01.52 |
$00.03 |
Total Hardware Cost: $2.18
| Software Cost Breakdown |
PHP per gram |
USD per gram |
| Preshave |
-- |
$00.0321 |
| Lather |
-- |
$00.0399 |
| Post Shave |
-- |
$00.0308 |
| Fragrance |
₽1.2857 |
$00.0220 |
Total Software Cost: $0.1248 per gram
Assuming a totally arbitrary 2 grams used for each software item, my software cost for today's shave was $0.25. Also, assuming that all hardware items were one-time use only (a smart assumption for all but the bowl) and today's shave cost $2.43. Not too bad if you're into self-mutilation.
The Frugal Shave Challenge: There's a quote some attribute to Albert Einstein that goes "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Well, based on today's shave I'm certifiably insane because I had high hope for the razor/blade set. If last year's Frugal Friday shave was my worst ever, this shave is my second worst ever! The cheap-ass brush had ZERO water/lather retention, so it functioned closer to a silicone spatula than a brush. Using the brush like a very, very short egg wisp, I was able to beat the soap sufficiently in my bowl to make a lather. I tried to paint the lather on my face, but the bristles acted like Teflon and shed all soap before I could make it to my face (to avoid losing all of my lather, I resorted to lathering my face with my fingers). And speaking of shedding, every time I moved the brush a dozen bristles dropped, so by the time I made acceptable lather, there were more bristles in the lather than remained on the brush.
As bad as the brush was, the razor/blade set was worse. No matter what blade angle or head pressure I used, the razor/blade sucked. By the time I finished 2 passes, my face was on fire from razor burn, and everywhere the blade touched was as red as Jolly Saint Nick's cheeks! Good thing my cheapest post was Thayers, because my skin needed some relief. I encountered a first with witch hazel, it stung on contact similar to how alcohol does after a good shave. Stinging witch hazel, that's how irritated my skin was. I needed two doses of Thayers to get my face to relax. I finished with the frag and was pleasantly surprised by its descent scent, or maybe because the shave sucked so bad the frag appeared good in comparison...