Ingredients, honestly.

The backbone

Nearly everything we make starts from the same short shelf: olive oil for a gentle, creamy lather; coconut oil for cleansing and bubbles; shea butter for the soft after-feel; fresh goat milk in the bars named for it and in our premium specialty bar; beeswax in balms; Epsom and Dead Sea salts in the bath; and pure essential oils or cosmetic-grade fragrance oils for scent. Color comes only from mica and mineral oxide powders — never synthetic food dyes.

Three families of soap, three honest recipes

Cold-process & artisan bars. These are traditional lye soaps, made the way soap has been made for centuries: olive oil first, coconut oil second, mixed with lye (sodium hydroxide). The lye and the oils turn into soap and natural glycerin — none of the lye remains in a finished, cured bar. Big commercial brands typically strip that glycerin out to sell separately; a handmade bar keeps it, which is a lot of why it feels different.

Goat milk bars. Our goat milk soap and our premium specialty bar are made with fresh goat milk — fats and proteins your skin takes to immediately. If a bar doesn't say goat milk, it doesn't have it; we'd rather be exact than impressive.

Glycerin bars. Our clear glycerin bars and the kids' rubber-duck bars are poured from an all-vegetable glycerin soap base made from coconut, palm, and safflower oils with added vegetable glycerin and oat protein. It's what makes a crystal-clear, ultra-gentle bar possible — which is exactly why it's the base of our kids' line.

The ones people ask about

Propylene glycol (in our glycerin-base bars) — a humectant that keeps a clear glycerin bar pourable and smooth. Ours is derived from vegetable glycerin, and propylene glycol itself is so well studied that the FDA lists it as generally recognized as safe — in food, at far higher exposures than a rinse-off soap. We use it because, in fifty years of making clear soap, nobody has found a gentler way to do the job.

Cocamidopropyl betaine (in the glycerin base and some washes) — a surfactant made from coconut oil that boosts lather while making the cleanse milder, not harsher. It's one of the most common ingredients in baby washes for exactly that reason. A small number of people are sensitive to it; if that's you, our cold-process and goat milk bars contain none.

Preservatives (in anything made with water — lotions, shampoos, conditioners, washes) — a bar of soap needs no preservative, but any product that contains water will grow bacteria and mold without one. That isn't a style choice; it's biology. Where a preservative is needed, our bases use food-grade systems — the same potassium sorbate and sodium benzoate that keep salad dressing safe — or modern cosmetic preservatives used at a fraction of a percent. An honestly preserved lotion is far safer than an unpreserved one, every time.

"Fragrance" — our scents come from two places: pure essential oils, and cosmetic-grade fine fragrance oils from our suppliers' skin-safe lines. We will always tell you which a product uses, and our unscented options are exactly that — nothing added at all.

Check our homework

You shouldn't have to take a soap company's word for any of this. These are the primary sources, straight from the regulators:

• FDA — Frequently asked questions on soap (what legally counts as real soap — ours does)
• FDA regulations (21 CFR 184.1666) — propylene glycol's GRAS listing
• FDA — Fragrances in cosmetics
• FDA — Cosmetics: laws, safety, and ingredient information

Questions about a specific ingredient on a specific label? Write to us — we answer those personally, usually the same day.