HAGS – why this brand has taken up significantly more space with us than planned

Actually, I didn't want to go this far with HAGS at first.

Test a few varieties.

See how the brand is received.

And then see.

The problem:

With HAGS, you pretty quickly find the next variety that makes you think: We need to have that one too.

And that's exactly how a few products have now become a significantly larger brand world for us.

HAGS is not made to please everyone

And that's exactly what I like about it.

Many classic personal care products try to be as pleasant as possible.

Not too loud.

Not too dark.

Not too special.

HAGS sometimes does exactly the opposite.

Unusual scents.

Eye-catching names.

Artwork you wouldn't mistake for a classic shaving soap from the drugstore shelf.

And varieties where you can quite rightly say:

Either I love it—or it's nothing for me at all.

For me, that's more of a strength than a weakness for an artisan brand.

Not every shaving soap has to smell "fresh" or "barbershop"

That's probably the point that interests me most about HAGS.

Of course, there are also more accessible scents.

But HAGS regularly dares to go significantly further.

Dark.

Fruity.

Aquatic.

Sweet.

Perfume-heavy.

Sometimes quite unusual.

Because of this, not every new variety feels like a slightly altered version of the previous one.

And that's exactly why it's fun to test your way through the brand.

Some varieties I probably would never have searched for myself

That is now an important point for me in the selection of the range.

If I only included products that exactly matched my own taste in scents, our range would eventually be quite one-sided.

HAGS sometimes forces me a little out of my own comfort zone.

And that's exactly what's good.

Because some scents work on customers precisely because they are different from what I would have personally chosen first.

By the way, that's one of the things I had to learn when building the shop:

My taste is not automatically your taste.

With HAGS, the artwork is part of the product for me

Normally I say:

A beautiful tin doesn't make a good shaving soap.

And it stays that way.

But with HAGS, it would be just as wrong to completely ignore the design.

The artwork belongs to the identity of the individual varieties.

You recognize many products immediately.

And often the design fits quite well with what you expect from the scent.

That doesn't make the tin better at shaving, of course.

But it makes a product something you remember.

And especially in an area where many very similar tins sometimes stand next to each other, that's not entirely unimportant.

The soap remains the deciding factor

Because if only the label were interesting, we wouldn't have expanded HAGS further.

In the end, a shaving soap has to work exactly where it counts:

when lathering,

in its slipperiness,

in its protection during shaving

and in the feel on the skin afterwards.

That's exactly why HAGS is more than just a brand with crazy designs for me.

The design catches my attention. The performance decides whether the brand stays.

Why we now carry so many HAGS varieties

Because the brand has an advantage that I consider very important for our range:

The individual products can really take on different roles.

One variety can be dark and heavy.

The next fresh and summery.

Another one again works completely through scent and mood.

Because of this, I have less of a feeling that I'm just buying the same soap over and over again with a different sticker.

And when a new edition appears, I regularly catch myself asking the same question:

Do we really need another HAGS variety?

The reasonable answer would sometimes be:

No.

You probably know the actual answer by now.

That's why HAGS fits very well with our range

I want to carry brands that are distinctive.

If I were to cover the label and in the end ten products remained that all told the same story, I would have done something wrong.

HAGS brings its own signature.

Not only through the scents.

But also through the names, design, and the way new varieties are presented.

That makes the brand exciting for me.

And it also explains why we are now significantly deeper into the HAGS range than with many other manufacturers.

My conclusion

HAGS is not the brand I would introduce to someone with the words:

"You can't go wrong with this."

And that's exactly what I mean positively.

The brand is allowed to surprise.

Some varieties you like immediately.

Others not at all.

And with some, you probably need two or three shaves before you know what you actually think of it.

But that's exactly what I prefer over indifference.

Because a shaving soap that bothers no one, but also delights no one, ends up being one thing above all:

forgotten.

That happens to HAGS quite rarely.