Arko Soap: Revisiting Wet Shaving's Most Divisive Scent
Hello, my friends. Welcome back, good to see you again. John here, also known as Cape Cod Wet Shaving. Hope you’re well, hope you’re having a good summer.
The coffee for this shave is Wicked Wolf from Raven’s Brew. I’m still working my way through the bag, only the second time I’ve ground beans from it. That coffee’s too good to drink daily. It’s a special occasion coffee for me.
This video’s one I’ve been wanting to make for a long time. I was going through my YouTube Studio insights, the tool that lets you filter your videos by most viewed, and my second most-viewed video of all time (behind, oddly enough, one where I used a CVS Goodline grooming set) is the one where I used Arko. I made that video back in 2021 or 2022, had to be one of the first ten videos I ever put out. It’s an old video and it’s still pulling views. So I’ve been telling myself for a while that I should do a proper redo now that I know a lot more than I did back then. That’s what this one is.
The Gear for This Shave
I’ve got the Arko puck blooming, been sitting for about five minutes. I usually go ten just to be safe, but Arko runs a little on the softer side for a puck, so five does it.
For splash I’m using a mentholated lemon lime, one I found randomly on Amazon. Ordered one and it came as a two-pack, so now I’ve got two of these giant old-school Listerine-looking bottles sitting around. I use it sparingly.
Razor is the new Parker Variant. I’m in love with this thing. Easily one of my favorite razors this year, and I can see myself reaching for it all year long. Brush is a white Omega boar, I don’t remember the model number off the top of my head, doesn’t matter here. Blade’s a Treet Falcon on its fifth use, and I think it’s on its way out. Getting a little tuggy. I usually get three or four uses out of a Falcon before it starts losing its edge, so I pushed this one a bit.
Why Arko Divides People
Arko is about as divisive as soaps get. You either like it or you hate it, no middle ground. There aren’t a lot of scents I personally dislike, it’s hard for me to land on ones I can’t stand, but I get why this one splits a room.
The scent is hard to place. It’s very chemical, but not in a bowl-cleaner way. Think more like lemon Lysol, which I realize also sounds gross when I say it out loud. There’s a heavy citronella note under that, and a little bit of a musky, laundry-detergent thing going on too. People have compared it to urinal cakes. I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I understand the comparison.
I like it. It’s different, and it’s tallow-based, which is part of the story here. Arko isn’t the only soap that smells like this either. My buddy Gareth over at Shave Supply sent me a Turkish shave stick with an order once, something I’d never heard of, and it smells almost identical to Arko. And if you’ve ever smelled Derby, Derby’s scent is close to a dead ringer for this too.
Lathering It Up
Look at that. This stuff lathers up fast. It’s a good soap with a good base, the fragrance is just the part that splits people. You could absolutely load this with a badger brush, but I go boar out of habit whenever I’m working a puck, because pucks are usually double or triple milled and pretty hard.
This soap gets used for punishments in the community, believe it or not. People make bets, loser has to shave with Arko for a week. I think that’s a little cruel, honestly.
If you’re curious about buying it, I checked Amazon to see if they still carry the puck, and it looks like they’re also rolling out a new tub format now, similar to how Proraso packages theirs. I don’t know if that means the pucks are getting phased out. I hope not. The shave sticks are still around too, and I’d guess the shave stick is actually Arko’s most popular format in this community.
My daughter’s watching her brothers downstairs while I record this, so if you hear thumps in the background, that’s just the kids, not movers. Five of them total. Oldest is about to turn 20, youngest will be two soon, and in between I’ve got one about to turn 16, an 11-year-old (my only girl), and a three-year-old. Busy house, and it’s summer break on top of it. My wife’s at work, so I lean on the older kids to keep an eye on the younger ones so I can get videos like this done, or yard work, or laundry, or anything that takes more than two uninterrupted minutes. Wouldn’t trade it. Probably earning some premature gray hair for it, but I love what I do.
Second Pass and the Ingredients
Look at this lather. It’s honestly worth trying for that alone, especially if you’re new or you’ve been on the fence because people talk trash about the scent. I don’t remember exactly what I paid for this puck, it wasn’t much, maybe six or seven dollars, and that was years ago so it’s probably more now. I’ve had this specific puck for about half a decade. Smell hasn’t faded, lather’s just as good as the day I got it.
I wanted to show the ingredients list, but it’s tough to read on camera, so pause the video if you want to check it yourself. First ingredient listed is potassium tallowate.
Should You Buy Arko?
Thinking it over while I finished my second pass, I don’t think I should just say “try it.” I think you should get it.
When you start out in wet shaving, there’s a set of steps you go through without really noticing you’re going through them. You get your first safety razor, your nerves settle, you get comfortable. Same thing happens with a straight razor down the line. At some point you drift away from canned goop and pick up a real shave soap, and that first one is probably going to be Proraso, or maybe a Van der Hagen. Good stuff, by the way. Then eventually you work your way toward small-batch artisan soaps, names like Sir Hare or Ariana & Evans, and Stirling is usually one of the first of those to come up.
Arko sits in the tier of soaps you should try at some point in that journey, just because it’s so well known in this hobby that being able to say “yeah, I’ve tried Arko” means something. I like it myself. That said, there’s stuff out there I don’t care for, and I won’t name the artisan or the soap, because artisans put real work into these releases and I’m not going to trash somebody’s project. There was one soap sample a while back with cucumber in it that I just couldn’t get past. Nothing against cucumber, I like cucumber, it was just how it was blended into that particular soap.
Same story with star anise for a long time, which smells like black licorice, and I hate black licorice. Hate the smell, hate the taste. But star anise blended well doesn’t bother me at all these days. Leather scents used to be a hard pass for me too. Not hated, exactly, just avoided for years. There’s one release from a friend of mine that smells just like a lambskin leather coat I own, and that one I liked from the start, but leather in general took a while to come around on. That’s the thing about this hobby: you smell something and recoil, and then a year later, after you’ve smelled a hundred other things, you go back to it and it’s not so bad. You evolve. I think that’s what happened with me and Arko.
Wrapping Up
Splash time. This lemon lime is way more mentholated than I expected, got it a little too close to my eyes there. More cooling than Sterling’s Glacial, though not quite up at that level, and more than Proraso Green. Pairs well with the heavy lemon in the Arko itself.
That’ll do it for Arko. Lather was fantastic the whole way through, I’ve still got some left in the puck, could keep going with a little more water if I wanted to. Hope this got you interested if you haven’t tried it yet.
Thanks for watching, and I’ll catch you in the next one.