The Soap Improv® is a curated personal care shop built on restraint, taste, and long-term thinking.

We select products the same way we use them ourselves—by paying attention to formulation, function, design, and history. Our assortment balances legacy brands refined over decades with small-batch makers working at a human scale.

The store is founder-led and product-driven. Our founder studied formulation and product safety at the Institute of Personal Care Science in Australia, and that technical foundation informs how every product is evaluated—without losing sight of daily usability.

We don’t sell everything.
We curate on purpose.

Less noise. Better choices.

A Note from the Founder

I started The Soap Improv® out of a long-standing interest in the things we use every day—and how little thought we’re usually asked to give them.

That interest started more than a decade earlier. In 2012, I began making soap at home, experimenting with oils, lye, additives, and process. What began as a hands-on craft quickly became a deeper curiosity: why certain formulas worked the way they did, why some products felt better over time, and why others didn’t hold up at all.

That curiosity gradually expanded beyond soap into cosmetics formulation and the broader personal care industry. I became less interested in novelty and trends, and more interested in structure—ingredient function, formulation logic, safety, and why certain products endure while others disappear.

Personal care sits at an unusual intersection of chemistry, habit, and trust. When it works well, you barely notice it. When it doesn’t, you feel it immediately.

That path eventually led me to formal study at the Institute of Personal Care Science in Australia in 2020, where I focused on formulation, ingredient function, and product safety. That experience didn’t turn me into a brand evangelist or a trend forecaster—it gave me a framework for judgment.

Today, that framework guides every decision here.

I believe people make better choices when they’re given honest options and clear context—without unnecessary noise, pressure, or manipulation. The Soap Improv® operates with that belief at its core: minimal intervention where freedom and choice matter most, and clear standards only where safety, honesty, and trust are essential. We focus on stewardship, transparency, and letting the market do what it does best.

We don’t carry products because they’re popular.
We carry them because they make sense—technically, practically, and over time.

We physically receive, store, and ship every item ourselves. We don’t open products, we don’t test them, and we don’t blur the line between new and used. Simple rules. Clear responsibility. Respect for the customer.

The Soap Improv® is my attempt to build the kind of store I wish existed: edited, thoughtful, and grounded in both taste and understanding. A place where fewer products mean better choices, where independent brands can coexist without being flattened, and where trust is earned through restraint rather than excess.

We trust people to choose.

Thanks for being here.

— Jeremy
Founder, The Soap Improv®