Thread: Art of shaving stores - Any good?

I like the AOS shaving creams. I find their limited selection of shaving equipment overpriced and their salespeople clueless on shaving knowledge.

I got some AOS preshave oil for xmas, and I must say that it works pretty well.

I don't know much else about the store's merchandise (only been there once), but here's one thing that I found kind of funny:

I went in to AOS in the mall near me and was chatting up one of the employees, and we got to talking about Straight Razor shaving. He told me that he was their "resident expert" on straight shaving. I said "oh cool! maybe I can bounce some ideas off of him." So my first question was whether I should try honing with a coticule or stick to synthetics (this was a while ago). He did not know what a "coticule" was, so I asked him how they hone their TI's that they sell. He says "I'm not sure, maybe a machine does it? DO NOT buy a stone though. it's too hard to learn, so you should leave it up to us to hone your razor".

OK, fair enough. You don't know what coticules are, and would rather I put off learning how to hone. So I then told him I wanted a nice strop,. and asked him whether I should go with a Tony Miller or Kanayama strop, and what the pros/cons are for each (I've since acquired both). His response? "Well I'VE never heard of them, so I would just stick to a Dovo or something that we sell"..

This kind of turned me off, and I haven't been back since. Not so much due to the lack of knowlege, but just because I never go to the mall!