Our Story

Crafted with precision and luxury

Most luxury is skin deep. We decided to go deeper.

Cole & Cade wasn't born in a boardroom; it was born from a pursuit of consistency in a world of "good enough." For years, I (Rowan) sought out high-end soaps and cosmetics, only to be met with two recurring disappointments: fleeting designs and uninspiring scents.

In the world of artisanal soap, beauty is often temporary. A beautiful swirl or a delicate botanical topping usually vanishes after the first few lathers, leaving behind a plain, characterless bar.

I believed that if you pay for art, you should keep the art until the very last bubbles.

"We don’t just make soap; we make functional sculpture. At Cole & Cade, we believe that the objects you use every day should be as reliable as they are stylish."

The Engineering of Elegance

The journey to create a "through pattern"—a design that remains physically integrated through the entire body of the soap—was anything but simple. It required a marriage of traditional cold-process chemistry and solid engineering principles (I (Rowan) am an aerospace engineer by trade with a background in microbiology, of all things).

  • The Vision: A soap where the intricate pattern you see on day one is the same pattern you see on day thirty.
  • The Trials: It took a relentless series of formulations, custom-built moulds, custom pressing tools, bespoke curing and gelling processes and hundreds, yes hundreds, of failed batches to find the "Goldilocks" process for each scent.
  • The Breakthrough: After 2 years of refinement, the technique finally held. We had successfully created a process that yields a bar that maintained its aesthetic integrity from the first use to the final sliver and whose design could be changed to produce almost any pattern imaginable. 
  • Scale: Initially it was only possible to create 8-16 bars at a time with varying levels of success. This was complicated by the highly variable chemistry caused by the scent formulations. As the process was refined and new tools designed and implemented, the number of bars increased over and over while the effort required to create them did not. Once a precipice was hit with scalable potential, I knew that Cole and Cade was a viable venture.

Cole & Cade Today

This is the start of Cole and Cade with our first ever signature design soap, but this is just the beginning. We will be bringing many new designs as well as introducing new "through pattern" offerings including shave soap, beard balms, and shampoo bars as well as beard oils, moisturisers and deodorants with plant based, cruelty free and ethically sourced ingredients. 

Here are some painfully honest pictures from our development history :)

Our Journey

2024

The Beginning

I (Rowan) started trials with melt and pour soap to see if full size patterns were possible. There are a couple of images above of that disaster :D

2025

Process Development

Ongoing trials with cold process soaps. Hundreds of iterations and improvements in a truly trial and error method finally resulting in a stable and repeatable process (Bottom Middle image above).

2026

Getting started

Curation of multiple scents and colour combinations producing the current soap offering from Cole and Cade.

Next steps

New offerings

Over the last 2 years there have been a number of offshoot projects that will result in new offerings from Cole and Cade. These include, beard oils, shave soaps with through patterns and variations on the design of the current maze pattern.

The future

Expansion and new Capability

In the medium term future, once we have stabilised the brand, we will endeavour to expand into new areas within the UK to bring job opportunities to areas of low employment and reinforce our community approach to our brand while continuing to innovate within the cosmetics space as well as seeking other areas of development based on our core principles.

Our Values

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Luxury Craftsmanship

Many of our products require a true artisan approach with skilled hands. We never shy away from difficulty.

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Ethical, natural and sustainable

Environmental responsibility is at the heart of everything we do. This includes building a UK based business to play our part in the UKs future.

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Innovation

We're always looking for new ways to improve and evolve with new processes, patterns and offerings to add an aspect of interest to the norm.

FAQs

Do you use essential oils?

Yes, all of our scents use a blend of natural essential oils and with some of the trickier scent profiles (looking at you Melon) a fragrance alternative is necessary for the scent offering to be possible at all. Our ingredients labels are very clear as not to cause any confusion. We also adhere to the upcoming EU and UK allergen declaration standards providing a level of transparency not seen in many other brands.

Who is Cole and Cade?

Cole and Cade are not people. It emanated from “Cole and Hwīt”, old English for “Black and White”, from the contrast of our patterns but evolved as a nod to the rustic nature of our products with Coal (the black stuff) and Cade (Juniperus Oxycedrus) as conceptual foundations and a reflection on the family values that spawned the company.

When did the business begin?

I (Rowan) have been creating scents and oils since 2020 as a personal endeavour to get access to the types of products I had never been able to find. After a few years of using my creations, I developed the through pattern concept and tooling that ultimately created the uniqueness of the brand and I currently make every product, by hand.

Are the products Hand Made?

Yes, all of our products are handmade, personally inspected, packed and shipped. The artisan nature of the product means that this will not change.

What makes Cole and Cade different?

  • Cole and Cade Soaps and oils are created from necessity. We use the finest of ingredients, with traditional processes (“True Soap”) and have developed our formulations to provide the core of a rich lather, unique designs, minimal soap scum (something that personally irks me(Rowan)) and long-lasting economy.
  • Every bar of soap is cured for between 4 and 6 weeks providing a dense and long lasting bar.
  • All of our products are made from the ground up using our own proprietary formulations designed to meet our scrupulous quality and performance standards.

Do you make antibacterial soaps?

This is somewhat of an oddity, and no. There is little evidence that off-the-shelf antibacterial soaps do anything as the main mechanism for their cleansing nature is to lubricate and remove bacteria and viruses by washing, not to kill them on your skin, which can also damage your skin (The FDA has recently banned them for this reason). This is why we focus on skin health in our formulations with Shae butter and Castor oil to give a rich nourishing cleanse without harsh chemicals.

Do you do samples?

Yes but no. We endeavour to be a zero waste company and our process produces a small amount of “flash”. This flash is re-moulded into sample bars and sent to new customers as free samples when they are available so you may receive a free sample, but otherwise we do not do them by request.

How is the pattern made?

This would be telling. We have several patents covering our process and tooling and will be creating many more patterns over time. If you have any suggestions, or would like custom batches and orders, feel free to get in touch.