13-03-2025
The £8.50 bar of soap used by the King
Last week a bar of soap arrived on my desk. So far, so boring. But this soap was shaped like a lemon – complete with a convincingly grainy texture – and smelt exactly how a lemon should smell: zesty and fresh.
And the brand? It was the £8.50 Lemon Soap from Bronnley, a brand that has just received a royal warrant from King Charles III as supplier of soap.
It turns out soap bars are in fashion again, after years of plastic-pump hand washes reigning supreme. In fact, it is five years ago this month since the start of the first Covid lockdown and the resultant boom in liquid washes and sanitisers.
But now we're back on soap, in a big way: the global bar soap market is estimated to grow by around £7 billion from 2024 to 2028, according to market research company Technavio.
There's something so satisfying about how well a bar of soap lathers up in your hands, plus the newer formulations don't feel skin-stripping – which I've always found very off-putting – and are mostly very moisturising.
For a product that was originally created in 1892, the Bronnley Lemon Soap has stood the test of time, and it is still produced in the UK in small batches – a rarity nowadays. It's also incredibly popular: one bar of the brand's soap is sold every four minutes.
