THE BEARDSMAN ARCHIVE / SINCE 2009
BEARDSMAN DIDN’T START THIS YEAR.
It started in 2009.
The website is new. The bottles are being filled again. Some of the products are returning one at a time.
But Beardsman™ Oil Co. isn’t a new company trying to invent a history.
There already is one.
For years, Beardsman™ made beard oils, balms, washes, soaps, shave products and grooming goods, shipped orders, showed up at events, worked with other makers, sold wholesale, donated soap, made a commercial, and built a customer base that still exists in pieces all over the internet.
Then life changed.
The shop went quiet.
In 2026, the lights came back on.
2009 — THE BEGINNING
IT STARTED SMALL.
Beardsman™ Oil Co. began in 2009.
There wasn’t a marketing department. There wasn’t a product-development team. There wasn’t a giant launch.
The idea was simpler than that.
Make things we wanted to use ourselves. Soap. Grooming products. Things made in small batches instead of bought off a shelf and relabeled.
And because making things costs money, those products had to pay for their own materials.
That was the rule.
Sell enough of one batch to make the next one.
One order became another. One customer came back. Somebody told a friend. The little side project became a real company because people kept buying the products.
ONE BATCH AT A TIME.
The early company grew the way a lot of small makers grow: slowly, personally and without much separation between the person making the product and the person answering the email.
The same hands mixed the batch, filled the bottle, printed the label, packed the box and talked to the customer.
That stayed part of Beardsman™ even as the catalog got bigger.
THE PRODUCTS BECAME THE LANGUAGE OF THE BRAND
Beardsman™ became known first through scent.
Earl Grey. Bay Rum. North Woods. Lavender. Tea Tree. Citrus Blend. Cuban Coffee.
Some were traditional. Some were personal. Some were just strange enough to become memorable.
EARL GREY
Earl Grey became one of the clearest examples of what Beardsman™ was trying to do.
It wasn’t built around a generic “men’s” fragrance. It was built around something specific: bergamot, black tea, lavender and tea tree.
For the founder, the scent also carried the memory of Aunt Hazel’s kitchen and summers in the mid-1980s.
That personal connection is one reason Earl Grey came back with the relaunch.
BAY RUM, NORTH WOODS & THE REST
Bay Rum, North Woods and the other early scents helped round out a catalog that was never meant to feel like ten versions of the same thing.
Some were bright. Some were dark. Some were herbal. Some were woodsy. Some were seasonal.
The goal was always to make each one feel like its own product.
2014 — 45 TRIALS, THEN BATCH 46.
One of the clearest surviving looks at early product development comes from a later Beardsman™ flashback post about December 2014.
After 45 trials, batch number 46 became the winning formula for the original creamy conditioning balm.
That matters because it shows what “small batch” actually meant inside the company: not simply making small quantities, but repeatedly adjusting a product until it felt right.
2014 — DIAMONDS & RUST
Before Christmas 2014, a Beardsman™ wholesale order went to Diamonds & Rust: boxed beard oils, red wax-sealed bottles and soaps tied with twine.
The beard oils came in apothecary bottles. Shipping them was a problem. Padding and boxing the bottles was supposed to help, but it just didn’t work.
The shop shared this photo, and Beardsman™ reposted it on January 10, 2015.
2015 — BEARDSMAN LEAVES THE WORKBENCH
By 2015, Beardsman™ was becoming something larger than an online storefront.
The company was showing up in person, collaborating with other makers, opening wholesale accounts and building a repeat-customer program.
CANAM BEARD & MOUSTACHE COMPETITION — PORTLAND, MAINE
A surviving March 2015 company newsletter announced that Beardsman™ was heading to Portland, Maine as a vendor at the CanAm Beard & Moustache Competition during the Bearded Brewfest weekend.
The company was also sponsoring a local competitor entering his first beard competition.
The event poster dates Bearded Brewfest to March 21, 2015, at the Sullivan Complex in Portland, Maine, with the CanAm Beard & Moustache Competition during the first session.
It was the kind of event that made sense for Beardsman™ at the time: independent makers, beard clubs, beer, competitions and people who cared enough about grooming products to stop at a table and talk about them.
LUMBERJACK COMB CO.
That same 2015 newsletter announced work with Lumberjack Comb Co.
Beardsman™ planned to carry more of maker Brent’s work while developing a custom line of oils and soaps for him.
It was an early example of the company moving beyond direct retail into collaboration and private-label work.
WHOLESALE & LOYALTY
By March 2015, wholesale ordering had been opened online and a customer-loyalty program was being prepared for repeat buyers.
The company was still small, but it was doing real-company things: retail, wholesale, events, collaborations and repeat business.
MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE
After meeting Jason at a convention in Manchester, New Hampshire, HeadQuest followed up in August 2015 about a possible company spotlight.
What caught their attention was how connected Beardsman™ had become. Jason was the only vendor of his type they had met with such an extensive network and involvement in so many charitable organizations. There was more than enough material for a feature.
2015 — THE FULL LINE, REVIEWED
An independent look at the Beardsman™ product line from Ugly Dudes With Beard Reviews.
Watch the full-line review ↗
Ugly Dudes With Beard Reviews · August 22, 2015
2016 — PINE TAR BEARD WASH, REVIEWED
Watch the Pine Tar Beard Wash review ↗
Lets Talk Beards · June 6, 2016
CIRCA 2015–2016 — MORE PRODUCT REVIEWS
- Review of Beardsman Oil Co ↗Beard Review · circa 2015–2016
- Beard Wash review ↗Beard Review · circa 2015–2016
- Pine and Dead Sea mud bar soap review ↗Ugly Dudes With Beard Reviews · circa 2015–2016
2016 — THE CATALOG GETS SERIOUS
A surviving Beardsman™ wholesale line sheet dated July 30, 2016 gives one of the clearest snapshots of what the company had become by then.
The line was much broader than the small relaunch catalog people see today.
BEARD OIL — GOLD LINE
Citrus Blend. Earl Grey. North Woods. Tea Tree.
BEARD OIL — SILVER LINE
Lavender. Bay Rum. Cuban Coffee. Seasonal.
BEARD BALM
Citrus Blend. Cuban Coffee. Earl Grey. North Woods.
BEARD WASH
Citrus Blend. Earl Grey. North Woods. Peppermint & Tea Tree. Pine Tar.
MOUSTACHE WAX
Citrus Blends. Earl Grey. North Woods. Tea Tree.
SHAVE SOAP
Menthol. Rosemary Lavender. Barbershop. Sandalwood.
AFTERSHAVE
Menthol. Rosemary Lavender. Barbershop. Sandalwood.
SAFETY RAZORS
Open Comb. Closed Comb. Butterfly.
SOAP
Cuban Coffee. African Black Soap. Seasonal. Activated Charcoal / Tea Tree. Special-run bars.
ACCESSORIES
Lip balm and other grooming accessories rounded out the line.
This was not a four-oil hobby catalog. By 2016, Beardsman™ had become a broad men’s-grooming line with wholesale pricing, case quantities and products spanning beard, shave and soap.
BEHIND OTHER LABELS
The Beardsman™ wholesale catalog was only part of the work. By 2016, Jason was also manufacturing for a dozen other beard care companies. For some, he made a single product. For others, he made the complete line.
The work went beyond beard care: lotions for spas, massage oils, candles for another company, bath soaks, eye serum, and an exfoliating foot scrub for a retreat in California.
He was also making guest toiletry kits for a small boutique hotel.
Because this was private-label and white-label manufacturing, client names and links remain confidential.
HOLD FAST & THE WORLD OF HANDMADE POMADE
Beardsman™ made more than beard products. The old line included Hold Fast pomade in three formulas: clay, unorthodox water-based, and oil-based.
Pomade in Words brought together handmade pomade makers from around the globe in its directory, Handmade pomades & their brewers. Readers contributed suggestions and additions as the list grew.
Under Massachusetts, it lists:
The Beardsman™ Oil Co. — Jason Dorr
That was a pomade manufacturer listing, part of the same work in formulation and small-batch manufacturing behind the rest of the Beardsman™ catalog.
See the worldwide pomade-maker directory ↗
Bertold Roux · Pomade in Words · First published May 5, 2016; updated June 10, 2020.
2016 — IPSWICH HARVEST FEST
Beardsman™’s local event history also included a beard competition tied to Ipswich Harvest Fest.
A surviving September 18, 2016 Instagram repost from Ipswich Ale congratulated the winners of the Beardsman™ Oil Co. beard competition and noted that raffle money would be donated to charities chosen by the winners.
It is a useful snapshot of the company at home: local beer, a beard competition, charitable giving and Beardsman™ woven into the event itself.
2016 — GOOD IN THE HOOD, IPSWICH ALE
Not every Beardsman™ event happened somewhere else.
Closer to home, Beardsman™ Oil Company organized and hosted the Twisted Whiskers Beard Competition as part of Ipswich Ale Brewery’s annual Good in the Hood block party.
By 2016, Good in the Hood was already an established Ipswich community event built around local food, music, area businesses, family activities and Ipswich Ale.
The beard competition gave Beardsman™ a real role in the event rather than simply a vendor table: organize the contest, bring the local beard crowd together and make it part of the day.
It was a very different kind of appearance from the larger tattoo conventions and beard competitions farther from home. This one was local — rooted in the same North Shore community where Beardsman™ started.
Surviving event photos and additional contest material will be added here as they are recovered.
SOAP BECAME SOMETHING BIGGER
GOOD SOAP. GOOD NEIGHBOR.
Soap started as another product made in the shop.
Then it became something that could do a little more.
The idea was simple: sell a full-size bar, then use part of that sale to help make smaller bars that could be given to people who needed them.
SEPTEMBER 2016 — BEVERLY BOOTSTRAPS
In September 2016, Beardsman™ made its first major soap donation to Beverly Bootstraps in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Approximately 250 bars were donated.
The idea behind it was simple then and it is still simple now:
A bar of soap is ordinary until you don’t have one.
2016 — NO-SHAVE NOVEMBER IN IPSWICH
In November 2016, The Local Ne.ws covered the Ipswich Police Department’s No-Shave November fundraiser for cancer awareness, education, research and prevention. The article identified Jason Dorr as the owner of Beardsman™ Oil Co. and quoted his support for people trying facial hair.
Read “Cops Give Shaving a Miss For Month” ↗
John P. Muldoon · November 12, 2016 · The Local Ne.ws
2017 — LIVE FREE OR DIE TATTOO EXPO
Manchester was also part of Beardsman™’s event history through the Live Free or Die Tattoo Expo.
A surviving July 20, 2017 post from the expo promoted its Beard & Moustache Competition for Saturday, July 22 at the Radisson Hotel in Manchester.
The competition was sponsored and judged by the Bearded Sinners Beard Club of New Hampshire, with cash prizes, trophies and gift baskets contributed by local businesses including The Beardsman™ Oil Company.
That puts Beardsman™ directly into the documented event record as a prize contributor supporting the competition, alongside local barbershops and other sponsors.
THE FIRST SOCIAL LOGO
Before the later label systems settled in, Beardsman™ used a simpler social-media identity built around the comb-and-drop mark and a bold BEARDSMAN OIL CO wordmark.
This version survives in a 2017 Live Free or Die Tattoo Expo post and is one of the clearest snapshots of the brand’s early social presence.
NOVEMBER 11, 2017 — WHISKERS OF WAR
WHISKERS OF WAR & THE ROAD
Beardsman™ wasn’t built entirely in the shop. For years, I traveled to beard and moustache competitions up and down the East Coast as a vendor, with a few trips farther out. Virginia became almost a second circuit for me: Hampton Roads, Richmond and other events where I kept running into the same clubs, vendors, makers and competitors.
One of the groups I remember most is the Hampton Roads Beard & Stache Society. I went back year after year, sometimes alone, sometimes with my brother or a friend. They were always gracious hosts.
Their Whiskers of War competition deserves a place in this history. It raised money for homeless veterans, and Beardsman™ returned as a vendor more than once. Of all the competitions I attended, that one still stands out.
The road also became part of how I learned the industry. Through Tim Humble of 80 Beards, I became involved with a Facebook group called Beard Co Founders and later helped administer it. I spoke with hundreds of company owners and became a fairly vocal source of advice on manufacturing, formulation, labeling, cGMP, wholesale and running an actual cosmetics business.
I was not always polite about it. I had no patience for companies making products in bathrooms, making beard-growth claims, calling fragrance-oil products “all natural,” or treating customers like they wouldn’t know the difference.
That earned me a lot of friends and a few enemies. My standards never changed.
The shop was where Beardsman™ was made. The road was where a lot of the brand was built.
AMAZON PRIME & RETAIL STORES
A June 20, 2017 Instagram post shows rows of finished product during what Beardsman™ described as a “good restock” for Amazon Prime and several stores.
That surviving post is one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the company’s reach had moved beyond direct website sales by then.
NEW PRODUCTS IN THE WORKS
A July 2017 post captures another ordinary but useful piece of company history: bottles, tubes and products spread across the work surface while new items were being developed.
2017 — CITIZENS INN
THE SOAP PROGRAM CONTINUED.
The soap program continued in 2017 with another donation, this time to Citizens Inn in Peabody, Massachusetts.
This wasn’t a campaign. We made soap. You bought it. We gave some away.
The years keep passing. The need never fades.
The modern Soap Shop is a continuation of that same idea.
BUY A BAR. GIVE A BAR.
Today, one full-size bar sold helps create four approximately one-ounce donation bars.
2018 — BEARDSMAN ON THE ROAD
In 2018, Beardsman™ teamed up with The Beard Whisperer in Texas on co-branded T-shirts. The Beard Whisperer offered customers a discount when they came in wearing one.
That same year, Jason started seeing Beardsman™ shirts on people as he traveled around the country to beard competitions and other events.
2018 — CUBAN COFFEE
CUBAN COFFEE
Cuban Coffee developed its own following and eventually became one of the products most closely associated with the old company.
On December 4, 2018, The Exotic Bean included Beardsman™ Cuban Coffee Beard Balm as item 15 in its “17 Greatest Coffee Gifts for the Coffee Lover in Your Life” gift guide ↗, written by Matty Byloos, alongside coffee equipment and specialty coffee products.
That small mention matters because it is part of the surviving outside record of the brand: someone other than Beardsman™ found the product and thought it was worth putting in front of their own audience.
2018 — GIFTS WITH LOCAL FLAIR
Beardsman™ appeared in The Local Ne.ws holiday gift guide in December 2018. The personal-care section pointed readers toward the Ipswich company’s locally made beard and moustache products, along with razors.
Read “Gifts with local flair” ↗
John P. Muldoon · December 23, 2018 · The Local Ne.ws
THE INTERNET LEFT A PAPER TRAIL
The old internet is messy.
Pages disappear. Stores close. Images break. Platforms change.
But brands leave footprints.
Old product listings. Independent reviews. YouTube videos. Event pages. Gift guides. Directories. Marketplace listings. Old newsletters. Old emails. Old photographs.
Some survived intact.
Some survive only as fragments.
We are collecting them here instead of pretending the company started over from zero.
VIDEO REVIEWS
Independent video reviews still survive for old Beardsman™ products, including Silver Line Lavender and Bay Rum.
Those reviews matter because they capture how the products were actually being talked about at the time, not how we remember them now.
MARKETPLACE & PRODUCT TRACES
Old marketplace and product-listing remnants still exist for earlier Beardsman™ products, including beard washes and other items from the original catalog.
As those references are verified, they will be added here with dates and source links.
CUSTOMER REVIEWS
Historical reviews are still being recovered from old listings and archives.
Only verified review text will be published here.
2019 — MAN OF HOPE
In October 2019, Beardsman™ ran the Man of Hope patch fundraiser for Partners in Development ↗.
The limited run was numbered out of 50. Patches sold for $25 shipped, with every penny going to the charity. Robbie Markel, founder and mad genius behind Foot Fetish Pedals ↗, makes custom guitar pedals. He also designed the Man of Hope patch as part of his “Man of” patch series and donated the patches for the fundraiser. Shipping costs were covered separately, and Beardsman™ matched donations dollar for dollar.
A surviving October 7, 2019 post in Black Iron Union announced the fundraiser.
Read the original October 7, 2019 fundraiser announcement ↗
Jason still has patch #1.
2019 — THE COMMERCIAL
By 2019, Beardsman™ had gone far enough to produce a full one-minute commercial.
The finished master still survives in the company archive.
The voice-over also survives independently in voice actor David Strong’s commercial portfolio ↗ under “The Beardsman™ Oil Company.”
The archived master carries a December 2019 creation date.
The commercial belongs on this page as an actual artifact of the old company, not just a sentence saying it once existed.
THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT A BRAND
I can make the bottle.
I can mix the batch.
I can print the label and put the box in the mail.
That alone doesn’t make a brand.
The people who bought this stuff, talked about it, came back for it, gave it to somebody else and remembered it years later are the reason Beardsman™ became anything at all.
That part was never mine.
I’m just the guy in the shop.
THEN LIFE HAPPENED.
Eventually, Beardsman™ stopped.
There was no dramatic corporate ending.
Nobody bought the company.
Nobody turned it into something else.
Life simply changed.
The products stopped being made.
Orders stopped shipping.
The shop went quiet.
And for a long time, Beardsman™ existed mostly in old bottles, old photographs, old websites, old reviews and the memories of the people who had used it.
WHAT DIDN’T CHANGE
THE IDEA SURVIVED.
Even while the company was inactive, the basic philosophy behind it never really changed.
Make something because it deserves to exist.
Know what is in it.
Be honest about what it can do.
Don’t invent problems just to sell people solutions.
Don’t claim beard oil grows a beard.
Don’t turn ordinary grooming products into miracle cures.
And if a simple product works, leave it simple.
2026 — THE LIGHTS COME BACK ON
In 2026, Beardsman™ returned.
Not as a giant launch.
Not with fifty products.
Not with a fake countdown clock.
The relaunch started the same way the original company did.
One product. One batch. One shelf at a time.
Old favorites came first, and the catalog began growing again from there.
SAME IDEA. BETTER SHOP.
A lot has changed since 2009.
Packaging is cleaner.
The website is better.
Fulfillment is more organized.
Product photography is better.
The catalog is being rebuilt more deliberately.
But the underlying idea is still recognizable.
Make good products.
Be straight about what they do.
Don’t make ridiculous promises.
THE SOAP SHOP RETURNS
When Beardsman™ returned, the soap program came with it.
The modern Soap Shop carries forward the same idea behind the original donations:
Good soap should also be able to do some good.
Every qualifying full-size bar sold helps fund four approximately one-ounce donation bars for shelters and community organizations.
THE ARCHIVE IS STILL GROWING
This page is not finished.
Neither is the historical record.
Old Beardsman™ material is still being recovered: customer reviews, event photos, product photography, videos, product listings, labels, wholesale sheets, emails, old packaging, advertising and press references.
Where a date or source can be verified, it will be added.
If you have an old Beardsman™ bottle, photograph, review, event picture or other piece of the company’s history, we’d like to see it.
YOU ARE BEARDSMAN.
The people who bought this stuff, talked about it, came back for it and remembered it years later are the reason there is anything here to relaunch.
I’m still just the guy in the shop.
You are Beardsman™.
And if you were here the first time:
Welcome back.