Ariana & Evans is back in stock at Agent Shave with new K2E tallow formula and VR1 vegan base shaving soaps. This week we go undercover with Peter Charkalis from American wet shaving brand Ariana & Evans.

What is the story behind the Ariana & Evans brand?

Ariana & Evans is a family business, so we’re pretty much together all the time. Ariana is my daughters name and my name is Evans Peter Charkalis. My daughter Thalia Ariana (yes, I named the company after her) is attending university, however, she’s very much involved in the business. I rarely make a decision without her input at this point. At a young age, Thalia has a brilliant business mind (I’m very proud). 

I wanted to create a separate brand from The Shaving Shop. I didn’t want to pigeon hole the name to be market specific (ie Wet Shaving), as we are expanding this brand into a whole rage of products, from Skin Care to Candles.

What do you do outside of Ariana & Evans? 

As far as hobbies, I very much enjoy travel. I’m not sure if this is considered a hobby, but it’s my respite outside of work. Otherwise it’s 18 hrs, 7 days a week. We travel about 4 times a year outside of the country, plus my business travels take me away to some cool places. Breakfast is coffee and coffee, haha.

Do you wet shave?  

Could you imagine if I used disposable razors? I would lose all my street cred, I shave with straights and safety razors! The strangest place I have ever wet shaved On the beach in St Maarten (island in Caribbean). I did a video of this on YouTube several years back.  

When did you start shaving soap making & why? 

This is a long story, but I’ll try to shorten it. I already had a business selling wet shaving stuff. Similar to what other retailers do. However, the difference was, each artisan made shaving soap exclusive to my shop. This worked out quite well, but I wanted to expand to other retailers. The only way to do this was to create my own shaving soap. I also wanted more uniformity. This could only be done by taking everything in-house. I have only been making my own shaving soaps for a few years, so we’re still in our infancy…the best is yet to come!

What is your secret to achieving the perfect lather from your shaving soaps? 

Start with a relatively dry lather and gradually add water to achieve your desired consistency. One thing to point out and the mistake I see people do is overload our shaving soaps. Our soaps don’t require as much soap to make an amazing 3 pass lather. 30 seconds should be fine. 

What prompted the shaving soap formula change to K2E? 

As I mentioned, we are still relatively new to wet shaving and in our infancy. We exploded on the shaving scene and became quite popular very quickly. We are very fortunate for this. However, I was still learning and knew I could make what many considered among the best shaving soap base, even better. 

I made incremental changes to Kaizen, culminating to K2e. I believe this shaving soap base is superior in every metric. Post shave with the addition of emu oil is superb. It’s also the easiest soap to lather I have ever made. * 

What is your favourite Ariana & Evans scent?

I have a love affair with all my scents. However, I tend to like dark exotic scents. My all time favourite begins with a new one, Club n’ Roses. Also included in that list is Chasing the Dragon, Cannabliss Santal, Fruit de la Passion, Khalifa and Signature. Oh…Ouddiction and Aqua de Boracay. I should just list them all!

Is there a scent that you would really like to try making that you haven't yet?

Actually I’m about to make a Pistachio shaving soap. I love the scent and flavour of anything with Pistachio. I’ll let you know how this works out!

What is next?

Each and every year seems to be a banner year. 2022 is by far our most ambitious, exciting and challenging year in our company’s brief history. We are incredibly excited to collaborate and partner with Dovo in Germany. We recently moved to a larger headquarters location in America. We are also about to unveil our first store/showroom in America as well. In addition, we expanded in the Asian Pacific region. We established a regional headquarters in Binmaley, Philippines and signed up retailers based in China and India. I spent almost 3 months in the Philippines establishing this location which will support that part of the world.

Thank you to Peter for taking time to answer our questions, we hope our UK wet shaving community loves the new K2E formula shaving soap as much as we do! 

Image credit: Instagram @ariana.evans.thebrand