Our Story
From Marine to Half-a-Chemist to Soap Maker
It started as a joke.
In 2020, while working as a Coatings Manager in the oil industry, I googled “saponification” to understand the chemistry behind a process I was seeing. My co-worker looked over and joked, “You should start a soap company.”
I started selling in October 2020. That offhand comment became Prohibition Soap, and what began with bar soap has grown into beard care, body care, and room fresheners.
Meet Ray Thomas
I served as a Marine Corps infantry rifleman from 2002 to 2006, including three combat deployments totaling about 2.5 years.
After the Corps, I discovered my interest in chemistry while building an entire nickel plating facility from the ground up with zero experience. Just me and my Marine boss figuring shit out as we went.
I’m not a chemist. I’m a “half-a-chemist.” But that same problem-solving mentality is how I approach soap making: test, learn, improve, repeat.
From Detergent to Real Soap
For years, I accepted dry skin as part of my normal routine. Then an ad from another soap company got my attention. I tried a handmade bar and was hooked.
That “holy shit” moment changed what I expected from a shower. I wanted to create products that could give someone else that same feeling of discovering something they’d been missing.
Why Prohibition?
My fascination with Prohibition-era cocktails and Mafia culture runs deep. I watched The Sopranos during my 2005 Iraq deployment, and the food, music, and legendary gangster suits all stuck with me. The suits even helped lead me to a job at Bachrach after the military.
For cocktail-inspired soaps, I start with the actual drink. I visit bars, order cocktails, smell them, taste them, and take notes. Then I work on matching the soap’s scent and color to the drink that inspired it.
Meet Mama Prohibition
My mom, Ann, spent 50 years in music ministry as an organist, pianist, and choir director. She planned the music for church services and put together a student orchestra like no other church had: around 20 musicians, in a church with about 70 people in attendance. Classical music remains one of her great loves.
When she retired in 2023, she offered to help me with the business. What started with stamping shipping boxes and counting inventory grew into making beard care products, then much more. Today, she makes our beard care, body care, room fresheners, and melt-and-pour soaps, while I make the cold process bars.
Christmas is her absolute favorite holiday, and making her melt-and-pour Christmas soaps gives her another way to enjoy the season. Halloween gets plenty of attention, too. It’s my favorite holiday, and she shares in the fun, especially when making the Death’s Head skull soaps.
At home, she enjoys cooking and sees a familiar connection between time in the kitchen and making our products. As she puts it: “I use recipes to cook, and I use recipes to make our products. These are not so different after all.”
She also loves spoiling her “granddog,” Stanley, our soap shop dog. He has a pretty good arrangement.
You can find some of her soaps in Mama Prohibition’s Lineup, but her work reaches well beyond that collection.
Supporting Our Brothers and Sisters
In 2019, I attended a reunion of my old unit, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines. It was a chance to reconnect with old comrades and share memories that only we could understand.
At that reunion, I met the team from Reuniting After War (RAW). Their work helping veterans reconnect meant something personal to me, and I wanted to support it.
That connection led to our Reuniting After War Camo Collection, which helps raise funds to support their work. Mama P puts considerable time and effort into this mission, too, including preparing our product donations.
Premium Ingredients. Fair Prices.
Our products get tried at home, starting with me and my family. I want to be proud of what we make and happy to use it myself.
Ingredient choices matter. Our beard oil starts with organic golden jojoba oil as its first ingredient. Across the rest of the lineup, we choose ingredients to suit the job each product needs to do. The goal is straightforward: make products worth using and keep the prices fair.
Every Customer Matters
Prohibition Soap is a small business with real people behind the products. I appreciate every order, and I never want a customer to feel like just another order number.
People work hard for their money. I want you to get something you’re glad you bought, enjoy using, and look forward to coming back for.
From industrial chemistry to bathroom chemistry. Welcome to Prohibition Soap.