Frequently Asked Questions

We prioritize authentic products inspired by traditions and craftsmanship from diverse cultures.

The majority of our products come from Europe and are carefully selected for their quality, composition, and authenticity.

We don’t have a physical KŌSM store.

However, you can find many of our products in our small boutique, Au Savon de Marseille, located next door at 1258 Principale Street East, Saint-Paul-d’Abbotsford, QC, Canada.

Thanks to our online store, we can reach our customers without geographical restrictions. This model allows us to offer our products more easily throughout Quebec and Canada.

We also participate in a few markets in Quebec, and some of our products are available at retailers.

We offer free shipping within Canada on orders of $85 or more. For orders under $85, shipping costs are $12 in Quebec and Ontario and $18 to other provinces.

Orders are generally shipped the next business day after they are received, and Canada Post delivery times typically range from 1 to 8 business days, depending on the destination.

For complete details regarding rates, delivery times, and exceptions, please visit our Shipping page.

No. None of our products are tested on animals. Respect for all living beings is one of our core values.

We prioritize formulas that are as natural as possible and select ingredients known for their quality and reduced environmental impact.

Furthermore, in accordance with European regulations, cosmetic products and their ingredients cannot be tested on animals.

Absolutely. You can consult the Environment page to find out why most of our Marseille soaps do not have packaging.

It’s also good to know that they’re stored away from dust and remain in their containers, which we keep closed at all times. If that reassures you, do to our products what you would do to an apple: rinse them lightly, even if cleaning a cleaning product seems a little strange.

Marseille soap has not been made exclusively with olive oil for over two hundred years, for both technical and economic reasons.

Olive oil is more difficult to saponify because it produces a much softer soap that is unusable as is. It would therefore be imperative to let it dry for many months, which would lead to high storage costs that would be added to the cost of the expensive raw material, as is the case with Aleppo soap.

Furthermore, other oils such as coconut and palm oil give soaps some interesting properties, including making them hard more quickly and creating lather.

For your information, the quantity of saponified olive oil can represent 40% or more of the total oils in a Marseille soap.

Hypoallergenic: Refers to a substance that causes few allergic reactions.

Traditional Marseille soaps, like Aleppo soaps, are considered hypoallergenic since they contain only the bare minimum necessary to make a soap, thus drastically reducing the possibility of allergies.

On the other hand, scented soaps, whether they are called Marseille soaps or something else, contain many more ingredients.

They are therefore more likely to cause skin reactions in people suffering from an allergy to one component or another; more often perfumes and their molecules.

Traditional Marseille soap, whether for bathing or cleaning, does not contain any perfume other than its natural scent.

Scented soaps contain fragrances of natural or synthetic origin.

A naturally derived fragrance is an essential oil that is listed under its botanical name in the ingredient list. For example, Rosa Gallica L for rose fragrance.

Synthetic perfumes are used when you want to reproduce a fruity scent or when the production of essential oil is impossible for various reasons, for example with lily of the valley, which is a toxic and deadly plant.

Please note: a naturally scented soap is not necessarily better in terms of safety. A plant, and even more so its essential oil, can be just as toxic or allergenic as a synthetic compound. We will therefore never use the marketing rhetoric of systematically praising the presence of essential oil in a soap.

What you need to remember is that, regardless of the nature of the perfume used, it is often the primary cause of allergy and intolerance when using soap.

Traditional Marseille soap is not colored. However, scented toilet soaps may or may not contain colorants.

The presence of a colorant is always indicated in the list of ingredients by the letters CI followed by a five-digit number. For example, CI12490 indicates a red colorant.