The 100 Year Story of Cheia Soap

The story of Cheia soap takes us back in time to March 3, 1886

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 17.12.2024, 13:41

The story of Cheia soap takes us back in time to March 3, 1886, when Lippa Brunstein registered his family’s factory with City Hall. Today, as then, Cheia is a family business. Today, as then, it is a brand that promotes itself by using natural ingredients, working, cutting and stamping by hand, with great care.

The story of Cheia soap, like that of many Romanian brands that existed during the communist period, such as Dacia, Arctic, Borsec, Timişoreana, Dero, Braiconf, Antibiotice, Rom chocolate, Gerovital or Eugenia, is often associated with the sad memories of those who lived in the “golden age”. However, many of these products existed before nationalization, some not even being promoted during communism, and others only gaining a utilitarian dimension, such as Cheia soap.

Thus, between 1950 and 1989, Cheia soap did exist on the market, only in the laundry soap version. It was a big surprise to discover that the brand is one of many elitist products, with a long history.

How Cheia soap is maintained now, over 100 years later, we learned from Alin Laszlo, the “soap maker of today’s soap”, as he introduced himself:

“Just like back then, in 1886, it’s still a family business, it’s still a business that respects those principles from back then, that is, the production of a natural soap, it’s the same elitist soap. So practical for the 21st century, let’s say the 7th generation of Cheia soap producers, we also consider the period 48-90 still covered by generations of Romanians who produced Cheia soap. The soap is an elitist one, which respects principles older than a century, and which proudly rewrites a history longer than a century in Romanian soap production.”

We asked our interlocutor what is, in fact, the range of products that appear today under the “Cheia” brand, remembering the laundry soap from before 89. Here is Alin Laszlo: “What you have exemplified currently represents 7% of our current offer. Currently, we are rewriting a long history, with recipes specific to each period, because Cheia soap has known normality, it has known war, it has known epidemics, it has known forced industrialization during the communist era, with that change in the production paradigm in which need, and not pleasure, were covered. Neither from a moral nor a historical point of view, we cannot remove that period from our history, and again we only refer to it as a period defined in our offer, the “grey book of Cheia soap”. We offer that wide range of products described, but rewritten for the mind, needs and use of the contemporary consumer, in the sense that we still produce laundry soap and not necessarily that laundry soap from the time of Ceauşescu. That interwar laundry soap was something else, it was not a mass product, and we still produce it today, but we produce it for an extremely small area, and not for nostalgics. There are even still people who use solid laundry soap. To develop our business, we innovated and obtained powdered laundry soap, the equivalent of the habit of mothers of my generation, in the early 90s, of washing clothes with grated Cheia soap, liquid soap in its natural form, not chemical detergent.”

Our interlocutor also tempted us with other Cheia products:

“Number one is Cheia for hair. And not necessarily because we are going back to our grandmother’s ritual of washing our hair with soap, but still, because it is that primary shampoo that humanity used until the 50s, when the chemical one was invented. Here we have developed a complete range, starting with soap and ending with the equivalent of vinegar in our grandmother’s ritual, hair conditioners. As I said, in the laundry range, we have absolutely the entire range currently possible, from solid soap, powdered soap, paste soap and liquid soap. Likewise, we have returned to the same formula that we all learned in chemistry lesson in 10th grade of natural soap for the hand soap application, which is maybe the second best-selling product in our portfolio.”

Proud to be part of a long tradition, Alin Laszlo added:

“We believe in the value of tradition! I would be happy to know that we have also contributed with a small percentage to raising the specific consumption of soap per capita in this country, because you know very well that we are not doing exceptionally well.”

Under the Cheia brand, there is now a vast offer of natural, organic, eco-friendly soaps, with a friendly attitude towards loved ones and nature, as well as a diverse range of surprising gifts. Maria luxurious body butter, which bears the face of Queen Maria on the packaging, shower oils with Christmas aromas, or Santa Claus-shaped children’s soap, lip balm, but also ‘cookie candy lip scrub’ with orange and cinnamon aroma, or Cheia-Dac, soap for a beautiful beard. These are just a few examples of today’s Cheia products, their number being much greater.