Kia ora Sara,
Thanks for your message and I'm sorry to hear about the trouble you've been having with our shampoo and conditioner bars!
As our shampoo bars are 100% soap-free and work like your typical liquid shampoo and conditioner, they should not be leaving any residue or build up.
However we find that if this is the case with some customers, the following tips on how to use the products help a lot. But if all else fails, we do have a product guarantee and are more than happy to help you to find a combination that works best for you.
Our bars are very concentrated and only a small amount of product is needed. We recommend thoroughly wetting your hair (and wetting the bar too), gently swiping it just a few times from root to tip (4-5 times), then placing the bar down and building up a lather with your fingers. As tempting as it is to, there's no need to keep swiping the bar to hair until a lather begins to build; by this stage, it's likely that too much product has already been deposited to strands. If you have oily hair, we recommend washing twice - the second time, you should get a deeper cleanse and more lather with only a tiny amount of product. Another common issue is that customers will lather the bar in their hands like soap however this doesn't give you enough product at all and you'll essentially be cleaning your hands instead!
Similarly, only a few swipes of our conditioner bars are needed (4-5) - hair won't feel slippery on application the way it will with liquid conditioners, but the silky magic happens when the conditioner is rinsed out.
If you have thick hair, to make applying product on easier, I'd recommend sectioning hair into two or four, and rubbing the bar on each section to make sure there is enough product distributed - in saying this a little goes a long way, so make sure you aren't using too much! π
Here are some helpful videos of how to use our bars (and to see how well our shampoos lather!) : https://ethiqueworld.com/pages/how-to-get-the-best-from-your-bars.
Hope this helps but please let me know how you get on! As mentioned above, we do have a product guarantee and would love to help you find a bar that works best for you, just flick us an email at hello@ethique.com π
~ Georgia