Hey Everyone! I'm Kyle Ingham from The Distilled Man.
Up next I chat with one of the founders of British shaving & grooming company, Stubble and Strife.
We talk about the recent men's grooming revolution and delve into the ritual of traditional shaving.
Side note, there was so much great content in this interview
that we actually had to break it into two parts.
So this is part one make sure and check out part 2 at the end.
Also, don't forget to grab a free copy of my PDF guide,
"48-Hour Gentlemen: Your One-Weekend Plan to More Confidence Poise and Manly Know How."
Alright, without any further ado let's get to it.
Well thank you so much for being here.
It's my pleasure.
I really appreciate your time, so for those
of you know folks out there who aren't familiar with Stubble and Strife,
can you talk a little bit about who you are and what the company is all about.
So, we've been around for about two years,
just under two years and we're in
essence a company that supplies beard starch, shaving products for men.
But the key thing about us is that
we focus on two things one is that we
try and source products from the UK,
so provide the best of British and the
second is we place a lot of emphasis on
communication in terms of explain people how to use the products explain
how the ingredients work what's in the ingredients and basically giving really
good solid advice in terms of the best
grooming experience from beards and
starches shading products.
I'm curious what's happened in last years,
it's just there's an explosion and interest in men's grooming.
Guys who were never interested in taking
care of themselves or definitely not
interested in a safety razor, you know, I mean they wanted the latest,
so I'm curious to know your thoughts on the trend I guess.
Well I think there's a couple of things, so first of all I think
what changed things dramatically was a lot of the magazines like FHM, Esquire,
when they appeared men started to look at their own grooming habits very differently.
And what we saw is that percolating down into what we were doing.
When we presented people released traditional razors.
They were intrigued, nostalgic, they were curious and that often drew them in.
And they asked us lots of questions because...
You said, attraction is to the nostalgic
the old way and it was because it on the
same the same token I think people are
embracing technology everyone wants the
latest and Macbook but they kind of want to go backwards in terms of, not that I'm
making a judgment about that, but what do you think that's all about?
Yeah, I think there's an element of getting back to basics.
For a lot of guys that we spoke to,
they're really attracted by a thought of taking something that looks a bit more dangerous.
So their favorite...
"I could kill myself this morning when I shave when I'm awake."
It is amazing the number
of times we got asked do you have a
cutthroat razor or a singular razor
and obviously we sell those and on
many occasion they would look at and
have a play with them and say,
"Okay, that's a bit too scary."
Right, the idea's nice
but i think I'll...
And then they drifted back down to double edge razor
which they thought looked a little less threatening, but it's just i think it's
just a case of every once in a while people
need change from technology and to go back to something is a little bit more traditional.
I think there's that there's also this ritual aspect of grooming.
It's actually a little bit lost if you like right so there's something relaxing about waking up
and actually taking a time to have a shave there's a slow shape as opposed to
just whizzing through your face with a multi-blade system.
There's an element of spending
time with yourself just shaving so it's a purely pleasurable...
I don't want to do that.
Purely pleasurable simple thing.
Maybe going back to the wielding a knife
the way that men used to wield knives and
that there's a strong sense of technique
that you have to learn a skill or not before you can actually shave properly.
So, a lot of lot of guys will come to us and will say,
"Okay I kind of remember that from when my father and when my dad did that."
But it's been lost a little bit so...
Curious if you have those stories about customers that you come in contact with who, you know,
rediscovered shaving and now it's change their lives or it really impacted them.
Yeah, it's I think there's numerous examples
one that springs to mind we first
started we set up in Greenwich market.
Which is a part of London that is, it's quite touristy in terms of lots of tourists would walk around and visit.
But it's also known to be a market for the food.
Right, so there's one side there's food folks and the other side is produce focused.
And most people that wander in there, wondering they're looking for food.
And I remember this instance with this
one guy that purchased a very large
gourmet burger and was chomping his way
through and then happened to walk past
us and saw the the razor or a selection
of razor and just stopped and stood
there thinking for a second pointing at
the razor and saying, "I haven't seen one of those for fifty years."
So, what then happened with
this guy's a spending maybe 20 minutes
learning about the razors and type of razors.
He end up buying one and then much
to my surprise he came back and he
bought another one two weeks after.
He came back.
For himself?
Well, that's what he said.
Did he have a burger in his hand this time?
No, they left the burger back where it was.
And then you did it a third time.
He came back for a third razor and in essence what it was what it was
down to, is the fact that he just liked different styles of razors.
You get long handle, short-handle, there's a slightly different feel and technique.
And he wanted to try the variance before he actually adopted one.
And he explains to me that he'd become very interested on the side looking at the history
and the technique and spending a lot of time in YouTube.
As a result of was once a burger venture through the market.
Maybe you need a sort of insight into what that looked
like in his daily life and how that how
that kind of changed the way you shave.
Yes, he explained that he's pretty busy and this is consistent with many people.
They live in London for example and many other cities.
And he explained that he gets up in the morning
he's eager to get through the shower, the shave and get out the door.
Because he's got a hundred things buzzing through his head.
So shaving's not exactly his number one priority of the day.
And he said the mornings generally aren't a relaxing time.
They're about speed, they're about getting to the next thing.
And what he's found is that by actually spending a
little bit of time relaxing in the morning.
Having a shave and taking his time
the brush using a traditional razor
It gave him time to sort of just mull the day over and plan his day,
just enjoy that moment and he felt that was very liberating.
He felt that was really, really very refreshing.
And so he's adopted the routine of a traditional razor.
It sound like it has really changed his life in a way.
Yeah.
All because of a hamburger.
Isn't it ironic that a hamburger led to this peaceful morning nothing.
Yeah, you put two together, really...
Hey everyone, thanks again for watching.
If you like this video please hit like below.
Also make sure to check out the second half of this video by clicking below.
In part 2 we get into the details about what
exactly is so special about safety razors.
Plus we talked about the other essential things you need to know
to start enjoying a traditional shave
Finally, if you haven't already grabbed a
copy make sure to download my free PDF guide,
48-Hour Gentlemen: Your One Weekend Plan to More Confidence Poise and Manly Know-How."
Thanks again and see you soon.