To sell high-quality razors and the best blades at a fair price to the American working man, and usher in a new Golden Age of Shaving.
Badass Shaver Co. was founded with a simple vision: to save working men a ton of money by giving them a great shave at a price they may not have realized was even possible.
Chris Gleason, our founder, got into shaving with a safety razor after years of frustration with the shaving systems and methods found in today's drugstores, big-box stores, and online retailers in the U.S.
In his youth, Chris started with a double-bladed cartridge he liked. He intended to stay with it, but eventually the manufacturer stopped promoting it in favor of the next generation of costlier triple-bladed cartridges. Once his double-bladed razor handle broke, he saw that they were no longer on sale, and he felt like he had been swindled into a forced upgrade to the triple-blade system against his wishes. Not liking the increased expense of those, he revolted and stopped shaving entirely for a while. A couple years later, after cutting his beard off, he went with an electric shaver for daily use and saved the cartridge blades for special occasions.
Chris disliked how poor the shave quality was from electric shavers, as well as their tendency to clog easily. But he stuck with one for many years because of the cost. Then, he heard about a cartridge razor club that would be less expensive than the big players, and gave it a try. He liked the cost and the feel of the shave, but not the iffy quality of the razors (two of them broke within six months). He also disliked the constant barrage of ads for the side products the company really wanted to sell.
So, Chris started checking out safety razors as an option. But most online research kept taking him to boutique sites where the razors are very expensive. Also, the online discussions were too focused on "keeping up with the Joneses" and how many different razor handles the members own, instead of how to try out a safety razor in the first place. They generally made safety razor use sound like membership in an exclusive club instead of just an option for a bit of daily grooming. He found it very off-putting and kind of snobbish.
But one day, Chris found a razor he could afford — and he loved it. He loved the simplicity, the ease, the speed, and most of all the low cost of it all. And once he had tested dozens of different blades personally, and read multiple reviews of each of them online (which took him back to the boutique forums), he realized something: The only information the working-class guy hears about these products is from companies trying to sell the razors and all the side products at boutique prices, or cut-rate safety razors of uncertain quality. Nobody was offering a high-quality, inexpensive deal for the bare essentials.
That's how the Badass Shaver Co. was born. Chris saw that, if he could find a manufacturer that would make high-quality razors at an affordable price, there were potentially millions of men who might want to try it out for themselves, especially if they didn't have to deal with a bunch of extra nonsense on the side. Once he found his manufacturer, he got to work building a company to sell them, and here we are.
The company name, incidentally, is a nod to Chris's wife, Dr. Linda Shaver-Gleason. As someone who completed her Ph.D., founded and maintains a significant blog for public musicology, and writes academic articles for publication and program notes for orchestras all over the country, all while co-raising a toddler and battling Stage IV breast cancer, she is far and away the most badass person Chris has ever known, and he named the company and its signature product in her honor.