TheShaveDen

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Happy Sunday From Florida!

Many of you posted messages wanting to see an interview with a Vendor of Shave Goodies... I wrote to Gary from The ShoeBox Shave Shop and asked him if he would be interested in giving an interview. Gary emailed be back and included his phone number, so I called him. We chatted for a bit and the exchange below is what came out of it.


Q: Your story on how your store got its name is that you promoted traditional wet shaving by handing out shaving kits in shoeboxes. Can you elaborate on the story please?

A: About 3 ½ years ago. I evangelically, loaned a copy of Leisure Guy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving to a comrade in the cube farm where I worked. That piqued his interest in wet-shaving but he didn’t want to bother picking kit and asked me to order some wet shaving products for him the next time I ordered for myself. I did and he really enjoyed the products and the wet-shaving experience.

He & I both, started talking to other guys about old fashioned shaving and they started coming to me to pick starter kit for them too. The “direct marketing” network just kind of grew organically from there. I hope I didn’t cut into Michael Ham’s sales because I loaned my copy of Gourmet Guide to Shaving Edition 1, out to a whole lot of gentlemen. Michael is a man I admire a whole lot and his contributions to modern wet-shaving have been enormously positive.

At the time, my favorite online shaving store was the late, lamented and sorely missed “Barberia Italiana” which was run by a true “Renaissance Man”, Giovanni Abrate. Barberia Italiana had great products, unusual products and hard to find products. At the time, the market was dominated pretty much by English products and Giovanni single handedly introduced the USA to the wide, wonderful world of fine Italian shave products. Anyway, I told Giovanni what I was doing, “filling orders” for newbies and he suggested that I just stock up some products all at once and he’d give me a nice discount so I could make a little extra money while helping guys get started into the world of way better shaving.

So I bought an initial stock of Merkur HD’s & Treet Platinum (aka Del-Rin) razors, a nice cache of about ½ dozen top blade brands, a nice selection of Omega brush models in Silvertip and Pure plus some boars. The idea was to offer good products at several price points. Initially we limited our “software” to Proraso shave cream and soap, Cella, and Arko Shave Creams and aftershaves. Then I started carrying them around with me in a ShoeBox.

One day I’d pack the ShoeBox with razors and blades, the next day brushes, the next day creams and soaps and so on. Customers told other guys and word would go around that the “ShoeBox ShaveShop” was open for business in the 2nd floor break-room or 3rd floor break-room or “wherever” and guys would stop by to see what was in the ShoeBox that day and buy what they needed. Looking back, sales were good. Very good. Even the guys who weren’t interested in switching from cartridges to DE razors saw that a brush and a good soap or cream make a whole lot more skincare & sensual sense than their crummy canned goo.

So we were named ShoeBox ShaveShop by our first direct marketing customers. I figured if the customers cared enough to give us a name, I’d stick with it – the name and the business.


Q: How long have you been at this?

A: Direct marketing started about 3 ½ years ago and we still direct market out of a ShoeBox. I really enjoy direct marketing as I like to talk shaving and it gives customers a chance to feel and handle and sniff the products which you can’t do on the internet.

About 2 years ago, Giovanni landed a whale of a dream job with an Italian aeronautics company. The new job required him to travel in Europe and the USA 3+ weeks a month. He decided to sell his shave business because he just didn’t have time to do it anymore.

My wife and I discussed buying Giovanni out. I’m nearing retirement and we thought it would be good to have an internet business for retirement. We could make a little extra money which is always helpful in “retirement” and it would keep us “active” in our golden years which is another good thing. My wife knew that the Shoebox was already selling a considerable amount of shave kit just casually with no publicity or advertisement so we reached an agreement with Giovanni to buy his inventory.

I built the web-store and opened it as ShoeBoxShaveShop.Com. It was tempting to keep the name Barberia Italiana as it was a well-recognized name with a store of “good will” from it’s customer base. I named it ShoeBoxShaveShop instead because our direct marketing customers had already informally named us and if Giovanni ever decided to get back into the shave business I wanted to keep his old name open for him.


Q: Has this venture of yours outgrown your home and required you to set up a shop somewhere?

A:...