The Straight Cut

Recently we had the great pleasure of being interviewed for the Daily Interlake, the newspaper of the Flathead Valley where UNO is based. We've received a lot of positive support and also a lot of more detailed questions. Questions that, being the radically transparent company we are, we're very happy to answer and elaborate on.

Would you ever team up with Gillette or, what if they want to like “buy you out?”

I feel I speak for both of us, that we don't foresee any future collaboration with Gillette because, foremost, we feel the level of malfeasance they have brought to the consumer for nearly 50 years is too great a sin for us to stomach ever working with them. We just don't have the same commerce philosophy.

Unlike concocting a thing to sell as your prime objective for your company shareholders... truly WE wanted to be the first UNO customers. We weren't finding what we needed and wanted on the razor market so we made it for us, to share with everyone who feels the way we do. Tired of the bad shaves, tired of the expense, tired of the unneeded extra landfill waste, and moreover tired of the bullshit.

We just don't like lying in commerce. It's unnecessary. Put it this way, there are various qualities and textures of toilet paper, right? But, good toilet paper has probably reached its product apex at this point. Any imaginable modifications to the product now would probably come with detrimental utility to some, if not most, end users. Pun intended. So, this approximate point was reached 50 plus years ago by razor companies when they began adding blades and gimmicks. Then they lied about the real reason they kept adding more. Outdoing their competition, at your skin's detriment. You go two, we go three. We go three, you go four, five and so on.

Printed inside every UNO box is a very old quote, 428 BC in fact and that is: “A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe.” And that defines Paul and I's philosophy precisely. There is just too much bullshit in society that people and companies try to get us to believe, and the razor industry has clearly been no exception.

As a person with a degree in a physical science and a person who had to research this matter in-depth before bringing our product into existence, I assure you, there has never been a measurable benefit of shaving hair from human skin with multiple blades. The theory is that hysterisis (which is a physics principle upon which the multiple-blade scheme is built) is actually a shaving benefit. Tug, and then slice before the hair can retract. On paper, it makes all the sense in the world... until you apply it to the human anatomy. Once you do that, immediately the problems begin to arise. And they arise sealed under your skin. Again, pun intended.

So this is one of the foundational lies upon which an industry that can look you in the eye and sell you a $200 dollar heated razor and 4-cartridges for it at $50 is built. Hyper-complicating shaving, and confounding us all, and getting us to believe that it is indeed superior. Bullshit. And I mean absolute bullshit.

Their theory seems to be: We create a perception. With enough advertising, that perception becomes reality.

Our theory is: The truth will set you free.

The UNO razor is about truth and practicality. Once you begin using it and begin breaking down the multi-blade shaving habits you inherited by force (odds-are you have probably never shaved with a single blade before because even if you are 60 years old today, a multi-blade was on the shelf when you were 11; when you first may have chosen a razor), you realize you've been lied to for quite some time. Alas, your skin is calmer and beautifully smooth. Then you begin to notice you are throwing away far less plastic, and using far less water to clean your razor. And finally you realize that UNO blades are lasting longer, and are saving you tons of money from end to end.

Why Kalispell, specifically?

We're located in Kalispell, Montana for a few reasons. One, we are able to pass on the tax benefit to our customers of no sales tax as they are, in fact, doing business in Montana and Montana has no sales tax. Two, there is abundant storage and assembly space in the Flathead Valley, and therefore those costs as we grow should remain low; there is also an abundant supply of capable workers here. As we scale, I've no doubt that the ingenuity, adaptability and can-do attitude which is often a requirement in Montana will be very compatible with UNO as a company, and both of us.

What about the recycle-ability?

Our handle is 100% recyclable, and we're very committed to switching over to bio-plastics for our cartridges so they will degrade in the soil, obviating your need to go an extra mile to recycle. We're looking at many options, and really excited about hemp plastics. Of course, at the moment, ABS is what we use but we're still using over 3X less than the competitor. Plastic injection molds are designed for specific temperatures, pressures and abrasion properties of polymers for which they are designed. Hemp polymers are exciting, but we need to figure it out so it doesn't destroy our molds, or cool with imperfections. We also need to figure out the best way to tint it. Once we do that, we feel we will be delivering a razor that is at the zenith of everything a razor should be, absent of any need for change. Like that high quality toilet paper, or a nice comb, right? It does one thing, it does it very well, and anything else is marketing. A high-quality razor is a personal grooming staple. Pure and simple. And we want UNO to be that staple for everyone. In the meantime, if recycling the cartridges is something you are interested in, a company called Terracycle does take these by mail to do just that.

Plastics make many things possible, and much safer. I mean, a glass shampoo bottle is a really bad idea, right? I'll give you another example, of course, I'm currently wearing jeans with some stretch, and they're damn comfy too. That stretch is being provided by some type of petroleum elastomer. Yoga pants, for instance, are a very popular product these days. But without polymeric esthers of petroleum, the yoga pants market would cease to exist because the feasibility and durability of stretchy organic oil esthers has not been completely figured out yet, right? The plastic part of our product is a rudimentary plastic solid. I think we are much closer to providing a bio-plastic cartridge than, for instance, a future corn or hemp yoga pants market is to elasticizing those compounds because it will be far less complicated. And for us that's very exciting because every human has something to shave, so the potential positive impact is massive. The yoga pants... well, sadly for all dem nice bootys just trying to do good by Mother Earth that they stretch around today... will still require petroleum, and still ultimately wind up in the landfill.

What about safety (double-edge) razors? Aren't they just as good?

Not to diminish shaving purists who prefer an old-fashioned safety razor, but they're rather impractical. For one, you cannot fly with it in your carry-on. Two, disposing of those blades presents a potential danger of getting cut, and cut badly. A cartridge razor has quite little ability to do major damage, whereas a naked blade can theoretically cut you as deep as the blade's widest point. Not a great thing to think about when you're compacting the trash with your hand, for instance. Or if you have a nosy pet, or small child. And finally, the geometry of a DE razor is shit, hasn't really changed for 80 years, and there are like 35 types of steel blades in that market space. So, shortfalls in consistency of your shave quality and the ability to maneuver it over your skin and really see what you're doing makes it an uphill battle to honestly look in the mirror and say “oh yeah, dawg... this is a super convenient way to shave.”

Modern tech, and the innovation of cartridge razors was created for speed of installation, convenience and safety. I'm not sure going backwards in time on this is safe, sound or convenient enough to become widely-practiced and have a meaningful environmental impact for us all as humans who quite unavoidably do consume disposable goods – gender withstanding AND gender notwithstanding. It's just the truth. You're going to throw shit in the trash, period. Like, every single day.

If you always shave with a DE razor, that's great! But it's pretty undeniable that it's grounded more in dogmatism than it is in pragmatism. It's the bamboo vs. graphite fly rod argument, right? One provides a quirky, nostalgic and nuanced performance that you come to swear by over time - incorporating your emotional attachment to the history and appearance of it; and the other is actual, modern performance that probably won't snap like a twig when you're landing that hog-Johnson Bull Trout.

Paul and I are glad to be running an honest company where we can hold our heads high and tell you we aren't full of shit, and we won't sell you gimmicky shit. I'm not sure how the other guys do it, but hey... I guess that's on them.

If you detest being bullshitted too, join us. Try it. It will take time, of course, to learn this modified skill. To break down those old, hinged multi-blade habits you've learned. To undo what might be decades of muscle memory using a thing designed to train you, to ready you, to indenture you... to using their next bullshit thing. But, we are confident you will come out the other side with truth on your face, and more money in your pocket.