Twenty-one brand guides to wet-shaving makers — safety razors, shaving brushes and straight razors — and the towns that made them famous.
Wet shaving is a geography lesson. The guides below run from Seki in Japan, where Feather makes its blades in the same house that makes surgical blades, to Sheffield, where Edwin Jagger makes razors and brushes, and Solingen, where Dovo, Boker, Ralf Aust and Wacker make straight razors.
Heritage houses and the machined wave
Old names sit beside new ones. Plisson in France dates itself to 1808 and calls itself the world’s first shaving-brush maker; Simpson’s badger brushes have been hand-made in Britain since 1919; Thiers-Issard has made straight razors in Thiers since 1884. Alongside them, a newer wave machines razors from aluminium and titanium — Henson at an aerospace facility in Canada, Blackland in the United States.
Where it is made, and where it is “widely reported”
Some brands state their origin plainly; others do not. Several guides here — Parker, Yaqi, Gold Dollar — describe manufacture that is widely reported rather than declared, and we say so.
How to use these guides
Each guide covers who owns the name today, where the products are made — by the maker’s own account and, where it differs, by other sources — and the brand’s visual identity. A company’s description of itself is attributed to the company, and where a business has closed we say so plainly. The table at the end gathers the essentials.
Safety razors
Double-edge and adjustable razor makers.
- Feather — The 1932 Seki, Gifu maker whose double-edge and Artist Club blades come from the same Japanese precision-blade house that makes surgical and industrial blades.
- Edwin Jagger — The British shaving company established in 1988 that makes its DE89 double-edge razor and brushes at its own factory in Sheffield, England.
- Fatip — The Italian open-comb double-edge razor, born in Milan in 1950 and handcrafted in Premana, a Lombardy village famous for knives and cutlery.
- Parker — The wet-shaving brand family-owned since 1973, known for its butterfly twist-to-open and three-piece razors, with manufacture widely reported in India.
- Rockwell — The Toronto brand that brought the adjustable double-edge razor back with its swappable-plate 6S and 6C, now trading as getrockwell.com.
- Henson — The razor two machinists began in 2020, machined at their aerospace facility in Canada to AS9100 standards, in AL13 aluminum and Ti22 titanium.
- Blackland — The US machined-razor maker Shane Swartzlander founded in 2015, whose Blackbird and Vector razors are made in America, its name drawn from Germany’s Black Forest.
Shaving brushes
Badger, boar and synthetic brush makers.
- Simpson — The heritage British shaving-brush maker whose badger brushes have been hand-made in the UK since 1919, its handwork tied to the Isle of Man.
- Omega — Pennellificio Omega of Bologna, the family-run Italian brush factory, established 1931, whose boar-bristle shaving brushes sit beside its paint brushes.
- Semogue — The Portuguese shaving-brush house that has made boar-bristle brushes in Portugal since 1955, a family name behind the Owner’s Club series.
- Zenith — The Italian boar-and-metal-handle shaving brushes made in Palermo, Sicily, by Pennellificio Pandolfo, a brush works dating to 1902.
- AP Shave Co — The Ontario one-man wet-shaving brand Andrew founded in 2016, known for its synthetic knots and DIY brush components, with knots sourced from Japan and Germany.
- Yaqi — The value wet-shaving brand widely reported to be Chinese, selling affordable synthetic and badger brushes and razors mainly through online marketplaces.
- Plisson — The French luxury shaving house that dates itself to 1808 and calls itself the world’s first shaving-brush maker, its badger brushes made in France.
Straight razors
Straight-razor makers from Solingen, Thiers and beyond.
- Dovo — The 1906 Solingen razor house named for founders Dorp and Voos, hand-making straight razors in Germany and distributing the Merkur safety-razor line.
- Thiers-Issard — The straight razor Pierre Thiers founded in 1884 in Thiers, France, made 100% in France and run by the Reynewaeter family since 1985.
- Boker — The 1869 Solingen “Tree Brand,” best known for knives, whose Solingen straight razors sit alongside its blades under Heinr. Böker Baumwerk.
- Ralf Aust — The small Solingen workshop, named for its maker, that hand-forges carbon-steel straight razors in Germany in a range of sizes and points.
- Wacker — The Solingen straight-razor maker, dating to 1940, known for high-end handcrafted razors — unrelated to the Munich chemical giant Wacker Chemie.
- Gold Dollar — The low-cost straight razor widely reported to be Chinese, the honing hobby’s go-to cheap blade for learning to hone and for modding.
- Hart Steel — The US maker, based in Sandpoint, Idaho, that it calls the first production straight razor made in America in over 50 years, forged from O1 tool steel.
Mass-market shaving and hair removal
Gillette, Schick, Barbasol, Edge, Noxzema, Skintimate and Nair.
- Gillette — The safety-razor company King C. Gillette formed in Boston in 1901 as the American Safety Razor Company, patented in 1904, known for the 1989 line “The Best a Man Can Get” and merged into Procter & Gamble on 1 October 2005.
- Schick — The razor name of Colonel Jacob Schick, whose Magazine Repeating Razor went on sale in 1926, renamed the Schick Safety Razor Company by Eversharp in 1946, bought by Warner-Lambert in 1970 and Energizer in 2003, and part of Edgewell Personal Care since 2015.
- Barbasol — The brushless shaving cream Frank Shields made in Indianapolis around 1919, sold with “No brush, no lather, no rub-in,” owned by Pfizer from 1962 and by Perio Inc. of Dublin, Ohio, since 2001, and known for its barber-pole can.
- Edge — The shave gel S. C. Johnson launched across the United States in March 1970 on a post-foaming gel patent, sold with Skintimate to Energizer in 2009 and part of Edgewell Personal Care since that company’s separation from Energizer in 2015.
- Noxzema — The Maryland skin cream sold since 1914 in a cobalt-blue jar, built up by George Bunting’s Noxzema Chemical Company, owned by Procter & Gamble from 1989, Alberto-Culver from 2008, then Unilever, and now marketed in the US by Evermark.
- Skintimate — The women’s shave gel line that Edgewell dates to 1996, sold by S. C. Johnson to Energizer Holdings in 2009 together with Edge, and kept by the personal-care company when Energizer renamed itself Edgewell Personal Care in 2015.
- Nair — The hair-removal brand Carter Products introduced as a lotion in 1940, advertised from 1975 with the “Nair for short-shorts” commercials, and acquired in 2001 by Armkel, the Church & Dwight and Kelso joint venture, when Carter-Wallace sold its consumer brands.
At a glance: who owns the name and where it is made
Taken from each guide’s fact panel, as of October 2026. Ownership and production change; follow the link for sources and detail.
| Brand | Origin | Owner | Where made |
|---|---|---|---|
| AP Shave Co | Canada (2016) | Andrew (solo) | Knots JP/DE |
| Barbasol | Indianapolis, Indiana (1919 (company date)) | See guide | Perio Inc., Dublin, Ohio (since 2001) |
| Blackland | USA (2015) | S. Swartzlander | USA |
| Boker | Germany (1869) | Böker Baumwerk | Solingen |
| Dovo | Germany (1906) | Independent | Solingen |
| Edge | United States (24 March 1970) | See guide | Edgewell Personal Care (since 2015) |
| Edwin Jagger | UK (1988) | British (priv.) | Sheffield |
| Fatip | Italy (1950) | Italian craft | Premana |
| Feather | Japan (1932) | Independent | Japan |
| Gillette | Boston, Massachusetts, United States (1901) | See guide | Procter & Gamble |
| Gold Dollar | China (rep.) | Unverified | China (rep.) |
| Hart Steel | USA (2009) | Independent | Idaho |
| Henson | Canada (~2020) | Aerospace machinists | Canada |
| Nair | See guide | Church & Dwight Co., Inc. | See guide |
| Noxzema | See guide | See guide | Evermark, LLC (US) |
| Omega | Italy (1931) | Family (4 gen) | Bologna |
| Parker | India (1973) | Family-owned | India (rep.) |
| Plisson | France (1808) | Independent | France |
| Ralf Aust | Germany (Solingen) | Artisan | Solingen |
| Rockwell | Canada (~2014) | Independent | Undisclosed |
| Schick | See guide | See guide | Edgewell Personal Care |
| Semogue | Portugal (1955) | Family (rep.) | Portugal |
| Simpson | UK (1919) | Vulfix (rep.) | UK |
| Skintimate | See guide | See guide | Edgewell Personal Care, Shelton, Connecticut |
| Thiers-Issard | France (1884) | Reynewaeter fam. | Thiers |
| Wacker | Germany (1940) | Independent | Solingen |
| Yaqi | China (rep.) | Unverified | China (rep.) |
| Zenith | Italy (Palermo) | Pennellificio Pandolfo | Palermo |
Frequently asked questions
Where are Dovo straight razors made?
In Solingen, Germany, where Dovo was founded in 1906; it also distributes the Merkur safety-razor line, according to our guide.
What is the oldest shaving-brush maker?
Plisson of France dates itself to 1808 and calls itself the world’s first shaving-brush maker — the company’s own claim.
Part of our Beauty & Grooming brand guidelines. See also all collections.