Meet Douglas Smythe and Frances Towle of Phoenix Shaving

Today we’d like to introduce you to Douglas Smythe and Frances Towle.

Douglas and Frances, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Douglas: Our story begins in a hammock on a beach at the edge of a rain forest somewhere in Central America. I had moved to Costa Rica pretty much on a whim. I did not know the language or anyone there.

It was a lot like a lyric in a Paul Simon song, or maybe Jimmy Buffet depending what crowd you run with. For the first two years, I lived there my home/bed really was a hammock on the beach and a small pup tent for storage. I really just wanted to set out and experience some real life adventure, a sort of modern day pilgrimage. It was truly a wonderful, eye opening experience however there were sand fleas. The bane of my existence and yet the reason why we are doing what we do now. Every evening in between the hours of 6pm-7pm these tiny bloodsuckers would attack, no one on the beach was safe!

Being way of the beaten path I had real trouble finding an After Bite type product or anti itch cream…so I needed to make my own, which I did. After much trial and error using what was available to me via the local shops and traveling artisans I met, I developed what I called, jokingly, Itch No Mas. Word got out and soon, I had local villagers and tourists knocking on my tent flap! I leaned back in my hammock thinking that if I ever made my way back to the states, I might want to consider producing this stuff on a larger scale. Four years later, I was back in Amherst, Massachusetts and now dating Fran who was practicing acupuncture at the time. The world I returned to was a little different thanks to the explosion of the internet and especially this new platform called Etsy. The playing field really had been leveled and I now could actually experiment with selling my own creations online! Fran and I immediately set up shop in a spare room in the apartment we shared.

At first, before using Etsy, I produced Itch No Mas and another sister product I came up with called “Stink No Mas”, Emergency deodorant/Insect Repellent. As the wearer sweat it released essential oils into the air that would repel bugs! We then would ship the product down to Costa Rica to be sold in tourist shops. Both products became instant hits but the shipping costs were killing us…so we turned our sites on the USA. From there, we branched out. Fran was an artisan soapmaker and thought she’d start out her own little bath bar boutique on Etsy. I created a blog dedicated to facial hair and traditional wet shaving. My goal was to sell ad space on the blog like so many of my pals in Costa Rica were doing, in fact, that is how they funded their lifestyles there. But no matter how much time and energy I put into the blog I really wasn’t getting to much interest. So I created my own moustache wax to sell in hopes of driving traffic back to the site in order to sell ads. Literally overnight, the wax was a hit! I quickly realized we should be using the blog to sell our own products rather than advertise others, others that really didn’t seem to be interested anyway.

To make the long story short, with less than a $500 investment while keeping our day jobs, we started creating more and more male grooming supplies with a heavy focus on my passion, traditional wet shaving. I have always been a fan of antiques but what set vintage razors apart from most is they were still functional —Meaning: you could still use them and they’d shave just as good today as they did when they came out of the factory 100 years ago. Not to mention, the shave was better and healthier than the cartridge razors that most men use nowadays. Better for your face, better for your wallet, better for the planet! An idea born out of necessity gave us our start, passion took over and here we are almost eight years later…in a (coco)nutshell. Sometime in 2014, during a blizzard we decided to move out of snowy New England to sunny Arizona! It would seem our pilgrimage was just beginning. (Go West young man!)

Has it been a smooth road?
Doug: Oh lord no! Being new to running an online business we…mostly I made every mistake in the book! We really had no role models or a clue, I mean this was ground zero for a lot of people in our niche. These mistakes were actually the best teachers however, not only making us better at what we do but better people all around. I mean, before returning to the USA I spent very little time online, didn’t own a cellphone and had only just recently picked up my first PC while in Costa Rica! So online decorum and trolls where a real culture shock! Fran: We had no blueprint for what we were doing, not for scaling up a soap making business or running an online store. The challenges were many and varied! Back when we started in 2012 there was a lot of opportunity in the online world but not nearly as many tools as there are now. Everything about this business was a learning experience and not always easy, but we are very thankful for the journey and we certainly have learned a ton!

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Phoenix Shaving or Phoenix Artisan Accoutrements is an online Traditional Shaving & Male Grooming Company. Our primary focus is on traditional shaving but we do cater to the bearded folks as well. We have been designing and creating our own razors, shaving brushes, artisan shave soaps, aftershaves, etc., since day one. We are very much inspired by the traditional shave gear of the past and when possible, we make it our mission to “reboot” lost classics. We are also educators & leaders within the niche. Over the years, we have had three podcasts, a blog and currently two YouTube channels. One channel I devote to tutorials and our products (http://douglassmythechannel.com) while the other is a morning shave show in the vein of Car Talk, where you need not be a car enthusiast to still enjoy the show. It’s called I’d Lather Be Shaving and we are currently in our 3rd season (http://idlatherbeshaving.com). Also, this will be our 6th year throw our annual traditional shaving convention, The Big Shave S’west.

The first three years the event was held in Pasadena, CA. The 4th year we brought it to Fort Lauderdale, FL and last year we finally brought home to Arizona! This year we will once again be in Chandler, AZ at The Crown Plaza Resort on March 28th! It’s a day long event of panel discussions with industry folks and personalities from our niche and also hosts over 30 artisan shave soap & razor makers too! Best of all, admission is free! http://bigshaveswest.com Aside from everything we bring to the growing hobby, we also do things a little different in regards to our products and marketing. Being big on sci-fi we have created a “Universe” of characters that come and go on our labels, products and adverts. Also, we include small novellas on our sales pages, continuations of ongoing sci-fi/fantasy adventures that I pen. This has created a real solid and faithful cult following for us. Our mottos are “more than just shaving” & “try something different” for good reason!

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Douglas: This is a real difficult one for me, there really has been so many! Maybe when we were interviewed by Forbes Magazine a few years back? Although buying our own facility last year really felt good too…we made it! Fran: One moment that had a huge impact was when we got an e-mail from a small retailer in New Orleans. They wanted to know about opening a wholesale account. This was really early on, we had not had too many sales, and only had a handful of listings on Etsy. We had no wholesalers and hadn’t even thought about it too much at that point. When they contacted us we kind of freaked out (in a good way) and had to figure out really quickly how to put together a line sheet so we could respond to the e-mail! But getting this e-mail was so inspiring and encouraging. It was proof that we had something to offer and people were starting to take notice! That was awesome.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://phoenixshaving.com
• Phone: 520-280-0860
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/phoenix_shaving
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/HTGAM/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/Douglas_Smythe
• Other: http://thebigshaveswest.com A One Of A Kind Traditional Shaving Expo

Image Credit:
Photo of Doug & Fran together by Nate Arizona

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