The physical store front

There aren't that many store fronts that are not backed by a huge website.

West Coast
Maggards

Those are all that come to mind as actual store front and internet. Everything else is all pure internet.



WHy is the physical store for shaving goods basically dead? Look at tobacco stores.

With the internet you can get any tobacco you want, and get it fresh. See, no one wants to buy a 3 year old tin of tobacco. SO they go online and get it fresh.

Same issue with shaving gear. Creams are only good for so long, so why par above average internet retail for a 3 year old tube of cremo or proraso?

Two that come to mind are MensEssentials, and Old town shaving

I have Handelbar a mere 45 minute military pace from my door and intend to make it soon. I forget his name, but in Florida a storefront imports VP Rein Dachs brushes and a few other lesser known products. Online ordering has advantages as do B&M. If expediency and efficiency are paramount I have no doubt someday we will live from birth to death within efficency apartments with online virtual sex followed by drone pick up and delivery of cyrogenically frozen sperm and the infant transferred to it's own unit upon parturation. Lovely.

Art of Shaving and Pasteurs are 2 more fairly large B&M shops.

I've also noticed more and more pharmacy and convenience stores selling DE and SE shaving blades, along with cheap, imported badger brushes, and Van der Hagen soaps and splashes. Stores like CVS, RiteAid, Kmart, WalMart, and a lot of other big box stores. You can also find assortments of artisan shave soaps at many barbershops these days.

In Southern California. Groomatorium is set to open, if not already open. The founder of Chiseled Face has opened a huge retail store.

The best part about going to Maggard's is being able to smell the soaps and hold the razors, etc. I'm like a kid in a candy store, it's great! No more blind buys.

Another one that hasn't been mentioned is Merz Apothecary/ Q Brothers in Chicago.

Oh, and what makes a tube of Proraso guaranteed fresh just because you bought it off the internet? Shaving creams don't degrade faster on the shelves of a store than they do in some online retailers warehouse.

Not dead at all. Plenty of storefronts not backed by large websites.

New York

Pasteur's Pharmacy (2 locations)
Cambridge Chemists on Lexington Ave. Scott is one of the most knowledgeable guys in wet shaving.
Clyde's Chemists (Madison Ave)
CO Bigelow (6th Ave. in the West Village)

Boston

Colonial Drug (Newton, MA formerly of Cambridge near Harvard.)
Just a fantastic wet shaving Mecca. Cathy is great to talk to about wet shaving. She has seen it all.

Chicago

Merz Apothecary
Merz Downtown (Palmer Hotel)
Q Bros.

Florida

Superior Shave (Jacksonville, FL)

UK

Three T's and DR Harris
The Gentleman's Groom Room (Dundee, Scotland). Really well stocked and Ian is also a huge advocate for wet shaving.

wet shaving is still a very niche market, imho. while we've come a LONG way from even 5 years ago, it's still very small. hopefully in the next 10 years, we'll see a B&M wet shaving store in a vast majority of large cities around the world..

The pharmacies mentioned, have an internet fame just because they were featured in an episode of Senfield 20 some years ago. Maybe a few movies.

When I meant, I can get fresher proraso shave cream in a tube off of the internet, I was refereeing to the fact that internet sales are massive. If I shop from amazon to get my shaving cream, that place has a massive turn over. Thus if I buy from amazon or west coast, due to them having such a large amount of product going through them, ill be able to get a tube of cream or a stick of soap that's within a year of being made. With a brick and mortar store, that doesn't sell much stock, it will sit around for years.

I have worked retail, and have worked in retail inventory. No one wants to know how long food or pharmacy items will stay in the back room or on the shelf before selling. I actually food things for little children that were still being sold 5 years past the sell by date. Heck, I even found infant formula that was a year past date on the sales floor.

I don't know that I would say it is dead but that it is still early in the game. As Andrew said, it is still so niche and actually more and more producers and distributors are selling through Amazon. It is not an easy business to be in but that doesn't mean it is impossible. I think more artisans will become more like distributors. They start of with software that they make and pretty soon, they start designing hardware, and then they beginning buying from others with a wholesale account. Then they may open a store front to offer wet shaving products in general when they originally started as a soap and aftershave maker.

But, since you mentioned freshness of tobacco leading into customers buying online. TOBS and Proraso (especially) sold a ton at the place that I worked (brick and mortar) and I know Maggard mentioned the same. We would get lots of people, of varying degrees, men and sometimes women, purchasing it to use with or without a brush, people starting off with their first kit, guys that weren't enthusiasts but enjoyed using a traditional wet shaving product, etc. So those people could've gotten it a bit cheaper via online wherever but at least for the reputation and performance, that product moved fast!