FENDRIHAN the blog

We are delighted to have discovered Valentino Garemi, a new source for quality shoe and leather care products, and soothing and smoothing foot grooming aids. Read on for more about them and a special offer for Fendrihan customers.

Valentino Garemi offers the finest in shoe service, cleaning and protection. You can keep your footwear looking brand new with the best polishes, shines, colorants and dyes. Cracked and dried out shoes will be a thing of the past when you use Valentino Garemi’s innovative care products made with organic bamboo and olive oil to keep leather soft and supple. Stubborn stains, including salt and sweat, are easily removed with their effective cleaners, including some made especially for use on suede, nubuck and velour. If your shoes are feeling a bit snug they come to the rescue with an innovative stretching compound that does not harm leather but allows for the extra room needed. Valentino Garemi carries shoe brushes, shoe horns, insoles and laces of the highest caliber along with sponges and cloths to apply and use their amazing products.

Superlative shoe care is paired with first-class foot grooming at Valentino Garemi. Deodorants, powders, foams and creams that keep feet healthy, dry and soothed are available here, along with exquisitely designed nail trimming tools. Treat corns and calluses with solutions that are proven to reduce and eliminate these painful foot problems.

A wide variety of leather care products are also available from Valentino Garemi, ensuring your treasured leather accessories and furniture give you many years of use and continued beauty. Everything needed to keep your leather clean, conditioned and protected is on one well-organized website, including the tools and accessories necessary to use the products effectively.

We are excited to announce that, through a special offer, Fendrihan customers can get 15% off their Valentino Garemi order by using promo code fend15 upon checkout. Additionally, Valentino Garemi offers Canadian customers the ease of ordering locally in Canadian dollars with no exchange rate or custom issues. Orders over $70 also receive free shipping and a free gift. As an added incentive, because Valentino Garemi is a small business, orders are tax free for a limited time.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions and requests for Geo F. Trumper’s Extract of Limes Shaving Cream. It’s been sold out for a while and Trumper won’t be able to fulfill any orders for it until December.

But if you’re in the market for a well-balanced masculine fragrance with a citrus character, try GFT Shaving Cream. GFT has a lively lemon opening note with hints of mandarin and cedar.

Maximum Fitness is a self-described no B.S. essential guide to fitness and health for the busy man. Besides in-depth workout advice, they routinely cover topics such as fitness, health, nutrition, weight loss, supplements, sex and training tips and tricks.

Fendrihan’s shaving and grooming products recently made it to this fit magazine’s pages. Our Merkur Double-Edge Safety Razors were reviewed in their “Get Your Gear On” section as one of the ways to get the best shave. MaxFit considered them one of the best safety razors around:

It’s the ideal midpoint between a straight razor and a disposable: You get a close, comfortable
shave with less razor burn. These are the razors that your grandfather, Cary Grant, Lee Marvin and John Wayne used—
the ones that were used in the trenches during the Second World War. These modern classics cost a little more initially, but replacement blades are generally cheaper than disposables.

As for their tips for the perfect old-fashioned shave, their emphasis is on technique, but not without these three essentials: a safety razor; a pot of high-end British shaving cream, such as Geo F Trumper’s; and a proper badger-hair brush. And don’t forget to follow the perfect shave with a non-alcohol-based moisturizer; their recommendation, Geo F Trumper’s Skin Food.

A wet-shaving-centric event is in the works. Details so far are: Chicago, November 10, with topics such as fine liquors, cigars and traditional shaving. Some more information from Mantic59′s blog:

They want to bring in barber chairs to be set around the Palmer House’s mezzanine with barbers offering straight razor shaves, various vendors with giveaways, some kind of tasting event, and a room specifically for traditional shaving aficionados from the web forums to meet.
And they have asked me to conduct a presentation on traditional shaving!  In fact there might be two: one for the “general” event and one in the room with the web forum users.

This all sounds really exciting and we are eager to see how it develops!

Canada Post motto is “From anywhere… to anyone”, but if the postal workers union goes on strike on June 2, they won’t be making good on their promise for up to two weeks.

I guess we don’t need to tell you that we have been avidly following the news about a possible strike with nail-biting preoccupation. As the scenario grew closer, we decided we had to act just as if the strike was a fact, and not rely on Canada Post to deliver our parcels for the time being. We simply can’t have hundreds of packages stuck in their warehouses, half way to their destinations.

So until the dispute is resolved, all orders will be shipped by UPS or Purolator. We know that this means higher rates for you, so we have done our best to give you the best possible discount. We will also continue to honor our Free Shipping for Canadian orders of $65 and U.S. orders of $95 (which will ship by courier as well).

To assure delivery, please make sure your address entries are complete and correct, including a valid phone number where you can be easily reached as well as the buzzer/intercom number for apartment buildings and business name for office buildings.

As a business that relies entirely on shipping to get our products to our customers, these developments are challenging for us. But we will continue to work as usual to get your orders to you on time. That’s a promise!

SHARP Magazine For Men’s Spring/Summer 2011 Book For Men is out. A 214-page compendium with essential man knowledge on grooming, leather goods, shoes, watches, electronics, fashion, travel, alcohol, and automobiles.

Fendrihan‘s products are featured in the editorial “Maintenance”. Alex Grigorescu writes of the new eShave award-winning verbena lime shaving cream:

There’s a new luxury shaving player on the scene: eShave has collected accolades for its rich-lathering shaving cream, featuring the refreshing scent of Verbena Lime.

Mr. Taylor Deodorant‘s royal origins and exclusive fragrance are also worthy of note:

Taylor of Old Bond St. was established in 1854 and catered to the royal court, but deigns to bring its pedigree to your 21st-century underarms. Its fragrances are distinguished, distinctive and old-school masculine, ranging from top notes of sandalwood to the cheekily named “Mr. Taylor”—a herbaceous mix of lavender and musky cedar.

Today’s myriad choices of products and services targeted at men might seem daunting to navigate. There seems to be a concoction for just about anything; so where to start?

Sharp Magazine For Men tries to make sense of it all in its November 2010 issue. Grooming Editor Leo Petaccia writes:

…as crucial as it is to know which shampoos curb baldness or the difference between pomade and wax, so is a good grasp of the basics: a straight razor shave, a clean haircut, a barber you can vent to, that sort of thing. If you can strike a balance between the old school and the new school, then you’re a step ahead of the curve.

Their editorial How a Man Should Groom covers all the essentials: barbershops, hair cuts and hair products, basic grooming tools and techniques, what makes a great shaving cream, the best face products, how to pick your perfect scent, as well as body and winter grooming. And Fendrihan’s select grooming products are featured throughout as pivotal choices.

Here are Sharp’s picks for the quintessential grooming tool kit:

1. Thiers Issard 5/8″ Le Thiernois Straight Razor
2. Illinois Razor Strop Co. 361 Hanging Razor Strop
3. Groom Mate Platinum XL Nose Hair Trimmer
4. Tweezerman Stainless Steel Nail Scissors
5. Taylor of Old Bond Street All-Natural Classic Toothbrush
6. H.L. Thater Silvertip Shaving Brush, 22 mm
7. Cyril R. Salter Pearwood Pure Bristle Nail Brush
8. Tweezerman Slant Tweezers

Their article The Chemistry of Common Shaving looks at what makes the cream of the crop when it comes to shaving creams:

All shaving creams use a variety of common ingredients to achieve their intended purpose. Where the difference comes in are the complements, the “extra” ingredients that give the creams the extra level of quality. High-end creams emphasize quality chemicals.

Canadian-based the Gentlemen’s Refinery and J.M. Fraser are both fine examples of this quality approach. Fraser uses high-grade coconut oil in their shaving creams. The G.R. Black Ice shave cream is glycerine-based, which gives it a nice glide. Certified organic bergamot oil is used to soften the beard and soothe the skin. Organic basil and anise evoke the scent of Sambuca. These essential oils come alive while you shave, but they wash off, letting you use other fragrances for your after shave ritual.

Sharp’s picks for The Best Face Products include Edwin Jagger Moisturizing Aftershave Lotion and Baxter of California Clarifying Clay Mask.

Some archeologists claim that beer kicked-started civilization, and whether that proves to be true or not, the civilized beer connoisseur knows that there’s more to life than hops. And to sport a spotless mug, the folks at DRAFT Magazine picked some fine products brewed just for men. Among them, Anthony Logistics for Men Razor Burn Repair. An emulsion that “soothes razor-burned skin and erases irritation; ingredients like St. John’s wort and chamomile calm inflammation, while aloe and marshmallow squelch redness and sting.”

Read more about Razor Burn Repair here.

Fendrihan and our traditional shaving products have been featured in the November issue of Fast Company Magazine. David Lidsky writes in the editorial Clean and Clear:

You never see razor burn in old photographs. For all our modern tools –lubricating gels, moisturizing balms with SPF– an apothecary-style morning ritual combining today’s knowledge with old-time techniques may be a better way. I started with a [...] Semogue shaving brush, handmade in Portugal by a small family business. The stiff boar bristles of the 1520 brush [...] (fendrihan.com) felt so great while exfoliating my skin that I may start brushing my face for fun. I used it with [...] Gentlemens Refinery’s Black Ice shave cream [...], developed by Las Vegas master barber Perry Gastis. Its light pink hue and whiff of anise (an anti-inflammatory) shocked me at first, but it builds a rich, not-too-thick lather. I finished off my face like my old man did, with an aftershave splash…

Old-style shaving techniques do have a lot to offer, and as Lidsky notes it, the improvement might not only leave you with better skin, but also with a smile upon your face.

Mühle-Pinsel is celebrating its 65th year of operations. Run by the grandchildren of founder Otto Müller, the brand is recognized by its iconic mill; or Mühle, in German, the place where a Müller, or miller, works.

The house of Mühle excels at bringing together tradition and cutting-edge technology to a carefully designed product line. The Mühle offering has sure evolved and the company has prospered since the first bristle brushes were produced in a wash-house and loaded on to horse carts, shortly before the end of the Second World War. The company is one of the few worldwide producers of complete shaving lines, and their trendsetting design is young and contemporary.

Find Mühle shaving sets, mugs and razors at Fendrihan.