Issue #35, Volume #1
Friends,
What a year.
Can’t think of a time in my life that’s had so many incredible ups and downs.
Saying it’s been a complicated year doesn’t quite cut it. Maybe you’ve had years like this. Or maybe, like me, you’re in the middle of a mess right now.
If so, you know that so much of what really matters in life comes down to legacy.
As you reflect over the holidays, I hope you’ll spend some time thinking about what, ultimately, really matters: doing what it takes in your life to be a good husband, a loving father, a loyal friend, and an encouraging boss.
And, if you’re like me, you’ll be thinking about how much farther you’ve got to go to leave the kind of legacy you want to leave, in all of these ways. There’s always more you can do. The work never ends.
We often talk about legacies in financial terms – that’s what Porter & Co. is all about, after all – but for many successful men, money is actually the easy part.
I definitely want my legacy to be about far more than just some coins – even if they’re Bitcoins!
I think about the legacy my dad created. Men of my father’s generation were men of action. And men of routines. Their consistency spoke loudest. We watched them getting up early every morning, paying the bills, taking care of us when we were sick, putting money aside for the future (like my own dad, who faithfully invested in Coca-Cola)…and they didn’t say much. But we watched. And we learned.
Hopefully, I’ve passed on those lessons – how to be strong, how to be a provider, how to protect your family, how to keep working until the job is done – to my boys. And hopefully you’ve done the same for yours.
This year, I want to pass on something very special to you. It’s more than an idea – it’s part of the legacy I’m trying to build. I hope it will become part of your legacy too because it symbolizes to me all of the things that are so important about being a man: consistency, strength, resilience, tradition, excellence.
My hope is that you’ll recognize how special this is and decide to adopt it as part of your family’s traditions too.
For my dad – and probably for yours – shaving was a ritual. In our busy home – filled with three children and two working parents – it was nearly the only time he had alone and totally undisturbed.
I vividly remember watching my father use his badger-hair brush and his soap dish. I remember his brilliantly polished steel-handled razor. I can still remember all of the smells, of the hot soap, and all of the sounds, the swish of the brush along his face, and then thick beard crackling as his scalpel-sharp razor cut through it.
I knew shaving was dangerous. But I knew Dad was good at it – like he was with everything else.
As a boy, the process was mysterious… and uniquely masculine. Since then – in today’s fast-paced, disposable world… we’ve lost something precious… in the art of shaving, and consequently, in the pride of being a man.
Men – whose fathers and grandfathers had daily shaving routines that included hot towels, high-quality soaps, exotic brushes, beautiful steel tools, and fine porcelain basins – now get up in the morning and have to search for a five-bladed, gimmicky, piece of plastic… one that has gone missing because their wives borrowed it.
Razors have evolved from being sharp, precise tools that men used exclusively, into completely anodyne and androgynous, disposable pieces of plastic. My mother would have never dreamed of picking Dad’s razor. And so, beyond the quality of the shave, something else is missing from modern cartridge shaving – masculinity.
The irony is that men love good tools. Our garages and our workbenches are full of precision-tuned instruments, some that are very dangerous. We take pride in using our tools well. But razors? The most masculine tool of all? They’ve been gelded.
It’s a tragedy that we’ve ended up in a world where most men don’t know how to shave with a real blade… or even understand why they should use a truly sharp edge that has been honed with shaving in mind.
Being a man is hard. We have the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of disease. We work more overtime, we have more workplace injuries, and we suffer a far higher rate of depression and suicidal thoughts.
It’s just the way the world works. And part of being a man is not complaining about it.
But being a man is also (or, should be…) rewarding. We create. We build. We fight. We’re invigorated by challenges and the thrill of the chase. And developing mastery in our lives fills us with a feeling of immortality.
Learning to shave and to shave well is a part of my Dad’s legacy.
It is what inspired me to create the world’s most advanced, most technologically perfect, all-steel, razor: OneBlade.
It’s for men. And, if you’re a man, then using it – and using it well – should be part of your daily routine. It’s the best way to start your day: by doing something perfectly. Just like making your bed. Having your coffee. And reading my latest rants in the Daily Journal.
(By the way, if you’re a woman reading this… then you know exactly how important it is that men are skillful, consistent, and know how to shave well. Nothing gets me more of the attention I want from my wife than a perfectly “baby bottom” smooth face.)
What I Want to Share With You
If you look up U.S. patent #11389978 — the key OneBlade patent — you’ll find my name, Porter Stansberry, listed as the inventor.
In 2013, I set out to build the perfect razor.
I had always dealt with irritation from cartridge razors. I have a thick beard and sensitive skin, so shaving with cartridges has caused painful and annoying skin problems. So, I shaved as little as possible and generally hated shaving.
But, on a trip to Italy in 2002, I discovered that a barber, using a straight razor, could give me a perfect shave without any irritation at all. I suspected that if I could learn to shave well with an old fashioned razor, like my Dad had every morning, I could maintain a clean shaven look without the constant skin problems.
And so began my deep dive into razors: angles of attack, types of steel, razor gap sizes, stropping… soap chemistry…
After years of trying just about every kind of razor ever made over the last 100 years, I was convinced there was a much better way.
Cartridge razors are easy to use because they have very small razor gap sizes and the cartridge heads rotate to move along the contours of your face. But, they’re made with terrible steel and relatively dull edges, which, along with multiple blades, leads to skin irritation. So, what if we combined the good things about cartridge razors (safe, easy to use) with the incredible shave you can get from an ultra-sharp, single blade?
Seemed like a simple project, but it took two years and more than 1,000 prototypes to build. Since then, I’ve spent around $10 million to design, manufacture, and develop OneBlade.
(Along the way, Philips, the industrial manufacturing giant, stole our brand name. To avoid an endless legal war, we settled the lawsuit. So, we own “OneBlade” in the wet shaving market, while Philips owns the trademark on electrical razors. Just to be clear: our OneBlade is a real razor, not a lawn mower for your face.)
And, even today, over a decade later, no other razor in the world is made like ours.
Each OneBlade Genesis razor undergoes more than 50 individual steps of manufacturing, including state-of-the-art metal injection molding, military-grade physical vapor deposition (“PVD”) coating, and hand-polishing. We individually number every Genesis shaving handle we sell (in the order it was made) and include a lifetime warranty.
We put just as much effort into our blades. We offer two blade choices: a Japanese stainless steel, platinum-coated blade from Feather (a world leader in precision blade-making). And, as we announced this year, we have finally developed our proprietary blade that lasts 6x longer than the Feather blade because it’s made with carbon steel and chromium, and coated with platinum.
Both blades are industry leaders in sharpness and shave comfort. (But, if you’re like me, you will vastly prefer the OneBlade carbon steel blade. It’s more mild and it lasts longer.)
Either way, by using a single-edge blade instead of a double-edge blade (which allows you to shave on either side of the blade), we were able to build our razor handles with unique geometries that allow a shaving process that’s nearly identical to a cartridge razor. And single edged blades are safer too: Our blade slides quickly into place from the back of the razor head in seconds, and is removed just as easily.
I can tell you from years of personal experience that nothing – absolutely nothing – shaves like a OneBlade Genesis Razor. Genesis was designed and built to inspire men to be their best, every morning.
And, just last month, OneBlade announced its latest innovation: an electronic hot lather machine that’s safe enough to take in the shower. If you were with us at our Porter & Co. conference this year, then you saw a live demo of OneBlade LTHR. This remarkable and rechargeable hot lather machine is designed to give you the perfect heated lather in under 90 seconds, providing a smoother, closer, and irritation-free shave every time. Oh, and it’s water-proof, so shower shavers will love it. This technology was developed to be similar to using a modern coffee machine: you insert a soap cup and, presto, you’ve got hot lather for your next 5-10 shaves. No mess, no cleaning the machine, no fuss.
This week, in honor of the holidays (and of all the good men in our lives), the OneBlade team and I have put together something special for Porter & Co. readers: A full complex of OneBlade’s finest products at a steeper discount than anything we’ve offered ever before.
If you visit our main page, you’ll see our Black Friday offers (which are already our best deals of the year)… but we want to offer Porter & Co. readers something much more elite – a special box with…
- OneBlade LTHR Hot Lather Machine: The best part of getting a shave at the barber… only you can do it yourself, every morning. There’s something so luxurious about a real hot lather shave. Included are two lather pods – our Sandalwood and Lavender scents.
- Genesis Razor – Gunmetal Edition: This is OneBlade’s flagship, stainless steel razor, reimagined in a sleek gunmetal finish. It’s more than a razor – it’s a masterpiece of form and function.
- 30 Proprietary OneBlade Replacement Blades: These blades are designed for maximum sharpness, durability, and performance, delivering the closest shave possible.
- After Shave Balm: I haven’t discussed all of our chemistry work, but we’ve put just as much time in attention into our soaps and lotions as we have with our razors and blades. All of our skin products are made with organic ingredients and in small batches to assure quality and consistency. You won’t find anything like our products in a store.
Separately, these items cost $500. Here, we’re offering them, together, to Porter & Co. readers for only $295.
(Please note… you won’t find this offer listed anywhere on our site. The only way to get to it is by clicking this link.)
We’ll set you up with the best shave of your life. This is a product I’m proud to share with you – and a legacy I’m thrilled to pass down.
To your success,
Porter Stansberry
Stevenson, MD
P.S. This email is all about men (because some things in life just need to be that way).
But OneBlade actually has created a sleek, feminine and just-as-advanced Dawn razor for women. If you’d like to swap out the Genesis razor in our bundle offer for a Dawn, just click here.