Adam Simone, Leaf Shave: Engineering Lifelong Razors – Well Made E83

A mechanical engineer by trade, co-founder Adam Simone worked for medical technology companies before bootstrapping his sustainable razor brand, Leaf Shave. After the acquisition of his first company, and a year of product refinement, Adam took his experience creating medical-grade tools to develop the refillable, plastic-free Leaf razor.

Leaf Shave’s hero product combines the form factor of a disposable cartridge shaver with the durability of a double-edge safety razor. Adam still works for a surgical tech company but hopes to take Leaf Shave full-time, for now, he’s focused on creating great facial instruments and growing the small consumer brand on its own strength.

“Maybe, unconsciously, we were developing a medical device grade tool for consumer modern use.”

On this episode, Adam talks about making well-designed tools (3:36). Adam tried to shoehorn a consumable business model — it didn’t work. He shares how he and his co-founder Adam Hahn found value in a focused core product (10:45). Adam talks about building brand loyalty (12:47) and innovating distribution strategy with retailers, like Package Free Shop (20:59). Adam shares why they decided to fulfill in-house and how they found a great overseas manufacturing partner (25:00). Lastly, Adam talks about robots, regulations, and applying conscious consumerism to build the Leaf Shave brand (39:03).

Follow Leaf Shave on Instagram.

Also mentioned on the show:

You can find this and all future episodes on iTunes, Google Play, and here on the Lumi blog. This episode was edited by Evan Goodchild.