He’s no beard-o

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/11/2016 (3450 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In July 2015, the Huffington Post published an article titled, What the Heck is Beard Oil and How Does It Work?

Around the same time, Winnipegger Dan Carriere posed a similar question, after spying one of his co-workers rubbing clear liquid together in his hands then massaging it into his beard, neck and facial area.

“I was like, ‘Is that aftershave or something?” says Carriere, 38, who, despite sporting an enviable set of whiskers ever since he’s been able to grow a beard, had never used any sort of cosmetic products on his bristles.

“He said, ‘It’s beard oil. It gets rid of itch, it softens your skin, it makes your beard more manageable… here, give it a try.’”

Carriere applied the oil the way he was shown and noticed a difference almost immediately. He looked at his colleague and announced, “I have to get some of this.”

Two problems: firstly, Carriere couldn’t find a salon in Winnipeg that stocked beard oil, which has grown in popularity in recent years. According to a 2013 New York Times piece on the topic, businesses have become more permissive of facial hair. Secondly, because he’s “frugal,” he wasn’t sure he wanted to do what his co-worker had done, which was spend close to $75, plus shipping, for a 50-millilitre bottle ordered in from the States.

After mentioning that set of circumstances to his wife, who had just begun making all-natural creams and lotions for their two-year-old son, she suggested they determine what the components were and whip up a batch themselves.

“I have no chemistry background whatsoever — I’m strictly blue-collar — but after ordering a bunch of ingredients and learning about different types of carrier and essential oils, I was able to come up with 30 recipes I liked,” says the married father of one.

“After trying them out on family and friends, I whittled that number down to seven.”

Next, Carriere approached the co-worker who introduced him to beard oil in the first place. He asked him if he’d be interested in going into the beard biz together. After striking a deal in November 2015, the pair came up with a name, Beard and Brawn Oil Company, established a website (www.beardandbrawn.ca) and began advertising on websites such as Kijiji and eBay.

(“Oklahoma, of all places,” Carriere recalls when asked where the duo’s first online order came from.)

On April 29, 2016, Beard and Brawn, which by then had become a one-person operation after Carriere’s partner bowed out to spend more time with his young family, was scheduled to be a vendor at Third + Bird, an artisan market held twice a year that routinely draws over 5,000 shoppers.

Because Carriere wasn’t certain he could handle that large a crowd by himself, he solicited his pal Kyle Von Reisen, who teaches hairstyling at Steinbach Regional Secondary School, to join him in his booth.

Wait a sec; you sell beard oil, right? And isn’t the crowd at Third + Bird predominantly female?

“That’s exactly what I said to my wife when she suggested setting up there,” Carriere says with a chuckle. “My feeling was, ‘This is dude-stuff. Why would I go to a market for a bunch of women?’”

“But that’s the thing,” interjects Von Reisen, who officially joined the business in May 2016. “Ninety per cent of our customers are women, which was proven that weekend when we couldn’t take people’s money fast enough for their oil. I mean, who’s rubbing against these guys’ scratchy beards every day and night? Who benefits the most when they’re nice and soft and smell great?”

 

In June 2016, Carriere and Von Reisen heard from Robert Brush, an Australian bloke whose goal, according to his website, is “to gather and grade every commercially available beard oil on the planet Earth.”

Brush, who has tried 172 different oils to date, was particularly interested in the fellows’ Winter Spice beard oil because, he told them, he’d never encountered one that contained frankincense and myrrh before.

How did Beard and Brawn fare? After trying it out, Brush granted Winter Spice a heady 90 per cent approval rating, noting “this husky wintery blend is such that one imagines its purpose is to protect a man against chilling, harsh winter blasts of a cold, soulless wind.” (Although Brush makes it sound like he’s been to Winterpeg during a January cold snap, he was only imagining what -40 C feels like, he told us when we contacted him Down Under.)

Brush summed his report up by stating, “Winter Spice transported me away to a land where I was protected against the elements and every conceivable danger… by my unfathomably dense and ferocious beard.”

“In the case of Beard and Brawn, it was really the excellent therapeutic value of the coconut, castor and avocado oils, along with the unique and balanced scent of peppermint and frankincense,” Brush said from his home in Sydney. “It is definitely a unique and well-considered recipe.”

 

Thanks to Von Reisen’s industry connections, Beard and Brawn’s all-natural product line is available in a dozen locations, including Edward Carriere Salon (no relation) on Spence Street, Generation Green at The Forks and Fort Knoxx Barber & Salon in Kenora.

Carriere and Von Reisen were also recently approached by the owners of Brazen Hall Kitchen & Brewery, a new brew pub set to open on Pembina Highway. The management team there is hoping the budding entrepreneurs can create a beard oil that would be exclusive to their establishment.

“Their logo is this Viking bearded guy so they asked if we could do something with hops in it,” Carriere says, mentioning one of their products, Beer’d Wash soap and shampoo, contains a trace amount of beer. “We’ve had similar requests from a few salons and barber shops but it’s a matter of finding the time. We both have full-time jobs away from this so we have to be careful about getting too big, too quickly.”

Oh, in case you were wondering, yes, Carriere and Von Reisen find themselves noticing other guys’ beards much more than they used to. While they won’t approach hirsute types in coffee shops per se and hand over their card, when they’ve been at family functions such as weddings or birthday parties, they have been known to begin conversations with, “Nice beard. Do you use anything on it?”

For the month of November, Beard & Brawn will donate 10 per cent of all sales to Movember Foundation Canada. (During the rest of the year, the company donates 10 per cent of sales to sponsoring children through WorldVision Canada.)

 

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca