I recently had the pleasure of visiting the (futuristic, glass and concrete monster) Braun Research and Development Center in Kronberg, Germany to take a look at how Braun creates it’s electric razors. Bear with me on this one because it turned out to be fascinating!

But first, we started off at the Braun Collection – sort of like a Braun Archive with exhibits upstairs and a cool vault of retro Braun products (around 2,800 of them spanning 85 years of Braun) underneath. The highlights?

This is a wall of all the Braun electric shavers. If you enlarge the pic, you’ll spot Braun’s first mass shaver, the s50. Towards the end, their best-selling Series 3 and at the bottom? The sleek Series 7 (more on that later!).

See where the shavers suddenly go from black and white to orange and red? That’s when the 70s and space travel rolled round, those colours that look retro now looked incredibly modern then. Come the 90s and you have digital panels and more black!

It’s fascinating to see them all lined up like this, you can see them becoming a lot more modern looking as time progresses – they have more electrical components, screens, shiny bits etc. Interesting to note that the ones that got the most attention from our group were the oldest ones for their retro Mad Men appeal.

These were amazing. Tucked away in the vault downstairs, possibly some prototypes that didn’t make it past Braun safety testing. If anything’s going to put you off wet shaving (and on to dry!) it’s going to be these. Click to enlarge (and spot the guy with a missing nose!):

And to finish up, our brilliant guide telling us how it took 9 years and a relatively simple thought for Braun to take one of the major steps in electric shaving; self cleaning machines so your razor stays fresh, clean and bacteria-free! Another factoid learnt on that day? Braun is pronounced ‘brown’ and not ‘brawn’ – listen to the vid!

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Then it was on to product testing at their Quality Innovation Center. To be honest, as much as I find anything tech interesting, this was the biggest draw for me. Definitely much more interesting than assembly line tours or the dizzying chat we had about trend forecasting. Braun spends a hell of a lot of time and money creating and testing their products to ensure they’re providing people with the best. If they say something is [whatever]% better, you can guarantee it’s been tested to within an inch of it’s life so they can say that. If you know anything about SCforM you’ll know how much I appreciate that.

Prototype after prototype after prototype...

Every Braun product goes through tonnes of preliminary stages where the technology is perfected and then expensive prototypes are hand-made and tested to find flaws and pick out the best bits. Once that’s done, one perfect model is created and then put through an incredible degree of testing (checking how much pressure it applies to the skin, how irritated the skin becomes, 3D face scans, x-rays, how it sounds, battery life, the wear of the blades, how it compares to other shavers…) before it finally goes on sale!

It’s sort-of comforting to know that they’re taking so much care and spending so much effort on our faces…

Possibly the weirdest/coolest things I saw were these police movie-style two-way mirrors. Braun calls in hundreds of ordinary guys to shave in front of these mirrors while researchers study the way in which they shave and adapt the razors to fit that pattern. Lots of men shave against the grain? Make sure the razor performs as well backwards as it does forwards. Trouble around the neck? Make a shaver that cuts close, hugs the neck and prevents redness. You have no idea how tempted I was to do this in front of them…

Weird but useful...

Oh and then there are these terrifying shaving robots that hook up lots of shavers at once to shave across an expanse of ‘hair’ specially made to mimic stubble. They go back and forth a few times and then researchers come in to check how well they shave and how many passes it takes to get all the hair at the same length:

And the outcome of all of this research and testing? The Braun Series 7 Electric Shaver! It’s bigger, better and more expensive but in exchange it’s thoroughly tested, packed full of the latest technology and promises to provide the best electric shave ever. Having seen the amount of work put into this as well as the enthusiasm of the people that work at Braun (these guys really do love a good shave!) – i’m inclined to think that this might live up to expectations.

Keep an eye out for my review once it’s finished my own brand of testing, don’t worry – I won’t be going easy on it!