About GERMANIKURE

About Germanikure We are a family-owned company. Because we aren’t a corporation, we can do things most corporations cannot. We define our success not by the bottom line, but through quality, ethics, accountability, and affordability. We are glad you are visiting our site, and hope you will learn more about the efforts we make as a company to provide fine manicure tools at affordable prices. Old-World craftsmanship Renowned German engineering has its limits. Top-notch CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machines, grinders, high-tech mold making machines and robots will never be able to fully replace human hands. Our most valuable assets are the true artisans who learned the trade traditionally, from their fathers. Our modern machinery helps with initial shaping, but then each and every piece goes through many traditional manual steps on its way to becoming a life lasting, precision tool. People are often surprised to learn that every single pair of our scissors is assembled by hand and every single screw is set with a screwdriver to ensure proper tension. Scissor blades are adjusted with a small hammer for precise shearing cuts. Every nipper is assembled by hand and sharpened with a file - not a grinder. Highly skilled handwork is required to make our products functionally superior and life lasting. We do not want to be in the business of selling replacements, so mass-production is simply not an option. In life, when it is time to make a decision people usually know the right path, but often choose the easier route. It's the same in business. We know faster ways to produce our products, but not without sacrificing quality and critical functions. We also know there are cheaper production methods, but those methods do not come without environmental and societal repercussions. We chose a path that may not be as easy or profitable as it could be, but we believe it is the right path for us. alt Affordability Our tools are intentionally and deliberately priced 30-60% less than other comparable European and fine Solingen products. We also ask our stockists to keep our items attractively affordable to purchase. By supporting our beliefs, these retailers actually sacrifice a larger profit from an enormous markup. Instead, they agree to an intangible return on their investment. Unfortunately, “taking the right path” does not always look good in the annual stockholder report, which is why you’ll only see our products in places that care: small local drugstores, health stores, boutiques, or ethical nail spas and salons among others. No child Labor It doesn’t make the news, but the sharp truth is: the grooming tool industry is heavily supported by child labor. It is well known that Pakistan is a major producer of grooming tools sold in the U.S. The child labor laws in Pakistan state that children under 14 years old cannot work in factories or any job deemed hazardous, yet there are an estimated 11 million child laborers in Pakistan alone under 14 years of age, and most of these children are sitting on moldy floors, operating heavy machinery, and performing hazardous jobs like grinding scissors, polishing tools, or sharpening blades. While not every factory in Pakistan operates under such questionable ethics, enough of them do to warrant careful consideration. No child labor is ever used in the manufacturing, packaging, or distribution of GERmanikure products. We ask you to please carefully consider the origins of your next tool purchase, and stop contributing to this growing worldwide child labor problem. alt Earth-consciousness At one time, Solingen was a muddy, rust-colored mess without much green space. Steel factories coated everything in a fine film of brown. Through tighter factory regulations and an influx of more caring companies, Solingen has been brought all the way back from drab desolation to a green city where children can visit the Rhine and swim in clean water. Water Water is a key element for most of our production operations such as grinding, drilling and sharpening. Water not only washes away steel bits but also removes glue residues, excess minerals, lubricants and silicones from grinding wheels and belts. To save money (and increase profitability), some steel factories re-use their dirty, abrasive laden, effluent for several cycles. If the water in the grinder is already filled with abrasives and steel shavings, it is difficult to control the exact sharpness of the ground edge. After re-using the muddy water as much as possible, many factories just dump it back into the ecosystem without much thought. After each use, we collect all our water in pools under the factory, extract and recycle tons of steel grounds from it, and then filter the water back to usable condition on site. This filtered water then gets reused for our production operations. Filtering our water on site not only saves the nearby Rhine river, but also allows us to use only clean water in all of our manufacturing operations. This process also makes our tools much more precise and sharp. Air Re-using our water isn’t the only area where we are strict. We use industrial air filtration, exhaust hoods, and efficient air circulation on the factory floor to remove unhealthy air particulates. All of the exhaust we generate goes through filtration before it exits the factory. While manufacturing in a 100% pollution-free environment is pretty much impossible, we do our best to limit our contribution to smog. Grooming tool factories in many other countries such as Pakistan are not so careful. alt Minimalist packaging Perhaps the best way to impact the world's waste problem is to buy everything without packaging. Until that time arrives, we use the bare minimum packaging of plain, hand-stamped kraft envelopes. Marketing specialists told us that this kind of minimalistic, non-plastic, “blind” packaging wouldn’t sell products. We want to prove them wrong. Our customers are mature enough to research our quality for themselves. We are in the business of selling tools, not the package they come in. Not only is the packaging 100% biodegradable, but because each of our products also lasts a lifetime or longer, our tools will not be discarded quickly. These two things together exempt us from an alarming statistic that, quite frankly, we want no part of: nearly 3 trillion pounds of throw-away trash is created worldwide