Beard Monkey

Beard Monkey is a Swedish men's grooming brand founded in 2015 by childhood friends Markus Ahlgren and Alexander Sveningsson [1][7]. Built around barbershop culture, it makes beard, hair, skin and body care alongside its own fragrances, and positions itself as a Swedish label combining "style, quality and function for the modern man." The company is owned by Heads Up and runs its own factory in the Småland region of southern Sweden. It remains active, with a current webshop, regular magazine content and new fragrance launches.

The brand's name comes from a private joke. The two founders played ice hockey together and used to call each other skäggapa — "beard monkey" in Swedish [7]. That nickname became the company they built once they moved into grooming professionally.

Ahlgren and Sveningsson both grew up in business-minded families and were drawn toward entrepreneurship early. They entered the barbering industry in 2012, and before launching their own label they imported an American haircare brand into Sweden. With Beard Monkey they wanted to build something entirely original — products with high quality, interesting fragrances and considered design that, according to the company, they felt were missing from the market when the brand launched in 2015 [1].

The first three products went on sale on 21 May 2015: a Sweet Tobacco beard shampoo, a Sweet Tobacco beard oil, and a mustache wax. The company says these early items remain among its bestsellers [6]. One of the founders, Markus Ahlgren, lives in Skillingaryd near Jönköping in Småland.

The brand's surname records are partly complementary across sources rather than contradictory: the company's about page introduces the founders by first name only, as "Markus och Alexander," while the full surnames — Markus Ahlgren and Alexander Sveningsson — appear on the brand's founder page and in editorial coverage [1][7]. The surname Sveningsson is also rendered "Svenningsson" in some accounts.

Beard Monkey is owned by Heads Up and has a sister company, Ellwo Professional, which makes women's haircare [2]. The brand describes its products as developed in Sweden, with the majority manufactured in its own factory in Småland — an arrangement the company says gives it full control over quality and craft.

The company frames Beard Monkey as a Swedish brand built to meet "all of a man's beauty needs," extending well beyond the beard. Its stated positioning is that a beard may be a man's signature, but style does not stop there, and the range now spans hair and body, shaving, skincare, fragrance, tools and accessories. The brand also markets a lifestyle identity through merchandise such as caps, socks and pouches, framed around belonging to "the pack."

Fragrance is central to how Beard Monkey presents itself. Scents are organised into named collections — among them Sweet Tobacco, Licorice, Orange/Cinnamon, Oud/Saffron and the more recent OPUS X — and the company has described its aim as products made "with high quality and feeling," with "that little extra" [6]. Its summarised tagline for this broader positioning is "beauty for men — inside and out."

The core catalogue centres on beard care — beard oil, beard balm and beard shampoo — and widens into hair and body wash, antiperspirant, shaving products, skincare and eau de parfum. According to the brand, all products are developed together with professional barbers, and in its early years new products were tested for at least four months before release, with both male and female test groups consulted on fragrances, logos and packaging.

On ethics, the company states that Beard Monkey never tests on animals and describes its products as cruelty-free, made in line with the EU cosmetics regulation that bans animal testing [3]. It says many, though not all, products are vegan; some may contain animal-derived ingredients such as lanolin or beeswax [3].

Editorial coverage of the brand is limited. The Swedish business magazine Enterprise Magazine profiled Beard Monkey in 2017 under the headline "En apa med skägg" ("A monkey with a beard"), covering its founding, the origin of the name and its barber-led product development [7].

Beard Monkey is an active brand. Its webshop is operating, its online magazine carries recent 2026 articles, and it continues to introduce new fragrances such as the OPUS X collection. Direct shipping from its own store is limited to Sweden, but its products are sold more widely across the Nordic market through third-party retailers.