Furbo

Furbo is an Italian men's grooming brand built around traditional wet shaving, owned by the Pesaro-based cosmetics manufacturer Balocchi Group [1]. Its range spans shaving and pre-shave products, aftershaves, fragrances, men's skincare and grooming tools, distributed mainly through perfumeries in Italy and a network of specialist wet-shaving retailers abroad. The line is closely tied to classic Italian barbershop tradition: several of its products reformulate discontinued Italian classics, and its shaving soap draws on a recipe dated to 1926 [8].

No public source records the year Furbo itself was founded. The brand was developed concurrently with Balocchi Group's beard-care line Hipsteria, created by company founder Marco Balocchi together with his father to serve customers who preferred shaving with a blade [6]. The parent company, Balocchi Group, dates its own founding to 1978 — a separate date that does not mark Furbo's launch.

Furbo originated within Balocchi Group, a niche professional cosmetics maker that founder Marco Balocchi describes as a family operation. According to a founder interview published by the Italian perfumery Muzio Profumi, the Furbo shaving line was developed alongside Hipsteria and built in collaboration with Balocchi's father, with the aim of serving customers who did not want to give up traditional blade shaving. The father's name is not stated publicly. The same two-generation family involvement underpins the brand's positioning around long-standing Italian shaving craft.

Furbo is one of the brands in the portfolio of Balocchi Group, an Italian company headquartered in Pesaro, in the Marche region [2]. Balocchi Group describes itself as a producer of niche professional cosmetics and lists Furbo among a portfolio that also includes the beard-care brand Hipsteria and several other lines [2]. The group has continued to expand: in 2019, trade publication BeautyBiz reported that it added the shaving brand RazoRock to its portfolio, with Marco Balocchi quoted as its founder [9].

Furbo's positioning centers on the daily ritual of wet shaving. Its dedicated brand page addresses "the Gentleman who does not want to abandon traditional blade shaving, continuing to love it as a true ritual," and carries the Italian tagline La rasatura non è più una seccatura — "Shaving is no longer a hassle" [5]. Much of the range is explicitly retrospective: the company reformulates discontinued Italian products while seeking to preserve their original characteristics. The specialist retailer Proshave describes Furbo as reworking classics such as Floïd's Sandolor pre-shave gel and Floïd Blue, "while maintaining their original properties and scents" [7]. The brand frames its products as Italian-made, stating that its traditional-shaving range is "100% made in Italy" [8].

Furbo's catalogue covers shaving creams, soaps and foams, pre-shave and aftershave products, eaux de parfum, cologne and toilette, men's face and eye creams, bath soaps and grooming tools such as brushes and safety razors. The range is organized into lines including Vintage Orange, Vintage Blu, Smart and a basic line, with the Vintage products tied directly to the reformulated Italian classics.

Among the products carried by international retailers are the Vintage Blu and Vintage Orange shaving soaps, the Sansdolor pre-shave gel and an aftershave balm. The shaving soap is described as based on a 1926 recipe, with a fragrance running from mountain lily gathered in the Alps, through Tuscan lavender, to bergamot from Calabria [8]. The brand's main proprietary feature is Sansdolor, a pre-shave technology the company says reduces irritation during shaving [6].

Distribution combines Balocchi Group's Italian perfumery network — reported in the founder interview as a presence in 850 stores, with the company focusing on perfumeries — with international specialist wet-shaving retailers, including stockists in the United States, France, Denmark and Greece [6]. Its Vintage Blu shaving soap, recognized among wet-shaving enthusiasts as a reformulation of the discontinued Floïd Blue, is carried by such retailers internationally [10].

Furbo is active. Its brand pages on Balocchi Group's official sites remain live, and its products continue to be listed by international wet-shaving retailers. The brand operates at a small, indie scale rather than as a mass-market or prestige name, distributed through Balocchi Group's specialty channels rather than general retail.