Mühle

Mühle is a German manufacturer of wet-shaving products, based in Stützengrün in the Ore Mountains of Saxony. Founded in 1945 by Otto Johannes Müller, it began as a small maker of shaving brushes and has grown into a maker of safety razors, brushes, bowls and skincare, trading under the name MÜHLE Rasurkultur [2]. The company remains family-owned and is run by the founder's grandsons, the third generation; it describes shaving as a slow daily ritual it calls "shaving culture".

The business is still active. Its most recent news posts and product launches run through 2026, and it operates retail stores in Berlin and London alongside its manufactory and online shop.

Otto Johannes Müller started the company in 1945, just after returning from the war. According to Mühle, he worked out of a laundry room, produced the first brushes by hand and devised the MÜHLE logo. The early business specialised in shaving brushes and, the company says, won its first export customers in 1949 — the same year a fire destroyed its premises. Mühle describes itself as having grown from this workshop into one of the world's leading suppliers of wet-shaving accessories [3].

The manufactory has been based in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) for more than 80 years, a region the brand ties closely to its identity. The current legal entity is Hans-Jürgen Müller GmbH & Co. KG, named for the founder's son.

After Otto Johannes Müller died in 1965 at the age of 51, his son Hans-Jürgen took over the company. By that point Mühle exported to a number of countries, though the figure is recorded differently across sources: the brand's own history page states 36 countries, while an interview in the company magazine 30 Grad gives 30 [2][12].

The most disruptive chapter came under East Germany. In 1972 the company was expropriated by the GDR state through a forced share sale, and it later operated as part of the publicly owned VEB Flamingo-Bürsten [12]. Hans-Jürgen Müller has described the loss bluntly: "Everything we had built up was gone." German reunification reversed it; the family reclaimed the business after 1989–1990 [2].

The recovery was slow, and the company says its first major post-reunification orders came in 1995. From 2006 it expanded beyond brushes into a comprehensive wet-shaving range. The third generation — brothers Christian and Andreas Müller — assumed management of the company; the brand's history page dates this to 2008, while the 30 Grad interview places it in 2007, describing a gradual handover rather than a single moment [2][12]. The company opened its first retail store in Berlin's Hackesche Höfe in 2014 and a London store on Newburgh Street in 2018. It marked its 80th anniversary in 2025.

Mühle is an independent, family-owned business and has no parent company. Ownership has passed through three generations of the Müller family: founder Otto Johannes Müller, his son Hans-Jürgen, and grandsons Christian and Andreas Müller, who run it today. Its earlier names reflect its history — O.J. Müller KG before nationalisation, and VEB Flamingo-Bürsten during the GDR period.

Mühle positions wet shaving as a deliberate, unhurried ritual it terms "Rasurkultur", or shaving culture. The company frames this as taking time and quiet away from the pace of the day, and presents itself as a manufactory that joins traditional hand-craftsmanship with contemporary design. Its stated values centre on craftsmanship, tradition, sustainability and what it calls a cosmopolitan standard of quality; the founding family magazine adds "a lot of courage" as a recurring theme [3]. Its products sit at the premium end of the market.

Design is central to how the brand presents itself. Mühle follows a "form follows function" approach as a member of the German Design Council, and collaborated with the designer Mark Braun on its HEXAGON series. Final assembly of its products is done by hand at the Stützengrün manufactory, where the company says each model passes through numerous expert hands before it leaves.

The range spans shaving brushes, safety razors, bowls and a skincare line. Mühle's brushes use silvertip badger hair and a proprietary synthetic bristle it markets as Silvertip Fibre, designed as an alternative to animal hair. Among its better-known razors are the R89 and the COMPANION, launched in 2021 and described as a unisex safety razor with a patented head. The brand's ORGANIC skincare line is built around ingredients including argan oil, shea butter, aloe vera, calendula and chamomile, and the company states its products are vegan and free of parabens, silicones, sulfates and mineral oils.

The HEXAGON design series, developed with Mark Braun, won both a Red Dot Design Award and a German Design Award in 2017 [2].

Mühle is treated by wet-shaving editorial as an established maker. The English Wikipedia article on safety razors lists it among the better-known double-edge razor manufacturers, alongside Edwin Jagger, Feather, Merkur and others [9]. The specialist site Sharpologist gives the R89 an honourable mention in its safety-razor guide and notes that the head design Mühle developed jointly with Edwin Jagger was found "noticeably better" and widely copied [10]. A review of the COMPANION by Naked Armor described the brand as "known for making quality gear" [11].

The company frames durability as the core of its environmental approach, stating that "sustainable thinking begins with the longevity of a MÜHLE product" — brush heads unscrew so handles can be reused, and it offers repair rather than replacement. It says its production runs on green electricity with on-site photovoltaics, and it has shifted packaging toward single-origin paper and away from plastics. Mühle reports an EcoVadis Gold rating awarded in 2022 and arranges climate-neutral shipping through carrier programmes [5].

Mühle is active. It continues to launch products and publish news through 2026, including a patent for the COMPANION razor announced in early 2026 and a new KOLORIT design series previewed in late 2025 [8]. It operates its manufactory in Stützengrün, retail stores in Berlin and London, and an international online shop.