Personna

Personna is an American shaving brand best known for double-edge razor blades and, in later decades, for supplying store-brand and private-label razors. Its lineage reaches back to the nineteenth-century safety-razor trade, though the Personna name itself only appeared in the 1950s. The brand is no longer an independent company: it is a trademark of Edgewell Personal Care, which acquired it through a chain of corporate deals and has marketed it since 2015 [3].

Two dates are attached to the brand's beginnings, and they describe different things. The company lineage is usually traced to 1875, when the Kampfe brothers formed the Star Safety Razor company; Encyclopedia.com likewise records the corporate incorporation as 1875 [7]. The American Safety Razor Company (ASR), the corporate parent that would later own Personna, was itself founded in 1906 through a merger of the Gem Cutlery Company and Ever-Ready [3]. The Personna brand as such came later still, in the 1950s.

The story begins with three brothers from Saxony. Frederick, Otto and Richard Kampfe emigrated to the United States in 1870 and set up a tool-and-die shop in Brooklyn, New York; in 1875 they formed the Star Safety Razor company. That business is the anchor of the corporate lineage that Edgewell today summarises as "nearly 150 years of experience" in blade-making [5]. In 1906 the American Safety Razor Company was created from the merger of the Gem Cutlery Company and Ever-Ready; it was chartered in Virginia while razor and blade production stayed in Brooklyn.

Personna itself entered the picture by acquisition. In 1953 ASR bought the Pal Blade Company, taking on its Pal, Treet and Personna brands. Ten years later, in 1963, the company became the first maker of stainless steel blades, which were sold under the Personna name.

Through the mid-twentieth century the Personna name became ASR's banner for blade innovation. In 1970 the company introduced the Personna 74, the first blade made with tungsten steel. By 1995 it had developed the Personna moving blade cartridge (MBC) system, and around the same period established Personna International subsidiaries in several countries.

The corporate ownership changed hands repeatedly. Philip Morris acquired American Safety Razor in 1960, and in 1977 a group of executives bought Personna American Safety Razor Company back from Philip Morris in a management buyout [3]. Older business references also record a separate chain of owners in the following years, including the Bic Pen Corporation and a 1989 purchase by John W. Jordan, with a public share offering in 1993 [7]; these details are framed differently across sources.

The modern turning point came in 2010. American Safety Razor filed for bankruptcy that July, after several years of declining earnings and the loss of Walmart, its largest customer; in November, Energizer Holdings bought the company for US$301 million. In 2015 Energizer spun off its personal-care division as Edgewell Personal Care, which kept the Personna brand [3].

Personna is today a trademark of Edgewell Personal Care Brands, LLC, headquartered in Shelton, Connecticut [2]. Edgewell's portfolio also includes Schick, Wilkinson Sword, Banana Boat, Hawaiian Tropic, Bulldog and Cremo, among other personal-care names. The company describes its own mission as "we make useful things joyful."

The 2010 bankruptcy also split the Personna operation in two. Edgewell retained the consumer Personna brand and the blade plant in Israel, while the industrial-blade facility in Verona, Virginia, was acquired by an investor group operating as AccuTec Blades [6]. The Verona plant, once under threat of closure, remained the source of production double-edge blades labelled "Made in the U.S.A."

Personna's reputation rests largely on its blades. Beyond the tungsten-steel Personna 74, the brand's double-edge lines include the Lab Blue, sold as oiled, comfort-coated blades in boxes of 100, and the Med Prep surgical-preparation blade [6]. The brand also produced a Personna Safety Scalpel, introduced in response to HIV-related safety concerns in the medical field [7]. Blades sold under the Personna name continue to be produced at the Israeli facility, in coatings such as chrome, platinum and teflon.

Under Edgewell's custom-brands group, the Personna Blade Group (PBG) side of the business supplies private-label and store-brand razors — men's and women's multi-blade systems, dermaplane razors, and disposable and cartridge systems. Edgewell describes this operation as "one of the most trusted, recognized, and awarded suppliers of store-brand razors in the world," with distribution and manufacturing across more than 20 countries [5]. The brand's stated tagline is "Innovation. Quality. Sustainability."

Within the specialist wet-shaving community, Personna's double-edge blades have a durable following. The wet-shaving publication Sharpologist has described them as "some of the most loved blades in the wet shaving world," though its 2015 coverage also noted a reader complaint about quality [6]. The same feature, headlined "Personna Blades Are Here to Stay," documented how the Verona plant survived its closure threat and the brand's standing among traditional double-edge shavers.

Personna is an acquired brand rather than an independent company. It operates as a trademark of Edgewell Personal Care and remains in active production and distribution: consumer double-edge blades, surgical-preparation blades, and store-brand razors were all still being marketed as of 2026 [5]. Its output is split between Edgewell's Israeli blade plant and — for the industrial line spun off after 2010 — the AccuTec-owned facility in Verona, Virginia.