Why We Don't Sell Hair Wax: A Note on Product Line Decisions at Outlaws & Gents

An editorial note from Shayne Brown, Co-Founder & CEO of Outlaws & Gents Grooming Co.

People ask us regularly why our hair care line has a water-based pomade and a matte-finish hair cream — but no hair wax. The short answer: we don't think we'd make it better than the brands that already specialize in it, and we'd rather double down on the two formulations we know we make best.

The category math

Hair wax is a real, useful category. It's denser than pomade, gives a matte-to-low-shine finish, locks shorter and choppier styles into place, and resists humidity. For textured crops, modern messy quiffs, and short technical haircuts on coarse hair, wax can outperform both pomade and cream.

It's also a category where the formulation engineering is well-established — beeswax, candelilla, carnauba, the right ratio of fixative-to-conditioner, the wash-out trade-off. There are brands that have been refining wax formulations for decades and ship products that are genuinely excellent at what they do. We'd be entering that category to compete with companies that already make great wax. We'd be late, and we'd be competing on a curve we didn't shape.

What we'd rather do

Use the same R&D hours, formulation expertise, and small-batch USA manufacturing capacity to make the two products we're already confident are best-in-class for what they do. The pomade is water-based, washes out clean, holds a pompadour through a day on damp-hair-and-heat technique. The hair cream is matte, builds in layers, and lets you style a textured crop without the flake or stiffness of wax.

That's the trade-off. Cover 90% of classic and modern looks with two products we're proud of. Leave wax to the brands that have spent a decade getting wax right.

How we make these decisions

Three questions, every time:

1. Can we make this product meaningfully better than what's already on the market? If the answer is "about the same," we don't make it. Adding another median product to a saturated category isn't a contribution — it's noise.
2. Does it serve the customer we're already talking to? Our customer is the man who wants quality without department-store pretension. If a product type only serves a niche we don't speak to, we leave it.
3. Can we manufacture it in the USA at our quality standard without compromising on price? The made-in-USA constraint is real and non-negotiable. Some products would cost too much in small batches at U.S. manufacturing to ship at a price our customer would actually pay. Those don't make the cut.

Hair wax fails question 1 for us. Some other categories fail question 2 or 3. The line stays small on purpose. We'd rather sell a customer fewer products that all work than a wide lineup that includes things we made because the category existed.

If you're looking for hair wax, we'll happily point you to the brands that do it well. If you're looking for a pomade or a hair cream, we made ours for you.

— Shayne