These Entrepreneurs Are on a Mission to Save Luxury Scissors
Top, from left: Fennek 8" Italiano Classico kitchen scissors, Robuso’s Hoch Left-Handed 10" Tailor’s Shears, Pallarès 8" Profesional Cocina; bottom: Alpen 6.5" Grand Stork, Ernest Wright Kutrite, Robuso Wessi Vintage Trimmers.
Photographer: Kyoko Hamada for Bloomberg Businessweek
Maggie Fox and her husband, David Thomas, were on vacation in Lisbon in 2018, strolling and brainstorming business ideas, when they passed by a shop with a golden pair of stork-shaped shears in its window. “I looked at Dave,” Fox says, “and I said, ‘What about … scissors?’ ”
Although expanding, it’s still a bit of an unexplored market. Ordinary household scissors have yet to generate the kind of profligate ardor that knives have garnered for decades. Sure, there are exceptions in a few niche areas: A pair of Sasuke bonsai scissors might set you back more than $30,000, and tiny, ornate embroidery shears fetch more than $600 a pair from the French Needle. But when it comes to the office or crafts or kitchen cutting, there’s a definite blind spot, even among the culinary cognoscenti, says Josh Donald, the co-owner of San Francisco’s Bernal Cutlery. “It’s not uncommon for someone to have nice knives and a crummy pair of kitchen shears,” he says.