Tristan Walker raises $6.9 million for shaving system targeting African America Men

Tristan Walker – Founder and CEO of Walker & Company. PHOTO/David Paul Morris/Getty Images

Tristan Walker – a forner director of business development with location-based social website Foursquare, founded his startup Walker & Company in December 2013, has announced that he has been able to raise US$6.9 million in early-round funding from several investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Upfront Ventures, Collaborative Fund and Ron Johnson, who ran retail operations for Apple.

Walker, and his company is selling razors and shaving cream and grooming products for African Americans. Among the products the company produces and sells is Bevel – a high end line of shaving products targeting African American men with the effect of eliminating razor bumps.

According to Walker, whenever he visited his local pharmacy, as an African American man with curly hair, he would always have to head to the back of the store in order to buy cosmetic products, the ones he needed could only be found in the ethnic aisle. “It is not really an aisle, it is a shelf,” he adds. “Then you have to reach to the bottom of that shelf for a package that is dirty, and then there is the photo of a 45-year-old bald black guy in a towel on it – that entire second class citizen experience needs to go.”

The business model that Walker & Company has employed – targetting a minority audience is not new, and if ran well can be very successful – companies like Daymond John’s FUBU succeeded in marketing their products to African Americans.

Walker plans to use the newly raised money to develop new and existing products, and to get Bevel into brick-and-mortar locations like barber shops and specialty stores.

Read more: Wall Street Journal