When Andy Katz-Mayfield was getting frustrated with the limited, expensive options for buying razor blades, he asked himself a question:
“How can we fix this?”
So began the Brookline native’s path to becoming co-founder and co-CEO of the popular shaving company Harry’s and its parent company, Mammoth Brands. Harry’s is well known for its subscription service and direct-to-consumer business model.
Even while living in California, Katz-Mayfield, 43, still connects with his Brookline roots. When visiting, he makes sure to stop in at Anna’s Taqueria, bring his kids to the John D. Runkle School playground, or catch a Boston sports game with his family.
In 2013, Katz-Mayfield founded Harry’s with Jeff Raider, whom he met when they were interns at the consulting firm Bain & Company. Harry’s – the name is intended to evoke the feeling of a friend – has since taken off and served as a disruptive force in an otherwise dominated market.
Judy Katz, Andy’s mother, said she has had confidence in his entrepreneurship throughout his endeavors. She said she always knew Andy would do something interesting. “He’s a real thinker,” she said.
Andy is the fourth of five close-knit children and has always had a “very strong sense of family,” Judy said.
A teacher’s mark
Katz-Mayfield traces his thirst for knowledge and knack for problem-solving to his early life in Brookline.
Among the teachers who “left lasting impressions” on Katz-Mayfield was his junior year AP U.S. History teacher, Deborah Quitt.
“[Mrs. Quitt], was similarly just instilled in this thirst for just like knowledge and understanding the world around you,” Katz-Mayfield said.
Quitt started her 38-year career at Brookline High School in 1968 and retired in 2006. She remembers Katz-Mayfield as a “terrific student,” who “always worked hard, always prepared,” she said.
When Katz-Mayfield decided to apply to Duke University, he turned to Quitt for a letter of recommendation. “I wrote thousands of college recommendations,” she said. “I think his was the only one that I wrote to Duke.”
For Quitt, it’s “comforting” and “very rewarding” to have left an impression on Katz-Mayfield.
“And I think he was like a sponge,” she said. “He was ready and eager, and willing to learn.”
Buying a 100-year-old razor factory
After graduating from Brookline High in 2000, Katz-Mayfield studied public policy at Duke but was initially on the pre-medicine track. He was drawn to the health care sector by the idea of fixing a broken system and solving problems, intentions he carried through in his entrepreneurship.
“There’s an industry that’s broken. There’s a customer experience that’s broken,” Katz-Mayfield said. Again, the question arose: “How do I fix it?”
Nearly 10 months after Harry’s launch, Katz-Mayfield took on a daunting yet thrilling endeavor: buying a nearly 100-year-old razor factory in Germany. Limited options in shaving brands are partly due to the product being particularly challenging to manufacture, Katz-Mayfield explained.
“It’s sort of hard to innovate if you don’t really control the whole process and are vertically integrated,” he said. “So we did it.”
While the purchase was “stressful and hard and certainly risky,” Katz-Mayfield said it was a “formative experience.”
Despite any nerves that came with the purchase, the Katz-Mayfield family has remained steadfast in their trust in Andy and his endeavors, Judy said.
“We really have a lot of faith in him,” she said.
In the early days of the company, Katz-Mayfield learned on his network of support in his hometown.
“I’m still very close to a lot of my friends from growing up in Brookline and from high school,” he said. “They were all early users from prototypes of the products and giving feedback, [to] kind of rooting me on.”
Harry’s scope extends well beyond Brookline now — there’s even a running joke in the Katz-Mayfield family on Andy’s success.
“There’s nobody that my husband’s ever met on the street or seen anywhere who’s not familiar with Harry’s within three minutes,” Judy said with a laugh.
In 2018, Harry’s launched a women’s brand, Flamingo. Andy said Flamingo was created in response to women having similar frustrations with expensive products that weren’t suited to women’s needs.
It was important to stray from creating a “Harriet’s” or a “Sally’s” that was simply an extension of the brand, Katz-Mayfield said. Instead, they developed Flamingo with the intent to create a separate, distinct brand, with a team dedicated to serving women’s shaving needs.
Growing up in Brookline helped open Katz-Mayfield to a variety of ideas and perspectives, something he has brought with him to his work at Mammoth Brands, he said.
“Brookline was like a great community to grow up in, you know, in part because of the quality of the education, but also the diversity of ideas, of the population, the proximity to Boston, and all the sort of major cultures,” Katz-Mayfield said.
But his path to success hasn’t been without bumps in the road.
FTC throws up a roadblock
After disrupting the market controlled by only a few giants, including Boston-based Gillette, Harry’s nearly united with one of them. In May 2019, Edgewell Personal Care, the parent of leading razor company Schick, announced it was acquiring Harry’s for $1.37 billion.
In February 2020, the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the acquisition, ultimately killing the deal. The lawsuit cited losing Harry’s as a competitor in the shaving industry would take away an essential disruptive force in the industry.
To buy a single razor from Gillette ranges from around $15 to $25, while Harry’s, as well as Schick, average around $10.
Reflecting on the tumultuous time, Andy’s mother touted his resilience.
“He had a tough year, and he doesn’t show it,” she said. “He really takes things in stride.”
After being shut down by the FTC, Katz-Mayfield flipped the script. In 2021, Mammoth Brands acquired the deodorant brand Lume and in 2022 founded Mando, a brand focused on whole-body deodorant for men.
Mammoth Brands hopes to keep philanthropic work at the forefront. The company has donated over $20 million to nonprofit organizations.
A recent partnership that Katz-Mayfield is excited about is Flamingo’s Body Appreciation Program launched with The Girl Scouts, which seeks to help improve young women’s relationships with their bodies.
Andy’s 9-year-old daughter, Chloe, is a Girl Scout, with 6-year-old Isla likely to follow her. Through this partnership, Girl Scouts created six new Body Appreciation badges, distinct for different age groups, which Katz-Mayfield says his kids think is “very cool.”
Family and community are integral to Andy’s person, his mother said. When he returns to Brookline, Katz-Mayfield will meet up with his old high school friends and “Runkle Boys,” per Andy’s yearbook quote.
Andy hopes his children will grow up to be “Boston sports fans like me,” he said. When in town, he takes them to Red Sox, Bruins, or Celtics games “so that they can get indoctrinated into the culture.”
When Andy founded Harry’s, his mother said she and his father, Phil Mayfield, “were proud of him, and we were hoping that he also felt fulfilled,” throughout his career.
Maybe next, “he could solve health care,” she quipped.
This story is part of a partnership between Brookline.News and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
This article was originally published on October 18, 2025.