Working with what you have

By Asim M. Akhtar

 Founder, Kyoku for Men

 Every guy knows the Friday night scenario – you’re sitting watching some silly infomercial about a gadget that plays wave sounds whilst you sleep and your girlfriend is getting ready for tonight. You soon discover that not only does this gadget play wave sounds, but it has a built in alarm clock as well as ambient forest sounds to help you gently wake up as you would if you slept in the Amazon forest. By this time, your brain has atrophied and your girlfriend has just starting to apply her under makeup moisturizer. “Wow,” you say to yourself, “it’s only $19.95, and if I call now, I get a free leather carrying case.” As if you needed the motivation, you begin to grab your credit card, and finally, your girlfriend comes out looking like an absolute angel. Yes, you are running about 20 minutes late, but she does look stunning, doesn’t she?

As men, getting ready, be it for work or a night out, is a relatively simple process: shave, shower, style the hair, and, if the occasion demands, put on clothes. For men that are quite on top of their grooming routine, the cleansing and exfoliating process occurs in the shower, with any creams applied quickly thereafter. All we really have to go on is our natural appearance, wrinkled or not.  Women, on the other hand, have the distinct advantage of arming themselves with not only breakthrough anti-aging products, but make-up as well. Whilst women are applying a handful of different products to aid their aesthetic appearance, we are drinking a beer watching Shrek for the 5^th time.

Comparing the world of men’s grooming to women’s cosmetics is like comparing a McDonald’s cheeseburger to Filet Mignon, respectively. They are going to win every time using makeup. I actually dare any man to convince his girlfriend to go for a night on the town without any makeup at all on her face (Kyoku for Men nor myself take any responsibility for your personal health and / or emotional trauma following thereof). Women have it easy – we as men only have our face.

If we are going to even attempt to look a fraction as attractive as our female counterparts, we must pay attention to maximizing our natural appearance. This includes using products designed specifically for your skin and following a specific regime of cleansing, exfoliating, and moisturizing. Here at Kyoku for Men, we have designed products that fit specifically around this ritual, which we call the 3 rituals of Kirei, based on Japanese tradition. In an independent survey, we asked women what they found aesthetically most attractive about a man’s face. The results? Over 80 percent agreed that eyes and lips are the most attractive features on a man’s face. Unfortunately, eyes are the first place to show signs of stress, fatigue, and early aging.

This past month, the Kyoku for Men team and myself finally launched our Eye Fuel, which was developed over the course of 3 years using dozens and dozens of different formulations to really pin down the problems men experience around the under-eye area. This product comes in a dual-pump container that houses two different products: an Eye Radiance Crème and the Uplifting Eye Gel. The Eye Radiance Crème contains a host of deep-sea algae extracts and Japanese licorice root, harnessed via our patented micro-particle technology to help remove dark circles and prevent fine lines and wrinkles, at the cellular level. The Uplifting Eye Gel uses our exclusive light scattering particles to fill in any pre-existing lines you may have coupled with sugar extract that instantly gives you a fresh, well-rested, alert appearance. Armed with such potent technology on our side of the sink, us men can finally attempt to rival our female counterparts in terms of aesthetic appearance. After some time, your natural appearance will begin to rival that of your beloved partner’s appearance, err, natural appearance.

After a while using male targeted skincare products, you begin to notice the even tone in your skin as well as the reduction of lines along your under eye area. An extra glance from the waitress at the restaurant, an accidental brush of your shoulder by the lovely maître de, and an extra tight grip on your arm from your girlfriend all signify that you have done the right thing – that was easy, wasn’t it?

 Asim Akhtar, creator of Kyoku for Men, was born into the world of skin care and beauty. His family has been involved in the beauty industry for nearly half a century and, coming from a childhood spent in and out of the laboratory, knowledge of skincare became a part of his DNA. Asim grew up with an insatiable thirst for iconic fragrances, cutting-edge products and pushing industry standards of technological innovation. He developed his first beauty brand at the age of 13 and has since assisted in the development of countless well known, market leading beauty brands.

It was this driving force that inspired him to travel the world in search of the most efficacious natural ingredients to develop a scientifically superior skincare regime for men around the world. After months of searching, he stumbled across a small Japanese village, just two hours outside of Tokyo, called Yuzuri Hara - the ‘village of long life’ – where ten percent of the population is over eighty years old, nearly ten times of that in the UK and the US.

The villagers fascinated Akhtar, not only because of the lack of diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s, but also because of the impeccable condition of the inhabitants’ skin. Using many of the natural ingredients from Yuzuri Hara, he was able to disintegrate them and develop a dependable delivery mechanism in which the effectiveness of each ingredient would be fully actualized at the cellular level. Using himself as the first test, he developed what is now known as the Razor Repair Balm to cure his common occurrence of razor burn (an accumulation of red bumps and inflammation occurring in men post-shave) in just under three weeks. Asim knew he was onto something and devoted himself fully to integrating this newly discovered technology into a full range of products.