For the last 3 years Regal Gentleman had been a retailer selling other branded products. But last year, we made the decision to stop doing that and start to produce our own range.

The first product that we looked to create was the Regal Gentleman Matte Clay. A matte finish, high hold clay perfect for textured finishes.

It's been over a year since we first made that decision. And over 7 months since we received our first sample.

In that space of time the product has developed a lot. Most notably, becoming a medium hold product instead of a high hold.

The reason for this change was that we didn't want to lie you.

Being honest, this product could probably "get away" with being a "high hold." It does keep your hair in place for the day for the styles it is suited to. Those styles being textured, defined cuts like crops, David Beckham's new haircut and the haircuts scattered throughout this post that are all styled with RG Matte Clay.

But, it doesn't hold your hair in place solid like we would expect a high hold product to. And that's not because we couldn't get it to do that, we didn't want to.

The RG Matte Clay (name to be confirmed) is meant for styles that you don't want to be held solid. It's meant for styles that can be reworked or played with throughout the day if you wanted to and it's designed to keep your hair looking natural.

We sent samples to 15 people, some barbers and some past customers. It was very important to us that we got a mixture of experience levels of using products. From gents who had used 1 or 2 products all the way to gentlemen that had used every product under the sun.

The feedback we've had on this product has been truly amazing. We've had feedback from barbers who are using it regularly on clients and asking when they can stock it and feedback from the Regal Family saying it's the best product they've used. It truly has been overwhelming, considering this is our first ever product.

The only issue we really had was that the product was too hard coming out of the tub. We felt that we had got this product to the level we wanted to in terms of performance, but when getting it out of the 15ml sample tub it was very hard, meaning that it took a lot of work to rub it into the hands.

We needed to consider either going back to the drawing board or accepting that this would be a potential drawback.

However the hair product Gods were looking down on us and after putting the product into the larger 100ml tub (which it will come in), the problem was resolved and was a lot softer.

That means that we are now ready to go with our first ever product, the RG Matte Clay.

So, what now?

This clay will now go through thorough safety testing before we go on to manufacture the product. This should take around 4-5 months and means that we'll be ready to launch the RG Matte Clay in July.

At the same time we are continuing to produce our High Shine Pomade, and looking to work on more products for the RG range.

It's been an amazing journey so far over the past year of creating these products, and getting this product signed off is a huge first step on the ladder. There's still so much more work to go though as we get the Clay ready for launch, and continue to build the range, while bringing you value and education through our content.

Thank you to all those who've been involved in testing our products so far and we look forward to the rest of you trying it!

If you want to get first access to our Clay you can here.