Cherry Hill native Reid Simkovitz dealt with being a fish out of water as an undergraduate smack in the middle of Louisiana. He even survived a recent two-year spell without incident as a Philly native and Philly sports fan living in, of all places, Dallas.
But when it came to frustrating hair growth, the Cherry Hill East graduate just couldn’t grin and bear it. He decided to take action. Helping in his nascent quest to eliminate pesky neck hair was a new friend who grew up nearby.
“My friend Andre, who is from the Haddon Heights area, our dorms were near each other. He’d trim up my neckline because it got so hairy and I couldn’t shave it myself,” Simkovitz explained. “He wasn’t always around and I hated bothering him so much, and I couldn’t afford to be getting haircuts just to trim the back all the time.”
Things came to a head when Simkovitz had to attend a black-tie formal event and Andre wasn’t around.
“I was forced to go to this event with a hairy neck,” he lamented.
Soon after that evening, Simkovitz walked into the student incubator at Louisiana State University’s Innovation Park determined to find a solution, and was promptly paired with an engineer.
“I wanted to create a silicone-type thing that was bendable and flexible, and we just couldn’t get something going,” he explained. “Then I was paired up with another engineer, who got it right pretty quickly. It was (the result of) many nights pulling my hair out thinking of something.”
Armed with the prototype, Simkovitz commenced further tinkering and ended up with a circular neck shaver dubbed The Scruffie. The process lasted more than a year, and Simkovitz admitted that he graduated from LSU without a solid, workable design.
But it was thinking outside the box — not by the inventor, but by his local support group — that gave the product an unexpected boost.
“Originally, it was only intended for use on the back of the neck, and when my friends and family started using it for their legs, it became a leg shaver,” Simkovitz stated. “And I ended up selling more units after that.
“Now, I call it a two-in-one leg shaver and back-of-the neck shaver.”
Simkovitz, who will turn 27 in January, grew up on the east side of the township near Springdale Road and Route 70. He attended Stockton Elementary and then Rosa International Middle School before becoming a Cougar alumnus in 2012.
“I wanted to get away, and really wanted to test out the South,” he recalled. “I visited my friend — also from Cherry Hill — who was going to Tulane and it was during Mardi Gras. I took his car and visited LSU and liked it.”
Simkovitz studied general business with a minor in personal investment, and later found himself working at Staples in New York City for a time. But the pull of completing the task he had begun four years before at LSU, proved to be too great to try his hand at anything else.
Although grateful for his college-era experiences, lest there be any doubt, Simkovitz’s time in the South did nothing to dampen his Philly spirit or turn his rooting interest.
“I went to a couple Eagles games while I was living in Dallas,” he said. “Their tailgating scene was fun, too, not as intense as it is in Philly, and the stadium was fantastic. They never gave me as hard a time for being an Eagles fan as we do when the Birds play the Cowboys.”
Simkovitz officially launched his company in April, while still a Texas resident. But due to the ongoing pandemic, he decided to return home in the summer. It’s provided him with the proper focus and familiarity to keep going.
“I’m always trying to improve things. ” he related. “I see this turning into a full-service shaving company, where we’ll sell shaving creams and razors, and other items.
“For now, I want to perfect my current product before I start thinking about expanding.”
The Scruffie is available at: thescruffie.com. Interested parties can follow the product through social media, via Facebook: @The Scruffie, on Instagram: @thescruffie and through TikTok: @thescruffie.
