Sakura

Sakura is a Japanese-origin brand run by Sakura Japan LLC, with a mailing address in Windsor, California, an arrangement that puts Japanese blades and a US service base under one roof. The catalogue is the standard professional spread, cutters, thinners and left-handed models, focused on blunt, slide and point cutting.

Steel and edge

Blades are forged from stainless and cobalt alloy materials, and the brand’s signature is what it calls the Sakura Convex Edge, a proprietary finishing technique on the convex grind that does the work for slide and slice cutting. Every pair carries a money-back guarantee plus a lifetime warranty against manufacturing or material defects, which is reassuring on a mid-range purchase in the roughly $200 to $400 band.

The services are the story

Two service offerings set Sakura apart from a plain shear seller. The first is sharpening: a mail-in honing service it backs with more than twenty years of experience, an eight-step honing process (honing, the brand stresses, not grinding) meant to return a shear to original condition. Pricing is listed at $40 for the first pair and $30 for each additional, with return shipping and insurance included. The second is a custom manufacturing arm for salon groups, distributors and retailers who want shears under their own name, running from simple logo application on existing models all the way to bespoke handle shapes, steel selection and finishing, developed with the Sakura team.

Buying one

Sakura does not appear to run a full storefront of its own; the site at sakurashears.com is for product and contact details, while purchasing goes through retailers such as Scissor Dude and Scissor City.