Akitz

Akitz has been making professional hair tools since 1996, manufactured by its parent company A-Tech out of the Seo-gu district of Incheon. The brand points to craftsmen with more than three decades in the trade, and it carries an ISO 14001 environmental certification dating to 2006, which is a slightly more institutional footprint than many shops this size bother to document. One quirk to know: some of its lines are sold under the Suntachi name, so if you’ve seen Suntachi shears, you’ve effectively seen Akitz.

Steel and feel

The blades use Japanese Hitachi 440C steel, finished to roughly 59.5 HRC. That hardness is a sensible middle ground, hard enough to hold a working edge through busy days, not so hard that it becomes brittle or fussy to re-hone. It lines up with the brand’s mid-range positioning and the techniques it leans toward: blunt cutting, slide cutting, point work and volume control.

Range and buying

The catalogue covers cutters, thinning and texturising shears, and accessories, with dedicated left-handed cutting and thinning models alongside the standard right-handed range, which is a genuine convenience for southpaw stylists. Akitz sells directly through its own online store and reports distribution across Europe, Asia, the Americas and Australia, so it travels further than a purely domestic Korean label. Pricing sits in the mid-range professional band. More regional makers are gathered on the South Korea brands hub.