This ‘company’ was listed in the 1920s in Sheffield, as a razor manufacturer in Athol Road, Norton Hammer.  However, Kropp was already a well-known name in razors.  It was not a company, but a trade mark, which was owned by a London hairdressers’ sundriesman, Osborne, Garrett & Co Ltd.  Kropp was apparently ‘founded’ in about 1890, when the first advertisements for Kropp razors appeared in the London press.  The razors were stamped ‘KROPP’, with ‘Real German Hollow Ground’ on the blade.  Some were stamped: ‘Made in England.  Ground in Hamburg’.   

According to a letter by John Raine in The Evening Post [New Zealand], 7 May 1919, the Kropp razor was made in Sheffield for Osborne, Garrett by Joseph Elliot & Sons.   In the late nineteenth century, Sheffield razors were sometimes sent to Germany for hollow-grinding, where the job could be done quicker and cheaper – so that would explain the Hamburg connection and the attempt to trade off a German product.  Raine also stated that Garrett, Osborne won – somewhat ironically – substantial damages from German firms, after they had marketed an imitation ‘Kropp’ razor.  By the 1920s, the Kropp razor was advertised as ‘Made and Ground in Sheffield’, after Charles Myers undertook the manufacture and grinding.  The Kropp name continued to be listed in Sheffield directories until the 1970s.