Mane ’n Tail
Shampoos, conditioners and detanglers formulated and filled in one Pennsylvania plant
🇺🇸 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Mane ’n Tail products are made
Straight Arrow does not hedge. Its equine FAQ asks the question directly and answers it: “All Mane ’n Tail grooming and care products are proudly formulated and manufactured in Easton, PA in the United States, ensuring the highest standards of quality and safety for your horse.” The personal-care FAQ puts it more plainly still — “Our brand is family founded and family owned, and we’re made in the US” — and the corporate site adds that the company “continues to manufacture all of its own products right here in the USA.”
The facility is described on the company’s own FAQ as a “130,000 sq ft manufacturing facility and headquarters … located in Easton, PA,” and the site-wide shipping band reads “All orders are shipped from our manufacturing facility in Easton, PA.” Formulation and filling happen in the same building: “Every Mane ’n Tail product begins with an idea. Our team of chemists then develops a formula, which is produced by our manufacturing team.”
In 2014 Straight Arrow bought and renovated a 92,000-square-foot building at 900 Conroy Place in Forks Township, adding roughly thirty jobs. President Devon Katzev gave the reason at the time: “First of all, we are able to produce our existing products in larger quantities and more efficiently … Secondly, this will provide room for expansion of our lines down the road.” The company then had more than sixty formulas to make.
American Manufacturing is the right label here rather than Made in USA. The company’s statement is categorical and first-party, and the plant is real, named and owned — but the claim is made at company level and is never repeated on an individual product page. Straight Arrow also scopes it to “grooming and care products,” which leaves the Mane ’n Tail plush toys and branded merchandise outside it, and the company publishes nothing about where bottles, caps and pumps are sourced. Buy the shampoo for the Pennsylvania plant; do not read the claim as covering a stuffed horse.
The story
It started in a kitchen on a horse farm. Philip and Bonnie Katzev were raising Arabian horses in northwestern New Jersey in 1970 and could not buy anything decent to wash them with — as the company tells it, “Back then, horse shampoo and conditioner didn’t exist. Some people used to reach for dish soap, but it dried out the horse’s coat, mane, and tail by stripping away their natural oils.” Phil, a chemist, mixed the first batches himself.
The conditioner came first, not the shampoo: “That first product became the legendary Mane ’n Tail Original Conditioner, followed by our now-famous Mane ’n Tail Original Shampoo. Because these new pH balanced formulas were designed for the mane and tail area, the name came naturally.” Two more inventions followed from the same barn — Hoofmaker, for “dry, cracked, brittle hooves,” which owners noticed worked on their own hands, and Mineral Ice, a topical for horses in competition.
Then the customers changed the company. “Mane ’n Tail is the only horse to human hybrid brand. Originally formulated for horses, humans discovered the secret of Mane ’n Tail for themselves and started to use the product on their hair.” Production outgrew the farm, moved across the Delaware to Bethlehem, and finally to the purpose-built Easton plant. Phil and Bonnie’s youngest son Devon took over as chief executive at twenty-seven and has led it for more than thirty years.
Why they matter
Liquid personal care is exactly the category that left. Shampoo and conditioner are heavy, water-based and cheap to make abroad, which is why so much of the aisle is filled by multinationals using contract packers. Straight Arrow is a family-owned independent that still develops its own formulas and fills its own bottles in a plant it owns — and states it in one sentence anyone can check.
The 2014 expansion is the part that matters most. Faced with growth, the company could have handed production to a contract filler. It bought a building instead, renovated it in phases and added about thirty American jobs, for the stated reason that it wanted to make more of its own product more efficiently. That is a documented reinvestment decision rather than a marketing line.
It is also a consolidator rather than a target. Straight Arrow has acquired other family-owned American equine brands — Cowboy Magic and Exhibitor’s among them — instead of being acquired itself, an unusual direction of travel in this industry, and one that keeps more of the category’s production in Pennsylvania.
Shop Mane ’n Tail (Straight Arrow Products) products
Shampoos, conditioners, detanglers, finishing sprays and the Hoofmaker hoof treatment — for horses, dogs and people.
Shop all Mane ’n Tail products →Visit Mane ’n Tail website →
Mane ’n Tail questions
Is Mane ’n Tail made in the USA?
Yes, by the company’s own categorical statement: “All Mane ’n Tail grooming and care products are proudly formulated and manufactured in Easton, PA in the United States.” Production runs at Straight Arrow’s own 130,000-square-foot plant, where its chemists develop the formulas and its own team fills them. Two honest caveats: the claim is made at company level and is not repeated on individual product pages, and it is scoped to grooming and care products — the branded plush and merchandise carry no origin claim, so we exclude them.
Where is Mane ’n Tail based?
Easton, Pennsylvania. The company publishes 900 Conroy Place, Easton, PA 18040 and describes it as both headquarters and manufacturing facility. An earlier site at 2020 Highland Avenue in Bethlehem Township is still listed on the corporate site; a 2014 company post said it would remain “mostly for office space.”
When was Mane ’n Tail founded?
1970. “Straight Arrow Products, Inc was founded in 1970 when Philip and Bonnie Katzev created the Original Mane ’n Tail Conditioner as a solution for their own horses.” The first batches were mixed in their kitchen on a horse farm in northwestern New Jersey.
Is the horse product really the same thing people use on their own hair?
Essentially yes, and the company says so: “Mane ’n Tail is the only horse to human hybrid brand … Yes, all of Mane ’n Tail’s products are safe for human use.” Everything is pH-balanced between 6.0 and 6.5. A separate personal-care line has grown out of the equine originals over the years, but it comes off the same Easton production floor.