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Lucky for Dollar Shave Club, they struck a marketing nerve during a perfect storm:
While the Dollar Shave Club mostly compared based on price, a simultaneous uprising in more traditional wet shaving came around the same time, as abundantly witnessed by the following graph, courtesy Google Trends:
Unilever bet big on Dollar Shave Club’s model and team. Rightfully so, the company was able to quickly capture a large portion of Gillette’s dominance within only a few years. Furthermore, the market’s size and future growth is not expected to slow, but grow to $31B+ by the year 2020.
Instead of focusing on an improved shave experience, Dollar Shave Club’s initial push focused on differences related to price, not quality. The company effectively created its own price war. Not a bad deal for Dollar Shave Club, but very bad news for incumbent Gillette.
Per the graph above, online searches for general terms like “shave”, “wet shaving” and “safety razor” coincided with the viral spike that occurred when Dollar Shave Club entered the market. It was as if the classic wet shaving market simply road the coattails of a wave that appears to have significantly tapered in recent years.
Will Wet Shaving Ever Have its Own Moment?
Unfortunately for wet shaving hardware and accouterments providers, the margins on traditional wet shaving as it relates to recurring hardware purchases are not incentive enough for larger incumbents to even think about entering the market. At $2 to $4 a blade, both Gillette and Dollar Shave Club are still doing well on margins. No one would try to compete by selling a product that is some 10x to 20x less expensive. Any such provider would need to sell 10x to 20x the product, all at lower margins. Not something that falls within the salivating venture capital bucket for consumer goods. Hence, there are not going to be large ad budgets focused on classic wet shaving. Not going to happen. Hence, the industry remains small, obscure and essentially the red-headed step-child of shaving at large. Or, more appropriately wet shaving is the old grandpa that no one wants to spend time with. People would rather spend time with their hip cartridge razor cousin.
Here are the questions I personally have:
Lucky for Dollar Shave Club, they struck a marketing nerve during a perfect storm:
While the Dollar Shave Club mostly compared based on price, a simultaneous uprising in more traditional wet shaving came around the same time, as abundantly witnessed by the following graph, courtesy Google Trends:
Unilever bet big on Dollar Shave Club’s model and team. Rightfully so, the company was able to quickly capture a large portion of Gillette’s dominance within only a few years. Furthermore, the market’s size and future growth is not expected to slow, but grow to $31B+ by the year 2020.
Instead of focusing on an improved shave experience, Dollar Shave Club’s initial push focused on differences related to price, not quality. The company effectively created its own price war. Not a bad deal for Dollar Shave Club, but very bad news for incumbent Gillette.
Per the graph above, online searches for general terms like “shave”, “wet shaving” and “safety razor” coincided with the viral spike that occurred when Dollar Shave Club entered the market. It was as if the classic wet shaving market simply road the coattails of a wave that appears to have significantly tapered in recent years.
Will Wet Shaving Ever Have its Own Moment?
Unfortunately for wet shaving hardware and accouterments providers, the margins on traditional wet shaving as it relates to recurring hardware purchases are not incentive enough for larger incumbents to even think about entering the market. At $2 to $4 a blade, both Gillette and Dollar Shave Club are still doing well on margins. No one would try to compete by selling a product that is some 10x to 20x less expensive. Any such provider would need to sell 10x to 20x the product, all at lower margins. Not something that falls within the salivating venture capital bucket for consumer goods. Hence, there are not going to be large ad budgets focused on classic wet shaving. Not going to happen. Hence, the industry remains small, obscure and essentially the red-headed step-child of shaving at large. Or, more appropriately wet shaving is the old grandpa that no one wants to spend time with. People would rather spend time with their hip cartridge razor cousin.
Here are the questions I personally have:
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