Warning: Long post. This one’s been rattling around in my head for a LONG time.
Certain items, on the consumer market, are considered commodities.
Commodity:
“A raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee.1”
While there are differences as it regards the origin of coffee beans, the raw, unprocessed, green Arabica beans from Kona are all green Arabica beans from Kona. Across beans of basically identical origin, they can be considered a commodity, and commodity pricing applies. Kona vs Kauai vs Columbia is another argument entirely, but for the purposes of this post, the idea that once you’ve controlled for detectable differences (i.e. Origin, in the case of coffee), you should treat the item as a commodity, and attempt to get the best price.
Which brings me to the title of this post: Bic, Gillette, Harry’s, and the Dollar Shave Club guys would all like to make you believe that they’ve got the best razors, gels, and other ‘product’, and so you should be willing to pay a premium over ‘basic’ in order to have ‘a better shaving experience’ – whatever the hell that means. I would argue that this is complete and utter horse manure, and that we’d all be better served by figuring out which things in our lives should really be governed by commodity pricing, and stop buying in to so much of the bull-hockey advertising. Gillette, for example, spent on the order of $800 million on advertising worldwide in 2011 (the number for shaving brand advertising which was most easily found with my Google-fu), at the time DSC and the other ‘online’ shaving experience houses were starting up.
First, a quick examination of the domain: Adult males in this country shave once a day, on average. Even bearded men typically shave their neck, as just letting this go gets uncomfortable. Accounting for demographics, and assuming that ~90% of men over the age of 16 (closest I could break out given census data), you’re looking at approximately 100 million consumers in this demographic. Not a small group, so market share really means something. In ye olden dayes, one would shave with a single straight razor, which was honed, polished, and stropped daily in order to maintain functionality. Yes, buying one good straight blade and a strop, then using that for the rest of your life could be the MOST economical. However, given the difficulty of traveling around with a straight-blade razor these days (try getting one past the TSA, for example), ‘safety’ razors of some type are more convenient. I’m going to posit the assumption that one uses some sort of disposable blade for shaving, vice the single-edged murder-steel of yore.
So, men shave. Daily. It takes some practice to learn in youth, but by the time someone gets to be my age, it’s pretty much automatic. And unlike the general population, I am required by regulation to have a clean-shaven face every duty day. So I’ve got some additional practice. Basically, you wet your face, apply some sort of lather/gel/blade lubricant to keep the blade sliding along the skin, remove all of that material with a razor, taking the stubble with it. It takes a couple of minutes, and then you move on with your morning. A little over a year ago, I was looking into the ‘lather with a brush’ phenomenon, somewhat as a curiosity. Applying lather with a brush helps get the hairs to stand up better, and is very mildly abrasive to the skin, an aid in keeping your pores clean. Or so the arguments on the process go. I went into a couple of the ‘elite’-branded stores in malls etc, and saw what I can only describe as astronomical markup on so-called ‘premium’ shaving gear. After some quick exploration on Amazon, I dropped some stuff on my wish list and moved on.
For Valentine’s day last year, Kelly indulged the idea and grabbed a couple of the things on my list. A basic badger-hair brush, a long-handled safety razor, a simple stand to hang those items on, and a wooden bowl with shaving soap.
She left blade selection up to me, so I grabbed a 20-pack that had gotten good reviews. So, including my first set of 20 replacement blades, the total outlay was $79.40, with free shipping through our Prime subscription (don’t even get me started on why you should have one…). While this may seem like a lot of coin, the actual cost of ‘disposable’ items included in this buy amounted to less than 3-months worth of ‘premium’ multi-blade disposables (around ~$30 or so). You can buy much larger packs of blades, but I didn’t want to buy a metric tonne and then be stuck with them if that particular brand just sucked. So I tried it for a month, and haven’t looked back.
For comparison purposes, we’ll assume 1 razor ‘head’ per week, as that’s what the companies who sell subscriptions recommend (6-8 shaves per). This also aligns with my replacement burn rate for double-sided blades over the last year (~6 shaves per blade). Looking at the alternatives, one can buy a subscription to Harry’s for ~$1.87 per razor, meaning at a razor per week, the annual cost just for razors is $97.24. Or, ordering in bulk on Amazon, one can get a Gillette Fusion replacement blade per week for ~$2.83, making the yearly investment $147.16. This does not include soap/gel. This cost is JUST for razors. For year 1+ of my current experience, we spent the original $79.40, plus an additional $22.30 on a box of another 100 blades, and an additional brush – I pulled a bonehead and left the first one on the mirror shelf in an RV park shower room while were on vaction. Oops. Even considering that, we’re at $101.70, just above the cost of subscribing to Harry’s. Except that I already have soap, and I had to replace a non-wear item due to teh dumbz.
Looking at recurring costs post initial investment, I’ve already got my next soap bar ready (a locally produced $8 ‘artisan’ bar obtained because Kelly thought it smelled nice at the Occoquan arts & crafts festival) , but won’t actually break it out until the current one is totally gone. AND, I have almost exactly half of the original razor stack (58/120 replacements left), meaning annualized costs there are ~$5/yr. Even if this 2nd soap bar runs out twice as fast (a BIG assumption), I’m at $21/yr. If it lasts the same as the previous bar, $13/yr. That’s $0.25/week, for a savings of 86.6% over the cheapest option above.
Pros of going this route:
- EXTREME cost savings.
- Better exfoliation, due to lather application with a brush.
- Significantly better 3-day-stubble shaves. You know, that Monday morning shave where you last pulled out the razor on the preceding Friday… Just my personal experience, but this is where 2/3/5 blade razor heads take a serious beating. The 5-blade jobs are especially egregious, feeling something akin to grabbing the hairs under the razor head and trying to yank them all out simultaneously.
Cons of going this route:
- TSA-screened travel (if you’re paranoid). I’ve had no issues with the razor in my toiletries bag, and all my issues with TSA over the last year were diaper bag related. But I’d be remiss to not mention this, due to the arbitrary and capricious nature of the entire TSA system.
Seriously, just the one con. And for any trip where you check your bag vice carrying everything on, even that goes away. Day-to-day shaving (i.e. shaving on a morning where you shaved the morning before) is no different. Shave ‘closeness’ is no different. Risk of nicks is no different. I have had 1 (read: ONE) nick in the past year, roughly equal with previous experience, with my overly pointy Adam’s apple being the usual cluprit. Time spent shaving is no different, and is actually quicker when dealing with the aforementioned 3-day beard. So, on a day-to-day basis, it’s equal, it’s much better on Monday mornings, and at all times is a significant cost savings. Advantage: Old-school.
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