On
this date in 1904 King C. Gillette secured a patent on a safety razor and the disposable
blades to use in it. The products
quickly changed the lives of American men and the and the culture. Men were liberated from straight razors which required daily stropping to keep sharp
and except in the deftest of hands
apt leave minor or major cuts—a day without blood on the towel was a victory for
many.
A
major victim of the safety razor
were the ubiquitous neighborhood
barbershops and the ones that were in virtually every major office building and many factories where many men gathered daily
for a professional shave and comradery with their personal shaving mugs lining shop shelves.by the Depression most such shops would vanish and the survivors focused on cutting hair. By the 1960’s most barbers did not even
offer shaves.
On
the other hand drug stores prospered
offering the razors, and more importantly the blades which needed to be regularly replaced along with
associated shaving products—soaps, mugs, and brushes (later brushless
creams like Burma Shave and aerosol foams); aftershave lotions; and styptic
pencils. Gillette showered the
stores with plenty of promotional
materials, especially the large placards
of Gillette Blue Blades packages, posters, and display cases.
And,
of course, the razors changed the way men looked. Ease of shaving at home eliminated the beards many men wore just to avoid the pain and hassle. The impressive moustaches many men wore in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries we grown mainly
because the upper lip was one of the
hardest parts of the face to shave without injury. After World War I Doughboys were issued safety razors and blades—a contract
that made Gillette millions—and came home the clean shaven look became considered modern.
Although
King Gillette’s name was on the patent, he was not an inventor. He was a salesman who came up with a marketing idea, found a product that would fit that model, and
then spent years finding the men who could develop
his vision. When asked about his long attempt to develop
a razor Gillette said, “If I had been technically trained, I would have quit.”
King Camp Gillette was born on January 5, 1855,
in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and raised in Chicago,
where his family survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
He was a middle
aged salesman for the Crown Cork and
Seal Company, the firm that
developed the modern bottle cap, in
the 1890s, Gillette saw bottle caps which would be thrown away after the bottle was
opened could be the model for basing a business on a product that was used once or a few times and then
discarded. He cast about for various ideas before hitting
on safety razors and blades.
Safety razors had already been developed in the
mid-19th century, but used a forged
blade. In the 1870s, the Kampfe
Brothers one type of such razor, but the blades were expensive and hard to
produce in the huge quantities he envisioned. Gillette
recognized that thin carbon steel blades could be stamped out on a mass basis dropping the cost to the blades exponentially.
The most difficult part of development was engineering the blades, as thin, cheap
steel was difficult to work and
sharpen. This accounts for the delay between the initial idea and the product's
introduction. Steven Porter, a
machinist used Gillette’s conceptual drawings
to create the razor to hold the disposable blades. William
Emery Nickerson, who Gillette took as a partner, changed the original model, improving the handle and
frame so that it could better
support the thin steel blade and designed the machinery to mass-produce
the blades, and he received patents for hardening
and sharpening the blades.
To sell the product, Gillette founded the American Safety Razor Company on
September 28, 1901 (changing the company’s name to Gillette Safety Razor Company in July 1902) and obtained a trademark registration for his portrait and signature on the packaging.
That made him a relatively early pioneer of brand name marketing.
The company finally went into production began in 1903, but sold only 51 razors and 168 blades. The first
razor retailed for $5—equivalent to $142 today and half the average working man’s
weekly pay. The following year the new patents were issued and
production was ramped up. Within a few years Gillette drastically slashed the retail price of the razor making it a loss leader to market the blades.
By 1908, the corporation had established manufacturing facilities in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. Razor sales reached 450,000 units and blade sales exceeded
70 million units in 1915.
The razor and blades business model credited to Gillette would go on to applied to many
other types of products from ball point
pens to the notoriously expensive
ink and toner sold for
relatively cheap computer printers.
Gillette also recognized that regular even if minor, improvements to
the razors and blades could provide patent protection from competitors and also
drive sales to men always looking for a smoother, more comfortable shave.
Gillette sold
his majority interest in the company to a rival director, John Joyce
in the mid-1920s. It made him a very wealthy man and he retired with his wife Alanta “Lantie” Ella Gaines enjoying traveling
the world and spending time at the Palm Springs, California resort the Desert Inn owned by Nellie Coffman. He purchased large ranch in the Santa Monica
Mountains near Calabasas in Southern California in 1926. The master plan and new buildings on the ranch were designed
and built renowned architect Wallace
Neff in the Spanish Colonial Revival
style.
But his lavish spending and the hit his company stock took in the Wall
Street crash of 1929, left Gillette
nearly broke. He died on July 9, 1932 in
Los Angeles. His widow was force to sell the ranch and
other properties to settle his debts.
Business
was not Gillette’s only interest. He rose to Grand Master of the York
Rite Free Masonry. To the surprise of
many, he was also a Utopian socialist.
He published a book titled The Human Drift in 1894 while he was
working on his razor which advocated
that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned
by the public, and that everyone in
the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara
Falls. A later book, World Corporation in 1910) was a prospectus for a company set up to create this vision. He offered Theodore Roosevelt the presidency of the company, with a one
million dollar salary. Roosevelt of course declined. Gillette's last book, The People's Corporation
in 1924was written with Upton Sinclair
and later inspired Glen H. Taylor.
Meanwhile his company continued Gillette’s
marketing vision and regularly upgraded its products. Improved double-edged blades were developed
including Thin Blades and then stainless steel blades that made
shaving more comfortable and the blades longer lasting. The introduction of a dispenser save many fingers cut
while replacing blades. Around 1960 the adjustable razor was introduced with
settings for the coarseness of beards
and skin sensitivity. The original Fat Boy model was joined by Thin
Adjustable and other of various handle length and with steel, brass, or plastic handles.
As
a boy in Cheyenne, I first scraped my peach fuzz with a Fat Boy and Blue Blades,
but quickly, as the company knew I would, transitioned
to the improved Thin and stainless steel blades. But I continued to use my trusty adjustable
razor, enjoying the satisfactory heart
of its feel in my hand long after
many others had abandoned
double-edged razors for the new two-bladed Aftra models in the 1970’s.
Since
then the company has introduced improved, or allegedly improved, razors almost
annually. Cartage heads swiveled
to follow the contours of the face,
blades multiplied to three, four, then five.
Lubricant Teflon strips were added as were soft plastic flutes said to
raise the beard stubble. A single blade was added to the opposite side for use in square trimming sideburns. With each improvement, packages of blades leapt
in prices. A half-dozen blades could top
$25 at the store.
Those
prices led to a challenge to Gillette’s long-time business model. Harry’s
and other companies began producing basic four-blade cartridges with
lubricants that could fit a Gillette handle or their own in plants in Germany
and elsewhere and marketing them by mail-order subscription at less than half
the cost of Gillette. Sales were brisk
and began to deeply cut into the old company’s market. They did not stop producing improved models,
but last year began selling a basic blade package like Harry’s for competitive prices at retail stores. I switched to them and found them even better
than the fanciest of the recent improvements.
The
Gillette Company continued to thrive and sell products under a variety of brand names including Gillette, Braun electric shavers, Oral-B
toothbrushes, and Duracell batteries. In 2005, the Gillette company was sold to Procter & Gamble for $57 billion. It is now known as Global Blades & Razors, with the
Gillette brand, a business unit of Procter & Gamble.
You
can still buy original Blue Blades, but in recent years they have been used mostly
as cutting blades in various tools. Recently double-edged adjustable razors have
become something of a retro fad. Procter & Gamble recognizing a niche created a new King C. Gillette
brand and is marketing high-end razors, blades, and other shaving products.
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