Baffling - Schick Injector blades for USA are made in China, Schicks for Japan made in USA

[Jopo]

A strange state of affairs:

The Schick injectors distributed in North America are made in China-

But the Schick Injector blades made for the Japanese market, are made in USA. Available in single and twin blade versions-

Can we assume that the Japanese blades are made by Personna? Not aware of any other US manufacturer of Injector blades.

And more's the pity for North American Injector users - in my experience as well as noted in online reviews, the US made/Japanese blades are superior in quality to the ones made in China. Schick maintains a comparatively larger market share in Japan, and I believe the Injector was quite popular there (Schick manufactured the Type O Injector up until 2001, only available in Japan, while Schick had discontinued handles elsewhere in the early 90's, if I recall correclty). So I suppose that's why they get the better blades.

 

[APBinNCA]

As with most of these brands nowadays, these names are bought by large conglomerates for use in specific markets. And they can only be used in those markets because a different conglomerate has the rights to the name in another market. In this case, I don't read Japanese, I am guessing the schick-jp is different than whoever currently own the Schick name in the US. It all makes perfect sense right?

As to the blades. I was interested in those Japanese one and didn't know they were made in the US. They are prohibitively expensive. The only manufacturer in the US is Accutech and they make injector blades for lab and medical use. In this case they may or may not be made with the same specifications, but at least you get a better case than the ones available from Pella.

By prohibitively expensive, I mean they cost MORE than the vintage blades I use.

 

[haiti222]

Edgewell still has one or two "Schick" factories in CT. They make razor blades, but to our knowledge they have not been making DE razor blades for quite some time. It was assumed they were not making injector blades there either. Here is a tariff exemption they got for those factories in 2018. Connecticut's Schick razors receive a waiver in tariff war - https://ctmirror.org/2018/06/25/connecticuts-schick-razors-receive-waiver-tariff-war/ With regards to the injector blades, in 2008, an ebay seller in CT was selling large quantities of made in USA injector blades (and some twin injectors IIRC) that were in 10 packs. This was curious, because for may years the US market blades were in 7 packs from Germany, and then China. I think Schick/Edgewell may still be making batches of injectors for Japan in the USA, or is using old stock. The large numbers of these injector blades made me think they were bulk producing for Japan at that time, as the US market had not seen 10 packs for quite some time, even back in 2008.

 

[BigJ]

Interesting! But these permutation still make my head spin!

 

[Jopo]

As with most of these brands nowadays, these names are bought by large conglomerates for use in specific markets. And they can only be used in those markets because a different conglomerate has the rights to the name in another market. In this case, I don't read Japanese, I am guessing the schick-jp is different than whoever currently own the Schick name in the US. It all makes perfect sense right?

As to the blades. I was interested in those Japanese one and didn't know they were made in the US. They are prohibitively expensive. The only manufacturer in the US is Accutech and they make injector blades for lab and medical use. In this case they may or may not be made with the same specifications, but at least you get a better case than the ones available from Pella.

By prohibitively expensive, I mean they cost MORE than the vintage blades I use.

Re specifications - I've now used both the Accutech injector blades in the white plastic case as well as the Japanese Schick Injector blades, the Japanese are in a different league - far superior, and longer lasting. And I think the same is expressed in the reviews you can find of both - Accutech/Personna/Pella are usually regarded as just ok, while the Japanese blades seem to be universally very highly regarded.