How much are safety razors 'really' making a comeback?

[tankerjohn]

To this day I do not shave for enjoyment but to get the job done as fast and efficiently as possible. I suspect even in the golden era of shaving most people felt the same way, they just didn't have many other options. I believe this fad will also pass.

Traditional shaving taught me that shaving doesn't have to be a chore to be finished as quickly and effortlessly as possible, but rather can be an engaging and enjoyable daily ritual. That doesn't mean I dilly dally. I don't think DE shaving is a fad at all. It may rise and fall in popularity as time goes on, but its here to stay.

Back in the "Golden Era" there were lots of choices. Injectors, GEMs, electric, straights - it was all there besides DEs. I suspect some men were more discerning than others, then as now. Seems to me that the biggest difference is that there wasn't an internet back then to connect like-minded men and make it into a full blown hobby community. Same thing with soaps and aftershaves. Most men used Barbasol and one or two AS's. But the fancy stuff was all there and, I'm sure, indulged by men with the means and interest. But there was not really a mechanism for them build social interactions around that interest.

 

[APBinNCA]

The one piece of the puzzle I forgot when I wrote my above craft beer analogy: distributors. I have been told in beer the distributor holds life or death over the new brewer. They also enable smaller brewers to get a few bottles on the shelfs of several stores. I wonder what it would take to get Stirling on the shelf of maybe an independent grocery store or three? They have the full range of products for a new shaver.

 

[HoosierTrooper]

Attached is a Gillette magazine ad from Christmas 1947. Conjures up a bygone era when stores had displays of razors, blades, brushes and soaps.

I always like to see what the prices in those old ads convert to in todays dollars, and in this one the blade price caught my attention. 100 Super Blue blades for $4.90 looks really good but in todays dollars they’d sell for $60.78, and that’s for carbon steel blades that dulled and rusted quickly. At the equivalent of 60 cents a blade I think it‘s safe to assume that a lot of men used those blades well past their prime in order to get their moneys worth, just like some men, and women, do today with cartridges.

Even the lowly Tech in that ad would sell for $12.40 today, a Gillette ProGlide Power razor, with a battery included, sells for $13.64 on Amazon. Again, nothing has really changed.

 

[APBinNCA]

Hey, also think about it from that time period. By the late sixties, the new fangled Stainless blades were 13 cents each! I seem to remember hearing that many men only used the carbon blades once or twice due to rust issue. Remember this is the era when bathroom ventilation, in the US, was being done wrong. If a man could get a weeks worth of shaves, supposedly, out of a Stainless blade, they would actually be cheaper! Obviously, we know how men decided. Considering the improvement, it was a small price to pay.

 

[HoosierTrooper]

Hey, also think about it from that time period. By the late sixties, the new fangled Stainless blades were 13 cents each! I seem to remember hearing that many men only used the carbon blades once or twice due to rust issue. Remember this is the era when bathroom ventilation, in the US, was being done wrong. If a man could get a weeks worth of shaves, supposedly, out of a Stainless blade, they would actually be cheaper! Obviously, we know how men decided. Considering the improvement, it was a small price to pay.

Is that 13 cents a blade in 1969 dollars?

 

[APBinNCA]

Is that 13 cents a blade in 1969 dollars?

Yep! Except that's more like 1966. Half a gallon of gas. I have my own inflation calculations based on salaries of the time, but sometimes it's more instructive to think about being in the time. I haven't checked what the Blue Blades were going for by this time, but due to price stability I bet about the same as 1947.

 

[talibeard]

Attached is a Gillette magazine ad from Christmas 1947. Conjures up a bygone era when stores had displays of razors, blades, brushes and soaps.

Took a look and then I noticed..... That is $4.90 they charge for 100 blue blades; using the US inflation calculator this would be the todays equivalent of $60.78. Not everything was better those days!
Ouch, @HoosierTrooper beat me to that...

 

[HoosierTrooper]

Took a look and then I noticed..... That is $4.90 they charge for 100 blue blades; using the US inflation calculator this would be the todays equivalent of $60.78. Not everything was better those days!
Ouch, @HoosierTrooper beat me to that...

Very, very little if anything was better in the “good old days”.

 

[Whilliam]

Hey, also think about it from that time period. By the late sixties, the new fangled Stainless blades were 13 cents each! I seem to remember hearing that many men only used the carbon blades once or twice due to rust issue. Remember this is the era when bathroom ventilation, in the US, was being done wrong. If a man could get a weeks worth of shaves, supposedly, out of a Stainless blade, they would actually be cheaper! Obviously, we know how men decided. Considering the improvement, it was a small price to pay.

My dad was so taken with SS blades when they were first introduced, he'd get months of shaves out of them. (He was--how shall we say?--frugal.) At that time, anything beat blue blades.

 

[Whilliam]

Something to keep in mind in this discussion to temper my earlier post: DE razors are now, at least in developed countries, discretionary, rather than necessary, purchases.

For most of us, the decision to shave with a DE was not made when one began to shave, but at some later point. The choice might have then been economic (haha!), hygienic (to deal with ingrown hairs, etc.) or for the aesthetic satisfaction of using a fine instrument to mitigate a chore.

Nonetheless, it wasn't a decision that we had to make, but chose to make, much as the audio community has chosen to return to vinyl.

That said, we must acknowledge the other, more powerful economic forces at play in these markets.
Vinyl v. CDs is a small skirmish, as most music is purchased and delivered electronically. Similarly, were DE usage to increase, say a hundredfold, its share would be infinitesimal compared to cart sales.

 

[jefffeith]

Agreed. It's comparable to coffee. Manual drip, Chemex and French Press brewers are still popular today, but they never will be as popular as they were before Keurig machines came along. Many people prefer convenience to quality. IMHO, Keurig coffee is the instant coffee of the 21st Century and that's not a compliment.

Love my Chemex as well as my DE razor(s). This morning I will enjoy both.

 

[HoosierTrooper]

My dad was so taken with SS blades when they were first introduced, he'd get months of shaves out of them. (He was--how shall we say?--frugal.) At that time, anything beat blue blades.

Nice story! At roughly a dollar a blade in todays dollars it would be safe to assume a lot of men stretched them way past their prime.

 

[talibeard]

I have been thinking a little more about the subject. Compared to carts profit in selling DE razorblades will be very small indeed, but that is just one factor in traditional shaving, and the one in which carts with their relative mega-profit will dominate for maybe ever. But when I think about brushes, soaps, cremes and other more traditional aspects of our shaving we are a hugh factor imo. In the usual drugstore there are maybe one or two (cheap) soaps available, a drugstore-'quality' boar brush and some creams.

Now I don't say cart-users don't use soap and brushes but if they did it a lot and cared for quality there would have been a lot more to choose from at your local drugstore. I think we, and all other traditional wetshavers with a little money to burn, have changed that scene very much in the last one or two decades. There has been an explosion of soap-makers, razor-makers and even brush-makers in that time and they can only excist because of 'us' as their products are hardly sold in any normal store. So we do have an impact, even as an economic factor.

 

[T Bone]

I've been thinking about this more as well. I guess I'd define "comeback" in 1 of 2 ways. First would be units sold - is the number of safety razors and/or blades sold going up from one year to the next. Second would be is the percent of people who use a DE/SE as their main shaver increasing. The article I cited a few pages back shows that by the first metric, the answer is no, at least not globally for blades. I'd be very curious to see either of those metrics for USA, or for higher-income countries more broadly.

Despite this, I still stand by my original thought, that safety razors could make at least a limited comeback. They do shave better, they are cheaper in the long-run, and they are more environmentally friendly. With the internet, it's not like they're hard to find, people just need to know about them and (admittedly a heavier lift) be willing to try them and stick with them during the learning period. There is some advertising going on - no superbowl commercials any time soon, but virtually all of my online ads have been for safety razors since I first googled "Harry's vs Dollar razors" 4 months ago.

1 last thing, just an interesting side note. I replaced the cartridge system I'd been using basically since I started shaving with a Henson in August. Last week, I got an email from my college fraternity's national org about a partnership with none other than Henson Shaving - buy a Henson, and $10 from the purchase goes to the frat's Movember campaign. I have no way of finding out, but it's a pretty big national, I'd be curious how many sales this resulted in.

 

[EclipseRedRing]

There has been an explosion of soap-makers, razor-makers and even brush-makers

I agree to a point about brush makers but most of them are simply making handles, albeit with varying degrees of craftsmanship, then gluing in a pre tied knot, usually synthetic, and normally from China. The natural knots, even in brushes costing hundreds of pounds, are often chemically treated and gelled to within an inch of their lives which in my view only serves to disguise an inferior product. As someone else put it they are the 'brush equivalent of fish fingers or chicken nuggets'. Apologies if I am doing a disservice to any brush makers.

 

[talibeard]

@EclipseRedRing

You have a point but as always, when there is money to find, you will also find the ones in for a quick buck. A lot of 'new' razors on the market for $25 to over $50 can also be ordered at my not always reliable friend Ali (who is not so fast as his last name suggests) for a tenth of the price. The difference; they don't come packed in a neat (Chinese) carton box that says 'made in Germany' or any other country.

 

[Elvergun]

There has been an explosion of soap-makers, razor-makers and even brush-makers in that time and they can only excist because of 'us' as their products are hardly sold in any normal store. So we do have an impact, even as an economic factor.

Yeah, but could those soap-makers, razor-makers and brush-makers survive if 'we' acted like normal consumers and we purchased only one (or perhaps two) razor, one brush and a couple of soaps?

If shavers from the 50s and 60s could see some of the pictures of our "dens" they would assume we are crazy. They would probably think, "shaving is a hobby in the future?" as they scratched their head in confusion.

 

[SharpieB]

Yeah, but could those soap-makers, razor-makers and brush-makers survive if 'we' acted like normal consumers and we purchased only one (or perhaps two) razors, one brush and a couple of soaps?

If shavers from the 50s and 60s could see some of the pictures of our "dens" they would assume we are crazy. They would probably think, "shaving is a hobby in the future?" as they scratched their head in confusion.

Good post.

I think all of the soap, razor and brush artisans along with the big online shaving retailers would concede that they wouldn’t be in business today if it wasn’t for us shaving hobbyists buying more than we actually NEED to shave (a puck or two of soap a year, 1 razor, one aftershave, a few tucks of blades….).

Of course, they are welcome. AND if there is ever a zombie apocalypse or a global shortage of shaving gear, we are all set.

 

[APBinNCA]

Yeah, but could those soap-makers, razor-makers and brush-makers survive if 'we' acted like normal consumers and we purchased only one (or perhaps two) razor, one brush and a couple of soaps?

If shavers from the 50s and 60s could see some of the pictures of our "dens" they would assume we are crazy. They would probably think, "shaving is a hobby in the future?" as they scratched their head in confusion.

I do wonder about that though. Think about how many vintage razors are on the market, some unused, and think about how hard those companies were marketing back then. People back then may be considered minimalist by modern standards, but that may only be within their bathroom. How many razors were gifted that were never used? How many were replaced with the latest model, but the nearly new one went in the garage? A lot of people back then didn't throw things out, but they also weren't sentimental enough to take things out to look at them. In a sense, that is pure consumerism. But with a helping of old fashioned "don't waste things" justification.

 

[Ladit]

Very, very little if anything was better in the “good old days”.

The ****** up time now is the good old days of tomorrow!