It's Official ASR/ Personna = Energizer!

[michiganlover]

Energizer Holdings completed their purchase of American Safety Razor/ Energizer for $301 million yesterday:

http://www2.newsvirginian.com/news/2010/nov/29/american-safety-razor-sold-energizer-ar-682496/

This officially means that the shaving isle is dominated now entirely by Schick/Wilkinson Sword/Energizer Holdings, and Gillette/Proctor and Gamble.

No telling what this might mean for the future of Personna's product lines.

 

[kingfisher]

Maybe now they'll make a DE blade that can be used for something like 48 shaves before it has to be replaced.......



you know, the blade that just keeps on going, and going, and going..........

 

[Kcaps]

Maybe now they'll make a DE blade that can be used for something like 48 shaves before it has to be replaced.......



you know, the blade that just keeps on going, and going, and going..........

Where's the money in that? I am guessing more battery powered razors.....

 

[talibeard]

I think Energizer/Schick/Wilkinson badly wants to get a piece of the shaving cake back again in the US.

 

[mrmoonbeam]

Then again, all this might mean that Schick is coming out with their own high end brand stores, similar to what P&G had done for Art of Shaving.
I say if it elevates wet shaving to a higher level of awareness, then why not?!

Worst case, they drop Wilkinson and Personna.
I don't see this happening as it is a valued brand across the globe.

Best case, they come to compete in the shaving world, bringing better products out there and increasing retail sales of wet shaving supplies.
Perhaps Schick has decided to tackle the wet shaving and DE aspect of the market, as it lags behind in the cartridge market?

 

[talibeard]

Perhaps Schick has decided to tackle the wet shaving and DE aspect of the market, as it lags behind in the cartridge market?

I doubt that really; DE blades are just a side show for Personna. It is mostly about cartridges and disposables too.

 

[Buford T. Justice]

Maybe now they'll make a DE blade that can be used for something like 48 shaves before it has to be replaced.......



you know, the blade that just keeps on going, and going, and going..........

I'll buy some new Personna 74s!

 

[ACESFULL]

I am curious to see what this does to the shaving market. I hope that personas DE's stay. I love there stuff!

 

[Sydney Guy]

I am curious to see what this does to the shaving market. I hope that personas DE's stay. I love there stuff!

Nothing good, you can bet on that.

With a duopoly between Gillette and Schick they have a vested interest in stopping competing on price and ratcheting up the prices on their proprietary products. Competition between the two will switch to advertising, sports promtion and the like (actually it largely has already). This is exactly what happened in the beer market here in Aus after mergers reduced the suppliers to 2 major players with 95% of the market between them. Suddenly price competition screeched to a halt and beer prices started rising faster than the CPI, while the 2 beer companies went into sports sponsorship in a big way.

This is all entirely predictable, Economics 101. The competition regulators should be shot for first allowing Wilkinson to be carved up between Gillette and Schick, and then allowing Schick to buy ASR. It would have been better to allow a foreign player to buy them and preserve a real 3-way competition.

It wouldn't surprise me if Schick low-balled the Walmart contract with the object of forcing ASR into bankruptcy and picking up their assets and market share cheaply, knowing that the FTC wouldn't allow Gillette to buy ASR.

 

[michiganlover]

It wouldn't surprise me if Schick low-balled the Walmart contract with the object of forcing ASR into bankruptcy and picking up their assets and market share cheaply, knowing that the FTC wouldn't allow Gillette to buy ASR.

Big business being evil, happens all of the time. I would say this sounds very plausible.

 

[Sydney Guy]

Big business being evil, happens all of the time. I would say this sounds very plausible.

It's not that big business (or for that matter small business) is evil or bad per se, but that any business operates for its own benefit and one of the primary sources of "profit leakage" is the wasteful practice of giving away money via price competition to those undeserving wretches, the customers. That's why there have been so many attempts over time to stamp out competition by forming monopolies or organising cartels - think John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Adam Smith pointed this out in 1776:

"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices"

And this is from the man who is frequently lauded as the patron saint of capitalism!

Gillette and Schick create captive customers with their proprietary systems where they have a monopoly over the supply of cartridges through patents over their "inventions". Thus the high price of cartridges and huge margins over the actual cost of production, while DE blades are dirt cheap because there is real competition.

EDIT: Sorry MichiganLover, I didn't read your reply properly and thought you were referring to another part of my post. Of course, ASR wouldn't have been so vulnerable if the Private Equity vultures hadn't loaded it up with so much debt that it fell over at the first bump.

 

[Topgumby]

Odd, but in my local WallyWorld the Personna blades were back in the rack next to the Wilkies...wonder if the timing is accidental...?

 

[Sledgehammer39]

Well that kinda sucks. I hope at least that Energizer will at least start to stock Wal-Mart, Wal-greens, and Rite-Aid with injector blades.

 

[El Judio Bravo]

Odd, but in my local WallyWorld the Personna blades were back in the rack next to the Wilkies...wonder if the timing is accidental...?

If I were you, I'd snap up the Personnas and sit on 'em. They won't go down in value; I'm pretty sure of this.

As a side-note, I was strolling through my local Wally World one day and saw a pack of those Personnas on their shelf. I bought it, and the next time they restocked the DE slot in their wall of steel it was with the first of the Wally Wilks. They were priced the same but I don't care for them. Luckily there are other blades out there I can rely on.

Those Personnas? I got a box to put the blades in, and a safe to put the box in, and a house to put the safe in, and a watchdog on a chain to make quite sure.

I sleep soundly these days and wish likewise for you!