All true. Gillette's decisions to confront competition in the courts rather than in the marketplace didn't serve them well. ASR and Segal beat them to the one piece TTO and it took Gillette until the end of the decade to enter the cheap thin blade market which already dominated by that time. ASR revenues and stock value suffered from the economic depression but not nearly as much as Gillette. Gillette were truly a mess until around '38.The “New” era could have worked, they dumped millions of free and cheap razors onto the market in the US and Europe (based on newspaper articles the European manufacturers were pretty nervous during the early 30ies). Where it went wrong was Gaismans case, then the recession, then courts finally realised that the New/Gaisman patents shouldn’t have been actually patentable.
So instead of the previous 17 years of protection, anyone could produce similar blades and razors from ~1936 in the US, and somewhat earlier in Europe.
Adam
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