Great points, all. Today's artisan makers have modern CNC technology which produces outstanding results and is relatively affordable for small scale production. This works because though today's DE razor market is a tiny segment of the overall shaving market, it is the high end of that market. Selling a small number of units at a high price (and a high margin) is a viable business model.Great explanation, thanks. The thing is, today's artisan manufacturers have the advantages of modern technology, but they don't have all the same conditions that Gillette operated under 50-100 years ago. So it isn't necessarily a good idea to try to copy Gillette's design approaches. I'm not really a vintage collector, but I do have a 1958 Super Speed and a 1962 Slim. These clearly were non-luxury, inexpensive, ordinary household items in their day. But there aren't many inexpensive household items today that are made to their level of precision and close tolerances.
Gillette on the other hand could capitalize mass production manufacturing capacity back in the day largely because their market was huge; essentially the entire universe of shavers, at least potentially. Though the per-unit profit was small, they sold a zillion razors and that provided a handsome return on their investment in mass production. No maker today can afford the capital investment that would be required to produce razors like Gillette did; the market size simply isn't there. That's why we'll never again see mass produced, affordable razors that approach the quality of the vintage Gillettes.