Wondering how to shave for less than a fourth of what your neighbors spend on blades? Read on.
One of the things I love about my day job as an entrepreneur and marketer of ideas is the ability to identify and disrupt "pre-Internet" business models that are simply ripe for disruption.
I did this to an extent in 2009, when I launched Credit Card Outlaw—today one of the most popular and most extensive credit card comparison tools. The idea was to disrupt the old paradigm that banks had to market cards by blasting millions of mailboxes with "pre-selected" and "pre-approved" offers. Instead, we felt that providing real user reviews, interesting metric data, and real-time comparisons would put consumers back in the driver's seat, instead of passively "waiting" for an offer to arrive.
And now I'm pleased to be a co-founder of ShaveBoss.com, which has been shrouded in secrecy until just a few days ago. The business promises to disrupt another industry in a meaningful way. Based on our internal research, the average adult male in the U.S. may be spending $424 or more each year on "name-brand" disposable razor blades. That seems an awful lot of money to spend on shaving. Removing facial hair should not carry with it a serious fixed financial cost. It should be an afterthought, not a major household expense.
Riding on the proven popularity of monthly delivery models like Netflix, ShaveBoss allows customers to sign up for a no-commitment monthly disposable razor blade delivery. Before launching, we spent months "field-testing" a variety of blades—it's surprising how little correlation there is between retail price and actual quality. It seems to be an industry driven by sponsorships and maintenance of "brand name" reputation, rather than being driven purely by product quality.
Also surprising to us during the research phase was how much less expensive blades get if you are willing to buy in absolutely massive quantities—something the sane individual obviously cannot do, but something a monthly delivery service like ours can do (and does). Passing along much of the savings to our subscribers has, it seems, solved the price issue altogether... without sacrificing the quality of your shave.
We are compiling interesting data as the business continues to grow, and will post some "data porn" (charts, growth rates, etc.) here in three months' and six months' time. I wonder what other industries could be disrupted by the monthly delivery model?
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