Dollar Shave Club is a lifestyle brand and e-commerce company that invents and delivers smart, affordable products to make lives more comfortable. It is an American company based in California. It makes its products through its entire R&D process that includes botanicals and chemists and that too at affordable prices. It delivers razors and other personal grooming products to consumers, directly at their doorstep.
The company was founded in 2012 by Mark Levine and Michael Dubin. The idea came to them while they were talking about the prices of the razor blades. They began operations in January 2011 and launched their website in April 2011. In the next few years, the company was backed by many VCS like Venrock, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Andreessen Horowitz, Comcast Ventures, New World Investors, Battery Ventures, and many others.
Membership Model
The Company offers membership plans, which are based on person shaving frequency, i.e. the number of razors/period. Also, each subscription comes with a free handle. The membership can be changed, upgraded, downgraded, or canceled anytime.
At present, the model is pretty simple. Every new user can answer a few sets of questions. Based on these answers, the site will recommend a few products, or he can select one of the starter packs offered on the website. Now, based on the user’s preferences, the Company will restock all these products at a certain period, pretty much the same as an e-commerce model.
Marketing Message
On March 6, 2012, Dollar Shave Club kickstarted its membership service via a YouTube video – “Our Blades Are F***ing Great”. It featured CEO Michael Dubin, delivering his speech in a carefree and sarcastic manner, which went viral. The video attracted a surprising amount of traffic, which crashed the company’s server in the first hour. The team had to get new people to fulfill 12,000 orders that arrived in the early 48 hours of launching the video. Later, the company moved its warehouse and fulfillment to a third-party logistics center in Kentucky. The company acquired 3.2 million subscribers, out of which almost 20% of its customers were women
The video won many different awards, and the company got the initial recognition. On June 4, 2013, Dollar Shave Club released a second video on YouTube called “Let’s Talk About #2”, which again starred its CEO and promoted One Wipe Charlies. The company used social media platforms in the best way possible to gain attraction and rose interest in its product.
To showcase its social values, the company donated $10,000 to the Colon Cancer Alliance, contributing a percentage of One Wipe Charlies’ sales. Michael Dubin also had his colonoscopy streamed live.
Now, the company sells other grooming products along with razors. It also expanded in other countries such as Canada and Australia in late 2012 and the United Kingdom in 2018. Currently, the company runs in 4 countries.
Unilever later acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1B in a cash deal on Jul 19, 2016.
The company’s recipe of standout, irreverent marketing coupled with low prices created a brand with a huge value