Lesson Thirty-Five: Lessons from the Razor King

One morning in the spring of 1895 a traveling salesman named King Camp Gillette, after cutting himself while shaving, had a good idea. Back then, shaving offered much more personal risk than it does today. A man had two choices: the straight razor, or so-called safety razor. Gillette routinely traveled by railway. Shaving with a straight razor on one of those bumpy trips could quite easily cause a man to cut his own throat. Gillette, sensibly, favored the safety razor.

Now the safety razor of old was a unified piece of handle and blade and had to be manually sharpened on a strap. Eventually the blade got so worn and dull it became useless and the whole thing had to be discarded. It was just after Gillette had finished a miserable job of shaving, and thrown this safety razor in the trash in disgust, that he thought, ‘If only someone made a safety razor with replaceable blades.’

Eureka!

It took Gillette seven years to perfect the idea. (Sharpening thin metal was a major technological obstacle in the 1890s.) But in 1901, Gillette formed the company that still bears his name. For the first time, razor blades would be sold in multiple packages, with the razor handle a one-time purchase. Production began in 1903; Gillette won a patent for his product the next year. The rest is history.

To give you an idea of the size of modern day Gillette, consider that between 1993 and 1998 they spent about $750 million developing its Mach3 razor. After that they spent another $300 million to market it. That’s over a billion dollars to develop and sell a disposable razor that retails for about $8.

Most people don’t know that King Gillette was an opponent of capitalism. At least, as a young man he was. He’d written a number of books promoting a socialist utopia, declaring “competition to be the root of all evil.”

So if you were saying to yourself, ‘Old Gillette must have been a natural businessman,’ you’d be wrong. He was just a left-wing salesman with a good idea and passion enough to run with it. The first Gillette razor was sold in 1903; 51 razors were sold that year. The next year, 90,000 were sold. By the end of 1908 sales had passed the one million mark.

How far can a good idea and a little effort take you?



Principles of Persuassion by Shane Sparks