When Dollar Shave Club was launched in 2012, the men’s razor market was stable. It had always been dominated by a few big firms with new entrants to the market uncommon. The big players had continued to compete on whose razor had the most blades, or who’s razor head could pivot the most for years, with little true innovation. The site’s founders Michael Dubin & Mark Levine knew that to make a splash, big changes to the norm would be needed.
And change the norm Dollar Shave Club did. In the first two days after it’s now famous “Our Blades Are F***ing Great” video was launched, Dollar Shave Club received 12,000 subscriptions. Clearly consumers were ready for a change. But how did Dollar Shave Club go from a crowd-funded project started by two friends to being acquired by Unilever for over US $1 billion?
Meeting consumer needs
When Dollar Shave Club entered the market, consumers were bored and uninterested with razors. Men didn’t care about all the bells & whistles that the big players had focused on for so many years. They didn’t want to pay a fortune for product features they didn’t need - they simply wanted a razor that was easy-to-use and got the job done.
Dollar Shave Club saw this as an opportunity. Their value proposition was simple - to provide functional razors to men at a reasonable price. The founders looked directly at their target audience’s need and fulfilled it in as straightforward a way as possible. This positioned the brand for organisational and marketing success from the very beginning.
Unique and exciting business model
The big difference between Dollar Shave Club and its competitors was not just the razor itself, but also the delivery format. Dollar Shave Club’s business model is subscription based, with those who sign up receiving their razors in the mail at the frequency of their choosing (from every month to three times a year). The mundane task of buying razors at the supermarket is gone and is transformed into an exciting event, with the razors arriving in a curated box that includes a “Dollar Shave Club” membership card amongst other small goodies.
Whilst this idea doesn’t reinvent the wheel, it changes up the way consumers have purchased razors for a long time, and makes it cheaper and more exciting in the process.
Strong online presence
Right from the foundation of the brand, Dollar Shave Club has had a strong online presence. The brand was introduced to the world in a one and a half minute long YouTube advertisement that now has over 26 million views. The video features one of the site’s founders Mike Dublin talking to consumers in a relatable and humorous way to explain the merits of their brand. The advertisement created immediate buzz, with the brand’s CMO Adam Weber explaining in an interview that these early YouTube videos were always created with the intention of making something with ‘shareability’. Weber also noted that YouTube was the perfect platform for this.
Dollar Shave Club has continued to effectively use its social channels to communicate with its target audience. Whilst many brands have a presence on multiple social channels just for the sake of being present in that particular landscape, Dollar Shave Club makes sure to stick to being a simple and effective solution to a consumer need. You won’t find flashy advertisements on their Instagram, but instead relatable content, memes, and responses from their team to commonly asked customer questions. Their social channels serve a purpose, and keep their customers engaged with the brand.
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