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Unilever Buys Dollar Shave Club for $1B
- giarc 10y agoTo add, DSC has raised 5 rounds for a total of $147.8 million. Seed was in 2012 by KPCB and A16Z. [0] 0 - https://angel.co/dollar-shave-club https://angel.co/dollar-shave-club
- ionwake 10y agoSorry to be ignorant, but how did he start his seed round? How does one start a seed round or become involved in the process? Thanks!
- giarc 10y agoHaving never raised a seed round, I'm not the right person to ask. However I'm sure there are plenty of blog posts/articles about this out there.
- 1_listerine_pls 10y agoHoly shit, what am I doing in software?
- econner 10y agoUhhh? Let me point you to http://fortune.com/unicorns/ http://fortune.com/unicorns/.
- m_mueller 10y agoWill they simply close it down to protect their Gillette brand?
- jdavis703 10y agoIf they do I'll (and probably most other customers) be fine, we have a massive stockpile of unopened razor blades.
- JshWright 10y agoIf you do run out, just buy them from Dorco (DSC's supplier) and avoid DSC's markup...
- perishabledave 10y agoGillette is a Proctor & Gamble company, not Unilever.
- dharmon 10y agoP&G owns Gillette, not Unilever. I guess they think they can give P&G a run for their money, and $1B is a pretty cheap price tag to take a stab at it. They've got quite an uphill battle ahead of them, though.
- s_m_t 10y agoI don't think that would work out for them. Letting everyone know that someone was willing to pay Dollar Shave Club and then yanking it from the market would lead to a flood of imitators and new competitors.
- inthewoods 10y agoInteresting post by David Pakman on the deal - really love his investment thesis. https://medium.com/@pakman/dollar-shave-club-how-michael-dubin-created-a-massively-successful-company-and-re-defined-cpg-f2fa700af62b#.6bvb5bneb https://medium.com/@pakman/dollar-shave-club-how-michael-dub... Curious what it sold for - I guess they were doing close to $200m in revenue. My guess would be in the $400-500m range.
- adrr 10y agoZulily sold for $2 billion with $200mm in revenue(and declining). Edit: To add more color. P&G bought Gillette for $40 billion on $4 billion in rev.
- uhhhhhhhhhhh 10y agoUhh...Zulily sold to QVC for $2.4 billion with somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.3 billion in yearly revenue. http://www.geekwire.com/2015/zulily-sold-to-qvc-for-2-4-billion/ http://www.geekwire.com/2015/zulily-sold-to-qvc-for-2-4-bill...
- gregpilling 10y agoThe linked article said that they had 3 million subscribers. Pretty impressive for a 4 year old company. 3 million credit cards on file, 3 million payments. It sold for $1 billion dollars. Youtube says their channel has 35,002,980 views, so that would make about $28.57 per view the selling price.
- MichaelGG 10y ago$330 per user? Is that a good price for customers buying cheap razors? I'm a guy. I shave a bit. I've been, and continue to be, totally astounded how DSC is a business, let alone a successful one. No matter your preference for DE vs these fancy multi-blade rigs, just uh, go to Amazon and buy? "Subscribe and Save" if you have an issue buying more when you run low? What's the attraction?
- 10y ago
- flukus 10y agoSo I guess the subscription fad isn't disappearing anytime soon.
- shpx 10y agoOld fashioned safety razors are still very much a thing [0], 30$ for a handle and another 30$ for 100 blades, I switch blades every 2 weeks.
- pcunite 10y agoI'm interested in getting this type of razor. Is there a standard? Interchangeable blades?
- zachrose 10y agoYep, you want "double-edged razor blades."
- MawNicker 10y agoI have this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011L8WJIA/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011L8WJIA/ I'm very satisfied. Not coming apart is a significant feature. The case is nice too; I've used it several times to look at the back of my head. I haven't found any blades that don't work. As far as I know they're all the same.
- MengerSponge 10y agoI love my butterfly too! It's a different brand with a similar mechanism.
- mikestew 10y agoThat's the great thing about double-edged razors: you can recognize the correct blade on sight. The box is distinctive as well. Meaning you'd have to try really hard to buy the wrong blade. I mean really hard, given that a blind person could buy the right blades by feel.
- awill 10y agoYea, nothing could go wrong in that scenario....
- 10y ago
- JshWright 10y agoEven prior to this, it was cheaper to just buy from Dorco (DSC's supplier).
- whamlastxmas 10y agoI have DSC to thank for looking into Dorco. I never bought DSC but heard they used Dorco. I've hated shaving my entire life because I always used an electric or shitty Target brand razors. I also tried safety razors and they were worse for me than Target despite trying everything to make it better. A nice Dorco makes so much of a difference. Shaving is now just sort of neutral to me rather than negative. Stocked up on a year supply of Dorco in December I think when they have 25% off. I use a new razor every few shaves guilt free because they're cheap enough.
- chiph 10y agoA few years ago Unilever partnered with Shick to launch Axe razors to compete with P&G. That may not have worked as well as they'd hoped, thus the purchase of DSC. http://adage.com/article/news/unilever-sharpens-axe-razor-launch/239595/ http://adage.com/article/news/unilever-sharpens-axe-razor-la...
- gotrecruit 10y agoi wonder what his ownership is... $1b cash acquisition is serious.
- dannylandau 10y agoHow does Dorco (or DSC) compare with Harry's shavers? I use the latter and just curious.
- sithadmin 10y agoDorco's top of the line blade (Pace 6) is almost identical to Harry's blades, but are around 50 US cents cheaper per blade.
- pbreit 10y agoDorco 6s at Amazon are $1.67 when you buy 24. Harry's (which I prefer) are $1.75 when you buy 16 (shipped free).
- pbreit 10y agoI did not like the Dorco 4 blade but the 6 blades are OK. But I have a slight preference for Harry's both because the blades seem solid and sharp and I like how the head pivots on the face. The one thing that is a slight problem is that when I just use shave oil (like the Honest brand) the residue is sometimes hard to fully rinse out. Harry's finally came out with a grippier handle so that's better now, too. I like the shave cream/lotion but the gel smells like Axe (disgusting).
- sverige 10y agoA billion dollars for a razor company. What a marketing job they've done over the decades. I've never understood the shaving fetish. It irritates your skin, causes infections, and hides your beard. Yes, I'm both a graybeard and a "neckbeard." (Never understood why the latter is pejorative, either. If you let your beard grow like it should, it will cover your neck.) A question for all you young men who have grown your beards as part of the recent fashion trend and have gone back to shaving as the trend has faded, which was better? Lower maintenance? Less expensive? Yes, bearded, I'm sure. Stop following trends and do what you like.
- Axsuul 10y agoThere are those of us who can't grow beards in the first place, with any sad attempt at it looking like a miserable display of masculinity. And I'm sure there are millions of us out there. So we prefer to shave it to save us from our friends and girlfriends having to remind us to.
- sverige 10y agoWell, yes, then shave. But if you can grow one at all, remember it grows in better as you age. I had holes in mine in my early 20s, but they were gone when I tried again in my early 30s.
- pdxandi 10y agoIn my mid-30s and still can't grow a beard. Better than in my 20s, but not by much. I really hate having to shave with a razor everyday.
- xapata 10y agoWhat if I like following trends?
- sverige 10y agoThen do it! With gusto!
- Axsuul 10y agoAnother win for the Los Angeles startup scene!
- vit05 10y agoIt is funny how every time someone talks about Dollar Shave Club as a brand/business model, most of the comments are about Dorco. Lifestyle brand focuses on a man, that is something really hard to archive. Gillette spends 600 million years on marketing to try to archive this. BTW, PG has bought Gillette for 57 billion 10 years ago.
- HelloImDumb 10y agoWell, Gillette has their own product that they have spent billions on R&D and manufacturing. DSC is not even white label, there's not the slightest alteration to the Dorco product. They're just repackaging and selling individual units, identical to drugstore Dorcos. Sure, DSC is a phenomenon, but their product is Dorco blades, U.S. mail, and some brown packaging.
- vit05 10y agoThey have their own product because they are an industry. DSC isn't.
- a_small_island 10y agoWhat a disgusting website (fortune.com). Autoplays a video in the article below the one I'm reading, makes me think I'm crazy to hear Paul Ryan discussing politics from my speakers. Try to hit my mouse button to go back to HN and it won't release me from my captivitiy. All while running uBlock Origin. Just disgusting. Congrats to Dollar Shave Club.
- ams6110 10y agoIf you use firefox, you can stop autoplay videos by going to about:config and setting media.autoplay.enabled to false.
- bhaile 10y agoWith FF and UO, I set all videos to be click to play. Including HTML5 video. It took one website for me and now no more random audio like Fortune's site.
- yoha 10y agoI am running both uBlock Origin and NoScript and the website still found a way to annoy me: it gets Firefox Reader stuck, so that I am supposed to read the article in their terrible layout.
- electic 10y agoFor those visiting, let's give our traffic to someone who values their raeders, doesn't serve them malware, and doesn't auto-play videos...someone other than Fortune: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/unilever-buys-dollar-shave-club-with-152m-in-sales http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/unilever-b...
- alexmingoia 10y agoI heard they aren't profitable? Is that true?
- e15ctr0n 10y agoMods, can we please change the URL to http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/business/dealbook/unilever-dollar-shave-club.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/business/dealbook/unilever... since it is much more informative?
- dang 10y agoSure. Thanks! Url changed from http://fortune.com/2016/07/19/unilever-buys-dollar-shave-club-for-1-billion/ http://fortune.com/2016/07/19/unilever-buys-dollar-shave-clu....