Do the math for how much a razor "should" cost, and ask why you can't buy one for remotely that much at your local Walgreens. Ask why stuff like Dollar Shave Club exists, and then look at their prices and figure out what their margins are.
A lot of thought goes into anything that is mass-market and is still competitively priced. The article says, "each razor blade is 5 rupees, or 12 cents". Stuff like Dollar Shave club is way too expensive for most Indians, and that what this article is about.
If you still find it contemptible, fine, you make cheaper razors. If they work, I'll buy them.
> To do that, P&G executives would have to attract the nearly 500 million Indians who use double-edged razors, an old fashioned T-shaped razor that has no protective piece of plastic that goes between the blade and the skin when shaving.
...such razors are generally called "safety razors", and unless there's a radically different design in use in India, they're pretty hard to cut yourself with.
But a resurgence in their popularity would be pretty terrible for Gillette, given how much cheaper their blades are, so their PR can't say anything positive about them.
I am honestly never going back to a mass manufactured multi-blade type razor again. I get a much better, closer shave and way less rash and burn. It takes longer, but i feel the trade off is well worth it. There is the obvious financial benefit that will more that pay for itself within a couple of years as well. I forget how much a gilette mach whatever blade was, something like £3-5.
I've thought about going the safety razor route but there was a span of time where I was travelling almost constantly and, from what I understand, you're not allowed to bring them in your carry on (I don't usually check luggage).
Might give it a shot now that I don't really travel anymore.
It's much easier to cut yourself with a safety razor than with a cartridge razor. All it takes is being tired and in a hurry, or being clumsy when replacing the blade.
I've found the benefits (closer shave, cheap enough to replace regularly) worth the costs in time and (occasional) blood. But don't pretend that they're as idiot-proof as the cartridge razors, because unfortunately, they're not.
All that said--yeah, this was pretty transparently a PR piece with the moral of the story being "watch how people do what they do to make products that will appeal to them."
Um, duh?
I agree that the article is PR puff piece.
If I decided to produce my own razor blades, I suppose I would need to buy an iron mine, a factory to melt the ore to iron, and a factory to turn the iron into razor blades. And presumably hire a few industrial designers or engineers to ensure that I got a nice razor rather than a lousy one.
I've no idea what any of these things cost, so I'll pick a random number and estimate a few hundred million USD.
And say I did all that just to get razor blades for myself, because I thought the market offerings were too expensive.
So my math is: Say $500m to aquire the means of production, an unknown yearly cost to keep them running (so I'll just ignore that part), and a consumption of one razor blade per week or slightly more than 3,000 blades in a lifetime (assuming 60 years, age 17-77, of shaving). According to my calculations, razor blades "should" cost in the neighbourhood of $160,000 per blade.
That's my math. What's yours?
As an american audience member, my takeaway was around "knowing your customer". I also thought that they were focused on cost savings.
I am not sure what exactly you think is contemptible about this. That there is PR involved? That the price of razors is too high?
The marketing effort by Gillette is to upsell Indian consumers from a generic double-edged razor to a proprietary cartridge system, opening the path for continual upselling to multi-blade cartridge systems as those consumers and their offspring enter the middle class.