Back­story

I am not a big fan of rein­vent­ing the wheel, or under­tak­ing change just for sake of mak­ing a change. One thing that will nudge me toward change is the sat­is­fac­tion of a good shave. Though I tend to be rather fru­gal, when it comes to shav­ing, I am will­ing to spend some money. Some­thing about press­ing razor-sharp steel against your face will keep you from set­tling for cheap. Over the years, I have tried straight razors, safety razors, high-end car­tridge razors and dis­pos­able razors. I’ve tried razors with any­where from one to five blades.

After years of shav­ing, I’ve found that more expen­sive doesn’t always trans­late into a bet­ter shave. For years these plas­tic, pivot head, dis­pos­able Gillette’s have been my default razors.

The 52-razor pack sells at Costco for about $23, which aver­ages out to about 45¢ a razor.

Defy­ing my own “don’t rein­vent the wheel” mantra, I gave into some splashy mar­ket­ing — and a deep dis­count coupon — and picked up the Gillette Fusion razor.

The Fusion fea­tures five blades and a grippy han­dle. The ini­tial pur­chase, which includes the han­dle and two razors heads, is around $8 — 12, depend­ing on where you shop.

The refills will set you back any­where from $15 for a 4-pack to $40 for a 12 pack. Yikes!

It’s worth noth­ing that I could get more shaves, and a bet­ter shave, from the Fusion blades than I could from the dis­pos­able blades. I shave every other day, and can get two good shaves from a dis­pos­able razors. I could get a solid week out of each Fusion blade refill. Here’s how the costs breaks down per week.

Gillette Cus­tom Plus dis­pos­able — $1.50

Gillette Fusion — $3.75

Given my fru­gal ways, it should come as no sur­prise that I returned to the Cus­tom Plus razors. Even though the Fusion pro­vided a bet­ter shave, pay­ing twice as much for a shave just didn’t make sense.

Enter Dol­lar Shave Club

At the begin­ning of March, I spot­ted this video for Dol­lar Shave Club, which was start­ing going viral.

This video was so funny that I, hon­estly, didn’t think it was for real. Nev­er­the­less, I was com­pelled to check out the company’s web­site. I was pleas­antly sur­prised to learn that Dol­lar Shave Club was not just a spoof video. It is a real com­pany, sell­ing real razors.

Here are the company’s razor offerings.

I was so enter­tained by this whole thing, that I thought “What the hell?!” I’m gonna order me up some razors. Though the $1 Hum­ble Twin offer­ing tempted me, I was drawn to the mid­dle bear, The 4X. I signed up for an account and placed an order. As soon as the order when through I was met with a follow-up mes­sage on the screen that indi­cated that ship­ments were backed up because of the over­whelm­ing response by cus­tomers. Under­stand­able. It was some­what reas­sur­ing to know that I wasn’t the only one sucked in by that funny video.

My Expe­ri­ence

I placed my order on March 15, but was fore­warned that I wouldn’t get my first ship­ment of razors until May. Cool. I had just enough of the Gillette Cus­tom dis­pos­able razors to get through the end of April. On May 1, I sent an email to Dol­lar Shave Club just to make sure that I was still going to receive my razors. Some­one responded very promptly with an apol­ogy for the delay, and explained that the razors would not ship until May 15. To the company’s credit, they offered me two options — wait for the blades or can­cel my mem­ber­ship and receive a refund. Cus­tomer ser­vice is very impor­tant to me, and I was impressed. I opted to wait. When I got home on May 21st and there were no blades in my mail­box, I sent another email. (Admit­tedly, with a bit more of a WTF tone.) Again, some­one from the com­pany responded promptly the next morn­ing. Here is the response.

Hey Matt,

First of all, thank you for your patience over the last 8 weeks. We’re so grate­ful that you chose to stick with us while we scale our busi­ness to meet demand. We know it’s frus­trat­ing, and it means a lot to us.

To give you and idea of what’s hap­pen­ing behind the scenes: we’ve been hold­ing orders to ensure that once an order does in fact ship, we’re able to ful­fill sub­se­quent ship­ments flaw­lessly and on-time on the monthly anniver­sary. We’ve also changed ful­fill­ment part­ners so we can meet the demand of the thou­sands of orders we’re get­ting everyday.

Long story short, yes pack­ages were ful­filled start­ing on the 15th, but due to the amount of orders we had to ful­fill on that date, your order wasn’t shipped out on the day we promised. I am so sorry about that! How­ever, your first pack­age was indeed sent to shipping–so keep an eye out for it this week! Mov­ing for­ward, you’ll never have another delay.

Happy Shav­ing

Now, you know I let out a big UGH! about being addressed as Matt, but I read on. Again, I was impressed with the respon­sive­ness. I couldn’t help but think, “We’re just talk­ing about some razors here. Noth­ing life or death.” When I got home that evening, look what was wait­ing for me.

I can’t remem­ber being so excited to shave. The next morn­ing I tried out the 4X. I got a nice close shave, com­pa­ra­ble to what I would get with the Fusion. The razor han­dle is nicely weighted and grippy. I got four razor refill heads, which works out to 75¢ week. That is a $3 sav­ings per week over the Fusion Razor. In fact, this ini­tial ship­ment saved me even more money, if you con­sider that I got the han­dle and four razor heads for $6. Hope­fully, the ship­ment delays are behind me, and I’ll get my next ship­ment in about a week. I’m sold. If you are a reg­u­lar shaver, I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend giv­ing Dol­lar Shave Club a shot. If you’re a Dol­lar Shave Club mem­ber, or tried out the razors, please let me know what you think/thought about the razors.

Full Dis­clo­sure: Dol­lar Shave Club has a refer­ral bonus pro­gram. If you click any of the company’s links in this post and place an order, I will earn a free month of shav­ing for each order. Thanks in advance.