Freedom of Choice, Part 4

A recent piece in the Callithump! vending machine ended on a more downbeat note than I’d intended.  The three part piece, called Freedom of Choice (yes, after the Devo song) discussed how the Gillette company combined company founder King Camp Gillette’s “razor and blades” business model: sell something at little or no profit (in this case a razor) so that one might sell a lot of something at greater profit (the blades).

King Camp Gillette himself was actually a really nice guy, a Utopian Socialist who planned to use his great wealth to build a better world for everyone. It didn’t work out that way, and the company he started continued without him. The razor and blades business model got nasty by incorporating  proprietary formats (in this case plastic cartridges containing multiple blades) to eliminate competing blade manufacturers. Before Gillette (the company, not the man) did this, you could choose between more than 30  manufacturers who made blades that fit Gillette razors. Now in grocery and drugstores you can choose from Gillette or Shick razors and blades. These aren’t interchangeable. Once you buy a  razor, you have to buy specific blades that fit that razor. We went from having many choices from many companies to severely limited choices from two companies.

The razor and blades model is now pervasive. Companies sell need, not solutions. We buy a television, we need to get cable TV and buy a game console. We buy the game console, we need to buy peripherals and games to go with it. We buy a game and a year later the bigger and better version of that game comes out And so on, in perpetuity.Think about how many of the purchases in your life only guarantee you have to buy more.

It doesn’t always need to be this way. Of course, we’re consumers. It’s wired into in our animal natures. However, there’s genuine need and the perceived need that’s put into our heads by marketers. There are more choices, but they aren’t necessarily on the rack at the supermarket. The fact is, the multi-blade proprietary plastic cartridge razor blades never shaved better than the single-bladed safety razor. It was all just marketing.

I discovered this a while back. I was holding my 5-bladed Gillette Fusion with Lubricating Strip and battery-powered vibration, and I was trying to decide whether to torture myself for a few more days or not buy food because the blades were just so expensive, and I was thinking, There has to be something better. It turns out there was, and always had been. You can still buy safety razors of the sort King Camp Gillette first made. If you shop around you can still find safety razors that were made in King Camp Gillette’s day for cheaper than a Gillette Fusion. There’s all sorts of myths about these razors like, “They’re hard to use,” and “You’ll cut yourself.” This is true for about the first two weeks of using a safety razor (aka, dual edge or DE razor). Once you get the hang of it, you’ll get a far better shave than you’ll ever get from a 5-bladed monster razor.

What’s even better is, for the price of an 8 pack of Fusion cartridges, you can buy a pack of 100 Feather dual edged blades. Feathers are regarded as among the best DE blades you can buy, and yet they’re so cheap compared to the Fusion that you can swap out a fresh blade before it even shows signs of getting dull.

Make the switch to a shaving brush at the same time, and you’ll discover that there’s many more choices beyond the canned chemical goo that the stores try to pass off as shaving cream. In the morning I have the joy of a hot lather scented with things that I recognize, like lavender or lime, made with non-toxic, natural ingredients. Making the switch away from expensive gimmick razors has turned a morning chore into something I look forward to. I wholeheartedly recommend it!