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Who would have guessed that the lowly men's razor would be at the cutting edge of retail innovation in 2016? said Bhaskar Chakravorti at Harvard Business Review. In a deal that has shaken the stodgy consumer products industry, Unilever announced last week it will pay $1 billion to acquire Dollar Shave Club, a scrappy five-year-old firm that delivers no-frills disposable blades to subscribers for as little as $3 per month. Since launching in 2011, the Venice, California–based startup has grown to 3.2 million subscribers — earning $152 million in revenue last year and becoming a case study in how a disruptive innovator can "break into a highly profitable and overserved industry." The global razor business has long been built on convincing people they need more and more blinged-out blades at higher and higher prices, said Sharon Terlep at The Wall Street Journal. Dollar Shave Club's "simple, low-price razors have upended" that model. The startup now claims 5 percent of the U.S. men's shaving market, long dominated by the colossus Gillette, a property of Unilever rival Procter & Gamble. Since 2010, Gillette's market share has fallen from 71 percent to 59 percent.
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