When I started this series of posts, I was bewildered by the market for wet shaving. Four questions stood out. Really, two pairs: One about economics, one about performance:
- Why do manufacturers keep coming up with ever-more-absurd gimmicks for shaving cartridges?
- Why does a shaving cartridge typically cost a buck or more, but a double-edged razor blade costs ten cents?
- Why do some people report getting a ludicrously high number of shaves from a single blade or cartridge, while others report re-use in the low single digits, for the exact same blade or cartridge?
- Is any of the folklore around ways to extend the life of a razor blade true?
After doing my research, I reached a state of razor enlightenment. It all makes perfect sense. So let me start by ‘splaining what I think I know. Then finish with a short discussion of stropping.
Absurd innovation and pricing: It’s all about winning the “game of razors-and-blades”.
Source: Amazon, via Google search for “most absurd razor”.
With regard to questions 1 and 2 above, the crazy products and the crazy prices are two sides of the same coin. Or blade, as it were. They are both driven by the need for manufacturers to try to win the “Game of Razors-and-Blades”.
Economists have many names for this phenomenon: Mickey Mouse monopoly. Two-part tariff. Game of razors-and-blades. It all boils down to the same thing. If a manufacturer can lock you into buying their product, and only their product, they can charge more for it.
That’s pretty obvious, I guess. It doesn’t even have to be an absolute lock. Just so long as they can create a some sort of economic barrier to using somebody else’s product.
The term Mickey Mouse monopoly refers to a long-standing practice of charging two fees at theme parks: One for admission to the park, and one for each ride (or possibly, package of rides). As it turns out, this strategy generates more revenues than charging just a high entry fee, or just a high per-ride fee. Because, once you’ve paid that stiff fee to get into the park, well, you might as well make the most of it. Theme parks do a lot of analysis to try to determine which combination of fees will maximize their profits.
Arguably, a product-based example familiar to most is the pricing of ink-jet printers and cartridges. Typically, manufacturers sell those printers for little more than the cost of the cartridges. Once you own a particular printer, you’re locked into buying that exact cartridge. Profits come from the inflated price of those cartridges. I would say that battery packs for battery-powered tools fall into the same category. Maybe Brita filters and Brita water pitchers, at least back in the day. The pitcher could be had for a song, the filters cost an arm and a leg. (That seems to have changed, so I can only assume that generic competition for their filters has put the kibosh on their prior two-part pricing strategy.)
Those are both instances where the only compatible disposable component comes with a hefty dose of monopoly pricing. I’m sure if I thought about it for ten minutes, I could come up with a much longer list.
A game of razors-and-blades occurs when a given razor (handle) will only accept that manufacturer’s blades. Much like the Mickey Mouse monopoly, each manufacturer then strategizes over the combination of razor price and blade price that will maximize profits.
Here’s a hint: Providing shaves at lowest total cost ain’t part of the strategy.
This has apparently been a feature of the disposable shaving market since its inception. When Gillette introduced disposable razor blades circa 1904, he owned the patent. His blades fit his razors, period. Once you bought a Gillette razor (the handle), if you wanted to keep using it, you had to buy Gillette blades. And the blades were priced accordingly. Other manufacturers offered razors and blades of different design, but their blades wouldn’t fit a Gillette razor.
But how do you make sure that only your blades fit your razor, in the modern world? I’m betting that the answer today is exactly the same as it was in 1904: You own the patent.
And I’m pretty sure that this is the primary driver behind all the crazy innovation in shaving cartridges. It’s not as if disposable cartridge razor designs from 40 years ago were bad. It’s that they lose patent protection. And when that happens, it opens up competition for your proprietary cartridges, which erodes your profits.
I am hardly the first person to have figured this out. Check out this knowledgeable discussion on Badger and Blade, a site for wet-shaving enthusiasts, emphasis mine:
Gillette started making the Atra razor and blades in 1977. That is 43 years ago. In 1985, the Atra cartridges were enhanced by adding a lubricating strip to make the Atra Plus. Typically, Gillette makes products until the patent expires, in the US that occurs 20 years after the original patent is issued. After that, they try to come up with another product which they can patent. In the case of the Atra, it was superceded by the Sensor in 1990. Then the Mach 3, the first three-blade razor, came along in 1997. In order to maximize profitability, Gillette wants to discourage potential customers from purchasing older products that are no longer under patent protection. They still sell the Sensor 3 as a disposable razor. They still sell the Mach 3 razors with replaceable cartridges.
Source: Posted by RayClem, on Badger and Blade.
When I looked on Amazon, I found truly cheap generic cartridges only for the oldest Gillette razors, such as the Trac II (1971), the Atra (1977), and Atra Plus (1985). In fact, it appears that when there is sufficient generic competition, Gillette itself will offer gray-market goods to compete with the generics. That is, products that may or may not be genuine Gillette, offered at a discount. Here’s an offer of what may-or-may-not be genuine Gillette Atra Plus refills, in bulk (i.e., non-retail) packaging. Note that the word Gillette never appears in the offering.
But there ain’t but so many ways you can shave your face and claim a patent. Hence, each generation of patented disposable razor cartridges pushes the boundaries of complexity. And gimmicks.
After a few generations of that, we end up with the seven-blade, elastic-mounted, precious-metal-coated, lube-stripped, pivoting-head acme of absurdity pictured above.
In short, it all makes sense. The crazy prices and the crazy products are but two avatars of the same spirit. Every manufacturer is trying to win at the Game of Razors-and-Blades. The only way to do that well is to have patent protection. Patents run out in 20 years. So they have to keep innovating, or they lose their monopoly profits on the disposable cartridges.
After half-a-century of that, well, here we are.
I get the sense that the public is finally catching on to just how absurd things have gotten. Hence a resurgence in old-fashioned shaving methods, such as the safety razor.
Blade life: Sure, YMMV. But why does YM V so much?
Source: Barbasol. This is not the original 1919 formulation. It’s a modern formulation, less the aerosol can.
Sure, beards vary. Frequency of shave varies. Arguably, tolerance for pain varies, as does one’s taste for a completely smooth shave.
And yet, it sure seems like the self-reported variation in razor blade or disposable shaver life can’t plausibly be explained by those factors alone. For any given blade or cartridge, you’ll see some guys says “lasts me three days”, and others say “lasts me half a year”. (I’m sticking with guys, not just because I’m one, but because for the most part I’m fairly sure of what, exactly, is being shaved.)
For me, questions 3 and 4 above come together in the one solid finding I had about the folklore of razor blade life: Softening your beard/lubricating your skin doesn’t just matter, it matters a lot.
Two weeks ago, if you’d asked me how long a Personna stainless steel blade lasts, I’d have said, ah, about three days. This week, I’m on shave #8 on a single Personna stainless-steel blade. With no sign of stopping.
For me, that’s absolutely unprecedented. And the only difference is that I stopped shaving with Dove soap and started shaving with Barbasol.
But now let me get some historical perspective on this.
Once upon a time, virtually all razor blades used in safety razors were carbon-steel blades. Not all of them. As it turns out (see prior post), chromium steel blades (functionally, stainless steel blades) were offered back in the 1910s. But I would say that, by 1960, virtually all double-edge blade sales in the U.S. were carbon steel blades.
This, I assert, is the reason for the folklore that drying your razor blade will extend its life. For carbon steel blades, that’s almost certainly true, as they will rust. For modern stainless steel blades, drying does nothing (because nothing happens to them if they stay wet.) I proved that empirically, a couple of posts back.
Carbon-steel blades aren’t as hard as stainless-steel blades. I’ll get to that below, in a discussion of stropping. But all the experts say that you can strop a carbon-steel blade on plain leather, but that you need to add some sort of grinding compound if you plan to strop stainless steel effectively. And that’s precisely because the edge of a stainless steel blade is harder than that of a carbon steel blade.
When everyone used carbon-steel blades, shaving cream (or equivalent) was the norm. And I’m guessing that if you shaved with soap, and carbon-steel blades, a) the blades didn’t last long and b) you probably got a pretty rough shave off of anything but a brand new blade.
With the advent of stainless-steel blades, shaving cream might have been preferred, but it was more-or-less optional. I, myself, shaved using soap my entire life. Until last week. You could get a few decent shaves out of a stainless-steel blade even if you skipped the shaving cream.
I am now guessing that if you combine a modern stainless-steel blade, with old-fashioned shaving cream, you can get excellent blade life. Blade life that would have been unheard-of in the era of carbon-steel blades.
Under the right circumstances, it now seems plausible to me that somebody with a light beard, a good blade, and proper preparation of their face could, in fact, shave for months on end with a single stainless-steel razor cartridge.
More to the point, if I can get eight (and counting) shaves with one double-edge blade, and Barbasol, it now seems completely plausible that somebody who is really into shaving might routinely report (say) three times that, using a high-end multi-blade razor cartridge, along with high-end shaving cream or equivalent.
The upshot is that, compared to shaving 50 years ago:
- Stainless steel makes the blade more durable.
- Multiple-blade cartridges eliminate the need for making multiple passes over the same area.
- Modern shaving cream formulations are designed in a way that greatly reduces blade wear-and-tear.
When you combine all of that, reports of extreme blade life now seem a lot more believable.
So, a heavy-bearded guy, using cheap soap, getting two shaves from a double-edged blade? Sure, that’s plausible. A lighter-bearded guy, with careful face prep, getting half-a-year’s shaving out of a high-end multiple-blade cartridge? I now think that’s plausible as well.
As with the nutty razors and crazy pricing, if you look closely enough, the ridiculous variation in reported blade life actually makes sense. If you combine the best of old technology (fat-based shaving cream) and the best of new technology (multi-bladed stainless-steel cartridges), exceptional blade life is going to occur under the right circumstances.
Technical addendum 1: Common active ingredients in shaving cream and shaving soap, or, why I’m sticking with Barbasol
Source: NIH
As much as I have become a Barbasol convert, I’m fairly sure there’s nothing unique about it. The main ingredient is a fat (“fatty acid”), stearic acid. That is, among other things, the main fat in coconut oil. Which, itself, is frequently recommended as a beard softener.
(Technically, the fat itself is three of those fatty acids, attached (“esterified”) to some a molecule of glycerol. The fatty acid (plus glycerine) is what you get when you chemically break up that fat.)
Below, you see the first-listed active ingredient in a variety of shaving creams, gels, and soaps. To construct this, I went to Amazon, found the first-listed brands of shaving cream/gel and shaving soap, and looked up their ingredients.
Despite being a bit slapdash, that’s fairly illuminating. At least in so far as the first-listed active ingredient goes.
All shaving creams/gels on this list something derived from coconut oil or palm oil as the first-listed ingredient after water.
As you can see from the molecules shown above, coconut and palm oil only different by the addition or subtraction of two carbons to their fatty acid chains.
In other words, to a first approximation, they all start with exactly the same stuff. I’m sure there are differences as you go down the ingredient list. I’m sure they vary in the exact proportions of the ingredients. But, in reality, they are all built off of more-or-less the same base.
The soaps, by contrast, were a somewhat more mixed bag.
For the solid soaps, manufacturers skipped the water, and moved up the mix of fat toward heavier molecules. They either start with coconut oil, or they used animal fat, which is a mix of fatty chains of different lengths, but generally longer than 18 carbon atoms. That would make sense for something that you want to be solid at room temperature.
Interestingly, those tallow soaps are exactly that: soap. They are no longer fats or fatty acids. Their principal element has been converted to a “fatty acid salt”, i.e., soap.
In addition, two of the best-selling brands (Van Der Hagen and Conk) appear to be something of a chemical cocktail. And two of the “all natural” brands were so cagey about the exact ingredient list that I could not put them on equal footing with the rest. So I just didn’t try. Plausibly, their ingredient list would look a lot less “chemical-y” than the rest of the soaps, if I could have found a simple ingredient list in the same format as the others.
The upshot is that I think I understand exactly what shaving cream is: It’s a convenient way to get beard-softening and skin-lubricating oils (long-chain fatty acids) delivered to your face. Separately, as I read the rest of the list of ingredients, I think they add just enough soap-like stuff to allow those oils to be washed off without difficulty.
But, in the main, I have only a hazy notion of what “shaving soap” is, or why it should work to soften a beard and lubricate a face.
In particular, when I was using Dove bar soap, the only obvious difference in between that and shaving cream is that a (mild) form of coconut oil soap is listed as the first ingredient, and coconut fatty acid was second. Here’s Dove bar soap:
Dove bar soap: Sodium Lauroyl Isethionate, Stearic Acid, Lauric Acid, Sodium Oleate, Water (Eau), Sodium Isethionate, Sodium Stearate, Cocamidopropyl Betaine, Fragrance (Parfum), Sodium Laurate, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Tetrasodium EDTA, Sodium Chloride, Kaolin or (ou) Titanium Dioxide.
So Dove is first-and-foremost a soap, and only secondarily some sort of skin and beard softener. Give that Dove was a failure for me, I have a hard time figuring out why those tallow-based soaps would work any better. Like Dove, they are first-and-foremost soaps, and only secondarily contain ingredients to condition or soften the skin.
Want a real kick in the pants? All the shaving gurus tell you NOT to use Ivory soap. But Ivory is just a good-old-fashioned animal fat soap. So guess what the main ingredient of Ivory is:
Ivory bar soap, original formula: sodium tallowate, sodium cocoate or sodium palm kernelate, water, sodium chloride, sodium silicate, magnesium sulfate, and fragrance.
And so, “The Art of Shaving” shaving soap? That’s more or less the same stuff as good old Ivory soap. Plus some fragrances, and some soaps derived from plant oils. Why Ivory is a no-no, but “The Art of Shaving” is a yes-yes, I cannot fathom, based on the ingredient list and chemistry.
Upshot: I’ll stick with shaving cream, thanks. Probably, any shaving cream would work OK. At the end of the day, I’m probably going to stick with Barbasol. Maybe I’ll try out the non-aerosol formula, at some point.
Some notes on stropping stainless steel blades.
Source: Sears and Roebuck 1918 catalog, via University of Illinois. See just-prior post for full reference.
Recap: Stropping means burnishing or polishing the very edge of a razor by running it backwards (opposite the direction of shaving) over some suitable material. Traditionally, that material was leather, and leather that you used was called a strop.
I tested the effect of stropping a double-edged razor blade in the first part of my set of experiments on blade life. ) I used a scrap of leather that I happened to have handy, glued it to some foam board, put the blade in my razor, and had at it. It absolutely polished up the ragged edge of a used blade. But I could not really detect an increase in blade sharpness or in “shave-ability”.
If you look back to that 1918 Sears catalog (above), it’s clear that stropping was an integral part of using a safety razor with disposable blades. Stropping was how you routinely re-sharpened you blade so that you could keep using it. Note the devices sold to reduce the effort required to strop your razor blades.
Today, I don’t think anybody strops disposable razor blades. In part, surely that’s because they are vastly cheaper now, in real terms, than they were in 1918.
But I also wonder if the switch to stainless steel has also discouraged that.
After looking around on some expert forums, the consensus is that a plain leather strop is inadequate for stropping stainless steel. Fine for carbon steel — like the common razor blades of 1918 — but stainless is just too hard to take a burnished edge that way. Experts tell you to add some fine abrasive to the leather, in order to strop stainless, typically referred to as “compound”.
And, because sharpening experts use it, you can still find stropping compound suitable for (e.g.) stropping a stainless steel razor. You have your choice of brands on Amazon.
I think I’m going to give it a try, just to bring this full circle. The only short-run problem is that the only way I have to hold the razor blade correctly is to put it in my razor. And I don’t want to run the razor over an abrasive surface. Once I figure out how to get around that (likely, by buying the cheapest razor I can find and using that for stropping), I’ll give this a try.
Finally, I came across close-up photos of the two-edge automatic stropper above. It’s ingenious. The two cylinders are leather-covered, and connected by an idler gear so that they turn in opposite directions. The blade is put into a holder in the cover, lowered onto the cylinders, and you just crank away until you feel that your stropping is complete. It appears to be a remarkably practical and fool-proof device.
In any case, the important new piece of information is that you need stropping compound if you’re planning on stropping stainless. Plain leather won’t hack it. Might as well give that a try.
