Image by YouTube

By Laura E. Adkins July 20, 2016

Dollar Shave Club, a 5-year-old company founded by two Jewish friends who were grousing over the high price of razors at a party, has been bought by Unilever for $1 billion, pending regulatory approval.

The Venice, California-based firm delivers razors and facial cleansing and styling products to consumers by mail.

It was started in 2011 by Mark Levine and Michael Dubin, who met at a party and shared a frustration with the high costs of retail razors. They are famous for their kitschy ads with straightforward messages, such as their 2012 viral Youtube video, “Our Blades Are F***ing Great,” which has been viewed over 22 million times on Youtube.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

In the announcement of the deal last night, Unilever noted that Dollar Shave Club had grossed over $152 million in sales last year, and was valued at $615 million last June.

Niche startups built on a direct-to-consumer model, such as Dollar Shave Club threaten the market share of traditional consumer packaged goods (CPG) giants, such as Procter and Gamble (who owns Gillette) and Unilever (who until now owned no razor brands). Consumers are willing to spend more for these distinctive products, online distribution is only getting easier and cheaper, and barriers to market entry are crumbling, making it much easier for a small company to gain large traction in a short amount of time. In the words of one executive of a major CPG company, the big traditional players are “kind of f***ed.”

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount