Image by Youtube/Dollar Shave Club

Are His Razor’s Good? They’re $1 Billion Great

It started in 2012 with a YouTube video (shot in a day for less than $4,500) that made a bold claim: “Dollar Shave Club’s blades are “f**ing great.” And it ended in July 2016, when Unilever acquired that company for a cool $1 billion.

In the whirlwind four years after Michael Dubin, 38, released the sassy introductory commercial — viewed more than 23 million times — Dollar Shave Club grew into a major disruptive player with over 3 million members.

Founded by Dubin and his friend Mark Levine, DSC’s business model is built on the premise that consumers shouldn’t pay for unnecessary shaving technology, and that it’s possible to bring excellent, affordable razors to customers by circumventing expensive advertising and middlemen.

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)

Startups like Dollar Shave Club, built on a direct-to-consumer model, don’t threaten the market share of traditional companies like Proctor & Gamble or Unilever, but they do threaten impersonal multinational brands by forging strong relationships with their customers — which explains the billion dollar appeal to Unilever.

Before Dubin was making major moves in the business world, he spent nine years in the infamous NYC comedy group Upright Citizens Brigade, whose other notable alumni include the comedians Amy Poehler and Aziz Ansari.

Dubin credits the experience with teaching him skills essential to succeeding in business: “[Improv] trains your brain to find what’s funny about a situation. That helps the advertising that we do…. When you’re in meetings with 20 people and decisions have to get made, it really helps to be schooled in a discipline of quick thinking,” he says. “That’s what improv really is.”

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. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount