We haven’t reached peak beard yet. And men who used to shave every day are, to a greater extent, more comfortable with artfully trimmed two-day shadow as personal grooming policies in some offices (Wall Street and the City included) become more relaxed.
Purveyors of razor blades like P&G’s Gillette, and France’s Bic and Schick, owned by Edgewell Personal Care, are working harder to sell their products and remain relevant.
Gillette’s risky bet with its new ad referencing the #MeToo movement and "toxic masculinity" is proof of the length to which brands will go to stand out. The reaction to the now viral ad largely fell into two camps: those who applauded the brand, and those who said Gillette was "dead" to them. Either way, if Gillette’s intention was publicity (and by extension profit) through commercialising a social and political movement, it succeeded.
Research increasingly shows millennials and baby boomers (um … older generations) want brands to stand for something and to make a statement — a brand’s "stand" drives purchase intent.
Remember Nike’s Colin Kaepernick from last year? The controversial ad initially boosted sales 31%, according to data from Edison Trends.
The roots of the societal shift to fewer shaves and the mainstreaming of stubble can be linked back to Movember, a November health promotion urging men to grow their moustaches and beards to raise awareness of prostate cancer, and also the rise of the "hipster-slash-Vikings trend". It would be remiss not to mention the firm belief by many that George Clooney’s designer-style stubble has, in fact, led the facial hair renaissance. Make what you will, dear reader, from this inference.
A Gillette consumer study shows that in developed markets, the average number of times men shave a week has fallen from 3.7 to 3.2 over the past decade, totalling about two fewer shaves a month. Owing to customers repurchasing blade cartridges, shaving is obviously a high-margin category for P&G. Its grooming unit, which includes Gillette, Braun and Venus, accounted for about 10% of the company’s $66.8bn sales in 2018.
Shaving costs
With the culture of everyday shaving diminishing, Gillette has introduced lower-cost blades and scaled back on R&D — historically it’s been biased towards the higher end, pouring billions into new launches every couple of years.
The rise of upstart, hip shaving companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s has also forced Gillette and its more established peers to defend their patch; all three now offer subscription-based products. As men shave less often, fewer need pricier high-quality blades, hence the popularity of shaving clubs or direct-to-consumer subscription services. So lucrative is the men’s grooming market (shaving makes up about 40%) that Unilever paid $1bn for Dollar Shave Club three years ago, giving it an instant 16% share of the US razor market for men and the No 2 spot after Gillette, which has a 65% share.
In so far as beard and moustache trends go, 2019 is being heralded as the year of the 5 o’clock shadow. Understated, with just the right amount of passable coolness, it’s the antithesis of the Gandalf beard and said to particularly flatter men with weak jaws. For moustaches, the thinner the better — or one risks a Tom Selleck/1970s porn star look.
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