How Are Gillette and Schick Getting Away with Ripoff Razors?
The razor blade industry is swarming with impenetrably high-tech products and shockingly high prices — accused of marking up prices 4,000-percent more than the cost of production — making it an easy target for pop-cultural satire. “Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades,” an Onion headline lampooned in 2004, spoofing an industry whose answer to the question of increased market share equaled more blades. “We’re standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip,” harrumphed a caricature of Gillette CEO James Kilts. “Moisture or no, suddenly we’re the chumps. Well, fuck it. We’re going to five blades.”Reality trailed behind comedy in 2005, when Gillette released the Fusion, a five-blade, battery-optional super-razor with a moisturizing strip whose residue evidently soothed your skin’s post-traumatic stress disorder, or something. In Gillette’s defense, it was just responding to market pressure. Schick released the four-blade Quattro in 2003, reacting to the
