Yesterday was the final day for our innovative 'Friend Funded' King of Shaves Shaving Bond. I'm delighted that not only did we achieve the minimum amount (£500,000), but were substantially over the minimum. In due course, I will be blogging about this innovative fund raising project, which garnered c£1m worth of world-wide publicity and had many journalists, investor web-sites, bloggers & the twitterati commenting on it - whether it was 'genius' or 'would fail'.
Well, all I know is that in my personal opinion, it was extremely worthwhile and will, in time, be a way of genuine fund-raising that can be considered by SME's with strong reputations and great products or services.
I also received our latest sales data yesterday for the 4 weeks ending July 11th, which showed that our King of Shaves Azor was only outsold in this period by...Gillette Fusion Manual'. Given that compared to our competitors, Gillette & Wilkinson Sword, we have spent a fraction on marketing they have, and have not had to resort to an almost permanent half price on handle sales, well, I am very pleased.
Headline figures according to industry sources were (based on volume sales of handles):
1. Gillette: Fusion Manual 'standard', 114,000 handles (1 up)*.
2. Gillette: Fusion Manual 'Phenom', 83,300 handles (1 up).
3. King of Shaves Azor: 49,467 handles (3 up)**.
4. Gillette: Fusion Power 'Stealth': 46,630 handles (1 up).
5. Gillette: Mach3 Manual 'standard', 45,775 handles (1 up).
6. Wilkinson Sword Quattro Titanium Manual: 41,239 handles (1 up).
7. Gillette: Fusion Power 'Phenom': 37,220 handles (1 up).
8. Wilkinson Sword Quattro 'Precision Trimmer': 36,414 handles (1 up).
9. Gillette: Mach3 Turbo Manual: 32,893 (1 up).
10. Gillette Fusion Power 'standard': 28,235 handles (1 up) .
*1up means sold with 1 replacement cartridge. **Note, Azor is sold with 3 replacement cartridges, a 3 up. Great Value!
Whilst this is a great result, (after just 1 year in the market and c500,000 handles sold), we clearly have a challenge ahead of us, with all Gillette variants summed together totalling over 400,000 units sold in 1 month (normally it's about 250,000 handles, but this was a heavy month for Gillette & Wilkinson Sword promotions) and all Wilkinson Sword variants selling 110,000 (normally it's about 75,000).
