King of Shaves USA

King of Shaves 2013 | USA Update | #WeAreKing > @JoinOurKingdom + Hyperformance

31 Oct 2012

Wow, with Movember arriving tomorrow, I know that 2012 is fast approaching its end – and at King of Shaves we’re all looking forward to 2013, a landmark year for our brand, as it leaves it’s teenage years, and will see us celebrate “Twenty Years of Shaving The World” on April 13th, the day in 1993 that I founded Knowledge & Merchandising Inc. Ltd. (OK, KMI) as the company to launch our first King of Shaves shaving oil (see pic below, wowzer!).

I don’t want to give the game away, but we have much planned for our brand next year, as we see increasing competition from ‘pretenders to our throne’ – the multi-billion dollar competitors who now inhabit our space (in 1993, it was simply Gillette, us and Colgate Palmolive).

In 2013 we’ll be:

  • Completely refreshing our King of Shaves range of products, stylishly and in a premium way (without charging more) but delivering “The World’s Best” by way of high performance (which is why we use the twitter #Hyperformance).
  • In Spring (or maybe earlier…) launching @JoinOurKingdom – you can follow ‘me’ on the twitter now, to get early news…
  • Launching an amazing ( LIKE AMAZING) new product in 2013 > #Hyperformance.
  • Launching an amazing new RANGE of products…
  • Building on our global distribution, strategically working with partners world-wide.
  • And more…

Which brings me to the USA…

We launched King of Shaves at Target in 2000, and between then & 2011, managed the business via our NYC headquartered company.  In 2010 we signed a distribution agreeement with the Remington division of Spectrum Brands, Inc., which saw us co-brand King of Shaves with Remington in the USA and launch our Azor 5 in Walgreens and other accounts.  For reasons that I am unable to express publicly, this partnership was dissolved in Spring of this year, and from January 1st 2013, it’ll be King of Shaves solo again, doing things in our own way.

This means for much of 2013, there will be a hiatus of supply regarding King of Shaves in the USA, as we strategically decide how to position our successful brand in the USA.  It’s never been easy for us there – I’m not too sure why – as we have had an amazing following, but somehow never ‘quite’ broken through (hence us signing with Remington, to see if that might work).

What I can assure our US fans of is A) a commitment to ensure that by 2014, we’ll have our latest and greatest products that will launch in the UK this coming year, there and B) use the internet and e-commerce, online commerce to keep you supplied.

We will be updating our US Facebook presence in the coming weeks, to ensure we have everything ready for January 1st.  In the meantime, continue to visit here or get in touch with us via shave.com in the UK.

In the meantime, we continue to enjoy superb sales in the UK, despite the best efforts of our competitors to out-promote and out-market us (NEVER) and as the only privately owned global challenger brand left in high performance men’s shaving and skincare, we love the support you give us.  Thank you!

So, here’s looking forward to keeping clean shaven, confident and uber-cool (just like Daniel Craig, another great British smoothstar) and to shaving lives, in the UK and beyond during our (next) 20 years.

And remember, don’t just shave, King of Shaves!

Will @KingofShaves

 

 

 

 

By: Category: King of Shaves, King of Shaves USA, The King of Shaves Company Ltd.

Honestly. Seriously! Our King of Shaves | Remington Azor 5 & AlphaGels are getting fabulous reviews in the USA via Amazon.com. 127 ave 4.2/5 Azor 5 ratings, 34 AlphaGel ave 4.8/5 – Wow!

27 Aug 2011

Remington, our US distribution partner launched our latest King of Shaves Azor 5 System Razor & two uniquely designed AlphaGels on Amazon.com just last week, and already, they’re getting fabulous reviews (and more reviews than Gillette Mach3 & Gillette Fusion ProGlide).

The 127 Azor reviews, averaging 4.2/5 are here. The 34 AlphaGel reviews, averaging 4.8/5 are here.

And the best bit for hard hit US consumers is that a pack of 6 Azor 5 EnduriumNano replacement cartridges is just $11.99 (or less) versus expensive Gillette Fusion ProGlide replacement cartridges, at $22+

Shave AND Save with King of Shaves | Remington.

Honestly. Seriously. King of Shaves IS the King of Shaves in the USA, and with our roll-out into stores across the USA coming in the Fall, we’re looking forward to shaving America better, forever with King of Shaves in partnership with Remington.

The King of Shaves USA Facebook fanpage is here if you wish to ‘Like’ us in America!

By: Category: King of Shaves, King of Shaves Azor, King of Shaves Azor 5, King of Shaves USA Tags: , , , , , ,

King of Shaves Cuts Deal With Kai, Launches King of Style Precision Grooming with Remington in UK

14 Aug 2011

I write this from NYC, where I’m delighted to be a guest at Diane Woods’ (our very own Queen of Shaves) wedding today in New Jersey. Sadly, the weather’s a little British (read raining cats and dogs) but it promises to be a fantastic day for Di – for whom the sun will certainly shine on her and her partner, Steve in the future (and definitely where they’re going on their Honeymoon!)

Awaking, I was delighted to read coverage in The Sunday Telegraph on not just our recent deal with Kai Industries Co. Ltd. of Japan, our technology partner (Kai is a £700m revenues company headquartered in Tokyo) but also a nice write up on our stylish, brand new Precision Grooming range developed in partnership with the Remington division of US $3Bn consumer products company, Spectrum brands.

2430-KoStyle.jpgThis is the first time we’ve taken ‘The King’ into the arena of men’s hairstyling & grooming, and we launched the range with Argos earlier this month. It’s available in over 700 stores, and will bring King of Shaves to a wider audience. Of course, we have more planned – both in this area, and in our core wet shave arena in terms of NPD – indeed, one person tweeted today that he saw King of Shaves “as the dyson of shaving” which pleased me greatly!

Before I flew to the USA, my Dad chastised me gently for not updating my blog more frequently – I tend to twitter and post on facebook, both of which he doesn’t particularly engage with. So I hope readers (and Dad!) enjoy reading this latest blog post.

It’s an exciting time for us, having entered the hyper competitive wet shave market with our King of Shaves Azor 4 in June 2008, and more recently launching our Azor 5 Sensitive in the UK, and shortly in the USA (yes, King of Shaves AlphaGels and Azor will be available much more widely in the USA in the Fall, as announced by Dave Lumley the CEO of Spectrum Brands Inc. (SBI) in their recent Q3 Earnings Call.

The King of Shaves Company continues to attract much interest from a wide variety of parties, looking to work with us on expanding our global reach – after all – in high performance system wet shave (an intensely challenging category, with high barriers to entry (patents) and potentially enormous commercial profitability (Gillette was bought for US$57Bn by P&G in 2005) I’m excited that King of Shaves is the only other high performance brand in this space, other than Gillette & Schick Wilkinson Sword – that’s right – just THREE companies, and ‘The British Are Coming’!

Over the coming weeks and months I’ll try to update my blog here, and my Brand Royalty blog more frequently – Dad (and Penny) if I don’t, keep on at me.

King of Shaves. The Future of Shaving! Come, join our Kingdom!

By: Category: King of Shaves, King of Shaves Azor, King of Shaves Azor 5, King of Shaves Japan, King of Shaves USA Tags: , , , , , , ,

Remington and The King of Shaves Company equal The King of Shaves Company.

31 Oct 2010

And then there were 3.

Yesterday’s announcement of the partnership between King of Shaves and Remington to market launch the King of Shaves brand into the core US market I hope will be welcomed by consumers and retailers alike. For too long, the hugely profitable wet shaving market (razors, replacement blades and shaving preparations) has looked like a monopoly/cosy duopoly to me, where P&G’s Gillette have enjoyed supreme market dominance, selling the most product, at hugely inflated prices to consumers, whilst their ‘competition’ – Schick – settle for a distant second place. Gillette have a market share of nigh on 80% in the US market, Schick a distant 10% and, as for us – as I write this in Phoenix, Arizona – zero.

With the exception of our King of Shaves Azor system razor launch in the UK in June 2008, the market dynamics have always looked the same – Gillette launch a new razor platform every 8 years or so, until recently, with ‘more’ blades, and charge more for it on the basis that the technology is ‘breakthrough’ and the shave ‘better’. Schick then launch their ‘newer, better, more expensive’ razor, normally priced at a 10-20% discount to Gillette and try to gain market share. And so the cycle has continued.

Until now.

In 2008, our launch proposition wasn’t ‘More’ – it was ‘Less’. Shave closer, longer, for less was our consumer message, with our sharper, longer lasting Endurium coated blades, which cost approximately £1.25 per replacement cartridge versus Gillette’s £2.50 per replacement cartridge for Gillette Fusion Power. Gillette presented the consumer with a ‘forced hardware upgrade’ – their current TV ads still exhort men to ‘replace their Mach3 with a Fusion, or even now, replace their Fusion with a Fusion ProGlide’. What the ad doesn’t tell the consumer is that the replacement being sold them is even more expensive.

And as the Western World faces down the twin barrels of economic austerity and increased personal uncertainty, surely selling more products for more money isn’t the right thing to do? Especially when the profit margins in the replacement cartridge market are, well, absolutely unbelievably large. I know it costs about US$10-20c to make a high performance razor cartridge. But to then sell that cartridge at retail at over US$4, and use that profit to fund increasingly disconnected marketing campaigns to continue to fulfil that strategy will make the consumer question the price they are going to be asked to pay.

For sure, our competitors are in business to make a profit, and a return to their shareholders – the same as we are. But when you also realise that in another part of the world, the same company can make a system razor – albeit a one bladed system razor – and sell the replacement cartridge at US$11c? Well, that’s quite a difference.

For me, and our brand partnership with Remington, the future is all about the ‘Aspiration of Fair’. Fair has gained much respect in recent years, for example, in the area of ‘Fair Trade’ and sales of coffee – much of Starbucks coffee is now sold on a ‘Fair Deal to the Manufacturer’ basis. The Fair I’m talking about is delivering a close, comfortable and long lasting shave to a consumer, at a Fair, not artificially, monopolistically, over-inflated price. Fair is about looking at ways to make a razor cartridge last longer, deliver more value, not wear out so quickly – a feature that is ‘designed in’ to many of the competitor cartridges out in the market.

But, making a brand sing with success is more about making it fair. It’s about aligning aspiration, cool and desire to own. Ever since the launch of our shaving oil back in 1993, with just a few hundred sold, King of Shaves has carved out its own desirability in the market. Our shaving oil solved a problem – that of razor burn, suffered by millions of men who had sensitive skin. It succeeded because it took a niche position, hung its hat there, then determinedly decided to be on the side of men who had sensitive skin, allowing them to get a shave as close and comfortable as those men who had normal skin. It was on the side of the disadvantaged consumer.

And that is where we are now. Remington have turned to King of Shaves to enter the US wet shave market because we’ve developed a 17 year reputation for delivering on our brand promise – to give men the King of Shaves – and because we have been the only brand to successfully enter into, and compete in the wet shave market, not just in the UK, but also in other international markets including Japan, Australia and South Africa. In six years, we’ve developed an expertise in shaving hardware which is only going to improve in the coming years. We’ve invested in smart innovations, R&D and technology partnerships (witness our recent investment deal with Kai Industries of Japan), we’ve invested in delivering the King of Shaves, without the ransom, to tens of millions of men. And we’ve done this despite being a small company (retail sales of King of Shaves are about £24m) in the face of huge competition (Gillette’s and Schick Wilkinson Sword’s sales are in the $Billions).

As our competitors know, from small acorns do large oaks grow – remember, Gillette was founded by King C Gillette, Schick was founded by Colonel Jacob Schick – these companies had named founders, just as King of Shaves was founded by me, Will King. Successful companies of today are run by their founders – witness Steve Jobs at Apple, Sergey Brin at Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Companies that need to watch out for their challenger brethren are those run by marketing management types – companies that have lost connection with their customers, but continue to sell them what they’ve always sold them in the hope that the consumer will stick with them.

Well, the world’s a changing. The instant imperative that is social media is rapidly dismantling the ability of a brand to deploy ‘Brand Broadcast’ and convince consumers to buy from it – nowadays, it’s a much more difficult space to market in, being increasingly driven by ‘Digital Dialogue’ and ‘Word of Mouse’.

And I reckon when the word of mouse gets out that a mouse has roared that it is in the house, and is launching a cool new system razor, where cartridges don’t cost you an arm and a leg, but still deliver not only a close, comfortable shave – but the King of Shaves, we’ll catch a couple of elephants on the hop.

Simply put, I’m going to do my darndest to ensure that our partnership with Remington works, and that we create The King of Shaves Company – the world’s best (not necessarily biggest) shaving brand.

By: Category: King of Shaves, King of Shaves USA, The King of Shaves Company Ltd. Tags: , ,

King of Shaves Joins Forces With Remington Division of Spectrum Brands in USA, Canada for Azor Market Launch 2011.

30 Oct 2010

So, the die is cast! Don’t just shave, it’ll soon be time to enjoy the King of Shaves in the USA courtesy Remington & King of Shaves Azor. Let the battle of the blades commence!

After a year of negotiations between King of Shaves and publicly listed Spectrum Brands, Inc. the US$3Bn revenues owner of Remington Consumer Products, I’ve signed a multi-year, multi-territory deal for this US$600m revenues division to launch King of Shaves shaving hardware & software in the USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina & Chile. I’m delighted about this, for reasons I’ll explain below, but to give you an idea how I feel about Remington, the company the late Victor Kiam made famous, read an extract from an interview I gave to Director Magazine in the UK in 2008, ahead of the launch of our revolutionary King of Shaves Azor…

In some ways, King’s high visibility approach is almost Bransonesque. And there are parallels with other famous business figures, notably Victor Kiam. Kiam was Remington’s biggest advocate, famously liking the brand so much he bought the company. King’s endorsement style is similar, although instead of buying in, King was forced to create the type of product he wanted to see on the shelves. After being made redundant from Hedges Wright Creative in 1993, he decided to concentrate on developing a shaving oil that could prevent shaving rash. Despite investment from his family and friends, the fledgling start-up was desperately short of cash. To save a couple of grand, King even filled the first 10,000 bottles of oil himself over the kitchen sink. But against development costs of £30,000, first-year sales were a paltry £300.

King kept himself going, inspired by a book he’d read about Kiam’s success with Remington. The book’s message, recalls King, was “to go for it”. And that’s just what he did, persuading Will Carling to endorse King of Shaves, and enlisting the help of Sophie Rees Jones (now the Countess of Wessex) at PR firm Brian MacLaurin Associates to push the product to the media. With the injection of £100,000 from a government loan scheme, the company secured a firmer financial footing, and by 2000 King and new partner Dayal were able to expand their range of shaving “software” and reach the US market. Success prompted one of two recurring questions: “People would either ask me, ‘When are you going to launch a razor?’ or ‘When are you going to be bought out by Gillette?’” King decided he didn’t want the latter–”They would never be interested in me anyway,” he says — so he set about launching a razor instead.

Trick or Treat? Halloween 2010.

And launch a razor we did! Treat. A razor that provoked (tricked..?) our established competitors into spending tens of millions of pounds in the UK trying to out-market us, and stop us gaining market traction (failed – we now have 10% system handle market share and the Azor was the #3 selling razor in the UK in the 52 weeks to end September 2010). Treat. A razor that has shaved millions off the cost of shaving, as our competitors repeatedly half price their handle price (but, unlike us, never cutting the cost of their hugely expensive razor cartridges – the latest costing nearly US$5. Treat. A razor that has won many awards, and has successfully launched in countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil, Japan and South Africa, with more coming on stream in 2011…

But to succeed with King of Shaves in the USA has always been my primary goal. Few British companies, let alone brands succeed in mainland USA, and that’s why I’m delighted that after months of talks, we have US$600m revenues Remington Consumer Products signed up to be our ‘Aircraft Carrier’ – prepared to let us take off Azor ‘Jet Fighter’ razor, and deliver American consumers, King of Shaves without Gillette’s cartridge ransom. Many Americans already think King of Shaves is a US brand – in fact, we’ve been in the USA for over 10 years – launching with Target in July 2000, and we’ve built strong brand foundations.

Dealing with huge US retailers however, has always been a challenge for us, and one I believe our partnership with Spectrum/Remington/Rayovac will allow us to overturn. We launched into the USA as a main board director of Target loved our shaving oil, and I know we have a couple of CEO fans of King of Shaves in the USA. But, buyers have always questioned our ability to support a market launch for King of Shaves in the USA with the millions of dollars necessary, not just for in-store trade marketing support, but also for the necessary consumer advertising. But, with this deal agreed with multi-billion dollar Spectrum/Remington and the game changing eruption of the power of marketing via social networking (Smarketing) will allow King of Shaves a unique opportunity to make the brand available to millions of American men and women, alongside a partner they know and trust, in a way that will be unique.

We actually had contact with (the then) Rayovac Corporation back in 2004, just after they’d bought Remington for US$330m and were looking to add a ‘wet shave brand’ to their portfolio – us. However, the timing then wasn’t right – we had only just put our Azor into development as Project Tomahawk, and weren’t sure we’d get the patents we knew we needed to genuinely compete with Gillette, then a corporation in its own right (it was bought by Procter & Gamble in 2005 for US$57Bn and Schick Wilkinson Sword, which had been bought by Energizer Holdings in January 2004 for US$930m. The then management at Rayovac (now 100% changed) didn’t give us the right feeling anyway, read private jets and debt fuelled expansion, but hey, that’s a story I’ll save for another time. Suffice to say, six years is a long time in our business, and I’m very happy to partner with Remington Products 2010 and their excellent team led by VP Drew Fiorenza in the US.

Wassup? Think Different, Do Different, Shave Different is what I say…

One of my favourite TV ads is ‘Wassup’ – developed for Budweiser – the US ‘King of Beers’ brand – one that would certainly be a social media hit today! The way we launch Remington | King of Shaves Azor in the USA will absolutely determine its success, but judging by the extraordinarily anodyne and lacklustre adverts our competitors are currently running, I think we have a great opportunity to capture the imagination of the US male, who may have been wedded to Gillette or Schick all his life, believing they are ‘the best’. Well, one’s a bit wet right now, and the other – well – it’s perhaps the best your dad can buy… So, Keep an eye out for our ad debut in 2011, and as I’m personally responsible for signing off on it, when you see it – let me know if you like it!

How all this will come to pass is obviously going to unfold over the next few months and years, but as I point out to those who are interested in finding how King of Shaves has succeeded in such a cut-throat market over many years, you’ll find the answers if you read Sun-Tzu.

The battle is won before it’s fought.

Food for thought, I hope.

So, why not make the change, join our Kingdom and ‘Be a King’ alongside me, as we change the face of shaving worldwide for better, Forever.

Will King
Founder, CEO & Chief Shaving Officer, The King of Shaves Company Ltd.

By: Category: King of Shaves, King of Shaves USA, The King of Shaves Company Ltd. Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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