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).
As you may know, banks ain’t lending much dough these days. And this is hurting SME’s (Small Medium Enterprises). Back in June 2009 we debuted our innovative Shaving Bond paying 6% interest over 3 years plus free product. Many companies, including John Lewis, Caxton FX, Hotel Chocolat, Ecotricity have now followed – and this type of mini-bond finance raising, which connects customers with companies, as well as raising money (to NOT be spent on private jets, exotic holidays or dubious pursuits) is gaining credibility & momentum. This was OUR idea. You should all be very proud we’ve pioneered this. Scan of article attached, Jax has FT.King of Shaves Shaving Bond was the First.
