I signed up for Dollar Shave Club back in December. It’s a relatively simple concept that made Gillette, the leader in shaving, completely alter their business model. For $9 dollars a month, they ship me 4 brand new razor blades. I found 8 razor blades for the Gillette Fusion online for $24.38 which seems like a reasonable deal for reference.
I shave about every 3 days and I would say I grow regular facial hair. Pretty consistent throughout and not too thick. After 9 months, I’ve stored about 10 extra blades that are mine. I go through 3 a month. The razor is never dull and I don’t feel like I’m burning money by throwing it out. One critique I have is that I don’t think the razor blades are as good as the Gillette ones. If you feel like you spend too much on razor blades, I’d say the Dollar Shave club, for $108 a year, is pretty good.
HOWEVER, if you say I go through 3 blades a month, and the cost of 8 is $24.38, than 4.5 x $24.38 – $109.71 which would mean if I think the Gillette blades are better, I should stick with Gillette. This is a valid point but I also accumulate 12 extra blades through DSC. I also saw the Amazon review was 2 out of 5 with 121 reviews. HMMMM.
OK. So This is something I’m pretty adamant, and passionate about, like Patrick Bateman’s morning routine…
Invest in a good Double Edge Safety Razor, and shave like a boss. Not only will it be a closer, smoother shave, but also cheaper; I spent ~$30 on a multi-pack of 100 different blades a little more than a year ago, and still going strong.
Get yourself a good razor (Merkur, cause German engineering > everything else), a quality badger hair brush, a multi-pack of blades on Amazon so you can sample a bunch before committing to a certain brand/blade type, some Proraso shaving cream, and an alum bar for after-shave-face-care.
Total package will cost you less than one year of DSC/Gillette, and the razor will last a lifetime. There’s a reason why the same type of razor from the 19th century is still used to shave today. You can’t even compare the savings OR the experience, and you will look forward to shaving instead of considering it a necessity to avoid looking homeless.
Reference:
(1) Gillette’s Facebook PR blunder: http://i.imgur.com/1eiimPd.png; and,
(2) Dedicated subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/wicked_edge/
Life changing, brah. You’re welcome.