Same diff. I'm 25, look nice 'n' young. I look around and see all these ppl's faces slaughtered by poor hygiene and shaving practices! Soap and water in shower. Shave properly and delicately. Splash AS. Simple Moisturizer.
Interesting thread. It occured to me somewhere in the middle of reading all of this that the manufacture and sale of cartridge razors may, in fact, be keeping the cost down for those of us that choose to use alternative methods, at least as far as DE blades are concerned. Gillette doesn't need to make money on them. The bread and butter of the Gillette line of products is their cartridges. As most of the world continues to use DE blades, Gillette may maintain their presence in that market in the hope that the future will open up opportunities in those markets for their cartridge lines of products. Maintaining the DE product line may just be a method to keep themselves recognized as a legitimate manufacturer of shaving products accross the world. They can't be making much after export costs on DE blades. But if they are able to convert the world shaving population to cartridges as well as they've done in the US, they would be pulling in mountains of cash. The general public in the US (well, at least the guys in my office) are effectively afraid of putting any real blade against their face with the intention to cut whiskers. That's some effective marketing, intentional or not.
I would think that Proctor and Gamble would have discontinued the double edge blades as soon as they got a hold of the company. Why make wonderful cheap products when they can sell you terrible expensive products. I would think that there would be no more blades from them what ever.
The people that are buying their double edge blades would be buying double edge blades from someone else if PG didn't make them. They aren't losing cartridge customers by offering these blades. They are looking for money, why not try to get in on every market possible?
India unlike the west has a huge population and a bigger gap between the rich and the poor. around 70% of population lives in villages and do farming for a living. Labor is cheap and so a village barber or two is always a norm. You will not see a farmer in a village shaving every single day himself with a DE. A single shave or two from the village barber with interesting village gossips and grape-vine information is what makes DE blades tick. That is also a proud village culture to be shaved by the barber. A lot of time spent is on trimming those magnificent curly mustaches is a propa shave routine, while getting free village news and updates. The barbers use the replaceable blades straight razor, where a cheap DE blade is snapped in to two, used per shave and then thrown away... Brands like Supermax, Topaz and many others target this segment. Being single use, these blades are not preferred by personal shavers for lasting a week or so. 7 O'Clocks are not used even in a good barber shop in Mumbai due to its price. Supermax stainless or platinum is more of a norm for a BBS shave and this blade does it as its used for a single shave. The 7 O'Clock does aggressive marketing for the lower middle class population which primarily uses DE Razors and blades. I have always seen the 7 O'Clocks with 5+1 free blade offers. As part of its marketing, Gillette is now making cheap "vector" cartridge and razors (Atra) to target these "DE" crowds. They will keep selling the DE blades as its is creating profit. When the market for the cheap multi cartridge razors grows and the population coverts and buys more of the vectors instead of DE Blades, they might shut down the India plants for DE to make the cartridges instead To give a comparision a pack of 7 O'Clock black super platinum costs 1$ for a pack of 5 blades. A dollar also gets you 4 vector cartridges ! There is an ad blitzkrieg promising " tension - nick free" smooth BBS shaves. I have tried one of them, but obviously the overheads mean that the vectors are not as sharp and long lasting as the platinum DEs, but they do give nick-free shaves for a while
