I would never buy it even if it was all brass considering its mild as heck. But interested if they ever release it
It time to move along now because they're not going to make and release a new razor, it's dead and buried
No doubt it's not happening. But I'm not trying to resurrect a dead discussion. Just curious if anyone confirmed that the story was EVER true, or not. I never believed it; others swore it was happening.
If you ask AOS manager some have no idea what you are talking about, and some say it got pushed back with no release date yet, and they would expect a christmas time release. One manager I spoke to said there was a last minute issue with production that pushed it onto another product release from gillette, and it just has not been rescheduled as of yet.
Who knows whether it will happen, but at one point it was planned. My guess is it will be zink and over priced, the initial time it was supposed to come out also saw a slight jump in retail price of the gillette platinum blades sold through AOS. It could very well be that they got cold feet and realized they would basically be competing with themselves.
I guess that's it, with the cartridges, they already have the market in some (most) countries. (At least in The Netherlands) And as they have supplier lock-in with the cartridges, why jeopardise that with a razor where the buyer can switch blade manufacturer when they want to... Business-wise it doesn't make sense.
I haven't used cartridges for 15 years so I have no idea what the market is like now. But are there generic blades available for the more popular Gillette razor models? If their patents have run out or are about to run out for their top selling models, they stand to loose some of that revenue stream anyway. Clearly, they don't make much off their razor handles, if anything. Jumping back into a growing DE market, where decent razors are going for over $50 and premium razors are in excess of $200, might be attractive to them. Escpecially since they might grab some loyalty to their already existent DE blades. Companies like QShave and even Rockwell have done well targeting the non-DE market with adjustable razors. It may be unlikely, but not especially farfetched, that Gillette is unwilling to ignore a growing market they once dominated. It's not like they'd be competing with themselves necessarily; it's revenue they're loosing anyway and it's growing. Just some thoughts...
Some interesting statistics. In 2014, the Gillette Mach 3 (currently best selling razor) sold $23.5m and private label (generic) sold $20.9m In 2017 ,Mach 3 $36.1m and generic $44.6m which was the #1 selling overall brand. Generics went from #8 to #1 in 3 years Sorry, I just found this interesting.