Which caused which?

[Thief]

Did the popularity of beards drive the price of premium disposable shaving cartridges sky high or did the high price of such shaving equipment cause men to give up being clean-shaven?

they will GIVE you the razor....
it is with the blade they will cut open your credit card

 

[Thief]

Kid, for fussing so much over shaving and appearances, you better be one fine-looking young man. Try wet-shaving till you can't hold a razor straight any more. By that time you should be old enough, you're not going to be pretty no matter how much time and money you put into trying to look pretty.


Barber Shaving Kit Set Straight Razor Shaving Brush Strop Wooden Box Father Gift | Wish

View attachment 36400

shades and shaves of my grandad

I would love to know where his strap went

 

[Jonathan Bailey]

The science, research and engineering involved to create a 3 or 5 blade razor to provide a good shave is not cheap. Also Gillette et-al are not in it as a charity, they need to make a handsome profit to keep their shareholders happy.

You want a cheap shave buy a cheap razor and a box of sticking plasters, you want a decent shave, invest.

I'm POOR!

But Gillette did it so well in the 1990's with Sensor Excel followed by Mach III then.

In 1998, Sensor Excel could still be had for under $1 a cartridge. I had used Sensor Excel until Mach 3 came out. They were about $1.62 a piece when they came out but I was making decent money as an auto mechanic and not paying rent then so I wasn't so price sensitive.

Gillette's Mach 3 Replacement Blades Cost Consumers More Than Expected

 

[Jonathan Bailey]

shades and shaves of my grandad

I would love to know where his strap went

My 1908-born grandfather used a Remington electric until he died in 1980.
My 1935-born father was a Trac II man until he died in a car wreck coming home from work due to some young drunken punk crossing the line in 1981.

Remington no longer makes the kind of shaver my grandfather had which same kind was the first one I had in 1979 for my 15th birthday. They were the reciprocating non-foil type. Both my father and grandfather thought Norelco rotary was garbage then.

This is the type of shaving head the oldies had (unlike modern foil shaver heads with round holes, these combs with elongated slots can easy handle long beard hairs):

 

[ChristineM]

I'm POOR!

Aren't we all.

There are alternatives, do some research and perhaps you will strike if lucky.

 

[PureX]

they will GIVE you the razor....
it is with the blade they will cut open your credit card

Of course. It's an old trick. Create a dependency, and then soak the buyer for every penny you can get. Kodak did it years ago with cameras and film. All the printer makers do it with printers and ink. Americans are idiots that think market competition stops this sort of exploitation, but it doesn't and it never has. Every vendor will charge whatever the market can bear, so it makes no difference how many vendors there are, they aren't going to compete for the lowest price point. They're only going to compete for the highest.

I switched to a Braun electric shaver years ago because I wasn't going to pay the insanely jacked up prices being charged for razor blades that cost pennies to manufacture.

 

[Jonathan Bailey]

Aren't we all.

There are alternatives, do some research and perhaps you will strike if lucky.

I wish I could even find a new Remington electric with the same head style as my grandfather had and I had for my first shaver in 1979.

 

[sun rise]

That's beside the point. Why aren't Fusion or even Mach 3 cartridges no more than a dollar a piece as they should be? My thread is not about what is available. It's about WHAT ISN'T available for a certain PRICE. I'M TRYING TO UNRAVEL THE PRICE CONSPIRACY HERE.

There is no price conspiracy that I can see but rather capitalism in action.

 

[ChristineM]

I wish I could even find a new Remington electric with the same head style as my grandfather had and I had for my first shaver in 1979.

There are several foil electric razors on Amazon,

Cheapest i see is $17.98

Just go to Amazon and type Remington shaver

 

[Jonathan Bailey]

There are several foil electric razors on Amazon,

Cheapest i see is $17.98

Just go to Amazon and type Remington shaver

No, they don't have the same head style as pictured anymore.
The Norelco rotary shaver does better for the longer hairs on my neck.
I bought a Braun foil shaver in late 2017 and it's crap. It will shave closer but it takes forever to do so on my stubborn neck. The shaving head broke easily too on that Braun with virtually no abuse. China made as well. $25 for a new stupid China made head of cheesy build. It won't cut a single hair on my face that has grown for one whole day at all. I have to follow the rotary shave with the foil shaver but its performance is still marginal. It will do better with Lectric Shave but I won't pay the price for that stuff. Hopefully, the cheap Personna pivot twin blade cartridges in 100-count bulk I have on order will be worth a dam. Twin blade is all I used to use from about 1985 until Mach 3 came out. I bought a Norelco in 1984 and it made my face red as a beet back then. I went to Atra a year later.Then to Sensor then to Sensor Ultra. I always kept up with the latest cartridges on the market. Even with good twin-blade cartridges I cut my face all to hell when I went into the army as you had to do every dam thing in a hurry in boot camp. After boot camp, I could take my time shaving and not cause a blood bath. You can't hurry even a Fusion cartridge or it can GETCHA! too. I've always kept a styptic pencil even with a good cartridge razor. I would sometimes get in a hurry and GETCHA! myself.
You have to careful around the lips, on the chin and under the nose.

 

[ChristineM]

No, they don't have the same head style as pictured anymore.
The Norelco rotary shaver does better for the longer hairs on my neck.
I bought a Braun foil shaver in late 2017 and it's crap. It will shave closer but it takes forever to do so on my stubborn neck. The shaving head broke easily too on that Braun with virtually no abuse. China made as well. $25 for a new stupid China made head of cheesy build. It won't cut a single hair on my face that has grown for one whole day at all. I have to follow the rotary shave with the foil shaver but its performance is still marginal. It will do better with Lectric Shave but I won't pay the price for that stuff.

Ok. Grow a beard then, its cheaper

 

[RabbiO]

I don't think disposables have the all-important pivot head. Gillette and my local retailers once offered me everything I liked and needed for shaving at a price that was agreeable to me up until about the year 2007.

Mach3s have pivot heads as do others.

 

[RabbiO]

@Jonathan Bailey -

Just so you know, there is no Gillette corporation. The company was bought by Proctor & Gamble about 15 years ago and is simply a division of that company.

 

[Darkforbid]

When I want a really good shave I go get a wet shave at the barber.

Best option

 

[RabbiO]

The science, research and engineering involved to create a 3 or 5 blade razor to provide a good shave is not cheap. Also Gillette et-al are not in it as a charity, they need to make a handsome profit to keep their shareholders happy.

You want a cheap shave buy a cheap razor and a box of sticking plasters, you want a decent shave, invest.

@Jonathan Bailey -

Gillette and other manufacturers do make a very nice profit, a very, very nice profit. However, it is not as nice as you seem to think it is. Besides the R&D costs, as ChristineM noted above, there are other costs, such as transportation, overhead, and marketing which contribute to the price of the item.

 

[Jonathan Bailey]

@Jonathan Bailey -

Gillette and other manufacturers do make a very nice profit, a very, very nice profit. However, it is not as nice as you seem to think it is. Besides the R&D costs, as ChristineM noted above, there are other costs, such as transportation, overhead, and marketing which contribute to the price of the item.

Then why is can of Barbasol only about a buck and change? I can get about a month out of a can shaving everyday. The Fusion has been on the market since 2013. There is no more to research and develop. A pack of 16 Fusion cartridges retails for about $36 at Walmart if online ordered. It can't cost any more to market, overhead and transport as a can of Barbasol.

A shaving cartridge is just a piece of mass-produced plastic with a few dinky strips of metal for goodness sake.

Robots can stamp these things millions an hour.

 

[ChristineM]

@Jonathan Bailey -

Gillette and other manufacturers do make a very nice profit, a very, very nice profit. However, it is not as nice as you seem to think it is. Besides the R&D costs, as ChristineM noted above, there are other costs, such as transportation, overhead, and marketing which contribute to the price of the item.

Agreed but small time compared with research (60 or 70 scientists need a lot of coffee ;-)

 

[Thief]

Of course. It's an old trick. Create a dependency, and then soak the buyer for every penny you can get. Kodak did it years ago with cameras and film. All the printer makers do it with printers and ink. Americans are idiots that think market competition stops this sort of exploitation, but it doesn't and it never has. Every vendor will charge whatever the market can bear, so it makes no difference how many vendors there are, they aren't going to compete for the lowest price point. They're only going to compete for the highest.

I switched to a Braun electric shaver years ago because I wasn't going to pay the insanely jacked up prices being charged for razor blades that cost pennies to manufacture.

not wanting to digress the thread....but...btw
an ex-employee of a telephone assist company...
answers the call to help unsavvy printer users to get the damn thing up and running
and while doing so attempts to sell cartridges

his integrity put him out the door and unto youtube

on his screen he could see the cost of the cartridge......56dollars
and the cost of making the item......56cents
(approx.)

and your printer is rigged to know when to buy another round of ink.....AND
it knows when or if you attempted a refill on your own.....AND
will play stupid for that effort

hence the phone calls for help