King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman who invented a bestselling version of the
safety razor
A safety razor is a shaving implement with a protective device positioned between the edge of the blade and the skin. The initial purpose of these protective devices was to reduce the level of skill needed for injury-free shaving, thereby reduc ...
. Gillette's innovation was the thin, inexpensive, disposable blade of stamped steel. Gillette is often erroneously credited with inventing the so-called
razor and blades business model
The razor and blades business model is a business model in which one item is sold at a low price (or given away for free) in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as consumable supplies. It is different from loss leader marketing ...
in which razors are sold cheaply to increase the market for blades. However, Gillette Safety Razor Company adopted the business model from its competitors.Randal C. Picker, "The Razors-and-Blades Myth(s)", John M. Olin Law & Economics Working Paper No. 532, University of Chicago Law Schoo full text PDF
Biography
The Gillette paternal ancestors were French
Huguenots
The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Bez ...
who sought refuge in England in the late 16th century. One or two generations later, in 1630, Nathan Gillette sailed from England to the newly founded Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America.
King Camp Gillette was born on January 5, 1855, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and raised in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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. His family survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
While working as a salesman for the
Crown Cork and Seal Company
Crown Holdings, Inc., formerly Crown Cork & Seal Company, is an American company that makes metal beverage and food cans, metal aerosol containers, metal closures and specialty packing. Founded in 1892, it is headquartered in Yardley, Pennsylvan ...
in the 1890s, Gillette saw bottle caps, with the cork seal he sold, thrown away after the bottle was opened. This made him recognize the value in basing a business on a product that was used a few times, then discarded. Men shaved with straight razors that needed sharpening every day using a leather strop. As existing, relatively expensive razor blades dulled quickly and needed continuous sharpening, a razor whose blade could be thrown away when it dulled would meet a real need and likely be profitable.
Safety razors had been developed in the mid-19th century, but still used a forged blade. In the 1870s, the Kampfe Brothers introduced a type of razor along these lines. Gillette improved these earlier safety-razor designs and introduced the high-profit-margin stamped razor blade made from
carbon steel
Carbon steel is a steel with carbon content from about 0.05 up to 2.1 percent by weight. The definition of carbon steel from the American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) states:
* no minimum content is specified or required for chromium, cobalt ...
sheet. Gillette's razor retailed for a substantial $5 (equivalent to $ in ) – half the average working man's weekly pay – yet sold by the millions.
The most difficult part of development was engineering the blades, as thin, cheap steel was difficult to work and sharpen. This accounts for the delay between the initial idea and the product's introduction. Steven Porter, a machinist working with Gillette, used Gillette's drawings to create the first disposable razor blade that worked.
William Emery Nickerson
William Emery Nickerson (November 5, 1853 – June 5, 1930) was an American engineer and inventor. He worked with King C. Gillette at the onset of the The Gillette Company and was later elected to Gillette's board of directors. Nickerson has bee ...
, an expert machinist and partner of Gillette, changed the original model, improving the handle and frame so that it could better support the thin steel blade. Nickerson designed the machinery to mass-produce the blades, and he received patents for hardening and sharpening the blades. (Nickerson was later elected to Gillette's board of directors.)
To sell the product, Gillette founded the American Safety Razor Company on September 28, 1901 (changing the company's name to Gillette Safety Razor Company in July 1902). Gillette obtained a trademark registration (0056921) for his portrait and signature on the packaging. Production began in 1903, when he sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades.
The second year, he sold 90,884 razors and 123,648 blades, thanks in part to Gillette's low prices, automated manufacturing techniques, and good advertising. Sales and distribution were handled by a separate company, Townsend and Hunt, which was absorbed by the parent company for $300,000 in 1906. By 1908, the corporation had established manufacturing facilities in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. Razor sales reached 450,000 units and blade sales exceeded 70 million units in 1915. In 1917, when the U.S. entered World War I, the company provided all American soldiers with a field razor set, paid for by the government. Gillette vetoed a plan to sell the patent rights in Europe, believing correctly that Europe would eventually provide a very large market. Gillette and John Joyce, a fellow director, battled for control of the company. Gillette eventually sold out to Joyce, but his name remained on the brand. In the 1920s, as the patent expired, the Gillette Safety Razor Company emphasized research to design ever-improved models, realizing that even a slight improvement would induce men to adopt it.
He was almost bankrupt due to spending large amounts of money on property, and to his having lost much of the value of his corporate shares as a result of the Great Depression.
Gillette died on July 9, 1932, in Los Angeles, California. He was interred in the lower levels of the Begonia Corridor in the Great Mausoleum located at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Personal life
Gillette was also a Utopian Socialist. He published a book titled '' The Human Drift'' (1894) which advocated that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that everyone in the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. A later book, ''World Corporation'' (1910) was a prospectus for a company set up to create this vision. He offered Theodore Roosevelt the presidency of the company, with a fee of one million dollars. (Roosevelt declined the offer.) Gillette's last book, ''The People's Corporation'' (1924), was written with
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American writer, muckraker, political activist and the 1934 Democratic Party nominee for governor of California who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in seve ...
and later inspired Glen H. Taylor.
Gillette was initiated to the
York Rite
The York Rite, sometimes referred to as the American Rite, is one of several Rites of Freemasonry. It is named for, but not practiced in York, Yorkshire, England. A Rite is a series of progressive degrees that are conferred by various Masonic ...
of Freemasonry, till his elevation to the highest degree of Grand Master.
Gillette married Alanta "Lantie" Ella Gaines (1868–1951) in 1890. They had one child, King Gaines Gillette (1891–1955).
In his later life he traveled extensively and was universally recognized from his picture on the packets of razor blades. People were surprised that he was a real person rather than just a marketing image. A Gillette company history stated that in non-English speaking countries people would often ask for "the kind with the Man's Face" blades.
Around 1922 or 1923, he built a residence at 324 West Overlook Road, in "The Mesa" district of Palm Springs. A main home and guest house. The homes, sitting on of land, are what remain of the original estate.
Sometime in the late 1920s, Gillette was known as a frequent guest of Nellie Coffman, proprietor of the Desert Inn in Palm Springs, California. He was often seen wandering about the grounds and lobby in a tattered old bathrobe. When Coffman was asked why she allowed such a lowlife to hang out at her establishment, she responded, "Why that is King C. Gillette. He has practically kept this place in the black the last few years."
Legacy
The company continues in the present day as the Gillette brand of Procter & Gamble.
Gillette is widely credited with creating the " razor-razor blade business model". Some peers in the marketing industry quote him as one of the innovators who revolutionized the
freebie marketing
The razor and blades business model is a business model in which one item is sold at a low price (or given away for free) in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as consumable supplies. It is different from loss leader marketing ...
ideas.
The Gillette Company
Gillette is an American brand of safety razors and other personal care products including shaving supplies, owned by the multi-national corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G).
Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was owned by The Gill ...
continued to thrive and sell products under a variety of brand names including Gillette,
Braun
Braun is a common surname, originating from the German word for the color brown. The name is the 22nd most common family name in Germany. Many German emigrants to the United States also changed their name to ''Brown'' (''see Brown (surname)''). ...
Duracell
Duracell Inc. is an American manufacturer of alkaline batteries, specialty cells, rechargeables and smart power systems, owned by Berkshire Hathaway. The company has its origins in the 1920s, through the work of Samuel Ruben and Philip Mallory ...
. In 2005, the Gillette company was sold to Procter & Gamble for US$57 billion. It is now known as Global Blades & Razors, with the Gilette brand, a business unit of Procter & Gamble.
King Gillette Ranch
King Gillette purchased property for a large ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains near Calabasas in Southern California in 1926. The master plan and new buildings on the ranch were designed and built for Gillette in the late 1920s by renowned architect
Wallace Neff
Edwin Wallace Neff (January 28, 1895 – June 8, 1982) was an architect based in Southern California and was largely responsible for developing the region's distinct architectural style referred to as "California" style. Neff was a student of ...
. The architectural style was
Spanish Colonial Revival
The Spanish Colonial Revival Style ( es, Arquitectura neocolonial española) is an architectural stylistic movement arising in the early 20th century based on the Spanish Colonial architecture of the Spanish colonization of the Americas.
In the ...
. After his death, his wife sold the home to
Clarence Brown
Clarence Leon Brown (May 10, 1890 – August 17, 1987) was an American film director.
Early life
Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, to Larkin Harry Brown, a cotton manufacturer, and Katherine Ann Brown (née Gaw), Brown moved to Tennessee when he ...
, an MGM film director who held A-List Hollywood parties at the ranch. In 1952,
Bob Hope
Leslie Townes "Bob" Hope (May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was a British-American comedian, vaudevillian, actor, singer and dancer. With a career that spanned nearly 80 years, Hope appeared in Bob Hope filmography, more than 70 short and ...
bought the property, immediately giving it to the Claretian Order of the Catholic Church, which operated a seminary on the grounds for 25 years. In 1970 Thomas Aquinas College rented the property from the Claretian Order later moving their campus to Santa Paula in 1977,
Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet (''née'': Wulf, a.k.a. Guru Ma) (April 8, 1939 – October 15, 2009) was an American spiritual leader, author, orator, and writer. In 1963 she married Mark L. Prophet (after ending her first marriage), who had founded ...
, founder of the Church Universal and Triumphant, purchased the property in 1978, and ran her New Age church at the site until 1986 when
Soka University of America
Soka University of America (SUA) is a private liberal arts college in Aliso Viejo, California. Originally founded in 1987, it was established on its current campus in 2001 by Daisaku Ikeda, the founder of the Soka Gakkai International Buddhist m ...
(SUA) bought the land.
In 1990, SUA announced plans to build a future liberal arts college on campus and plans to expand the facility over the next 25 years to an enrollment of as many as 5,000 students. SUA began making plans to expand the campus infrastructure to accommodate living quarters and classrooms for the proposed expansion, but ran into opposition from some local residents, the
Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy
The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy is an agency of the state of California in the United States founded in 1980 and dedicated to the acquisition of land for preservation as open space, for wildlife and California native plants habitat Natur ...
, environmentalists, and government representatives. Opponents sought to protect the Chumash ancestral site, the natural habitats and ecology, and the expansive open space
viewshed
A viewshed is the geographical area that is visible from a location. It includes all surrounding points that are in line-of-sight with that location and excludes points that are beyond the horizon or obstructed by terrain and other features (e.g. ...
within the
Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area
The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area is a United States national recreation area containing many individual parks and open space preserves, located primarily in the Santa Monica Mountains of Southern California. The SMMNRA is i ...
, and to prevent a development of unprecedented
urban density
Urban density is a term used in urban planning and urban design to refer to the number of people inhabiting a given urbanized area. As such it is to be distinguished from other measures of population density. Urban density is considered an importa ...
adjacent to
Malibu Creek State Park
Malibu Creek State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving the Malibu Creek canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. The park was established in 1974. Opened to the public in 1976, the park is also a component of Santa Monic ...
.
In 1992, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), a joint-powers authority associated with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, resorted to its powers of eminent domain to condemn the core parcel comprising the university and thereby halted SUA's plans for expansion. SUA appealed the eminent domain action. The legal debate continued for the remainder of the decade. Soka University was prevented from developing any expansion plans at the Calabasas property and began looking for alternative sites to build a larger campus.
After the university moved to a purpose-built campus, the King Gillette ranch was collaboratively purchased for $35 million by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, National Park Service, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and California State Parks, who then made it available for public use. Those agencies are also funding an $8.4 million visitor's center on the property.
On June 30, 2007, the King Gillette Ranch opened to the public as a park. The ranch is situated adjacent to
Malibu Creek State Park
Malibu Creek State Park is a state park of California, United States, preserving the Malibu Creek canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. The park was established in 1974. Opened to the public in 1976, the park is also a component of Santa Monic ...
Calabasas, California
Calabasas (from Spanish ''calabazas'' "gourds") is a city in the southwestern region of the San Fernando Valley, between the foothills of the Santa Monica and Santa Susanna mountains.
Since 2008, the ranch has been used for the
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are ...
reality show ''
The Biggest Loser
''The Biggest Loser'' is a reality television format which started with the American TV show '' The Biggest Loser'' in 2004. The show centers on overweight and obese contestants attempting to lose the most weight; the winner receives a cash pr ...
''. The ranch was also featured in the 2019 ''Ratched'' Netflix series and in the 2021
The Starling
''The Starling'' is a 2021 American fantasy comedy-drama film directed by Theodore Melfi and written by Matt Harris. The film stars Melissa McCarthy, Chris O'Dowd, Timothy Olyphant, Kim Quinn, Skyler Gisondo, Loretta Devine, Ravi Kapoor, Dav ...
Boni & Liveright
Boni & Liveright (pronounced "BONE-eye" and "LIV-right") is an American Publishing#Book publishing, trade book publisher established in 1917 in New York City by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. Over the next sixteen years the firm, which chan ...
(1924). .
References
Further reading
*
*
* Magill, Frank N. ''Great Events from History II: Business and Commerce Series, volume 1:1897–1923'' (1994) pp. 75–79, historiography