Next Generation CPG
In May 2019, we announced that Edgewell (the owner of Schick, Banana Boat, Hawaiian Tropic and Playtex, among other brands) agreed to acquire Harry’s for $1.37 billion. It was an exciting moment for our team and validated what we’d built at Harry’s.
Many people congratulated me and my co-founder Andy, assuming we would declare success and walk off into the sunset. Yet, that could not be farther from the truth. Rather than winding down, Andy and I have been ramping up for our next big challenge. Upon closing the deal, we will become Co-Presidents of Edgewell’s entire commercial business in North America. That means we will not only run Harry’s and Flamingo globally, but we will also oversee eight other brands in Edgewell’s portfolio.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity for us. We can keep building Harry’s and Flamingo, while also improving the lives and experiences of millions of customers who use Edgewell’s products and brands all over the world. And, importantly, we have a bigger platform to take on the large corporations and mega brands that dominate Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) and try and change the entire industry for the better.
At Harry’s, we have always been motivated to do what’s right for our customers and have never been afraid to take on giant entrenched competitors in that pursuit. Harry’s was born in 2011 after Andy had a frustrating experience trying to buy shaving supplies at a drugstore. He paid $25 for some Gillette razor blades and shaving cream and looked down at his package to see a razor blade flying over the moon — an attempt to justify the hefty price tag.
Needless to say, this wasn’t a good experience for Andy, and it motivated us to build a better experience for ourselves and for guys everywhere by starting Harry’s. At Harry’s, we’ve tried to approach our customers in a different way. We’ve built brands that connect with our customers directly, we’ve learned from our customers and worked to improve their experience with us, and we’ve always been committed to giving them honest and fair value. Our new roles at Edgewell will enable us to accelerate those efforts across many more brands and reach many more customers. Edgewell also offers us the infrastructure, intellectual property and product development capabilities of a more established company to be able to make our brands even better — together, we’ll be able to offer best-in-class products to customers how and where they want, all around the world.
Within shaving, we will be able to more effectively compete with Gillette. We will leverage Edgewell’s intellectual property, lower manufacturing costs and better distribution capabilities to offer dramatically improved Harry’s and Flamingo products at the same (or even lower) prices than we do today. The technology upgrades we intend to make with Edgewell will be a game changer for our customers. We will also reshape the Schick brand to emphasize the nearly 100 years of craftsmanship that goes into each Schick blade, and, like with Harry’s, we will offer Schick products to consumers at fair prices. While our combined market share will only be about 20%, our newfound capabilities will enable us to challenge Gillette head on, with more exciting brand choices and better value propositions driving growth over time. We hope it will be much better to be a shaving customer in the future than it is today.
And, our plans with Edgewell extend well beyond shaving. With this merger, we can launch a new brand that will better meet people’s daily skincare needs, leveraging the deep customer insights we’ve gathered at Harry’s, along with Edgewell’s exceptional product development capabilities. This merger will also allow us to reach beyond shaving and skincare, where we see an opportunity to build new brands that improve people’s experiences, offer honest value and take on large companies that today are not meeting people’s needs.
In short, together with Edgewell, we can create a next-generation CPG company — a company that deeply understands customers, makes exceptional products for them, delivers those products how and where people want to shop, and does so at a great value. This is our mission, and we can’t wait to get started.
