Good Wall Street Journal article (normally behind a paywall but THIS LINK appears to be open) about Proctor and Gamble’s Gillette brand about to announce a new Fusion cartridge-based razor, the “FlexBall.” The company will be formally announcing the razor on April 29.
Some interesting quotes from the article:
P&G Chief Executive A.G. Lafley said “Many have wondered if it’s possible to keep improving premium razors, trading consumers up,” he said, adding that it is “not only possible, but also coming soon.”
and
“Today’s consumer remains challenged, making it more difficult to translate new technologies into higher prices,” said Stephen Powers, an analyst at UBS Investment Research.
According to the article, Gillette plans to start shipping the FlexBall on June 9, timing it around Father’s Day.
This is why you should never ever ever cross-breed a Gillette cartridge razor with a Dyson vacuum cleaner.
Kidding aside, seems to me its just another gimmick to get the “soon-to-be-cartridge-deserters” to stay instead of going for the DE/Straight razor. IMH and un-experienced shaving opinion, and in the immortal words of Grandpa Morales, if professional barbers till use a DE or straight razor, doesn’t that say something???
I have an amazing and innovative tool which allows me to get a great shave every time. It’s called my arm. It is attached to my body by a similar “ball” technology and extends to a joint and then a wrist which, altogether have the amazing capacity to twist and turn in every direction necessary to shave. Also included is a nervous system with acute sensitivity that tells me when and where the blades need to be manipulated to get the most efficient shave ever! Forget 23 microns! Oh, and the handle, what I like to call the “hand”, is compatible with all blades ever made and ever will be made! Yes, I said ever! Here’s the clincher, it’s organic! (Should I stop here?)
This looks like innovation for innovation’s sake, done to bamboozle shavers into believing the ProGlide FlexBall is an improvement. It is not, just as the Fusion ProGlide Power Razor was not an improvement over earlier designs. Gillette has made the mistake of adding gimmicks onto a shaving system, when it is actually the underlying system that needs to be addressed. It would be like Ford never replacing the Model T, but instead tacking on gimmicks and claiming it is new and improved. Ever notice how Gillette’s competitors are not following suit? They realize the current shaving arms race reached its logical conclusion some years ago. How ironic that 40 year old Gillette razors and their ilk are now being recognized as a superior solution.
John
I bet you are not using 1950’s carbon blades with your 1950’s razors.
It’s quite hypocritical to bash twin blades, when every DE blade is stainless steel with chromium, platinum, ceramic, polymer, coatings.
You are not in the time warp you think you are in, its like driving a 1930’s roadster with a modern V8 and creature comforts.
It looks like someone at Gillette likes the game of basketball so much, that a mini basketball is merge in with a razor. This will be a hit every March.
The paywall seems to be back up, only the first lines appear.
I guess I’ll have to stick with my straight then. Shame. 😉
Of course I expect traditional shavers to poo-poo any Gillette innovation. It’s just part of our particular snobbery. But I admit to being interested in seeing exactly what they have here.
Gillette rarely makes a dud product. Before returning to DE shaving, I found just about every Gillette innovation to give me a noticeable improvement in my shaves. The Fusion was an enormous improvement over the razors that came before it, IMO.
While I will almost certainly check one out when it is released, I have no plans to abandon DE shaving and return to the cart. But I will give it a fair and honest trial, and try to keep the anti-Gillette bias to a minimum.
What I find interesting about this Ball Thingie is that, while it is certainly an effort-reducing innovation that still sticks in line with the Fusion, it is simply something else for people to buy. I still have the original handle that came with my very first Fusion purchase. If I am in an extreme hurry I still use it, but it’s basically there with the tag of “In case of emergency, break glass.”
As you correctly state, Gillette doesn’t make dud products. The amount of money they invested in the Fusion line is more than the GDP of small countries. But as you said, they hit their zenith in the 50s, and like Icarus, their wings melted.
And what of the cost of yet another piece of P&G Gillette plastic????
I deserted Gillette because of the outrageous cost of their short lived
Fusion blades. Rediscovered ‘real shaving’ and will never go back to
over priced plastic/battery razors and blades. For what it’s worth I
think P&G make good toilet cleaning products.
This really made me chuckle. It’s almost as funny as the old SNL skit about “3 blades being better than 2”. Little did they know . . .
It never ceases to amaze me the endless gimmicks and gadgets that Gillette will go through nowadays to convince people that their cartridge razors are “The best a man can get”. Such a pity that a company that once offered quality products at good prices (I’m thinking Aristocrat, FatBoy, Slim Adjustable and SuperSpeed), and was a world leader in offering quality razors and blades apparently hit their technological zenith in the late 1950’s.
For those who still view shaving as a chore that must be dispensed with as quickly as possible, I’m sure they are more than happy with their multi-blade, vibrating, and now Dyson-ball equipped monstrosities.
For those of us who have either discovered or re-discovered the joys of real wet-shaving and the almost Zen-like experience that it can be, all we can do is sit back and shake our heads, wondering if we can ever become modern-day Moses’s and lead our brethern out of the desert of cartridge shaving and marketing hysteria.
Hate it sight unseen. Everything “evil” about Big Razor rolled up into one. Batteries?