Dollar Shave Club Executive - is the new razor not made by Dorco?

Visiting a spanish razor forum can change your knowledge of the small razorworld you knew before in a massive way.

There are some well known companies in the consumer market for cartridge razors, even the OEM markets and brands are clearly marked, so are the subscription services too.

P&G with Gillette has no known white labels, trying to grab the second market with the Gillette 5 and 3 - existing cartridges with new handles. They got their own Gillette Subscription Club

Edgewell Co. owns Schick/Wilkinson and Personna. They cover with the Personna razors a wide range of shaving clubs worldwide and in the OEM markets.

BIC is a smaller player in the system razor market, but they get their own subscription service in the US, UK, France and AFAIK also delivers some cartridges for KOS.

KAI from Japan, mostly known for making DE blades or disposable razors for the US and the european market, they also produced some of the earlier King of Shaves blades.

Dorco is one of the big global players, present nearly all over the world. Big within OEM and subscription services. They also started their own subscription services in the UK, India etc.. But in the US most known to be the producer of the Dollar Shave Club cartridges. So DSC was always known for using the Dorco razors, even after becoming part of the Unilever universe.

Back to the spanish razor forum, in this post a always really well informed user brought a video about a new DSC razor to my attention.

A razor with a new hinge and connecting system, a 6 blade cartridge thinner then seen at most 3 blades razors? Not compatible with any known system worldwide? According to the existing videos with a great blade quality? Incredible that nobody reports about it. And I should have missed such an innovation by Dorco? Mhhhm...
 

But what's that, welding points on a Dorco blade? Skeptical about this change I started digging a bit in the www. First check with some bigger chinese manufacturers for 6 blades and a lookalike connecting system like seen in the video from notahairmodel. No results.

The next weekend I started searching for patents of connecting systems and cartridges for razors with different variables. Don't ask me today how I found that picture within the first 10 pages of search results.

Great - I found the patent for the cartridge design, but not a direct connection to any other razor company. The inventor "Shlomo Zucker" (who by the way is also connected to the Rolling Razor and the Defender razor) shows the new DSC razor on his website.

 

I was not able to connect the "PERSONAL CARE MARKETING AND RESEARCH, INC." or later the "PCMR INTERNATIONAL LTD" to any known player in the razor market at first.

Cutting a long and exciting story that should  later be told more widely with all the links and pictures in a video.

 

The PCMR finally led me to the Dollar Shave Club Israel Co.who builded their own razor factory in Israel! Also part of the Unilever Company. The PCMR also led me to a company named Universal Razor Industries, who partnered with KAI in different ways earlier. So not sure what exactly is produced in Israel, only the mounting of the self produced cartridge parts with delivered cutting blades, or the whole cartridge process from plastic to steel (can't imagine that)

So could KAI be the producer of the new DSC cutting blades?

I will never get 100% proof of that, but there are some circumstances between persons and company names that are showing up often in the different search results. Without having one of the new blades to compare with the KAI blades I own,  I can only guess.

But I'm sure there is no other manufacturer who uses 11 round welding points (should be infringement of patents). Then some long time existing partnerships between involved companys. So IMHO KAI could be the partner for producing the blades of DSC's own new Executive 2020 razor. 

 

Not sure where the journey is going, from the comments in Phil Deppen's video it sounds like the new razor is actually only sold or offered to customers who are not satisfied with the previously delivered Dorco razors.

But building a new razor factory to satisfy just some thousands of customers in the U.S.? We will see what will happen next. Interesting that in a video from another always well informed observer of the razor products, a german lettering on the cartridge holder is mentioned (4:50)

 

So it looks like Unilever really built his own razor business from base to top and produces cartridges in Israel with cutting blades from KAI? The handles should be made in China like all the others do.

My special thanks goes to the user Setent at Foroatfeitado, to Phil Deppen with his vlog  and also to the Geek Of Shaves with his great videos .

Without them I would never have found out that even in the small so well known razor world always some big surprises are possible.

 

Names or trademarks are property of their owners and just used for naming or description. I havn`t been payed or got free stuff for this blog, this is my personal opinion and all cost have been paid by myself.