Harry's growth is a cut above their manual shaving competitors

With Unilever’s acquisition of Dollar Shave Club behind us, the e-commerce community is watching for the next private razor brand to exit. Cutting-edge data from Slice Intelligence shows that Harry’s is the razor company to watch. At 35 percent year-on-year, Harry's is growing faster than Dollar Shave Club, and is three times faster than the industry average.

Harry's commands a nine percent slice of all online razor sales, and is the third-largest shaving brand in the U.S., behind behemoths Dollar Shave Club and Gillette. Collectively these two brands comprise three-quarters of all sales last year. Still, given Harry's high growth rate, it's already made a successful sortie on Gillette, Dorco, and Shick's market share.

Harry’s customers spend twice as much on the brand compared to Dollar Shave Club buyers. In the last year shavers spent an average of $17 per purchase on Harry’s razor blades. By contrast, Dollar Shave Club buyers spent $7 per razor order in the same period. Bevel, one of the newest specialty shaving brands, has the largest spend as their shoppers pay on average $50 per order.

While Harry’s growth and order sizes compare favorably to Dollar Shave Club, their ability to retain customers is less impressive. Data shows that only 24 percent of Harry’s buyers who purchased a razor during the first three months of 2015 are still buying razors with the brand, versus over half of Dollar Shave Club’s customers.

Boosting customer renewals is a major growth opportunity for Harry’s. So too is tapping into a younger demographic. The brand’s messaging for selling the high-end razor has resonated mainly with Baby Boomers, as 36 percent of their customers are between the ages of 50-70. Brands like Bevel, Schick, and Dollar Shave Club appear to do a better job of attracting the millennial generation.

Thirty-nine percent of online razor buyers were women this June, which is up seven percent since last year. Currently Dollar Shave Club is the primary brand marketing to women. Their messaging seems to be working as 57 percent of Shave Club's revenue growth has been driven by female buyers since the start of 2015. DSC's marketing seems to be helping the whole industry as more women are buying razors from all brands. Women even accounted for 18 of Harry's growth last year. 

So can Harry's improve their customer retention and cater to an increasingly female buying population? Only time will tell. Still, their quick ascent in the razor and blades category can't come altogether as a surprise; the company shares two founding members–Jeff Raider and Andy Mayfield–who previously founded Warby Parker, another business that disrupted a traditionally offline, manufacturer-controlled industry.

Warby is continuing to grow six years after launch. Slice Intelligence reports the company saw sales increase by 40 percent in the past 12 months. The messaging of these sister companies seems to be attracting similar buyers as Harry's customers are twice as likely to buy Warby Parker eyewear as Shave Club shoppers. Here's a breakdown:

With a panel of over 4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.