Double edge razors.

Following on from my gillette post, why dont companies like merkur, parker, feathers etc advertise thier products more, if your a teenager and starting to think about shaving and look at tv, billboards, magazines etc the only thing you see to shave with is the throwaways and unless you come accross boards like this would most probably never here of a de razor and even if they listen to their fathers advice i would say the same applies, i know advertising costs but i never see or ever have seen a advertisment for a de razor here in the uk, when the king of shaves introduced thier azor (did not like that thing) it did not advertise it but built up interest on the net and it went on to sell loads, and still does, with the economic/green climate we live in it is a perfect product but not out in the big world selling itself.

I think 'money' is the answer. A company like Gillette would make more money out of Mach3 than Gillette 7 o'clock. If they are still making the blades, they must make money from them... It might be a question for their customer rep!

However, Parker/Feather, I don't know. They might have some advertising in places like India...

Yep all got to do with $$. More money in cartridges than DE blades. Also it would fly in the face of what they have feeding us about "more blades the better" crap.

It's absolutely the money. Tiger woods' time does not come cheap. Merkur and Parker are a really small niche market. Luckily a relatively small community (when compared with gillette) can support these companies.

Nowadays, you don't bring a product to market without it being patented/copyrighted, as having something that is easily copied is a sure fire way to scare off investors.

Many of the wet-shaving products companies aren't US-based so they are unaffected by US laws. I'd call it a niche industry that probably would find little reward for their ad costs. When I was a kid, there were frequent ads for razors, aftershaves, etc. Nowadays, I rarely see any of this stuff on TV.

Its quite sad, i remember being in berlin last year with my wife and friends and my mate forgot his razor so he asked if he could borrow mine till he bought one the next day so i was using my merkur travel razor and some harris cream in a tube, my friend the same age as me had never actually seen a de razor before, 45 years old and his comment was "whats this thing" yet he could name every dissposable blade on the market, just think what a bit of advertising could do

I looked around a year ago trying to find out Gillette's American market share. Depending on the source it was anywhere from 80-95%. Add Schick and they both controlled anywhere from 90-98%.

If you want to play with the big boys, you need to be a big boy! Merkur, Parker, and any other out there isn't even in the same ballpark to be a real competitor with Gillette. What is Gillette's advertising budget for a year? A few billion? Merkur won't even make that kind of money in a few decades.

The little guys are probably better off staying in the shadows, they definitely don't wan't Gillette playing in their yard!