Iridium Super

[beisler]

I was thinking if the Iridium Super was very popular and sold alot of product,which I assume they did,than why would the company that made them stop production on them? That would be like Hellmans not making their mayo or skippy not making peanut butter IMO. (bad anology huh) I was just curious if anyone knows why production came to an end.

[TallyShave]

I certainly don't "know" but I can speculate. I feel like we tend to think of ourselves in a vacuum in that the Iridium's are/were very popular with us. The problem is, we make up a tiny fraction of the overall market. The vast majority of the market for DE blades is in the developing world where $.40 a blade is extremely expensive. To run some numbers, let's assume there are/were 10,000 loyal Iridium users here (first, that is likely very high and second, we are not the most "loyal" group... we like to experiment) and we required 100 blades per year. That is 1 million blades per year. They likely sold from the manufacturer at about 20 cents per blade. That is $200,000. That is before you 1) buy the steel and the packaging, 2) pay your employees, 3) pay for the machinery and upkeep, 4) I am sure there are few other expenses missing. You can expand out those numbers and it is easy to see that you need to be selling billions of blades, not millions.

That is my best guess...they weren't selling enough to really make any money. A lot of people hint that it is based upon P&G wanting to rid the world of quality DE blades, but I don't buy it. It is easy to read this site and think that product x,y, or z must really be going gangbusters based on all the love, but in the grand scheme of things, we are a pretty small population.

[raisindot]

TallyShave is absolutely right. We think SIs sold like gangbusters, and we believe that our little purchases of 100-500 here and there justify keeping them in production, when it's entirely possible that, looking at the global sales figures, they were a flop compared to Gillette's other brands. If I were Gillette and was making global branding decisions, I would probably stop production of any blade that wasn't specifically Gillette-branded. I wouldn't even resurrect the SI blade in Gillette packaging if its manufacturing costs were higher than its other DE brands. Whoever is managing Gillette's non-U.S. DE business is probably not a DE shaver and this business is probably a small part of his responsibilities and one to which he devotes little time or budget. There really just aren't enough DE connoisseurs like us to support a 'boutique' blade market.

Considering that 90% of all DE blades are probably sold outside the U.S., manufacturers' primary priority is getting shelf space for their brand. Little stores and supermarkets in India probably don't want to stock 'unknown' brands--they want whatever large brands (Gillette, Schick, Feather) mainstream DE consumers recognize, and want to sell them at a price that will keep the volume moving while providing enough profit to justify their shelf space.

[vegaskid74]

I, for one, bristle at your easy dismissal of our conspiracy theories. Actually, you may be right, but I vote for the conspiracy on this one. There are simply too many crappy quality, lower margin blades being produced by P&G to think they shut the Iridium down because it wasn't making enough money. If they were making enough money to keep them in production 5+ years ago, surely they didn't start losing money when they exploded in popularity (albeit within a relatively small segment of the world DE blade buying market). I truly believe P&G/Gillette realized that way too many of the SI blades were ending up in the western hemisphere where men can afford to buy their $4 cartridges, and they shut it down, or at least ended the brand. As I've said before, I doubt I could tell the difference between the SI and the Perma-Sharp (and if not fully awake, the 7'Oclock Sharpedge as well).

[raisindot]

Hee hee hee! Conspiracy theories are fun, but you give Gillette an awful lot of credit for making a business decision based on the idea that the sale of a few thousand SI blades in the west could seriously hamper sales of cartridges in the west. Anyone with any modicum of business sense would realize that Gilette could make a lot of money by keeping Sis in production and gradually raising the costs of volume purchasers in order to keep us westerners buying them at steadily rising prices. (Heck, a lot of us are willing to buy them at 50-60 cents a blade today, when last year we were paying 28-34 cents a blade.)

I still think the reason they stopped SI production was based on global sales and/or profit margins. Some bozo probably told the head of DE blades that they needed to consolidate brands. Choose the six brands that sold the most (or had the highest profit margins) and get rid of the lower selling, and least profitable brands or those that didn't 'reflect' the Gillette brand. That's the kind of thinking your average corporate executive could handle. Anything beyond this would require real intelligence.

[El Judio Bravo]

TallyShave is absolutely right. We think SIs sold like gangbusters, and we believe that our little purchases of 100-500 here and there justify keeping them in production, when it's entirely possible that, looking at the global sales figures, they were a flop compared to Gillette's other brands. If I were Gillette and was making global branding decisions, I would probably stop production of any blade that wasn't specifically Gillette-branded. I wouldn't even resurrect the SI blade in Gillette packaging if its manufacturing costs were higher than its other DE brands. Whoever is managing Gillette's non-U.S. DE business is probably not a DE shaver and this business is probably a small part of his responsibilities and one to which he devotes little time or budget. There really just aren't enough DE connoisseurs like us to support a 'boutique' blade market.

Considering that 90% of all DE blades are probably sold outside the U.S., manufacturers' primary priority is getting shelf space for their brand. Little stores and supermarkets in India probably don't want to stock 'unknown' brands--they want whatever large brands (Gillette, Schick, Feather) mainstream DE consumers recognize, and want to sell them at a price that will keep the volume moving while providing enough profit to justify their shelf space.

+2

That's how markets work. Luckily there are lots of blades I find suitable.

[Saxmoore]

Also remember that P&G introduced a new low-priced cartridge system for the lower income countries a year or so ago. If you get every man in India using the carts that cost a little bit more, but bring more profit, well....

I can't recall the name of the razor, but it seems to me as though there were numerous threads sometime in the last year. About the time Iridiums disappeared (for us conspiracy theorists!).

[bobusa]

Also remember that P&G introduced a new low-priced cartridge system for the lower income countries a year or so ago. If you get every man in India using the carts that cost a little bit more, but bring more profit, well....

I can't recall the name of the razor, but it seems to me as though there were numerous threads sometime in the last year. About the time Iridiums disappeared (for us conspiracy theorists!).

Name of the razor is Gillette Guard. It is sold for $ 0.40/ cart. Gillette claims it is good for 5 shaves

[vegaskid74]

Hee hee hee! Conspiracy theories are fun, but you give Gillette an awful lot of credit for making a business decision based on the idea that the sale of a few thousand SI blades in the west could seriously hamper sales of cartridges in the west. Anyone with any modicum of business sense would realize that Gilette could make a lot of money by keeping Sis in production and gradually raising the costs of volume purchasers in order to keep us westerners buying them at steadily rising prices. (Heck, a lot of us are willing to buy them at 50-60 cents a blade today, when last year we were paying 28-34 cents a blade.)

I still think the reason they stopped SI production was based on global sales and/or profit margins. Some bozo probably told the head of DE blades that they needed to consolidate brands. Choose the six brands that sold the most (or had the highest profit margins) and get rid of the lower selling, and least profitable brands or those that didn't 'reflect' the Gillette brand. That's the kind of thinking your average corporate executive could handle. Anything beyond this would require real intelligence.

I still don't buy it. Your argument is that P&G would be happy to sell us Iridiums at ever-increasing prices if they could do it profitably. I say they can't possibly raise prices on the Iridium fast enough to meet the margins they make on the $4 cartridges. I don't care if $0.30 out of the $0.35 price of an Iridium blade is pure profit, it still doesn't come anywhere close to the $3+ profit they must be making on each cartridge. Every Iridium blade (or any other DE blade for that matter) sold to men who can afford to pay more for cartridges is money out of their pocket. I think you underestimate the effect we nutty wetshavers were having on the market for Iridiums. Many of us were buying them by the thousands (trust me, I know). You cannot convince me that they were selling enough Iridiums five years ago (at lower prices, mind you. I've heard stories of guys picking them up for around $0.17 per blade in bulk several years ago, and near the end, most were paying closer to $0.35 per blade) to keep the brand afloat, but all of a sudden, when they become insanely popular in the wetshaving community and they can all but name their price, they have no choice but to shut it down for lack of profit. All the while keeping in mind that 10-15 lower margin blades keep pouring out of that factory. It doesn't add up.

[GreekGuy]

Here is my (more likely) theory:

The distributor for these blades went out of business for one reason or another. Everyone focuses on the SI but 3 other blades were discontinued as well. With no distributor to carry them they stopped producing the blades. Gillette has been re-organizing their production anyway. There is only so many blades they can produce. The SI was a top tier blade for western markets, not the US however. As a result, it seemed like an obvious product to eliminate.

Whether or not its inconvenient to admit, there are not nearly enough people here buying SIs to justify producing them. Even if everyone here, which is unlikely, (lets say 10,000 DE shavers) bought 100 blades a year, which is highly unlikely, that would be 1 million blades. At 10 cents profit per blade that is $100,000.

You think some number crunchers at P&G in the US are extrapolating that 100k to people buying these blades from abroad? Give me a break. It's not even a blip on their radar screen

[Pasha]

It makes them money. People buy everything, stop using the brand on a regular basis, and try to find a new go to blade to save their stash. It all equals more sales.

[raisindot]

I still don't buy it. Your argument is that P&G would be happy to sell us Iridiums at ever-increasing prices if they could do it profitably. I say they can't possibly raise prices on the Iridium fast enough to meet the margins they make on the $4 cartridges. I don't care if $0.30 out of the $0.35 price of an Iridium blade is pure profit, it still doesn't come anywhere close to the $3+ profit they must be making on each cartridge. Every Iridium blade (or any other DE blade for that matter) sold to men who can afford to pay more for cartridges is money out of their pocket. I think you underestimate the effect we nutty wetshavers were having on the market for Iridiums.

If your argument were true, then Gillette would have stopped producing all DE blades, not just SIs. But they haven't Gillette Blacks, Greens and Yellows are still widely available and are sold throughout the world. And their costs are not particularly lower than SIs were. The fact is is that these blades have become Gillette's main DE brands, and they seem to be gutting legacy brands, regardless of how much they sell. Gillette would need to sell upwards of ten million or more DE blades of a given brand to make $800,000 worth of gross revenue on them (assuming they sell each blade wholesale for 8 cents a piece). Even if all of us in the U.S. and Europe bought a million SIs a year it would only generate $80,000 in gross revenue for Gillette. Considering that SIs never had nearly as wide distribution as Gillette's other brands, it doesn't make sense for Gillette to keep producing a boutique brand--especially if producing the boutique brand ties up manufacturing time and resources they could use to instead produce their regular branded products.

[cfender]

I'm actually surprised at the variety of DE blades STILL available. Most US retail stores have no more than one brand IF ANY. I don't understand why catridge systems haven't done the same thing to DE markets all over the world. I'm glad it hasn't happened but I truly don't understand what's peculiar about the US/North American market.

[TallyShave]

I'm actually surprised at the variety of DE blades STILL available. Most US retail stores have no more than one brand IF ANY. I don't understand why catridge systems haven't done the same thing to DE markets all over the world. I'm glad it hasn't happened but I truly don't understand what's peculiar about the US/North American market.

I think it is just economics. Most people here can spend $2-4 per catridge for a convenient (if lousy) shave. Just like we spend $5 on a TV dinner or $1 on a bottle of water.* Someone in India, China, etc who makes $50 a month can't do that. But they can spend $.08 on a DE blade. And there are billions of men in this position.


*It is amazing the way we treat water here. I did a relief trip in Central Africa where they would literally kill for water 1/3 as clean as ours. It made me wonder what they would think if they were able to come to America and see the way we treat water. I think their head would explode at the thought that we urinate into a bowl of pristine water and flush over a gollon of it down the drain several times a day.

[cfender]

I think it is just economics. Most people here can spend $2-4 per catridge for a convenient (if lousy) shave. Just like we spend $5 on a TV dinner or $1 on a bottle of water.* Someone in India, China, etc who makes $50 a month can't do that. But they can spend $.08 on a DE blade. And there are billions of men in this position.


*It is amazing the way we treat water here. I did a relief trip in Central Africa where they would literally kill for water 1/3 as clean as ours. It made me wonder what they would think if they were able to come to America and see the way we treat water. I think their head would explode at the thought that we urinate into a bowl of pristine water and flush over a gollon of it down the drain several times a day.

Excellent point.

[jwilock]

What's not clear is why they stopped making IRIDIUMS. I mean as opposed to all the other blades coming out of the same plant. There are a large variety of differently branded blades coming out of PPI. I'm careful to say "differently branded" because I still think it better than 50-50 that some blades coming out of that plant in different packaging are actually the same blade. It's possible there was no sufficient niche market for the "Iridium" brand so they stopped labelling them that, but kept making them under different names.

[beisler]

the polsilver blade has the same logo on them as the SI's and alot of people feel they are the same

[TallyShave]

It's possible there was no sufficient niche market for the "Iridium" brand so they stopped labelling them that, but kept making them under different names.

Yes, I like this possibility and hope it is true. The thread with the microscopic pictures has debunked a couple possible suspects though (Polisilvers for example).

[Mischka]

In 1992, Gillette purchased the former state-owned Wizamet plant in Łódź, Poland that manufactured Super Iridium and Polsilver blades. Gillette's new parent company, Procter & Gamble, later demolished it and built a mammoth 620,000 sq. ft. factory that opened on June 8th 2008. It currently produces both cartridge and traditional safety razor blades. There is a production line that currently manufactures DE blades packaged under the Polsilver brand and more recently once again, under the Super Iridium brand. Both brands are being exported through tightly-controlled, limited distribution channels, to avoid cannibalizing sales of their more profitable cartridge razor blade sales.

Are the blades the same quality as produced by the former Wizamet factory? This is still up for debate.

[beisler]

Yes, I like this possibility and hope it is true. The thread with the microscopic pictures has debunked a couple possible suspects though (Polisilvers for example).

Check out the logos though--They are the same--btw I just tried an SI for the first time(thanks DAVE) and all I can say is HOLY COW--They just blew me away-also I have used the polsilver and imo they are NOT the same(not even close)