Shaving Disruption Goes Mainstream With Edgewell’s Harry’s Deal

Edgewell is the latest strategic buyer to turn to a direct-to-consumer shaving business to bolster its grooming sales. The company’s $1.37 billion Harry’s acquisition follows similar deals from Unilever, which bought Dollar Shave Club for a reported $1 billion in 2016, and Procter & Gamble, which acquired Bevel as part of the Walker & Co. transaction in 2018. The move comes as some of Edgewell’s existing shave brands, like Schick and Wilkinson, have started to struggle. Outside of Edgewell, it adds to the consolidation in the grooming market, with newer brands being scooped up by owners of older, more sluggish ones. “Shaving was once an amazingly vibrant, highly loyal and super high-margin category controlled by three companies. Today, it has been disrupted by two nascent companies who have methodically gained share by death by a thousand cuts and forever challenged the loyalty/price paradigm,” said Andrew Shore, managing director at Moelis, talking about the role grooming start-ups have played in today’s shave market. The Harry’s acquisition comes as Edgewell reported disappointing financial results. “Fiscal [second-quarter] sales came in far worse than we expected,” Citi analyst Wendy Nicholson wrote in a note, saying that organic sales fell in wet shave, down 12 percent; feminine care, down 7

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