Thread: If you were going to make a production razor...

Originally Posted by MattCB

Total cost for 20,000 pieces (10k sets of scales assuming both sides of scales are mirror images) is quoted at 22.5K

Hey guys, first post but I felt compelled to weigh in on this. I suppose I should have joined long ago so hey it's about time!

About $20k is a reasonable figure for a small mold producing razor scales in this quantity. I saw a figure earlier of $500k to $1 million and that is absolutely absurd.

Source? Well, I am a full time injection mold designer at one of the top 5 quality moldmaking companies in the US. For legal reasons I can not disclose our customer base, however I can say we make several $500k+ molds per year, and this type of mold is made to run *millions* of very complex parts per year and last for 10+ years easily.

A small mold shop is totally different and can produce a small 4 cavity mold to run 20k-50k parts for much less, typically $5k to $30k depending on the part and quality desired. This would put the cost of the scales (roughly) less than $0.50 to produce, even down to pennies possibly. Of course, even if the consumer cost of the scales were $5, I doubt most startups could expect to sell the roughly 5,000 razors it would take just to break even on the mold! That's 14 razors sold, per day, for a whole year non-stop.

So that's just my $0.02 on the scales. As for the steel I can't accurately say, but I do believe if it could be reasonably done PRC is the best example we currently have.

Side note- if any entrepreneurial type out there were crazy enough to give this a go, I would be happy to design (not build, just design) a low-cost scale mold for FREE for the good of the wet shaving community.