Exactly. This could be a lecture in any business class today. You nailed it.
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The Skyfall effect has dwindled. They were out of stock for months due to increased sales when the film came out. 007 needs to wield a straight razor in the next one, which ironically will be titled No Time to Die.
Am I the only one that gets grumpy when a person in a film is using terrible technique while "using" a straight razor. My kids laugh as I comment about the poor angle that a person uses and how they would get nothing but cuts and a poor shave at best.
Dovo's management never seemed to grasp that their survival didn't hinge on begrudgingly selling increasingly-basic straight razors to the rapidly-declining populations of European countries but on actively trying to make repeat sales to us crazy (mainly) US collectors. Boker understands this and offers a shifting range of high-margin, high-quality razors through a number of outlets. I got a new Boker this week and it's not only very different from my other Bokers, but its quality is considerably higher than any of my last few new-build Dovos.
Years ago, in the late Cretaceous period, I went to the Dovo web site and managed to find a pdf of their reseller catalog for the year. They had page after page of straights, maybe thirty models, of which maybe five or six were actually offered by any retailer I could find in the US. Naturally, Dovo had no way for a mere customer to order from them directly. If I could have, I'd have bought a bunch of razors that day and made a point of checking back for new ones periodically. With just a bit more marketing and sales effort (up from none whatsoever) they could have cultivated enough collectors to keep their straight business ticking over nicely between the periodic Skyfall-style bonanzas. Nope. Whatever resources they had were spent trying to get people to buy artisanal nail-clippers, a market where they'd lost the race to the bottom by 1985.
I've assumed for a few years that someone will eventually do a documentary piece on the enormous carbon footprint and environmental impact of making, marketing and disposing of disposable shaving cartridges and that the uproar would nudge at least a couple of million people back toward DE and straight shaving. This would certainly help keep a number of the old-school guys afloat. Maybe we'll all finally learn about shaving after we've heard the heart-warming story behind the ten-thousandth startup making $75 eco-toothbrushes and $50 wrapperless soaps. In the meantime, I'm hoping Ralf Aust will buy the Dovo assets, kick out the nail-clipper guys, and scale up his operation.