Why I quit Harry’s

A story of the Triggering Event

Yesterday while I was shopping in the grocery store, I went through the Pharmacy section and stopped to look for Harry’s Shaving Gel in a travel size. I had found this size before and I was planning for a weekend trip. I found the product display. Then I saw them. A pack of Harry’s disposable razors. My heart sank. As I teach founders, I had encountered a Triggering Event, an expectation violation, for my Existing Alternative that was my preferred brand.

Harry’s was an innovative startup with a good Unique Value Proposition (UVP) in 2016 and 2017, with an Unfair Advantage story of two friends taking on the giants of the shaving industry. “made by real guys for real guys”

(From the Internet Archive Wayback Machine)

What really won me as a customer was “a belief that companies should make the world a better place”. This spoke to my values.

(From the Internet Archive Wayback Machine)

Their web site from these early days also talked about the engineering and quality that went into their razor, and how the company had bought a German razor blade factory to drive their quality and price advantage. These were all pieces of their story that spoke to customer’s need for quality and price to switch to Harry’s. I ordered a Harry’s starter kit online. Then a while later I found the product at Target, and this was another step in convenience for a company I preferred. Harry’s founders had scaled their company successfully from online only to include a national retail placement. The feisty founders looked to be winning against the giants.

I was on a trip not long ago and needed some Harry’s Shave Cream, so I stopped into a Target and found their display. Next to the Shave Cream was a Shave Gel. Harry’s had been introducing their own line of shave and post-shave creams, so I thought this was another advance. I was a bit skeptical because this gel was too close to Big Shaving Company’s Gel. How had this startup found someone to make a shave gel for them? And I discovered that Big Shaving Company had bought them. The founders had their exit.

Not long after that I encountered Henson Shaving through a YouTube endorsement by a car engineer. Henson’s UVP: “Buy Once, Use for Life” Their story talks about “machined to aerospace standards” in aluminum, with regular double edge blades like my dad used to use. No plastic to add to the plastic waste problem. Their offer had met my values, and I switched.

This is a story of customer forces. This is a story about how innovation can dislodge your customers, which is why you need to keep innovating, like the shark that needs to keep moving to stay alive.