The female shaver market has broad prospects, and by 2028, the global market size of female shavers is expected to reach 5.28 billion US dollars

The female shaver market has broad prospects, and by 2028, the global market size of female shavers is expected to reach 5.28 billion US dollars

The female shaver market detail

In recent years, women’s awakening consciousness has infiltrated the consumer field, and more and more brands have begun to advocate the concepts of gender equality, women’s tolerance, and openness and diversity.

Previously, most shaving products on the market were either designed specifically for men or separated from men’s brands, which resulted in women’s shaving products not only lacking innovation and inadequate performance, but also having higher costs.

The female shaver market by 2028, the global market size for The female shaver market is expected to reach $5.28 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.85%.

The female shaver market has broad prospects, and by 2028, the global market size of female shavers is expected to reach 5.28 billion US dollars

With the increasing demand, many brands have started to launch shaving products specifically designed for women, among which Billie, a women’s personal care brand, is the most eye-catching brand in recent years.

Billie was founded in 2017 and achieved a market value of nearly 2 billion in just four years. It was acquired by two healthcare giants. What is the strength of this brand?

Specially designed for women

Billie’s co-founder Georgina has extensive experience in advertising and marketing. She has worked at leading creative agencies such as Wieden+Kennedy and BBH, and has collaborated with several well-known brands in the United States. She is passionate about building brands with strong DNA.

Before founding Billie, she realized that women’s shaving needs and body care products were not highly valued in the market, and there was a lot of gender discrimination and stereotypes, such as most razor products being specifically designed for men.

At that time, there were already emerging shaver brands such as Dollar ShaveClub and Harry’s in the DTC market, which had a strong impact on the shaver giant Gillette. However, the men’s personal care market was booming, and there were still few or no brands specifically targeting female users for female shaving products.

In addition to the lack of market innovation, women’s personal care products also face a serious problem – the “pink tax”. Billie founder Georgina said, “Women’s shavers are not only limited in variety, but also generally priced around 7% higher than men’s products. This is a pricing strategy with gender discrimination.”

A product of the same quality and material, but because the user is female, the price is twice that of male products, so it is called pink tax or women’s tax.

According to a 2015 study by the New York Department of Consumer Affairs, women pay an average of 7% more than men in multiple categories, with personal care products having the largest price difference, with an average premium of 13% for products aimed at women.

In order to eliminate the impact of the pink tax on women and enable female users to use exclusive razors, they founded a personal care brand Billie specifically designed for female users in 2017, and established contact with users through subscription and DTC models, so that every user can use suitable shaving products.

Among them, Billie’s brand name also has a lot of roots: a hundred years ago, Billie was a male name, but now it is mainly a female name. The idea of a name changing from “male to female” aligns well with Billie’s positioning.

In April 2018, Billie received a $10 million seed round financing from Silverton Partners, and in January 2019, it received an additional $25 million Series A financing led by Goldman Sachs. At the same time, it is also favored by two major personal care giants, Procter&Gamble and Edgewell, who want to increase their female personal care business by acquiring Billie.

Why can this brand, founded in 2017, attract the attention of industry giants?

Refusing to feel ashamed for hair removal

In the past, female users not only did not have exclusive hair removal products, but also easily had concepts of shame such as body hair and hair removal. In addition, previous brands and advertisements used to conceal and avoid women’s hair removal needs, resulting in a large number of women’s hair removal needs not being addressed.

To some extent, the hygiene significance represented by hair removal itself is far higher than the aesthetic significance. Hair removal not only enhances beauty, but also prevents skin infections.

Billie’s brand philosophy is to face the physiological needs of women, encourage them to accept the existence of body hair, and perform hair removal in a way they are willing to do. This concept was very advanced in the market at that time, because Georgina found that advertisements for hair removal products aimed at women did not display female body hair, and there was a strong sense of shame towards body hair.

However, Billie does not agree and has taken a different approach in brand marketing, presenting female body hair and the use of hair removal products in advertising videos.

In 2018, Billie launched the “Project Body Hair” and in her video advertisement, she used models to showcase body hair from different parts of her body, encouraging women to accept her body hair. She became the first brand to have models shave real body hair (armpit hair, leg hair, and belly hair) in promotional materials.

In 2019, Billie extended the shameful removal of body hair to pubic and upper lip hair.

According to statistics, this project has enabled Billie to receive over 3.3 billion media reports, 21 million views, and over 1.3 million points and comments in 23 countries or regions, and has won the Wooden Pencil Award (Bronze Award) at the D&AD Awards in the UK Global Creative Competition.

At the same time, Billie also published a book on popular shaving knowledge for children aged 5-9 and called for everyone to freely decide whether to keep their body hair.

In addition, Billie is committed to improving the social status of female users. In the event, Billie advocates for marketing to abandon prejudice against women and instead focus on positive and authentic depictions of women. Billie also donates 1% of her annual income to various causes and institutions that support women, such as YWCA, Every Mother Counts, etc.

As of now, we can still see these real body hair display advertisements and female shaving scenes on Billie’s official website. As a brand aimed at female users, Billie truly considers from the perspective of women. Whether it is practicing the shame of refusing to shave or calling for women to be inclusive and accepting, Billie’s brand philosophy has been silently implanted into users through these marketing activities.

Undoubtedly, this brand is very popular among women, and Billie has gained a large number of fans. It is understood that two years after its establishment, Billie’s sales increased by 268% year-on-year, with a repeat purchase rate of up to 56%.

Billie stated that it will also expand to the full category of female body care. At present, in addition to shaving related products, Billie has also launched body lotion, shower gel and other products.

Gain in-depth insights into user usage needs

The female shaver market D2C,From a product and user perspective, Billie is adept at utilizing the DTC model to build the connection between the brand and users, and gaining in-depth insights into user needs to optimize the product and improve the brand’s service level.

Therefore, Billie’s brand success strategy also benefits from the following factors:

User research and product optimization

Despite the rise of a series of emerging DTC shaver brands, there is still no female exclusive shaving brand on the market. Billie has done a lot of market research in the early stages of product development to meet the shaving and hair removal needs of women, such as establishing a market consumption group and exploring social media reviews.

Through research, Billie found that women may experience issues such as being burned by inferior blades during personal care and hair removal, the razor holder falling off while showering, and men’s shaving products not being suitable for women’s bodies.

In response to these user pain points, Billie has made breakthroughs in product development, such as choosing nickel free and rust free razor blades; Equipped with 360 degree bamboo charcoal shaving soap on the head of the shaver; Replace traditional plastic suction cups with matching magnetic suction cups; The handle of the shaver is made of matte rubber, etc.

In addition, Billie’s shaving cream and body lotion series both use vegan, gluten free, and genetically modified raw materials, and this design has been selected as the annual innovation product award by multiple fashion and beauty media.

Price advantage

Since its establishment, Billie has been entering the women’s personal care market under the banner of “rejecting the pink tax”. Unlike other women’s products that focus on high prices, Billie is the first women’s brand to adopt a low price approach and claims to reimburse women for the extra money they pay when buying shaving products.

In fact, this is also one of Billie’s differentiation strategies, utilizing product price advantages to win strong support from the market and target users. Compared to the high prices of other products, Billie’s product pricing is very affordable, such as the entry-level razor set priced at only $10, and its shaving cream and body buffer are also in the $7-10 range.

It is understood that Billie’s price is much lower than the average retail price of similar female products of about $20, and less than half of the price of similar male products. And this pricing also gave Billie strong support from women, enabling her to achieve her annual sales target in just a few months.

Subscription based e-commerce strategy

Dollar Shave Club, a DTC giant in the shaving industry, has solved the problem of product repurchase through a monthly ordering model, gaining a large number of fans and driving the subscription trend in the women’s shaver market.

The use of subscription system is currently one of the main ways for DTC brand scalability and revenue protection. Billie also adopts a subscription system, where users first select a razor handle they like on the official website, and then choose the ordering cycle. The first time, users will receive a razor handle, two sets of 5-piece blade combinations, and a blade head cover. Afterwards, they will receive replacement blades according to the cycle, with a subscription price of $9 per cycle.

This approach saves users the trouble of buying their own blades every month, and also brings a continuous stream of old users and income to the brand.

Overall, Billie is currently a relatively successful female shaver brand, loved by users, favored by capital, and chosen by the market. It can achieve these goals mainly through three innovations:

Category innovation: Discovering women’s hair removal needs and pain points in a range of male shaving products, exploring a female group that has long been overlooked in the personal care market, successfully incubating female exclusive shaving products, and opening the door to the female personal care market with category innovation.
Concept innovation: Brave to break inherent advertising rules, allowing models to display real body hair, rejecting shame of body hair, this brand concept challenged the market order at that time, reshaped social values, helped women face themselves, and also won the support of female users.
Model innovation: Billie has opened up a new model, and has become a female DTC brand without pink tax and adopting subscription system. With subversive authentic advertising marketing, Billie has opened a Xintiandi of personal care market with a female razor.

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