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King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman who invented a bestselling safety razor.[1] Gillette's innovation was the thin, inexpensive, disposable blade of stamped steel.[2]

Gillette is often erroneously credited with inventing the so-called razor and blades business model in which razors are sold cheaply to increase the market for blades.[3] However, Gillette Safety Razor Company adopted the business model from its competitors.[4]

Biography

The Gillette paternal ancestors were French Huguenots who sought refuge in England in the late 16th century. One or two generations later, in 1630, Nathan Gillette sailed from England to the newly founded Massachusetts Bay Colony in North America.[5]

King Camp Gillette was born on January 5, 1855, in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and raised in Chicago, Illinois.[1] His family survived the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.[6]

While working as a salesman for the Crown Cork and Seal Company in the 1890s, Gillette saw bottle caps, with the cork seal he sold, thrown away after the bottle was opened. This made him recognize the value in basing a business on a product that was used a few times, then discarded. Men shaved with straight razors that needed sharpening every day using a leather strop. As existing, relatively expensive razor blades dulled quickly and needed continuous sharpening, a razor whose blade could be thrown away when it dulled would meet a real need and likely be profitable.

Safety razors had been developed in the mid-19th century, but still used a forged blade. In the 1870s, the Kampfe Brothers introduced a type of razor along these lines.[7][8] Gillette improved these earlier safety-razor designs and introduced the high-profit-margin stamped razor blade made from carbon steel sheet. Gillette's razor retailed for a substantial $5 (equivalent to $163.00 in 2022) – half the average working man's weekly pay – yet sold by the millions.

The most difficult part of development was engineering the blades, as thin, cheap steel was difficult to work and sharpen. This accounts for the delay between the initial idea and the product's introduction. Steven Porter, a machinist working with Gillette, used Gillette's drawings to create the first disposable razor blade that worked. William Emery Nickerson, an expert machinist and partner of Gillette, changed the original model, improving the handle and frame so that it could better support the thin steel blade. Nickerson designed the machinery to mass-produce the blades, and he received patents for hardening and sharpening the blades.[9][10][11] (Nickerson was later elected to Gillette's board of directors.)

To sell the product, Gillette founded the American Safety Razor Company on September 28, 1901 (changing the company's name to Gillette Safety Razor Company in July 1902). Gillette obtained a trademark registration (0056921) for his portrait and signature on the packaging. Production began in 1903, when he sold a total of 51 razors and 168 blades.[12]

The second year, he sold 90,884 razors and 123,648 blades,[12] thanks in part to Gillette's low prices, automated manufacturing techniques, and good advertising. Sales and distribution were handled by a separate company, Townsend and Hunt, which was absorbed by the parent company for US$300,000 in 1906. By 1908, the corporation had established manufacturing facilities in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, and Germany.

Razor sales reached 450,000 units and blade sales exceeded 70 million units in 1915. In 1917, when the U.S. entered World War I, the company provided all American soldiers with a field razor set, paid for by the government. Gillette vetoed a plan to sell the patent rights in Europe, believing correctly that Europe would eventually provide a very large market. Gillette and John Joyce, a fellow director, battled for control of the company. Gillette eventually sold out to Joyce, but his name remained on the brand. In the 1920s, as the patent expired, the Gillette Safety Razor Company emphasized research to design ever-improved models, realizing that even a slight improvement would induce men to adopt it.[13]

He was almost bankrupt due to spending large amounts of money on property, and to his having lost much of the value of his corporate shares as a result of the Great Depression.

Gillette died on July 9, 1932, in Los Angeles, California.[1] He was interred in the lower levels of the Begonia Corridor in the Great Mausoleum located at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[14]

Personal life

King C. Gillette wearing a Panama hat, circa 1908. This is said to be Gillette's favorite picture of himself.[15]

Gillette was also a Utopian Socialist.[16] He published a book titled The Human Drift (1894)[17] which advocated that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that everyone in the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. A later book, World Corporation (1910)[18] was a prospectus for a company set up to create this vision. He offered Theodore Roosevelt the presidency of the company, with a fee of one million dollars.[19] (Roosevelt declined the offer.) Gillette's last book, The People's Corporation (1924),[20] was written with Upton Sinclair and later inspired Glen H. Taylor. Gillette was initiated to the York Rite of Freemasonry,[21][22][23][24] till his elevation to the highest degree of Grand Master.

Gillette married Alanta "Lantie" Ella Gaines (1868–1951) in 1890. They had one child, King Gaines Gillette (1891–1955).

In his later life he traveled extensively and was universally recognized from his picture on the packets of razor blades. People were surprised that he was a real person rather than just a marketing image. A Gillette company history stated that in non-English speaking countries people would often ask for "the kind with the Man's Face" blades.

Around 1922 or 1923, he built a residence at 324 West Overlook Road, in "The Mesa" district of Palm Springs. A 4,800-square-foot (450 m2) main home and 720-square-foot (67 m2) guest house. The homes, sitting on 1-acre (4,000 m2) of land, are what remain of the original estate.

Sometime in the late 1920s, Gillette was known as a frequent guest of Nellie Coffman, proprietor of the Desert Inn in Palm Springs, California. He was often seen wandering about the grounds and lobby in a tattered old bathrobe. When Coffman was asked why she allowed such a lowlife to hang out at her establishment, she responded, "Why that is King C. Gillette. He has practically kept this place in the black the last few years."[citation needed]

Legacy

The company continues in the present day as the Gillette brand of Procter & Gamble.

Gillette is widely credited with creating the "razor-razor blade business model". Some peers[who?] in the marketing industry quote him as one of the innovators who revolutionized the freebie marketing ideas.[25] The Gillette Company continued to thrive and sell products under a variety of brand names including Gillette, Braun, Oral-B, and Duracell. In 2005, the Gillette company was sold to Procter & Gamble for US$57 billion. It is now known as Global Blades & Razors, with the Gillette brand, a business unit of Procter & Gamble.

King Gillette Ranch

King Gillette Ranch mansion

King Gillette purchased property for a large ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains near Calabasas in Southern California in 1926. The master plan and new buildings on the ranch were designed and built for Gillette in the late 1920s by renowned architect Wallace Neff. The architectural style was Spanish Colonial Revival.

After his death, his wife sold the home to Clarence Brown, an MGM film director who held A-List Hollywood parties at the ranch. In 1952, Bob Hope bought the property, immediately giving it to the Claretian Order of the Catholic Church, which operated a seminary on the grounds for 25 years. In 1970 Thomas Aquinas College rented the property from the Claretian Order before later moving their campus to Santa Paula in 1977. Elizabeth Clare Prophet, founder of the Church Universal and Triumphant, purchased the property in 1978, and ran her New Age church at the site until 1986 when Soka University of America (SUA) bought the land.[26]

In 1990, SUA announced plans to build a future liberal arts college on campus[27] and plans to expand the facility over the next 25 years to an enrollment of as many as 5,000 students.[28] SUA began making plans to expand the campus infrastructure to accommodate living quarters and classrooms for the proposed expansion, but ran into opposition from some local residents, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, environmentalists, and government representatives.[28] Opponents sought to protect the Chumash ancestral site, the natural habitats and ecology, and the expansive open space viewshed within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and to prevent a development of unprecedented urban density adjacent to Malibu Creek State Park.[29][30]

In 1992, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), a joint-powers authority associated with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, resorted to its powers of eminent domain to condemn the core parcel comprising the university and thereby halted SUA's plans for expansion.[28] SUA appealed the eminent domain action. The legal debate continued for the remainder of the decade. Soka University was prevented from developing any expansion plans at the Calabasas property and began looking for alternative sites to build a larger campus.

After the university moved to a purpose-built campus, the King Gillette ranch was collaboratively purchased for $35 million by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority, National Park Service, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and California State Parks, who then made it available for public use.[26][31] Those agencies are also funding an $8.4 million visitor's center on the property.[32] On June 30, 2007, the 588-acre (2.38 km2) King Gillette Ranch opened to the public as a park. The ranch is situated adjacent to Malibu Creek State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains, at 26800 West Mulholland Highway in Calabasas, California.[33]

Since 2008, the ranch has been used for the NBC reality show The Biggest Loser. The ranch was also featured in the 2019 *Ratched* Netflix series and in the 2021 The Starling movie with Melissa McCarthy.

Works

Books

King C. Gillette - Wikipedia

Knowledge Web Content (see main node)

NAME: Gillette, King Camp

ACHIEVEMENT(S):  Inventor and first manufacturer of the safety razor and blade

NICKNAME/ALIAS:  None

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:  January 5, 1855, Fond du Lac, WI.

DATE/PLACE OF DEATH/AGE AT DEATH:  July 9, 1932, Los Angeles,  CA.

Aged 77

DISCIPLINE:  Inventor/Social theorist

FIELD:  Business

LANGUAGE:  English

PARENTS:  George Wolcott Gillette; Fanny Lemira Camp

SIBLINGS: 2 brothers, 2 sisters

SPOUSE:  Alanta Ella Gaines

CHILDREN:  King G. Gillette

EDUCATION:  High school, Chicago

MAJOR WORK:  Gillette safety razor and blade

LIFE AND TIMES:

As a youth, Gillette worked in hardware stores in Chicago and New York, and then in his early 20s took a job as traveling salesman for a Kansas City hardware firm.  He patented his first invention, a valve for industrial taps, in 1879, and later that year patented an electric cable conduit. 

In 1891, he took a job as New York/New England sales representative for <worked for> Painter*'s Baltimore Bottle Seal Co.  Painter, who would make a fortune from his crimped tin bottle cap, was impressed with Gillette's initiative and advised him to invent something that would be used and thrown away, so the customer would have to keep coming back.

Gillette kept Painter's advice in the back of his mind, but decided to pursue another interest: social reform.  Drawing on his own experiences and on the utopian and populist literature of the day, he published in 1894 "The Human Drift", a work of utopian socialism which blamed all social, economic, and political ills on competition. Gillette believed that the competitive system wasted 90 per cent of human productive efforts, and fostered the greed which caused industrial and international strife. 

The solution, according to Gillette, was a publicly-owned worldwide corporation, which would own and manage all means of production.  Maximum production would be assured by concentrating population and production near Niagara Falls, which could supply all the necessary hydroelectric power.

His plan proposed that the entire population of the United States live in apartment blocks with great central kitchens (in order to minimize domestic drudgery) at Niagara Falls, while agricultural work would be done by battalions of laborers moving from field to field. 

While some of Gillette's ideas (such as air-conditioning and government-subsidized work for the unemployed) were realized, the plan as a whole was totally unrealistic.  But his ideas found favor with the editors and readers of the radical magazine "Twentieth Century,"  who urged Gillette to lead a grassroots reform movement.  He took them up on the idea about 15 years later.

A year after his book was published,  and shortly after he moved to Boston, Gillette's life took a radical turn. While honing a permanent, straight-edged razor one day, he came up with the idea of making a thin, double-edged disposable razor blade and clamping it in a holder that would keep it rigid. 

Although experts assured him it would be impossible to sharpen thin steel blades  and salesmen and advertisers assured him that consumers wanted only blades of high-quality steel that would last a lifetime, Gillette was determined to make his project work.  He got in touch with William Nickerson, a leading engineer who had developed a machine that would hold ribbons of steel rigid enough for sharpening. 

Gillette and Nickerson established the American Safety Razor Co. in 1901.  By the end of the first year, the company was in debt, with no sales, and was bailed out by a friend, John Joyce.  Starting again, the pair changed the name to the Gillette Safety Razor Co. and by the end of 1902 were not much further ahead, although they had sold 51 razors and 168 blades. 

Unwilling to give up, Gillette and Nickerson tried aggressive marketing, and by the end of 1904, had sold 90,000 razors and 12.4 million blades from a factory in Boston.  Gillette resigned from Painter's company, (which was now called the Crown Cork Co.) and by 1907, had established eight other plants around the world, including in France and Britain.

Gillette amassed a fortune, but insisted that much of the profit be reinvested in advertising.  A quarter of every dollar earned by the razors went to promotion, and from 1905 the proportion was increased to half.   Blades were given away with tea and coffee, overalls, shaving cream, pocket knives, celluloid collars, and chewing gum, while some banks gave them to new account-holders.  

Gillette used his profits to subsidize two books outlining the economic theories he never abandoned, despite his commercial success.  The books, "Gillette's Social Redemption" (1907) and "Gillette's Industrial Solution" (1908), were written by a friend Melvin L. Severy. 

In 1910, Gillette formed the "World Corporation" to promote his goal of global consolidation.  <turned down by> Theodore Roosevelt*, after his term as U.S. president, refused a fee of $1m and a guaranteed four-year term as company president.  In 1913, Gillette retired from active management, although he remained president of his firm until 1931.  He moved to Southern California and spent much of his time investing in real estate and travel. 

In 1924, he wrote "The People's Corporation", with the editorial assistance of social novelist <worked with> Sinclair*.

By the time he died in 1932, Gillette had been virtually wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929 and by a collapsing California real estate market.

ASSESSMENT:  With the invention of the safety razor, transformed the developed world's shaving habits and created a hugely profitable industry. 

EXTRA CONNECTIONS:  None

ONELINER: King Camp Gillette, inventor of the safety razor and blade

BIBLIOGRAPHY: 

EB

Adams, Russell B., “Gillette, King Camp,” in American Dictionary of  National Biography, New York & Oxford: OUP, 1999