On Wednesday, November 7th, Gillette invited us to their Global Innovation Summit in NYC to announce their new products!
Gillette had three new products to announce during the summit: The Razor Maker, the Gillette Labs heated razor, and the Gillette Skinguard. Their ideology this year was lateral innovation, creating a range of products that allows a man to choose the razor that best fits his unique needs.
To start off, the Razor Maker is Gillette’s new collaboration with Boston 3D printing company Formlabs to deliver custom-made, 3D printed razors. What Gillette is offering is the ability to customize the razor’s handle, giving you a whole host of unique designs and colors, and it even allows you to put custom text on it too. You can also choose which razor head you want to put on it, so you can still get your favorite Gillette razor blades with the custom handles. To show us how the handles are created, they brought in two 3D printers from Boston and they set up a station so that we can customize and order our own if we liked. The handles are made from a liquid resin that hardens when exposed to UV light. A laser quickly and precisely exposes an ultra-thin layer of the resin with UV light, which slowly adds up to create a complete handle. The entire process can take somewhere around 13 hours and a Formlabs engineer said that they can deliver it to your door within 2-3 weeks of placing the order. Below, you can see that they make about 10-15 handles per batch and that green light at the bottom of the orange container is the UV laser.
The next product Gillette wanted to make was a premium razor that delivered a luxurious and comfortable experience. After interviewing men on what they wanted in a razor, they realized that many men loved the experience of a hot cream shave. Determined to create something that can deliver a similar experience, Gillette announced the Gillette Labs heated razor. This is a manual razor that has an electric warming bar that warms your face as the razor glides across. The razor has a sleek, black design with a cool orange glow bar in the middle. The heating bar has an adjustable temperature and safety measures so that it doesn’t get too hot. The razor itself is waterproof although being electric and comes with a magnetic wireless charger that doubles as a cool looking stand. This is Gillette’s answer for a premium razor that delivers a clean shave while providing the utmost comfort.
Finally, the main announcement from Gillette. For many men, shaving is a pain. Those who suffer from sensitive skin cannot use a razor without having to deal with the pain, bleeding, rashes, and bumps that follow. For 3 years, Gillette extensively studied men with sensitive skin, experimenting to find the best solution so that they too can shave with confidence. Their solution was the Skinguard. This razor uses only two Low Cutting Force (LCF) blades which are spaced far apart and are separated by a blue plastic bar. This blue bar flattens the skin’s irregular surface out and by spacing the LCF blades, the pressure can be distributed evenly. What this means is that there’s less tugging and overall aggravation on each hair follicle and less irritation and abrasion on the surface of the skin. To accompany this new razor, Gillette also announced their Pure line of shaving cream and gel. These are made with aloe and contains no alcohol, dyes, parabens, or sulfates. These two products are supposed to go hand in hand so that men with sensitive skin can have the best experience possible while shaving. As the ultimate stress test, Gillette got in touch with firefighters who suffer from sensitive skin. Firefighters have to wear oxygen masks so that they don’t inhale toxic fumes when running into burning buildings to rescue people. For those masks to be effective, they have to be secured very tight around their mouth and nose. This means that not only do firefighters with sensitive skin have to endure the pain of shaving every morning, but they also have to endure the after effects of having a mask pressed tightly around their face. Gillette gave these men the Skinguard razor to try and worked with them to improve their design. Gillette said that the firefighters were shocked and some wept when they realized that shaving no longer had to be a pain. Clearly, this was a problem that really affected their lives and Gillette was happy that the Skinguard was able to alleviate some of the pain these heroes dealt with on a daily basis.
Gillette boldly setup shaving stations so that we can try this new razor out ourselves. Personally, I have pretty sensitive skin and I only ever use trimmers because shaving causes too much pain and unwanted after effects. Also, I’ve never used a manual razor before because I was always afraid of cutting myself; so admittedly, I was pretty nervous when I went over to the try the Skinguard. After shaving with it, I was thoroughly impressed. Not only did I not get cut even though I was completely inexperienced with manual razors, but it also didn’t hurt and I didn’t experience any of those unwanted after effects. My face was just left smooth! I wasn’t expecting to have such a great experience on my first try, but then again, Gillette has worked pretty hard to get this new razor just right.
Gillette announced some really interesting and innovative products this past Wednesday. The Razor Maker is live right now and you can check it out here. The Gillette Labs heated razor comes out in 2019, and the Skinguard will be in stores in December and will retail for $7.99.
