Courtesy Alex Mitchell, Head of Influencer Relations for the IoD (Institute of Directors) I was delighted to speak at their annual Chartered Directors conference on Thursday 29th October, to approximately 80 leading CEO's, Directors & CFO's on what life's like at the heart of a challenger brand. I was the last speaker (of 6) and took to the stage at about 4.15pm to deliver a session that explained how King of Shaves is thriving by being at the 'heart' of a brand hurricane, how our company is structured (a wheel - always with momentum - always embracing change as a constant) and finally, a brief summary of my SPACE strategy - a blueprint for successful entrepreneurs, or 'momentum creating individuals' - MCI's.
Alex let me know that my talk was particularly well received, with 100% of the attendees rating it 'Good to Excellent' and 65% of the attendees rating it as 'Excellent'.
I was also pleased to make contact with a couple of companies interested in introducing King of Shaves into Russia and India, and was also delighted to make the acquaintance of Mark Swan, a Director at the CAA (Civial Aviation Authority) who gave me his word for 'Money' in my Wheel chart, 'Purdo' (Pounds, eURo's, DOllars). Thanks Mark!
Many thanks to everyone who came along, I hope you went away with some useful knowledge & insight into life at King of Shaves!
Awesome King of Shaves Azor Sales in UK. (original blog post)
In the past four weeks, in the UK alone, we've sold a simply stunning 107,000+ Azor system razor handles and an even more unbelievable 602,000+ Azor Endurium cartridges. With each Azor cartridge delivering 3-4 weeks of high performance use, that's over 2,000,000 weeks of King of Shaving.
Words fail me. Many, many thanks to everybody who's turned from 'the Dark side' and have seen the light, who 'get' our ecoptimised, high performance razor with its 'Bendology Technology' and who are shaving closer, longer, for less - and with style too.
King of Shaves Azor also shortlisted for Shortlist Magazine's 2010 Men's Grooming Award for Best Razor - we won 'Best New Shaving Product' last year - will we manage the accolade of 'Top Razor' as we turn our faces towards 2010.
King of Shaves - Truly the Future of Shaving.
King of Shaves - Putting Customers First, Proud to be Founder Member of The Consumer Forum (original blog post)
Late last year, at a business awards ceremony, I first met Simon Calver, CEO of Lovefilm,
the UK's leading on-line film & games rental company. Simon has
driven impressive growth for the firm and it became clear A) he was a
really nice guy and B) put his customers first. As we do exactly that
at King of Shaves too, when we met again in 2009 (at another awards
ceremony, which we were delighted to win) I was interested to hear of
his plans for a 'Consumer Forum' - a group of entrepreneurially minded,
customer-centric companies, which put the consumer first. His idea was
to get together a group of companies, and launch the Forum, which is
dedicated to not being 'confrontational' with consumers, but rather,
practice 'best practice'. Given we serve up millions of shaves each
day, each which must be the 'King' of shaves, I was more than happy to
sign up KoS for the forum, along with other like-minded companies such
as Ella's Kitchen, Photobox.com, Chemist Direct and A Suit That Fits (a company I talk about in my book on 'How to Grow a Great business in Tough Times'.
The forum launched today - you can visit it here, see our press release on it here and see early Marketing Week press coverage here.
Nicky Springle (who heads up customer care & interaction for me at King of Shaves) and I will post regularly, with examples of how King of Shaves puts customer care & satisfaction at the heart of what it does, which I hope people find useful.
Well done Simon, for getting The Consumer Forum off the ground, and here's to signing up many more likeminded members.
People who are interested in what TCF is up to can follow us via twitter here which is administered by Surinder Gill.
Cool shavings & savings with King of Shaves Azor & Clicks in South Africa (original blog post)
It's
a beautiful sunny day in Cape Town, and with Table Mountain in the
background, we showcased our Azor to South Africa's press at the
Killarney racetrack, before letting the 20 or so journalists loose on
the racetrack in V6 'full on' racing cars.
Bob Lansdowne, Cape Town's
premier barber demonstrated the Azor on half a dozen (unshaven)
journalists and was enthusiastic with the product, it being "cool,
without the cost". Available exclusively at Clicks across South Africa, and with retail prices of just 75 rand for the Azor
& 2 blades, and 70 rand for 4 replacement Endurium cartridges, we
are confident that men who previously have bought cheaper disposable
razors will welcome the Azor with open arms.
Many thanks to Redline & draftFCB who put on a great brand experience for 'the King' in South Africa, the Azor & Azure (for women) razors are on sale at Clicks now, look out for some great PR and publicity in the forthcoming weeks and months.
King of Shaves Azor & Gels Now Available In South Africa At Clicks (original blog posting)
I flew into Cape Town via Johannesburg yesterday, for the upcoming press launch of our King of Shaves Azor, exclusively in Clicks
- South Africa's leading health & beauty retailer.
Whilst out in
beautiful Cape Town today, I was delighted to find the Azor already on
shelf (and shopped, according to the young sales assistant I chatted to)
at the Clicks store in the shopping mall on the V&A Waterfront.
Excellent news! Really looking forward to the official launch next week, and many thanks to all at Clicks for helping us get King of Shaves & Azor on sale in the African continent, hot on the heels of South America (Brazil) and the USA.
So, the 'blade wars' start to ramp up. I spotted that Superdrug today now have old style Wilkinson Sword (Schick) Quattro cartridges (not Titanium) at 20p off. Oooh, that's a big shaving, not. Plus, they've also taken £2 off the cost of their manual Quattro razors (still more expensive than Azor at full price) and £3 off their hedge-trimmer razor (sorry, 'Titanium Precision) - also more expensive. Plus, they've brought their 'Mo'vember promotion forward...into October. Bit kneejerk, but as it's for charity, well - I'm not criticising this (we partnered with Movember in Australia a few years back).
In addition to Asda slashing up to £3.30 off Glllette Fusion & Mach3 cartridges, Tesco and Boots have only the sort of (Costco buy in bulk) promotion that P&G could think of, where you have to spend nearly £20 for 13 Fusion blades, saving you £11 off the already over-priced high price. With the average supermarket basket shop being about £80, Gillette are asking you to part with nearly 25% of this, to try and lock men into overpriced Fusion cartridges.
From a retailer perspective, given they specialise in FMCG - Fast Moving Consumer Goods - well, I can't believe they'll be over the moon about this when the promotion ends. The FSDU's I saw over the weekend were rammed full with product (we were pretty low on stocks in most retailers) as even at this 'bargain' price, our Azor (when it goes back to 'fair at full price' in a few weeks will still be LESS than Gillette's deal. Enter SMCG's (Slow Moving Consumer Goods). Ouch.
Plus, you won't have to drop nearly £20 to enjoy the months of King of Shaves shaving with our Award Winning razor, the Azor.
Interesting times - watch this space - and again, HUGE uplifts for King of Shaves Azor over the weekend, more great reviews for Azor at dooyoo.co.uk and our TV commercial Shaveolution (Bend the Rules) featuring our very own Elvis Stubbles is giving 'Wilkinette' troubles. People asking after Mat Le Star's soundtrack 'Lust and Charm' too - available on Soundcloud, downloadable MP3 coming soon I suspect.
Wow - what a day. Many, many thanks for the emails and tweets I've received today following the publication of the article on over-priced replacement blades in today's Daily Mail (not ours, I hasten to add - you can currently buy 8 replacement (yes replacement) Azor cartridges for just £4.88 - and they're highly rated - see the dooyoo review link).
My tweet below pretty much says it all - do read, and enjoy (especially the half a dozen dooyoo reviews and the one from Scott Meyer of US website, Basic Instructions.
---------via tweetdeck.
If you shave (man or woman) read these comments http://bit.ly/kwSbz then this http://bit.ly/mPSJ3 then these http://bit.ly/18xBkO. Go Azor.
----------
As my Dad said, "Wilkinette have got a brilliant future behind them".
You can read Scott Meyer's thorough and well-reasoned review of our King of Shaves Azor on his top US website BasicInstructions.Net here.
Currently available online here and if you live in NYC, from Duane Reade stores, the Azor will make its market debut in the USA in 2010.
Thanks Scott!
In just the past week, we sold nearly 30,000 Azor razors complete with 3 Endurium cartridges and nigh on 80,000 Endurium replacement cartridges (each cartridge lasts 3-4 weeks) - a remarkable 240,000 weeks worth of King of Shaves shaving!
And this against huge, HUGE promotional activity by Gillette, who when even on promotion are more expensive than our 'fair at full price' (and we're currently on half-price!)
And we continue to get great feedback for our Shaveolution TV advert! Look out for it on Sky and many other channels...very happy chap today :-)
