King C. Gillette

King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman who created a hugely successful safety razor and started the company that bore his name. His key breakthrough was a thin, cheap, disposable blade made from stamped steel. Though many people think he came up with the "razor-and-blades" model—selling razors at a low price to drive blade sales—that strategy was actually borrowed from his competitors. Gillette’s family roots go back to French Huguenots who fled to England in the late 1500s. Around 1630, Nathan Gillette sailed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. King Camp Gillette was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, on January 5, 1855, and grew up in Chicago, where his family survived the Great Fire of 1871. In 1891, he went to work for the Baltimore Crown Cork and Seal Company and became close friends with its founder, William Painter, who had invented the disposable metal bottle cap. Painter told Gillette to think of something that, once used, would be thrown away, so customers would keep coming back. That advice stuck. At the time, men shaved with straight razors that needed daily sharpening on a leather strop. Since existing blades were costly and dulled fast, a razor with a disposable blade seemed like a smart, profitable idea. Safety razors had been around since the mid-1800s, but they still used forged blades. In the 1870s, the Kampfe Brothers introduced a similar design. Gillette improved on those earlier models and brought out a stamped carbon-steel blade with high profit margins. His razor sold for a hefty $5—about half a working man’s weekly pay—yet millions bought it. The hardest part was making the blades. Thin, cheap steel was tricky to work and sharpen, which caused a long delay between the idea and the product’s launch. A machinist named Steven Porter used Gillette’s drawings to build the first working disposable blade. William Emery Nickerson, another expert machinist and partner, tweaked the handle and frame to support the thin blade, designed the mass-production machinery, and patented methods for hardening and sharpening. Nickerson later joined Gillette’s board of directors. Gillette founded the American Safety Razor Company on September 28, 1901, and renamed it the Gillette Safety Razor Company in July 1902. He trademarked his portrait and signature for the packaging. Production started in 1903, with just 51 razors and 168 blades sold. The next year, thanks to low prices, automated manufacturing, and good advertising, sales jumped to 90,884 razors and 123,648 blades. A separate firm, Townsend and Hunt, handled sales and distribution until the parent company bought it for $300,000 in 1906. By 1908, Gillette had factories in the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, and Germany. In 1915, razor sales hit 450,000 and blade sales topped 70 million. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, the government bought field razor sets for all American soldiers. Gillette turned down a plan to sell European patent rights, correctly betting that Europe would become a huge market. He later fought fellow director John Joyce for control of the company, eventually sold out, but his name stayed on the brand. As patents expired in the 1920s, the company focused on research to keep improving models, knowing that even small upgrades would persuade men to switch. Gillette nearly went bankrupt from spending heavily on property and losing much of his stock value during the Great Depression. He died on July 9, 1932, in Los Angeles, and was buried in the Begonia Corridor of the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. On a personal note, Gillette was a Utopian Socialist. In 1894, he published *The Human Drift*, arguing that all industry should be run by a single publicly owned corporation and that everyone in the U.S. should live in a giant city called Metropolis, powered by Niagara Falls. His 1910 book *World Corporation* was a prospectus for a company to make that vision real. He offered Theodore Roosevelt the presidency of that company for a million dollars; Roosevelt said no. Gillette’s last book, *The People’s Corporation* (1924), was co-written with Upton Sinclair and later inspired Glen H. Taylor. He was also a Freemason, rising to the rank of Grand Master in the York Rite. Gillette married Alanta “Lantie” Ella Gaines in 1890. They had one son, King Gaines Gillette, born in 1891. In later life, he traveled widely and was instantly recognized from his picture on razor blade packets. People were often surprised to find he was a real person, not just a marketing image.