King Camp Gillette

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King Camp Gillette (January 5, 1855 – July 9, 1932) was an American businessman of French family Gillette, popularly known as the inventor of the safety razor, although several models were in existence prior to Gillette's design. Gillette's innovation was the thin, inexpensive, disposable blade of stamped steel.

Gillette is widely credited with inventing the so-called razor and blades business model, where razors are sold cheaply to increase the market for blades, but in fact he did not adopt this model until his competitors did.

Biography

Born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and raised in Chicago, Illinois. King Camp Gillette's family was devastated by the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. His ancestors came from England to Massachusetts in 1630.

Razors and blades

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. 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. Gillette improved these earlier safety-razor designs, and introduced the high-profit-margin stamped razor blade steel blade. Gillette's razor retailed for a substantial $5 (about $134 in 2006 dollars) — 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.

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. The following year, he sold 90,884 razors and 123,648 blades, thanks in part to Gillette's low prices, automated manufacturing techniques and good advertising. By 1908, the corporation had established manufacturing facilities in the United States, Canada, England, France and Germany. Razor sales reached 450,000 units and blade sales exceeded 70 million units in 1915. In 1918, when the U.S. entered World War I, the company provided all American soldiers with a field razor set, paid for by the government. It continues as the Gillette (brand).

Personal life

Gillette was also a Utopian Socialist. He published a book titled The Human Drift (1894), 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), 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. (Roosevelt declined the offer.) Gillette's last book, The People's Corporation (1924), was written with Upton Sinclair and later inspired Glen H. Taylor.

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 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 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 low life 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."

Death

Gillette died in Los Angeles, California, and was interred in the lower levels of the Begonia Corridor in the Great Mausoleum located at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.[6] He was almost bankrupt at the time of his death, due both to his having spent 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.

Legacy

Some peers in the marketing industry quote him as one of the innovators who revolutionized the Freebie marketing ideas. The Gillette Company continued to thrive and sell products under a variety of brand names including Gillette, Braun, Oral-B, and Duracell until 2005, when the company was sold to Procter & Gamble for $57 billion USD. It is now known as Global Blades & Razors, with the Gillette (brand), a business unit of Procter & Gamble.

King Gillette Ranch

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. 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 bought the land.

The King Gillette ranch was most recently 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. Those agencies are also funding an $8.4 million visitor's center on the property. 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 near Calabasas, California. It is located at 26800 West Mulholland Highway (at Las Virgenes Road), Calabasas, CA 91302.