King of the razor gang

JOHN SELKIRK/The Dominion Post

CUTTING EDGE: Will King is Down Under pushing his King of Shaves brand of razors.

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Will King certainly lives up to his name – king of nerves, king of bravado and the pretender to the throne of shaving commerce.

As the energy and drive behind the brand King of Shaves (KOS), regardless of his degree of blue blood, you'd give him a regal nod for taking on the big boys of shaving, Gillette and Wilkinson Sword.

It has cost him millions to protect.

Down Under to promote his brand and the release of his new shaver, the Azor, he is simultaneously keeping a watching eye on the third appeal by Gillette to challenge one of his company's patents.

More thousands.

I'd like to sympathise but shaving has cost me thousands too. Between the razors, the blade cartridges, the foamy cream, my dalliance with a badger brush, and my insistence on moisturising after every raspy stubble slicing, I estimate over roughly two decades since puberty I've probably coughed up close to $10,000 to keep my chops looking respectable.

Despite male-dom's current "man-phase" where it's almost de rigueur not to shave, King is chasing guys like me. Pitching KOS blades mid-stream – a few bucks below the Gillette-Wilkinson duopoly – he's aiming at an angry niche of men forced to prostrate themselves wallet first to the merciless taxmen of shaving. It seems like a fool-proof strategy, but aside from big G's lawyers hitting where it hurts, the business case is a tough one, he admits.

KOS is making the grade, but it's been a slog since he starting out selling shaving oil in 1998. That was five years after Gillette handed out free razors to everyone in my 7th form class. Clever. I've been buying their blades ever since (see previous calculations). I even bought a Formula One razor in racing red once.

The KOS Azor is flash, with all the groovy lines and ergonomic shizzle. But the new kid is steering clear of going blade to blade – with KOS cartridges carrying only four to the competition's five.

"Twenty blades is not going to give you a better shave than four," King explains, listing the long-lasting and competitive attributes of the Azor.

He's all about marketing, expounding the potential of selling KOS via social media, amping up talk of his impending "Susan Boyle moment" which he assures me has nothing to do with shaving Susan Boyle. He's on YouTube, he rides his TweetDeck hard, and admits he is a "little bi-polar" in his frenetic efforts to "explode the brand awareness".

I can see the potential; especially if KOS saves me a fiver every time I buy new blades. But I'm a clean-shaven creature of habit and changing a man's morning routine is a hard sell.

A battle fit for kings, actually.

- © Fairfax NZ News