Dollar Shave Club: How a US$4,500 Video Led to a Billion-Dollar Buyout

On 6 March 2012 a man named Michael Dubin uploaded a 94-second video. In a shirt and tie he walked through a warehouse and asked the camera: "Do you like spending $20 a month on brand-name razors? $19 goes to Roger Federer. Do you need a vibrating handle, a flashlight, a back-scratcher and ten blades?" The video cost US$4,500 and was shot in a day. Within the first hour the website's server crashed; within 48 hours 12,000 orders had come in.

Four years later Unilever reportedly bought the company for US$1 billion in cash.

The story: eight years of improv, one day of filming

Dubin was not an ad man. He had spent eight years studying improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade in New York while working marketing and content jobs at NBC, MSNBC and Sports Illustrated. In 2011 he met someone at a party who was sitting on a warehouse of razor stock, and Dollar Shave Club began: US$1 a month, blades mailed to your door.

The video was directed by a friend from his improv days, shot in the company's own warehouse, starring Dubin and one employee. Its title: "Our Blades Are F***ing Great". It has since passed 27 million views.

On 19 July 2016 Unilever announced the acquisition. TechCrunch and Bloomberg reported about US$1 billion in cash; Unilever has never confirmed the figure. Dollar Shave Club had 3.2 million members at the time and about US$150 million of revenue in 2015. Over the same period Gillette's share of the U.S. men's razor market fell from more than 70% in 2010 to 54% in 2016, according to Euromonitor.

The story has an ending too. In October 2023 Unilever sold 65% of the business to private equity firm Nexus Capital for an undisclosed sum. A video can open a market; keeping it is a different job.

Why it worked: it sold a question, not a blade

There is no product close-up in the video and no blade specification. It sells one question: why are you paying for features you do not need? Taken apart, it did three things right:

1. It said the thing customers were already thinking

Everyone who had bought brand-name razors knew the blades were absurdly expensive, but nobody had said it for them. Dubin did, in one sentence. Positioning is not what you want to say; it is the sentence your customer already wants to say and nobody has said on their behalf.

2. It spoke in his own voice, not an advertising voice

Dubin told CNBC: "Understanding what's funny or why the audience laughs is something that you learn through the process of improv." Every joke in the video is his. Viewers could tell it was a real person talking, not a company reading a script.

3. It made the action one step

The video ends with a single ask: subscribe. One dollar a month, delivered. No plan comparison, no upsell. Twelve thousand orders in 48 hours happened because watching left only one decision to make.

The lesson for founders: positioning beats budget

Gillette's annual advertising budget could fund tens of thousands of videos like this one. It did not lose on money. It lost because it could not say the sentence: a company that profits from expensive blades cannot tell customers they are paying too much.

The biggest advantage a small company has is that it can say what a big one cannot.

If you are a team of one with no budget

• Write the sentence. What do your customers resent most about their current option? Put it in one line they would nod at. A gym's "you paid for the year and went three times"; a bookkeeper's "your accountant talks to you twice a year".
• Say it in your own voice. No studio, no script. Use your phone, in the place you work, saying what you already say to customers.
• Make the action one step. End with a single entry: a form, a booking link or a LINE friend button. Never offer three choices at once.
• Be ready for what comes after being found. Dollar Shave Club crashed within an hour. Your version: when an order or lead arrives, is there an automatic confirmation and a follow-up? Set up automated follow-up before you publish the video.
• Remember the ending. A video opens the market; keeping customers depends on every service moment after it. Unilever selling seven years later is the reminder.

A US$4,500 video reached a billion-dollar buyout not because it was well shot, but because it said the one thing nobody dared to say for the customer. Your customers are waiting for that sentence too.