My first million: Will King, King of Shaves
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Jody Clarke Oct 19, 2006
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It wasn’t until FHM hit the news stands in 1994 that, some would argue, it became acceptable for men to talk about dry skin and razor rash. But today, thanks to Will King, they can not only talk about it, but do something about it too. In the early 1990s, King started to use his girlfriend’s beauty products: “I put this bath oil underneath the foam and shaved, and for the first time in my life didn’t get razor burn. I thought ‘wow, fantastic’.”
Convinced others would think it fantastic too, and having just been made redundant, King began learning about essential oils with a view to setting up his own business. He then bought a formula for shaving oil from a chemist for £250 and borrowed £45,000 on his credit cards to make it up. In the first year, he sold £300 worth of what he called “King of Shaves” and lost £30,000. In the second year, sales were £58,000, but losses had hit £70,000. King, however, wouldn’t give up. “I knew the product worked,” he says, and to his mind it wasn’t going that badly. “£300 in the first year; effectively that’s 300 people year one, 58,000 people year two, 250,000 people year three.”
By 1995, things looked better. He took on an old colleague, Herbie Dayal, as his business partner and together they raised £100,000 through a Government loan guarantee scheme.
With this, they turned a profit of £1,000 on the back of sales of £250,000. By 1997, they were turning over £1.5m. Turnover is forecast to be £13.5m this year.
But King isn’t stopping yet. Next he intends to go head on with Gillette (which has 80% of the £55bn razor-blade market) with his own razor, “King of Blades”. “I saw what Branson did to BA in the early 1990s when BA had a monopoly” on transatlantic routes, he says. “You look at it now and it’s very competitive.” He sees no reason why this can’t happen in the shaving market too. His ultimate goal? “To one day challenge Gillette for worldwide shaving supremacy.”
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