Dollar Shave Club (2012): razors by $1-a-month subscription, launched by a viral video

Razor blades had been sold the same way for a century — at retail, with the premium end, as CEO Michael Dubin put it, getting ridiculously overpriced with vibrating handles. Dubin and Mark Levine saw a regular, predictable purchase with no subscription channel, and set out to build an online-only brand on price and convenience.

Sell razors as a $1-a-month subscription to the door: men's most regular purchase becomes recurring revenue, sold with a humor no retail rack could carry.

Members pick a plan from $1 to $9 a month plus $2 shipping; blades arrive by mail every month. A single-take, $4,500 YouTube video, 'Our Blades Are F***ing Great,' introduced the brand, and the site let members vote on future products such as shaving-cream formulas.

In its first 48 hours the video prompted 12,000 sign-ups; within a year DSC had raised $9.8M and moved its ad onto TV. By 2016 it had about 3 million subscribers in three countries and was on track for $240M in revenue when Unilever acquired it for $1B in cash.

Dollar Shave Club was founded in April 2011 by Michael Dubin and Mark Levine, relaunching in March 2012 with more than $1M in funding from Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and others. The model was simple: razor blades by subscription, starting at $1 a month plus $2 shipping, delivered to the door. Dubin argued the high end of the market was ridiculously overpriced with vibrating handles, while the cheap end was a shameful trip to the discount aisle.

To introduce a brand nobody could see in stores, DSC made a single-take comedy video for about $4,500, 'Our Blades Are F***ing Great,' in which Dubin walked a warehouse, rode a forklift and danced with a bear. In its first 48 hours on YouTube the video prompted 12,000 people to sign up. The company let customers vote on future products, and within a year it had raised $9.8M and run a cleaned-up version of the same ad on ESPN and Comedy Central with attribution data.

The model changed what a razor brand could be: by 2016 DSC had around 3 million subscribers in three countries and was on track for $240M in revenue when Unilever agreed to buy it for $1B in cash. It was still not profitable, and planned to be by the end of that year. The acquisition was one of the biggest e-commerce deals of the period, handing a direct-subscription playbook to one of the world's largest consumer-goods companies.

It found the most regular purchase in men's lives and gave it a subscription channel, converting a routine errand into recurring revenue.

A $4,500 single-take video stood in for a store and a sales force, proving the brand before it had any retail presence.

The $1 price point undercut the category while humor gave the brand a personality retail packaging could not carry.

Every future product became a customer conversation — members voted on shaving-cream formulas — so the audience helped build the roadmap.

A commodity with a century-old retail habit is an open brief: subscription delivery and a brand voice the category never had turned $1 razors into recurring revenue and a $1B exit.

Dubin stayed on as CEO under Unilever, and DSC kept expanding its product line and territories. The subscription-plus-personality formula it proved became the standard playbook for direct-to-consumer startups, and 'the Dollar Shave Club model' entered the vocabulary of DTC strategy. The company continued using comedy as its core marketing voice under Unilever ownership.