Beard Growth Shaves Razor Sales

Image: fda.gov

A quick glance around airports, bars, or supermarkets leads one to conclude that fewer men are shaving. There's more stubble, fuzz, and beards walking around than in recent years. The fad for "casual" styles may contribute to this phenomenon. Other causes for the increase in male facial hair may exist, but I'll leave that exploration to minds smarter than mine.

Procter & Gamble, manufacturer of Gillette razors and other shaving products, noted this hairy phenomenon in a recent Financial Times report on the topic. Diminished use of razors has shaved profits from P&G's lucrative Gillette product lines. However, the consumer giant sees a new market for shaving -- "manscaping," a/k/a body shaving. As P&G's CFO told the FT, "'While the incidence of facial shaving is down, the incidence of body shaving is up, and we can take advantage of that and plan to do that as well.'" That sounds like P&G had one helluva senior management meeting. (The ad campaign for manscaping ought to be an interesting one.)

Meanwhile, Gillette has filed the trademark "Gillette Body." That puts a whole new twist to the concept of "a shave and a shower," don't you think?

How Many Potato Chips Does $1.5 Billion Buy?

It's not an idle question. Procter & Gamble recently calculated the value of its Pringles potato chip brand and offered it for sale. The buyer, according to the story in today's Financial Times, is Diamond Foods. The snack king ponied up $1.5 billion in its own stock, and assumed an additional $850 million in Pringles debt.

I'm not a fan of Pringles as a product. The flavor just doesn't grab me. I don't like purchasing potato chips in a container that held tennis balls or pets. Pringles seemed like polite potato chips, thus taking all the jazz out of enjoying the chips.

The billion-point-five sale price leads one to wonder about the state of affairs in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. Who knew a potato chip manufacturer could be worth more all but a handful of Silicon Valley enterprises? What would the late Ross Perot think about all of this? Perot, in case you don't follow domestic politics, once famously claimed that the United States could only afford to make potato chips instead of computer chips.