Dollar Shave Club Is Rolling Out a New Fragrance Line and Getting Into Retail

Dollar Shave Club doesn’t just want men to look and feel their best; it wants them to smell their best, too, with the debut of Blueprint, a fragrance line. Blueprint comprises six different colognes. One set of three is called “Fresh” and includes styles 101, 102 and 103, and the other set is named “Warm,” with styles 201, 202 and 203. According to Michael Dubin, founder and CEO of Dollar Shave Club, the new cologne “aligns” with the company’s mission—and next iteration, called Dollar Shave Club 2.0—closely. “It’s been on our road map for a while,” Dubin said. “This is a huge part of that puzzle for those guys, and we want to make sure we had a solution with them.” According to Nick Virginio, senior brand development manager at Dollar Shave Club, the company ran a qualitative and quantitive survey with about 300 of its members to learn more about their cologne habits, including how many they own and how often they were buying it. The company also did market research in Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles of both members and non-members to learn more about how Dollar Shave should create the brand and strategy. In its research, Dollar Shave found that 62 percent wear cologne daily and 76 percent own more than two. Dollar Shave discovered an opportunity and worked with Ann Gottlieb, a perfumer who's worked at companies including Estee Lauder and developed fragrances like CK1 and Eternity, over eight months to come up with the fragrances. “I believe fragrance is the defining feature of many products across categories,” Dubin said. “Dollar Shave Club has chosen to make fragrance an investment and a defining feature of our product line.” Gottlieb said adding a cologne creates a “tremendous of brand loyalty,” and in the research found that men were wearing all sorts of scents. Virginio said the company also created the broad line as part of having an “inclusive strategy” and making sure they had something for everyone. As part of the release, the company started a preorder sale, and the colognes are officially out on Nov. 6. Dubin declined to provide specific numbers but said orders are in the “many thousands." Customers can buy a set of three 15-milliliter bottles for $35 or purchase a stand-alone 50-milliliter item for $50. “Dollar Shave Club is in its new phase helping them find products that they need to help them look and feel confident in their bodies,” Dubin said. “We believe its really important to for guys to have a fragrant option.” In addition to the release of the Blueprint collection, Dollar Shave Club announced it is rolling out more than 10 vending machines at “high-traffic areas” like LaGuardia Airport in New York and Minnesota's Mall of America. The machines will dole out six TSA-friendly kits that span the Dollar Shave product line and will cost $12. Virginio said this is part of the company's strategy to "increase Dollar Shave Club's physical footprint" and to let consumers get the product wherever they might be. "We view our automated retail machine as a large interactive billboard through which consumers can get introduced to their favorite products and increase awareness that we offer numerous grooming categories beyond shaving products," Virginio said. "With the evolution of our business model, we are not only upping the number of products we offer, but we are also presenting our members greater personalization and service, flexibility and customization—automated retail is a part of this." Get access to more stories like this—sign up for Adweek’s ecommerce newsletter today.