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In 1895 traveling salesman King Camp Gillette took advice from William Painter, inventor of the crown cork bottle cap, to invent something people use once and throw away. Six years of failure ended when MIT chemistry graduate William Emery Nickerson worked out how to temper and sharpen thin sheet steel, and with investor John Joyce they formed the American Safety Razor Company in 1901. The first year on sale, 1903, brought just 51 razors and 168 blades, but an automated grinder in 1904 lifted sales above 90,000. When gas masks required clean-shaven faces in 1917, Gillette sold 1.1 million kits, and in 1918 the U.S. military issued them to all servicemen.

As the patent expired in 1921, Gillette sold its old design as the $1 Brownie beside the $5 New Improved, creating the razor and blades model. In the late 1920s, a buyout of rival AutoStrop exposed that Gillette had overstated sales and profits by $12 million over five years to boost executive bonuses, and AutoStrop owner Henry Gaisman took control in 1930. The Blue Blade of 1932 restored trust. In World War II Gillette made magnetized compass blades, hollow handles hiding escape maps, and counterfeit German blades for Allied agents.

• In 1962 Wilkinson Sword’s coated stainless blade lasted three times longer, using a method Gillette had patented but held back.
• Research into the hysteresis effect, where the first blade tugs a whisker so the second can cut it lower, led to the Trac II twin blade in 1971.
• To counter Bic’s 1974 disposable, Gillette sold the premium blue Prestobarba in Latin America alongside cheaper yellow decoy razors it advertised against.
• Warren Buffett’s $600 million stake in 1989 helped fend off raiders such as Revlon, and the 1998 Mach3 launch cost $300 million in marketing.
• Procter & Gamble bought Gillette for over $50 billion in 2005, and the 2019 “We Believe” ad drew both praise and boycott calls.