Razor and Blades Model Got Worse

A common sales model nowadays is the “Razors and Blades model”. The basic premise is you divide a product into two parts. These two parts depend on each other, frequently having one reusable part and the other needing replacement. The reusable part is sold for cheap, the replacable part constitutes the primary revenue stream. The prototypical example is right in the name - razors and blades. Sell a razor handle for cheap, sell the razor blades themselves often at a markup.

I have been recently finding that this model has… broken? Quite badly? Well, badly for customers. It’s probably great for corporations!

The company I was buying my razors from, I got a handle from them some years ago and would buy replacement blades occasionally, as you do, when… they stopped selling blades that fit the handle. I had to get a new handle to fit the new blades. Well ok that sucks why would you do that the previous handle was perfectly fine.

I got an electric toothbrush a few years ago (I had been on a plain old mechanical brush for a while). You’re supposed to replace the heads on those every few months as the bristles wear out. So I go to the store to buy replacement brush heads and… they don’t make replacement brush heads for my model anymore. Nope, new base brush which needs a new model of brush heads. I bought a new base brush and a pile of brush heads so it would last a while but…

This is just miserable! The model was already predatory enough, but now they’ve broken it entirely. Now it’s not just “buy a cheap base and replacement add-ons”, you have to replace the base too! Might as well just buy something where you replace the whole thing, might be cheaper that way. Who knows.

I hate this. Capitalism is a nightmare. I would very much like to get out.