People

Ignorance can be a good thing. If I’d known when I started out that I was about to compete with Gillette, a $60bn company, I may have thought twice about it. But there wasn’t a product like mine on the market so I guess you could say ignorance plus great product equalled success.
 
People are ingrained into using Gillette and Wilkinsons’ Sword because that’s just what they have always used. Our challenge is to give them something different and better. Trust me, it’s a good crack trying to disrupt a market like this.
 
Maverick by Ricardo Semla is the only business book I’ve ever read. Essentially, it’s about how you can lead without leading and how you can be an absentee manager. It’s a democratised method of management, whereby you don’t have to kick people’s butts to get things done and where you can let staff determine their own salaries or the hours they work. It’s very enlightening.
 
If they ever made the King of Shaves story into a film I think I’d like Daniel Craig to play me: “The name’s King… King of Shaves.”

I want to make King of Shaves a billion dollar sales brand. I figure I’ve got another 20 years to see just how far we can go.
 
If you’re starting out, you have to sit down and have a word with yourself because unless you’ve got a dad with billions who can bung you cash, it’s going to be tough. Ask yourself if you have a product or a service that is genuinely better than those out there? If you have, then great, just get your head down for five years. Then, if you come up for air five years later hopefully you won’t just have been a busy fool. 
 
Momentum is key. Imagine your product as a boulder in a hollow and you’ve got to somehow rock it out of that hollow and get it rolling. If it’s a rubbish idea, it’s going to 
end up lifeless at the bottom of a valley.

I can’t believe the muppets that they have on The Apprentice. How can they sell it as 12 of Britain’s brightest young talents? It’s a sad indictment. Millions of people must watch it and think no wonder the country is in the state it’s in if this is the best we’ve got to offer. Besides, Alan Sugar never gives the job to the best candidate. It’s always the least bad that gets it.
 
I think of my business like some grown-up platform game on the X-Box or Wii. There are multiple levels, all of which have a bigger challenge you need to overcome to progress. At the moment, I reckon I’m on about level 10 of a 50-level game.
 
Things take time — even Simon Cowell is a 20-year overnight success.

I’m lucky. I’ve only got two competitors to keep an eye on — Gillette and Wilkinson Sword — and as long as they’re going in a different direction to me then that suits me fine. And anyway, it’s nice not having to worry about Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Thierry Henry being on my payroll.

You only have to observe how a brand is discussed on Twitter to see how quickly its fate can be decided. If someone tweets that a product is rubbish out there in the blogosphere, that can be the end of it.

There’s no space for average, especially in a recession.
 
My epitaph? He came, he saw, he shaved… he died.

Learn more about King of Shaves at shave.com