If you've not heard already Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club the subscription men's grooming brand. While the tech community is celebrating it as a VC success story at a 1 billion dollar exit , most are missing the bigger trend here. P&G bought Gillette for 57 billion , that's right. At 15% market share of the US market DSC was a great deal. That's the important part DSC has 15% share but just 1% of the profits as the internet has enabled it to price it's product much lower. It can use cloud computing , logistics and ultra targeted marketing to overcome the huge cost P & G entails. Retail margins , distribution and TV advertising make Gillette price the blades as high as 4 for blade that costs a quarter and it was getting away with this as they have monopoly power.
That's the important point here 'Value Destruction' the internet is making experiences more convenient and cheaper for consumers while also destroying value in the traditional sense. All the huge spends of P&G on advertising which are absorbed by the consumer are now disappearing. So in a traditional measure of GDP growth is not occurring. The same goes for Uber , AirBNB and countless other Internet and Blockchain enabled startups that will no doubt arise. We need new metrics to measure and value these new forces of change. STEEM and other crypto assets show a great path forward here. STEEM has not only funded internal operations but has allowed investors and longterm stakeholders to join in and participate in valuing and owning the growth.
Here's the original post by the excellent Ben Thompson https://stratechery.com/2016/dollar-shave-club-and-the-disruption-of-everything/