Shaving & Co

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• Notice that the sum is more than 100% as customers may use more than one method to remove hair.
• The reasons why women use wet/dry shaving less than men are: fear of being cut, shaving not seen as feminine, and shaving is often considered “lower class”.
• All values mentioned (segment percentages) have stayed stable in the last years and are expected to remain like this.

Information that can be shared on the interviewee’s inquiry:

• The market is segmented, for each application, into the male and female markets (as these follow very different trends and habits). This is a very insightful way of segmenting the market.
• 95% of men use hair removal products regularly.
• 80% of women use hair removal products regularly. (old women are mainly the ones who don’t use them regularly)

The interviewee should try to understand the customers and the market of hair removal better.

• Segmentation
• Customers
• Willingness to pay

Main conclusion

• Almost all men use hair removal products while 20% of women (mainly elder women) do not.
• Women use mainly waxing as hair removal method.
• Men use mainly wet- and dry shaving.

Information that can be shared on the interviewee’s inquiry: 

Bryan is seen as a cheap brand by its female customers. Men see it as a high-end brand. All products have similar profit margins.

The candidate should ask about the company’s expertise/capabilities.

• Sold products
• Price of products
• Company image by customers

Main conclusion

Bryan is apparently not very present in the women's market. While it has 9 products exclusive for men, it only has 2 for women
(not present at all in the feminine dry-shaving market).

We will come back to this issue and try to confirm this statement when we analyze the competitive landscape.

Bryan has only 1 product in the waxing segment and it serves both men and women segments. This could be a problem for the marketing campaigns which cannot target a specific audience.

Information that you can share on the interviewee’s inquiry: 

The men’s market has strong players (the 3 biggest players hold 75% of the market), which are not strong in the women’s market. Bryan is the second company in terms of market share for wet- and dry shaving. It is however the 8th for waxing. The women’s market is very fragmented, with 8 companies possessing only 60% of the total market share.

This is one of the most important parts of the case. The candidate should ask about the competition in each of the segments.

• Bryan’s market share
• Market saturation of segments
• Market fragmentation
• Main players

Main conclusion

We confirm that Bryan is not strong in the female market as it has only 10% of the female wet-shaving market compared to 33% in the men wet-shaving market. Bryan has also no market-share in the female dry-shaving market against 20% in the men dry-shaving market. The waxing segment is (as expected because Bryan has only one product in the market) almost not explored by Bryan. The men market is very concentrated whereas the women market is fragmented with many small players. This is an indication that it would be easier to gain market share in the women market (less probability of price wars, less cost of stealing customers from strong brands, etc.).

A possible closing to this case could be as follows:

After analyzing the three key areas we can propose the following strategies for Bryan:

1) Explore the waxing market (for both men and women) which is at the moment neglected (only one product available).

Bryan should create at least a couple of waxing products exclusively for women, as it could then target specifically the female public. Since waxing is not commonly used by men (among hair removers, only 10% of men use this method against 66% of women), it could be interesting to completely leave this market segment (no economies of scale for such a small segment).

2) Increasing the prices of wet-shaving products for women.

This would have the advantage of making the image of the brand in the women segment consistent with its image in the men segment, which is of an expensive, high-end brand. This increase could be done allied with a well-prepared marketing campaign to change the cheap and non-feminine image of wet-shaving among women.

3) Acquiring of new customer groups

Acquiring completely new female customers to the hair removal market (instead of only trying to steal market share from other competitors). This could be done with a marketing campaign aimed at old women, who most frequently do not use hair removal methods.

4) Partner-up with competitors

Although the men market is already saturated with strong players, a possibility for stealing market share from the number one (and thus become number one) would be to partner up with the third biggest company in this market or with the smaller players.

5) Acquiring competitors

Acquiring some of them would also increase the market share of Bryan instantly.

Suggested answer:

Wet-shaving men = Hair removal users * Wet shaving users

                          = 95% * 95% ≈ 90%

                         (= 0.95 * 0.95 ≈ 0.9)

Women waxing = Hair removal users * Waxing users

                       = 80% * 66% ≈ 53%

                      (= 0.8 * 0.66 ≈ 0.53)

That means that there are approximately 70% more men who use wet-shaving than women that use waxing

Suggested answer:

In order to decide which companies should be bought, it would be essential to analyze the trade-off between their market price and the market share they would transfer to Bryan.

Other aspects to be considered would be:

• Possible synergies between Bryan and the target companies could result in cost reduction in production, customer service, marketing, etc.
• How similar products from the target companies are to Bryan’s. The more similar the products, the bigger the risk of internal competition or cannibalization after merging.
• Soft assets like customer loyalty, brand awareness, etc.