How DTC razor brand Billie built a $310M brand by showing body hair and bucking gender norms

Billie are an 8 year old razor brand who’ve grown rapidly by going direct to consumer, flipping femininity on its head and sparking conversations about womankind

👋 Hi, I'm Amanda. I'm a brand strategist and fractional CMO. I help founder-led businesses turn belief into brand—and brand into a strategic asset that works as hard as you do. I share weekly deep dives with actionable advice on brand building—plus interviews with the people in the trenches. I also work 1:1 with founders and teams. Book a chat here.

Who will love this

• People with (gasp!) body hair

• Pink tax-evading shoppers

• People who think razor innovation is more than adding another blade

Today

G’day!

Happy Friday, and happy new year 🥳

Today’s brand is Billie: a razor company with an attitude.

I’ve done my time marketing fast moving consumer goods to women. I hated it. The briefs were all the same: women with legs a mile long, not a spec of cellulite in sight, shaving their legs with wild abandon. I’m not sure what they’re taking, but that’s not really…my experience with shaving.

I came across Billie a few years back when they launched Project Body Hair back in 2018. Then Red White and You Do You, a 4th of July themed ad in 2019. Then ‘Think of a Woman’ on International Women’s Day in 2021. In 2023 they released No Worries If Not with Little Troop, a hot little indie design studio. Billie have been busy.

Founded by Georgina Gooley, a Wieden + Kennedy alum and Jason Bravman, Billie have since built a loyal following, made waves in the category, and been acquired for a hefty amount of cash.

Highlights from Billie:

• Reported (in 2021) to do $90M / year in revenue

• Attracted $1.5M in seed funding from the Female Founders Fund, Greycroft Partners and Lakehouse Ventures

• Purchased for $310M by Edgewell, personal care brand behind Schick, Skintimate and Carefree

• Been covered in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Glamour, Women’s Wear Daily, Entrepreneur, and others

Let’s get into it! ✌️

Amanda

How Billie is Reclaiming the Pink Tax on Razors

Anyone who’s ever purchased a women’s razor knows there’s a pink tax: the insane markup on (often pink) women’s razors. They’re no different, but they’re more expensive. Women are essentially an afterthought in the category.

Billie is a female founded razor company with a fresh perspective in a male-dominated category. Who are Billie's competitors? Companies like Schick, who in a plot twist, are owned by Edgewell, who acquired Billie in 2021.

Business strategy

Billie solve a simple business problem. They've delivered superior product at a price point that eliminates the pink tax on women’s razors. What they've done with their brand is perhaps even more impressive.

Brand strategy

Billie's brand solves a social problem: shaming women for body hair. Their brand strategy is aimed at women fed up with the way they see themselves represented in media.

Billie’s proposition is simple: a razor for all womankind.

The role for Billie’s brand? Change the narrative around shaving. Billie are an alternative to traditional razors that accurately reflects women, minus the inflated price.

Billie’s brand strategy revolves around a few themes:

1️⃣ Changing the shaving narrative. Since day one, Billie have set out to change the narrative around shaving: that it’s a choice, not a requirement. From day one Billie have invested in attention-grabbing films and campaigns that challenge the "hairless=beautiful" convention to earn an outsized share of attention.

2️⃣ Product innovation. Think of the number of ‘new and improved’ razors you’ve been advertised in your lifetime .Has there been any innovation in the razor category? Not that I can think of. Billie offer a (more easily) removable blade, a magnetic shower holder, and a full line of body care products. Billie have also invested in their customer experience: their unboxing experience feels on par with an Apple product. A razorblade subscription and responsive, helpful customer service top off the experience.

3️⃣ No pink tax. This was one of Billie’s foundational pillars: refusing to charge more for a product that is fundamentally the same as a men’s razor. I’m curious to see how it holds up now that the brand is owned by Edgewell. If I were managing the brand I’d set a pricing formula as a core metric to track against competitors to stay true to the brand strategy.

Brand marketing moves 💃

• Project Body Hair. Billie’s first campaign in 2018, an ode to hair and a call to arms to do exactly what you want to do with it, shows models with and without body hair. The ad received floods of support on social media and the brand completely sold out of razors in the week following the video.

• Red, White and You Do You. Billie’s 2019 4th of July campaign was a rebuke of mass media telling women to get ‘summer ready’. The campaign featured women with realistic bodies sporting pubic and underarm hair.

• Movember. In 2019, Billie launched a Movember campaign. The ad featuring women with moustaches stood out against the historically male-dominated moustache growing challenge. The brand also matched donations up to $50,000.

• Think of a Woman. In 2022, Billie’s International Women’s Day campaign challenged the idea of the perfect woman. The ad attracted support, trolls, and everything in between. It's one of my favorite brand films.

• No Worries If Not. Billie partnered with hotter-than-hot design studio Little Troop to launch a game called ‘No Worries If Not’ with an infomercial-esque ad, challenging women to “play the game you never wanted to,” calling out the “real-life setbacks and pitfalls of daily life, it’s a game about ‘The Game’ women hate playing: people-pleasing, overthinking, multitasking, over-apologizing, etc.”

• Ten Things I Hate About You. A pitch-perfect 90s nostalgia play if I ever saw one, Billie partnered with Jameela Jamil, British actress and activist to reprise a scene from 10 Things I Hate About You to lambast the way brands talk about women’s bodies.

What can we learn from Billie?

• Timing is everything. Billie is a brand that masters the art of the well-timed launch. It’s ‘Think of a Woman’ brand film was launched to celebrate International Women’s Day. Red, White, and You Do You were launched on the 4th of July, and its ad, Movember featuring women and femmes with facial hair, was released during November: a month when mass media is dominated by men in moustaches.

• Picking the right fight can win you some friends. Billie have very cleverly made a beauty convention - that women should remove their body hair - its enemy. As a razor brand, that’s a fine line to walk. Brands with a point of view are rare because they require significant commitment to pull off authentically. Billie have done it authentically enough to win friends and fans, including Jameela Jamil, an activist and advocate for disability rights, LGBTQ rights, body neutrality and social justice.

• Brand > product. By building a strong brand over the last 8 years, Billie took the long view: notably, they’ve been rewarded with growth, an acquisition which has given them the distribution to grow even faster, and a platform from which to launch other products. They couldn’t have done this the other way around. Smart.

That’s all this week. ✌️

Amanda

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