A prince among shavers
Will King, founder of hugely successful men’s grooming brand, King of Shaves, is proof that self-belief and persistence pay off
the smart money
A PRINCE AMONG SHAVERS
WHEN WILL KING FIRST CREATED HIS OWN BRAND OF SHAVING OIL, IT TOOK HIM TWO WEEKS TO FILL 10,000 BOTTLES BY HAND. TODAY, HIS COMPANY IS A MULTI-MILLION-POUND SUCCESS STORY
words: rachel bridge
WHEN WILL KING decided he wanted to call his shaving oil King of Shaves, he faced a problem. Using the term ‘King of’ was deemed to be a laudatory trademark implying that his product was the best, and so was not allowed. Undaunted, King simply hired a patent attorney and argued his case in the European Patent Court. He won.
King has never been one to give up easily. Brought up in Lowestoft, Suffolk, where both his parents were teachers, he learnt to sail while still at school and soon became passionate about it. By the age of 15 he had become the UK’s youngest sailing instructor.
He says: “I was quite introvert at the time and I wasn’t really that happy at school because my dad taught there and I took a bit of stick for being a teacher’s son. But then I found something that I was fabulously good at.”
His passion for boats led him to apply for a degree place at Southampton University studying ship science and yacht design. But he didn’t get the A-level grades he needed to get on the course and suddenly found himself adrift. He managed to get a place on a naval engineering course at a polytechnic but while he was away in New Zealand on a gap year, the course changed to mechanical engineering, which was something he had no real interest in.
“It was designing gas turbo engines,” King recalls. “My maths wasn’t that great so it was hard work.”
Things went from bad to worse. On hearing that Simon Le Bon, the lead singer with pop band Duran Duran, was hiring crew to sail his boat, Drum, King decided to get a place on board and run away to sea. But he got to the boat yard a day too late.
He says: “If I had gone on Thursday afternoon instead of staying for maths, my life would have been completely different. I was absolutely distraught.”
After a few days staying with friends on the Isle of Wight, he decided to ring his parents and ask their advice. They told him to go back and fi nish his degree, so he did. When he graduated in 1987, his parents told him it was time for him to get a job. King applied for a position selling advertising space for a magazine, which promised a big salary if he met sales targets. He threw himself into the challenge.
“I have always believed that persistence is a good value to have,” explains King, “so I started making 220 calls a day to have nine effective calls to close two or three deals. It was very eye-opening. I learnt a huge amount. If you didn’t put in the volume of the calls, you weren’t going to get the sales.”
King found he was good at selling and after three months he was offered a job with a conference company selling events. He set himself a target of doubling his salary, learning to drive and buying a fl at within his fi rst year. He achieved all three.
But then things started to go wrong. Recession hit and the company he worked for found itself in trouble. King had to make people redundant and not long after was made redundant himself.
He realised, however, that although people had stopped spending money on conferences and events, they were still buying small essential items such as batteries and razors. So he decided to fi nd a product he could sell himself.
He says: “I decided that however bad things are, people will always need a product of some sort. And I wanted to be master of my own destiny. It was just a matter of deciding which product.”
He found the answer lay right in front of him. King had always had trouble shaving because he had sensitive skin and the razor would leave his skin itchy and bleeding.
One day his girlfriend suggested that he put some bath oil on his skin before shaving to see if it made a difference. It did.
“It felt fantastic,” he says. “I didn’t get any razor burn. I thought, if this works for me, it will work for other people.”
Inspired by the discovery, King bought a selection of exotic and essential oils from an aromatherapy shop and mixed them together at home to create a shaving oil. Then he tracked down the supplier and bought large quantities of the oils, funding his venture by taking out a £10,000 loan and borrowing £30,000 from two friends in return for shares in the business.
“I filled 10,000 bottles by hand at home,” he explains. “It took me two weeks.” He initially thought about calling his shaving oil Sunrise, because the sunrise is visable fi rst in Lowestoft, where he lived, as it is the most easterly point of the UK. But one day he was playing cards with his father, who turned over the king of spades and suggested he called his oil King of Shaves.
King decided that if his oil was going to be a success, he was going to go right to the top and try Harrods. So using his cold-calling techniques he managed to talk to the owner, Mohammed Al Fayed, in person and persuade him to take his oil.
It was, however, hard work. By the end of the fi rst year King had made sales of just £300, and racked up losses of £30,000. When he needed £10,000 to pay for a publicity campaign, he was forced to sell 12.5 per cent of the company to a friend.
He also had to overcome much scepticism. He says: “We had this tiny little bottle of oil and nobody believed it would work. When I told people I was going to go up against Gillette and change the face of shaving, they would yawn and say, ‘how on earth are you going to do that?’”
Indeed, as people were so convinced he was heading for failure, King started up a sideline business selling surf clothing called Bodyglove, which had featured on the television show Baywatch. It was a bad idea.
“It was a nightmare,” he admits. “None of the surf shops paid their bills. After two years I closed it down. I realised I had nearly mucked up King of Shaves because I was juggling too many balls.”
Fortunately, in 1994 he persuaded Boots to stock King of Shaves, and by the end of his second year in business sales of the oil had risen to £58,000.
He says: “It sat on a Boots shelf with a sad little home-made label stuck on the front of the bottle. But it worked. I would get phone calls and letters from people saying how it had transformed their life.”
In 1995 he launched a second shaving oil and the following year he launched a range of men’s skin care products. By now he had run out of money so he managed to get a £100,000 loan and started invoice discounting to bring in more.
It was a turning point. King of Shaves products began to be stocked in major supermarkets and the company started making fragrances under licence for the clothing chain Ted Baker. A King of Blades razor is soon to be launched and King also has plans to expand into the US. The business, in which King has a 35 per cent stake, is expected to have sales of close to £15 million in 2006.
Now 41, King thinks the secret of his success has been to create a product which people actually need. He says: “You have to be able to demonstrate that there is a reason for it. Why isn’t there a fi ve-wheeled car? Because people don’t need it.”
It also comes down to a large dose of self-belief. He says: “You can do anything if you believe you can do it and you have the persistence to do it. People think that Gillette is unassailable, sitting at the top of the tree. But big companies were small companies once and people forget that.”
My Big Idea by Rachel Bridge, published by Kogan Page (£14.99)
