Full Service

Topics: Consumer Goods, E-commerce, Retail, Subscription, Digital Marketing

Full Service was a ground-up reinvention of the Dollar Shave Club model, moving the company beyond its original razor-only subscription to own the whole bathroom. Facing rising acquisition costs as Gillette and Harrys entered the market, the team rebuilt the entire commerce platform from the backend up: a new React storefront, a new plan and cart service, a new pricing and promotion engine (the tiered Handsome Discount), and a new billing and fulfillment stack. Members could subscribe across grooming categories on a schedule that worked for them, and were rewarded for adopting more of the catalog. The result was a flexible, multi-category replenishment business that meaningfully lifted order value and lifetime value per member.

Challenge

DSC Classic launched in 2012 as a discounted, single-razor DTC subscription and grew rapidly with little friction. As Gillette responded with Gillette On Demand and Harrys entered Target, acquisition costs climbed to the point where the Classic unit economics were no longer sustainable. A small executive group (CEO, VP Product, VP Acquisition, VP Ops, VP Strategy) aligned on staying direct-to-consumer but expanding through cross-category adoption, owning the bathroom rather than just the razor. This became DSC Full Service.

Impact

Roughly 60 people (8 PMs, 50+ engineers) worked about 2 years on the rewrite. Millions of members were migrated across 4 markets in a phased rollout. Members who engaged with Full Service saw approximately 150% higher average order value and 40% higher lifetime value, with multi-category members outperforming on both retention and revenue.