The Blades In This Pack Cost $0.90 To Make. You Just Paid $41.95.
A Brisbane dad tallied eleven years of receipts, found he'd burned $4,312 on replacement heads — then traced the cartridges back to the factory floor. The real cost is on the price tag to the right.
Show Me The $1 Blades →
Cost per blade — same 5-blade cartridge
Same 5-blade steel head, same coating, same fit. One of them spent $18.80 on packaging, shelf space and an ad break.
The chemist aisle moment that started this
It was a Thursday night at the chemist in Toowong, kids in the trolley, and I was standing in front of the little locked perspex cabinet. The one they keep razor blades in. Like they're jewellery. Like they're pseudoephedrine.
Four cartridges. $41.95. For four small pieces of stamped steel in a plastic clip.
I stood there long enough that my wife asked what was wrong. And the honest answer was: nothing was wrong that night. Something had been wrong for eleven years and I'd just never sat down and done the maths.
So that night, after the kids went down, I did. I pulled up eleven years of grocery and chemist receipts in my banking app and searched one word: blades.
Four thousand, three hundred and twelve dollars. On razor heads. That's a family holiday. That's half a second-hand car. That's a rainwater tank and a decent barbecue with money left over.
"Lasts a month." Mine lasted four shaves.
Here's the part that actually made me angry, and I reckon it'll make you angry too, because every bloke I've told this to has the same reaction.
The box said one cartridge lasts up to a month. Mine gave me four decent shaves before it started dragging, then two more shaves of tugging and nicking my neck because I'm stubborn and I wasn't going to throw away a $20 blade after four days.
That's not a defect. That's the business model. The blade isn't the product. The refill is. Companies practically give away the handle so they can sell you the cartridge for the rest of your life. It's got a name — the razor-and-blades model — and every one of us has been quietly enrolled in it since we were seventeen.
Do your own damage. Drag the sliders.
Be honest about how often you shave and what you actually pay. Most blokes flinch at the ten-year number.
So I went looking for the factory
Once you've seen the number, you can't un-see it. I wanted to know one thing: what does a razor cartridge actually cost to make?
It took months. Supplier directories, trade shows, a translator, a lot of emails that went nowhere. But blade steel is a small world — there are only a handful of plants on earth with the tooling to grind, coat and mount a five-blade cartridge to tolerance, and they don't only make blades for one brand.
I stood on the floor of one of them. Same grinding lines. Same Swedish steel coil feeding in. Same platinum-chromium coating drum, same laser-welded mount, same rubber guard bar. Cartridges coming off the line by the thousand, into unbranded trays.
The steel and the grinding is the cheap part. It has been for decades. Here's where your $19.80 actually goes.
One Cartridge · Itemised
Illustrative breakdown based on Easy Shave's own sourcing and retail pricing. Your local pricing may differ.
Ninety cents of blade. Nineteen dollars of everything that isn't blade.
So I did the obvious thing. I ordered the same cartridge, direct, in volume, with no clamshell, no security tag, no chemist, no cabinet, no ad campaign — and I put it in an envelope that fits through your letterbox.
That's Odie 5 Blade. It's $1 a blade. And it fits the handle already sitting in your shower.
7 things I learned that the blade aisle never tells you
Read these before you buy another four-pack.
Cartridge prices have outrun your pay rise for a decade
Nobody announces a razor price rise. They add a blade, add a "lubrastrip", add a vibrating handle nobody asked for, and the pack quietly goes from $28 to $41 while the pack count drops from five to four. It's the oldest trick in retail — and it works because you buy them one grumpy Thursday at a time, never as a yearly total.
Your "premium" cartridge and ours come off the same tooling
There is no secret blade. Five blades of Swedish steel, ground to the same angle, coated in the same platinum-chromium, laser-welded to the same cage, with the same lubricating strip and the same rubber guard bar. The only difference between the cabinet cartridge and ours is the eleven dollars of branding printed on the box you throw in the bin.
You're funding shelf space, ad breaks and a security tag
Every cartridge carries the cost of the chemist's floor, the locked cabinet, the plastic clamshell, the distributor, the sports sponsorship and the margin stacked on top of all of it. Cut the aisle out and the price collapses — not because the blade got worse, but because you stopped paying for everything wrapped around it.
"Up to a month" is a marketing sentence, not a spec
Read it again: up to. That's the same weasel wording as "up to 100Mbps". In real use — thick stubble, daily shave, blade left wet in the shower — you get four to six shaves before the edge rolls. So the pack that was supposed to last four months is gone in three weeks, and you're back at the cabinet feeling like a mug.
It clips onto the handle already in your shower
This is the bit blokes don't believe until it turns up. You don't buy a new system. You don't relearn how to shave. You pull the old cartridge off, push Odie 5 Blade on, and it locks with the same click. Same weight in the hand, same pivot, same angle on your jaw. The only thing that changes is what leaves your bank account.
They arrive before you notice you're running low
The worst shave of your life is the one on a dead blade because you forgot to buy new ones. Your refills turn up on the schedule you set — through the slot, no signature, no waiting home, no $41.95 Thursday. Push it back, bring it forward, skip a month, pause it entirely. Two clicks, no phone call, no "let me transfer you".
If it shaves worse, you pay nothing — and keep the blades
I'm not asking you to take my word on any of this. Shave with them for 60 days. If the shave isn't as close, as smooth and as comfortable as the cartridge you've been buying for twenty bucks, email us and we refund the lot. Don't post anything back. Keep them, bin them, give them to your brother-in-law. The risk is entirely mine, because I already know how this ends.
Side by side, no spin
Same blade in your hand. Very different year.
Three steps. Under a minute.
No new razor, no contract, no phone call to cancel.
Tell us your handle
Pick the razor you already own. We match Odie 5 Blade to the fitting so it clicks straight on — no adapters, no fuss.
Set your rhythm
Every month, every two, every three. Shave twice a week or twice a day — you choose how often the letterbox rattles.
Forget about it
Blades arrive before you run out. Skip, delay, pause or cancel in two clicks. Nobody will ring you to "understand your decision".
"Yeah, but…"
Every objection I've heard in three years, answered straight.
Blokes who were sure it wouldn't work
★★★★★ 4.8 average from 3,100+ verified shavers
"Ordered it to prove my wife wrong. Third month in and I've cancelled the chemist run entirely. Shave's identical — I genuinely can't pick a difference."
"Was paying $42 a pack and pretending that was normal. Worked out I'd spent more on blades last year than on my car rego. Never again."
"Clicked onto my old handle first go. Sensitive neck, no rash, no tugging. Set it to every 8 weeks and forgot it existed — which is the point."
A dad, a receipt, and eleven years of being had
I'm not a razor guy. I'm a dad in Brisbane who got sick of paying $41.95 for four bits of steel that promised a month and gave me four shaves. I found the factory, found the real cost, and couldn't look at that perspex cabinet the same way again. So I got the same blade made, put a dollar on it, and posted it to blokes like me. That's the whole company.
You'll spend it either way
The only question is whether it goes to a blade or to a shelf, a clamshell and an ad break. Start with a free trial pack — just cover postage.
- ✔ 5-blade Swedish steel cartridge, platinum-chromium coated
- ✔ Fits the handle already in your shower
- ✔ Free letterbox delivery, on your schedule
- ✔ Skip, pause or cancel in two clicks — no phone call
- ✔ 60-day money-back guarantee, keep the blades
Advertising disclosure: this page is an advertisement produced by Easy Shave. The founder's story is the personal account of Easy Shave's founder. Savings figures are illustrative and compare Easy Shave's per-blade price with typical Australian retail pricing for premium 5-blade cartridges; your own saving depends on how often you shave and what you currently pay. Cost breakdowns are Easy Shave's own estimates based on its sourcing.
Product photography: images on this page depict third-party cartridge razors of the type widely sold in Australian retail, shown for comparison and identification only. They are not photographs of Easy Shave products and do not imply any association with, or endorsement by, their manufacturer.
Trademarks: Easy Shave is an independent company. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or connected to any other razor manufacturer. All third-party brand names and trademarks referred to on this page remain the property of their respective owners and are used for comparison and identification purposes only.
