Dollar Shave Club Sells to Unilever for $1 Billion – The New York Times.

While Unilever has made billions of dollars dominating in-store shelf space with its various consumer packaged goods, the company faces a particular looming challenge from Amazon, the online retailer which has recently signaled its own move into commodity goods like diapers and staple items like groceries. Buying Dollar Shave Club gives Unilever a strong entrance into the direct-to-consumer online sales space.
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Now Dollar Shave Club’s competition stretches beyond Gillette and Schick. Among its main competitors on the start-up side is Harry’s, which focuses more on the design of its razors but has also branched out into other grooming products. Harry’s — co-founded by Jeff Raider, a co-founder of Warby Parker, and backed by investors like Tiger Global and Thrive Capital — also owns its manufacturing, having bought a German razor factory two years ago. Harry’s last fund-raising round gave it a valuation of roughly $700 million, excluding that latest investment. And then there is Bevel, a razor seller that aims at the African-American market, which has drawn backing from the likes of Andreessen Horowitz. Yet Dollar Shave Club is still on the fast track in terms of sales growth. In Tuesday’s deal announcement, Unilever said that the razor seller collected $152 million in sales last year, and was on pace to pull in more than $200 million in revenue this year.

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…aaaand that brings us to “maker subscription” companies and/or efforts. There are a few!

thimble.io “Make a New Device Every Month – Learn to code, build, and hack with monthly DIY electronics kits delivered to your door”
hackerboxes – “Explore Monthly Kits for Electronics and Computers”
Maker Box (Quarterly) – “Crazy fun hands-on projects and DIY kits for Makers of all ages!”
GoBox – “A robot kit with a new mission delivered to your door every month”.
Tinker Crate – A” LABORATORY FOR HANDS-ON EXPERIMENTS DELIVERED EVERY MONTH”.
Protocrate – “Experience new 3D printing materials”.
Creation Crate – “Tech Education In-A-Box, Delivered monthly”.
Maker Box Monthly – “For $35 a month, you will get a box full of modules, electronic components, development boards, and fun electronic projects for the electronic maker delivered to your door every month”.
Boldport – “As a member of the Boldport Club you’ll receive an electronic project every month. Our projects are designed to be engaging, challenging, entertaining, collectable, and to promote exploration and discovery through the use of electronics”.
And coming soon … ADABOX.

If we forgot one, email us: pt@adafruit.com !