Shaving.ie – Irish website getting it right

Alarmingly there are few online Irish stores I would purchase from, this comes from being burned too often with high prices & slow delivery – but one website has restored some faith to Irish e-tailers, step forward Chris O’Grady & Shaving.ie

The age old art of shaving is alive and well, despite the strength of multi blade razors from Gillette & co I’m a recent convert to traditional wet shaving using a safety razor. I found myself becoming more and more disgruntled while shaving, either through razor burn or just general dissatisfaction in the quality of the shave itself. My interest was peaked over on the boards.ie facial hair & hats forum and after much reading, and re-reading I decided to try a new setup with a safety razor.

Buying the kit

Purchasing shaving gear as a first timer requires considerable investment, as starter kits will typically cost around €50 and can easily go much higher! Having decided on the type of razor, blades and some shaving soap – I was looking for, basing advice from posters on boards.ie but also other shaving communities like Badger & Blade

I first spotted shaving.ie from the boards.ie forum with a separate thread with some enthusiastic feedback, but I held of making any purchase until after Christmas. Luckily for me I received a nice starter kit as a present, but I was on the lookout for some accessories like balms and soap – so I took the plunge and went with the below ( again another present but I shared my wishlist from shaving.ie)

What are shaving.ie doing right?

Delivery was prompt and I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the products. Crucially shaving.ie do 3 things which many Irish e-tailers ignore

1. Price is competitive to UK & Euro websites
2. Delivery is quick
3. Customer service is top notch

One of the major put off’s buying online from Irish web stores is that the price is usually significantly more expensive than buying from UK – although that is an issue not limited to web stores as it happens offline too. This is one of the key areas where shaving.ie success, wet shaving is a relatively niche market and it’s difficult to find high quality products in actual shops so purchasing online is an absolute necessity.

Opportunities?

While I wouldn’t expect a newly niche website to come out the blocks with the full marketing playbook – it is commendable that Chris is concentrating on ensuring his business is performing before focusing on gaining exposure. There are a couple of quick wins here, Chris is already using feedback over on boards.ie, and has just started to tip toe into social media with a twitter account @shaving_ie but here are a few things I think would really work:

• Introduce video content
  The website right now is heavily geared to those who are shaving aficionados – the fact is that the majority of men use disposable multi blade razors. If Chris could put together some video content on the benefits of traditional shaving as well as techniques, the website positioning changes from somewhere that you can buy shaing gear to somewhere authoritative on shaving. A quick look on youtube shows most wet shaving video’s to have at least 100,000 views

• Adding a blog
  There’s already a news feature, but that’s a one way system – implementing a shaving blog would allow a better flow between the business and customers. It would also make it easier to add rich content which would be shareable
• Driving sales through newsletter
  Simple to implement, but adding a calendar of communications to customers can really drive sales. It doesn’t have to be every week, but at least twice a month with an incentive to buy

I’m not sure what constraints Chris is under, but I’d imagine he probably doesn’t have the time, resource or money to implement all my suggestions – but hopefully some of them happen in the future – I’m sure it would have a massive impact on the community and ultimately…sales.

So if you’re fed up with poor quality shaves and fancy a proper shaving setup – check out shaving.ie!