With full transparency, we have struggled to get the retailers to engage with the refill concept we introduced and consequently they were only stocking the bottle; they just wouldn't commit the shelf space for the two items, which is very cut-throat when competing with the multi-nationals in our UK market space.
As you can imagine, this has been very disappointing for us here at King of Shaves, particularly as retailers are very keen to promote their 'green credentials' to the press regularly and they backed our sustainable efforts when we first presented them.
Very sadly, and not by our choice, retailers are all delisting the shaving refill sachets when stock sells through as we have also discovered customers simply aren't buying in anything like the quantities they used to buy the tube / bottle and this is ultimately still a number game for the High Street.
Our sales have dropped dramatically and such a significant fall isn't sustainable for us either. Even store figures that stocked both items for a good 12 months show a huge drop in sales. It appears convenience is far more important for the majority :-(
The refill sachet stock that we had available online has now sold out, and has now been discontinued. We will be keeping the aluminium bottles as a compromise in order to try and resurrect our sales, bring confidence back to the retailers and in all honesty keep us in business.
We fully appreciate that this will cause frustration for those customers that share our disappointment and passion for sustainability, but we hope this goes some way to explaining our reasoning and the challenges we face as a small, independent British business.