2. Why do you think Gillette was so slow in introducing coated stainless steel blades, even though the company was familiar with the technology? What are the implications for firms faced with making long-term investments in manufacturing and supply chain resources? BOSTON, 1992—Several mornings a week, Alfred M. Zeien performs an odd ritual. After lathering his face, he shaves with two razors—one for each side of his face. Then he runs his fingers over his cheeks to check the closeness of the shave.

“That’s the only way to really compare shaves,” declares Mr.

Zeien, chairman and chief executive officer of Gillette Co., who tests both his company’s razors and competitors’.

Gillette is a company obsessed with shaving. “We spend more time than you can imagine studying facial hair growth—which is quite different from the growth of other hair on your head—because that’s the way to improve your product,” explains the very clean-shaven Mr. Zeien, who keeps a drawer full of experimental Gillette blades in his office for trying out.

In the annals of American business, few companies have dominated an industry so much and for so long as this one.

Gillette so dominates shaving worldwide that its name has come to mean a razor blade in some countries. It is the leader in Europe with a 70% market share and in Latin America with 80%. Indeed, for every blade it sells at home, it sells five abroad, a figure likely to grow as joint ventures expand sales in China, Russia, and India. Retaining its dominance in razors also has meant spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop the innovative twin-blade Trac II razor in 1972, the pivoting-head Atra in 1977, and the hugely successful Sensor, with independently suspended blades, in 1989. It also meant rushing out—albeit reluctantly—a disposable razor in 1976 to fend off French rival Societe Bic SA, even though the cheap throwaways cut into sales of higherprofit Gillette products