The razors-as-a-service model was the big win here. Microsoft moved office to subscriptions. Apple now sells iPhone via a hardware subscription. Amazon has product subscriptions and on-demand buttons you stick on your washing machine that you can press once for a refill.
Gillette doesn't do direct sales so it misses out on subs. It must rely on retailers to execute subs. If Gillette did subs for $10 they could greatly impact their "base" dynamics, essentially: low churn, consumer inertia, recurring and predictable revenues, direct channel to consumer for marketing and cross/up sells, streamlined billing, etc.
"Club" has been used to describe subscription products for as long as I can remember. Columbia House/BMG's mail order CD business were called record clubs, for example. There was (is?) also the Book of the Month Club and plenty of other "X of the month" clubs that probably existed way before the world wide web.
Perhaps "joining a club" sounds more positive/marketable than "subscribing to a mail order service."
Maybe something changed, but DSC was not yet profitable, so concluding that their service is a big win is premature. DSC was still burning cash which is important to consider in determining if they were sustainable.
The sale is a win for investors if they ended up with a good ROI. The article says the DSC brand cost $57m, but I've frequently seen numbers closer to $200m.
DSC alone may not have lasted, but if it has access to Unilever's product lines and resources, it can move beyond razors.
Gillette doesn't do direct sales so it misses out on subs. It must rely on retailers to execute subs. If Gillette did subs for $10 they could greatly impact their "base" dynamics, essentially: low churn, consumer inertia, recurring and predictable revenues, direct channel to consumer for marketing and cross/up sells, streamlined billing, etc.