Will King
Most challenger brands stall somewhere between a clever first product and the hard work of national distribution, repeat purchase, and defending shelf space against incumbents with vastly larger marketing budgets. The question is rarely the idea. It is whether a small team can sequence product, channel, cash, and brand with enough discipline to keep moving when the well-funded competitor finally notices.
Will King founded King of Shaves in his kitchen in 1993 and built it into a UK male grooming brand stocked by Boots, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, taking shelf space directly from Gillette and Wilkinson Sword.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Will King
- He has the rare full-cycle operator story: a 22-year run as founder-CEO, not a single product win or an exit anecdote
- He took a category-challenger brand from one person hand-filling bottles to national listings in Boots, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons and Waitrose, against Gillette and Wilkinson Sword
- He bought shave.com in 1995 for GBP 18 and used it as a working DTC channel long before that was a category, which gives him real authority on how brands earn direct customer relationships
- Hyperglide gave him a credible hardware-innovation story: a patented water-activated cartridge built on superhydrophilic technology licensed in from a UK university medical-device project
- His book, The King of Shaves Story (Hachette, 2009), reframes the conventional start-up narrative around tough-times trading rather than vanity growth, which is the conversation most boards actually want
Biography highlights
- Founder of King of Shaves (1993), built from a kitchen-sink operation to national UK grocery and pharmacy distribution
- Author, The King of Shaves Story, also published as How to Build a Great Business in Tough Times (Hachette / Headline)
- Inducted into the Great British Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame in 2019
- Founder of the Entrepreneur in Residence Company, advising early-stage technology and retail founders since 2014
- Speaker for Founders4Schools and the Speakers for Schools programme
- Bought shave.com in 1995, an early UK direct-to-consumer move; led the Hyperglide razor launch (2014) with multiple granted and pending patents
Biography
King of Shaves began at a kitchen sink in 1993, with 10,000 bottles of shaving oil filled by hand and a first listing at Harrods. Will King had just been made redundant from a marketing job. Two years later he bought the shave.com domain for GBP 18, well before direct-to-consumer was a category most brands took seriously.
The business he built over the next two decades is the part senior buyers want to hear. King of Shaves moved from independent retailers into Boots, then Tesco, then the rest of the UK multiples, taking shelf space in a category dominated by Gillette and Wilkinson Sword. By the mid-2000s the parent company was producing grooming ranges for Ted Baker, Orla Kiely and Fish, and the brand was running a real digital channel alongside national distribution.
The 2014 Hyperglide launch is the part that separates him from most founder speakers. The product used superhydrophilic technology originally developed by a UK university for medical devices, packaged into a razor cartridge that lubricates on contact with water. Multiple patents granted and pending, around GBP 5m to 7m of investment, four years of R and D. He stepped down as CEO the same year to set up the Entrepreneur in Residence Company, advising early-stage technology and retail founders.
His book, The King of Shaves Story, published by Hachette in 2009, was rewritten that year for the recession audience as How to Build a Great Business in Tough Times. He was inducted into the Great British Entrepreneurs Hall of Fame in 2019 and is a long-standing speaker for Founders4Schools and Robert Peston’s Speakers for Schools.
Key speaking topics
- Challenger brand building against category incumbents
- Direct-to-consumer and digital channel pioneering
- Product innovation and hardware patents in consumer goods
- Trading through recession and capital constraint
- Founder-led marketing and brand discipline
- Scale-up sequencing: product, distribution, cash, brand
- The transition from operator to investor and adviser
Ideal for
- Founders, scale-up CEOs and management teams of consumer challenger brands
- Marketing directors and CMOs in FMCG, beauty, retail and DTC
- Corporate innovation and venturing teams looking at category-disruption case studies
- Conferences for SME owners, family business leaders and entrepreneurial communities
Audience outcomes
- A clear-eyed account of what moving from independent stockists into national multiples actually demands of a small team
- Specific lessons on defending shelf space and brand identity against incumbents with materially larger budgets
- A working view of how a founder uses digital channels and direct customer relationships as a strategic asset, not a tactic
- A realistic picture of what hardware innovation costs in time, capital and patents in a consumer category
- Practical reasoning on when to step out of the operator seat and what changes when a founder becomes an adviser and investor