Dollar Shave Club Carves Off Another $9.8M to Take Business International

The Dollar Shave Club aims to disrupt the Gillettes and Bics of the world by offering razors sent to your door for as low as $1 a month plus shipping.

The razor-blade model has come to mean something in business: Selling something at a loss in order to lock in future sales at a markup.

But that approach doesn’t apply to this Venice, Calif.-based company, which is keeping things simple by creating an online membership service that sells basic razors without any superfluous features. Today, the company has raised $9.8 million in more capital to take the service international, starting with Canada next week.

Since coming out of beta in March, the company has gained a lot of attention for its funny commercials, which feature CEO Michael Dubin hawking the service in the tone of the recently successful Old Spice ads.

It also turns heads with its impressive investor list. The company’s first round was led today by Venrock, but as part of its seed round announced earlier this year, it raised money from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Forerunner Ventures. Other contributors included Andreessen Horowitz, Shasta Ventures and Felicis Ventures. The company originally participated in Science, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based incubator founded by former Myspace CEO Mike Jones.

Dollar Shave Club’s service in Canada will offer the same goods as the American version — shavers with two, four or six blades — at a slightly higher price than it charges in the U.S.; the company plans to expand to other countries, as well. It declined to say how many members it had signed up so far.

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Another gadget you don’t really need. Will not work once you get it home. New model out in 4 weeks. Battery life is too short to be of any use.

— From the fact sheet for a fake product entitled Useless Plasticbox 1.2 (an actual empty plastic box) placed in L.A.-area Best Buy stores by an artist called Plastic Jesus