Cornerstone: The shaving subscription service aiming to 'destroy the men's aisle at Boots'

Cornerstone is bringing the men’s shaving market into the 21st century by providing high-quality products on a flexible subscription

Entrepreneur Oliver Bridge had his eureka moment in the unlikeliest of places: the men’s toiletries aisle at Boots. Since then the 28-year old entrepreneur has made it his mission to totally destroy the entire section and its paralysing variety of balms, gels, sprays, creams, spritzes, powders and clays.

Not literally. He’s not a maniac. Bridge is the brains behind Cornerstone, a subscription shaving service for men that provides high-quality razors and skincare products. The aim is to make buying toiletries a whole lot more simple.

Bridge himself had suffered with sensitive skin and razor burn and just wanted a product that worked without the hassle.

After that frustrating moment at Boots some time in 2014, Bridge looked online and saw an American company, Dollar Shave Club, was providing regular deliveries for its customers and doing rather well. He realised that a brave new world of men’s toiletries was indeed possible here in the UK.

Cornerstone’s 130,000 customers receive a free razor when they sign up. They can enter details on the company’s website about what they want and how often. Blades are £2.30, skincare products are £5 each.

(Cornerstone)

Everything comes in a classy package delivered to your door. There are no 12-blade razors with nonsensical pseudo-scientific names and no ridiculous photos of square-jawed models doing adventure sports or hurling themselves into fighter planes after the perfect shave.

In an age where everything from music to vegetables is now available on subscription, Bridge is keenly aware of the business model’s potential pitfalls.

Anyone who has signed up for a weekly veg box may well have found themselves opening their fridge on a Sunday to find that, what on Monday was a verdant array of promising organic goodness, has turned into an unused and overpriced pile of wilting leaves swimming in a pungent brown sludge.

Cornerstone is different, Bridge says. “The great thing about this is it’s non-perishable,” he beams. I have visions of boxes of toiletries being stacked like Lynx gift sets and cheap cologne at the bottom of the wardrobe after Christmas.

But Bridge has thought of this too. First of all, the focus is on quality. Secondly, Cornerstone notifies customers before a delivery is due and tells them what’s going to turn up. The package is customisable so there are no surprises. If customers want to change their order or move the delivery back, that’s no problem. The average customer gets a delivery every three months and can cancel immediately.

“It’s not like some gym memberships or book clubs that are next to impossible to cancel - you have to phone up an 0870 number on the third Tuesday of the month or whatever. With us you can cancel immediately. There’s just a big red button on the website,” Bridge says.

“If I try to catch you out all that’s going to happen is you get annoyed. What’s the point? Our aim isn’t just to stay under the radar and hope you don’t notice, like some subscription businesses do.”

This refreshingly honest approach to customer service has paid off – much of Cornerstone’s rapid growth has been through word of mouth.

But it hasn’t all been plain sailing. In fact, Cornerstone nearly didn’t get off the ground at all. When Bridge launched the business he contacted about 50 suppliers to make the blades. The minimum order he was being offered was about £100,000 – well beyond his budget.

“We thought it was game over. Then I found this supplier in Germany and said , ‘what if i turn up with €5,000 in cash tomorrow?’ The guy thought we were mad, but I said I’d be there by 2pm the next day. He agreed, we jumped in my uncle’s car, stopped off at the FX bureau on the way and brought the stuff back.”

He began selling the products online, packaging them up on his mum’s kitchen table. From that launch in July 2014 the company hit 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year, 20,000 by the end of the next and now boasts 130,000. Another funding round is about to be wrapped up and the company has set its sights on the 250,000 milestone.

And what about that long-term aim of destroying the men’s aisle at Boots? Well it could happen sooner than you might think. Within six months Cornerstone plans to expand its range to everything you need for the bathroom – from shower gel to toothpaste, to deodorant. But hopefully they’ll just make one type of each.