Gillette — Wholesale Supply

The highest value per cubic metre we handle

A pallet of cartridge refills is small enough that two people can walk around it and valuable enough to matter on a balance sheet. That single fact drives most of what is unusual about trading this brand, and it is where an honest supplier starts rather than where a marketing page ends up. Blades are the most theft-exposed category in fast-moving consumer goods, at retail and everywhere behind it, and they are among the most counterfeited. Neither of those is a reason to avoid the line — the sell-through is excellent and the refill cycle is the best repeat business on a grooming shelf — but both change how a consignment has to be handled, insured and documented.

Gillette sits in our personal care range. What follows is about custody, classification and the composition of the order, in that order, because that is the sequence in which Gillette enquiries actually go wrong.

Custody, from our floor to your clearance agent

The controls we apply are procedural and checkable, which is the only kind worth describing. Stock is bought inside legitimate European supply channels and held in untouched factory packaging, unopened and never relabelled by us. Refill cases are picked, built and wrapped under supervision rather than left standing on an open floor. Containers are sealed at the point of loading and the seal number goes onto the transport document, so any interference between Madrid and discharge is visible before the doors are opened rather than argued about afterwards. Batch references travel on the paperwork, which means the goods can be tied back to the consignment we invoiced.

Where your own compliance process calls for verification steps at your end, carry them out. Take note of any supplier who would rather you did not. If a consignment ever does arrive short or damaged, the sequence and the evidence we will ask for are set out on our returns and claims page, and following it from the first hour is the difference between a settled claim and a long conversation.

What a goods-in team should be checking

1. Retail packaging sealed, with no sign of having been opened, re-wrapped or re-taped.
2. Printed batch and production coding present and legible, and consistent with the references on your documents.
3. Barcoding identical across every unit in a case, and consistent with the case itself.
4. Print quality, colour and finish uniform across the whole consignment; variation between otherwise identical packs is the oldest warning sign in this category.
5. Container seal intact and matching the number on the transport document.

Agree that list at quotation rather than at delivery, and confirm with us in writing which market version, pack language set and batch position you are being offered, so that what your warehouse inspects is what you actually bought.

Aerosols change the booking

The shave preparation lines are not a minor extension of the order. Pressurised aerosol foams and gels are carried as dangerous goods by sea, which means they are declared as such, they are packed and stowed to those rules, and the booking is not the same booking as a container of blades. Non-pressurised gels and post-shave products do not carry that treatment. The practical consequences are worth knowing before you build a mixed grooming order: the declaration takes longer to prepare, some services and some destinations restrict what can travel, and a late-added pallet of aerosol foam can change a sailing rather than simply adding a line to the invoice.

Tell us at enquiry whether shave preparation is in scope. If it is, we will say which formats are pressurised and how that affects the routing and the paperwork before the pro-forma is drawn, not after the booking is placed.

Handles, refills and disposables earn money differently

The assortment decision on this brand is not which sub-lines to list. It is how to weight three groups that make money in unrelated ways.

Handles supplied with a starter cartridge are an acquisition cost dressed as a product: they sell once per household, they carry the thinnest margin, and their job is to install a razor system in a kitchen cabinet. Cartridge refills are where the category actually earns, and they are the highest-value cases in the range. Disposables answer to a different shopper altogether — value buyers and travellers — and in a good many import markets they are the largest unit volume of the three while converting almost nobody upward.

The rule that follows is short. An order weighted to handles builds an installed base and very little margin. An order weighted to refills earns well only where the handles are already in the market. Say which of those two positions describes your market and the mix in our offer will move to match it. Women's ranges are a third shelf with a third buyer and rarely belong in the same facings as the men's; the beard and trimming lines are a fourth.

Market variants and what is genuinely open

Pack language, count conventions and which sub-lines are current all follow the market a batch was produced for. The three-blade systems and multi-count disposables carry the weight of demand in most import channels; the five-blade premium systems index higher in European retail and Gulf modern trade. What is actually available is set by the allocation in front of us in any given week, so we quote against real stock for your shipping window rather than against a range list, and we would rather report that an article is closed than offer something adjacent to it.

Grooming rarely fills a container on its own. Buyers listing a full hygiene fixture usually price the Colgate oral care range at the same time, and the term the whole load moves on is worth settling early rather than late — our page on Incoterms and payment terms sets out what each term moves onto whom, including why EXW here means our Madrid premises and not a quay in Valencia.