P&G Buys The Art of Shaving

Expands its presence in the men's grooming category.

P&G knows what men want. Or at least it's working hard and spending money to find out. On Monday, P&G acquired The Art of Shaving, a prestige men's grooming company. A price wasn't disclosed, but sources suggest P&G paid $60 million for the Miami-based company—about two times 2008 sales.

The acquisition bolsters P&G's already strong presence in the men's grooming category. After all, the company made a huge splash a few years ago with its $57 billion acquisition of Gillette.

But not everyone sees the move as a positive. Said Colin Hession, managing director of specialist personal care consultants, Colin Hession Consulting:

"(The move) sounds original enough, but will it really do the business upstream of Gillette in male grooming? After all, DDF hasn't set the world of upscale skin care on fire yet.Has P&G, unusually for them, maybe missed a trick in not acquiring Colomers' American Crew?Now there's a high end male brand which could do the business in prestige."

The P&G investment comes at a time when men's grooming sales are starting to show their age. According to Euromonitor International, U.S. sales ofmen’s grooming products rose just 1.6% last year to $4.74 billion.

With Gillette, P&G is the 800-pound gorilla in mass, but the acquisition gives the company a foothold in the prestige category, where The Art of Shaving operates 36 retail outlets and has 600 retail partners, including Saks Fifth Avenue, Sephora, Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. The brand competes against Molton Brown, Jack Black and Acqua di Parma.

This isn't the first meeting between the two companies. In 2007, The Art of Shaving worked out a deal with P&G to sell special chrome version of Fusion, Gillette's top-selling razor. Despite the $150 price point, Chrome Fusion became The Art of Shaving's bes-selling SKU.