This Brand-Building Genius Sold Her Razor Brand, Billie, for $310 Million

Here’s a weird thought: Before 2016, razor brands didn’t really show women with body hair. And they definitely didn’t suggest body hair was normal. Then along came advertising queen Georgina Gooley, who saw a huge opportunity being missed in the women’s razor market. She quit her career in advertising to fill that gap with Billie, and four years later the company sold for $310 million. Wild!

Do you know the razor brand Harry’s? They’re a huge company now that started selling razors directly to men online back when no one was doing that. Georgie and her cofounder wanted to do something similar, but with a brand built for and by women. At first it was hard to raise money—the male investors didn’t see much of an opportunity (lol)—so they applied to an accelerator in New York. This program got them $100,000! It was enough to get started and show the investors what they were missing.

Even though it was hard to get investment at the beginning, once Georgie raised her first $1.5 million and could show the business was growing fast, she continued to get support from investors. Over the next four years, Billie raised over $35 million!

“Showing progress was the best way to fundraise. Keeping in touch [with investors] saying, ’remember how we said we were going to do this? Now we've done that and we're just keeping you up to date.’ Rather than create this big process, it was deliver what you said you were going to deliver.”

By their third day after launch, Billie had sold razors to customers in all 50 states in the US. Georgie credits press coverage for the brand’s early growth. Once Billie had got some organic traction, they started investing into paid social ads to acquire customers.

We’ve all probably heard of product market fit (when customers actually want to buy the product you make), but Georgie says brand market fit is just as important. This means making sure your brand is clear and resonates with your customers.

“A brand to me isn't just your logo, and how you look, it's really, it's like a person. How you think, how you behave, and how you feel, all of those things need to be defined.”

Six months after launching, Georgie dropped a campaign that put Billie on the map: Project Body Hair. It was a risk and made Billie the first brand in the women’s shaving category to actually show body hair. Having that clear stake in the ground and point of view as a brand helped them to stand out, have virality, and get a lot of traction.

Georgie says the campaign was a risk—there were a lot of people that would leave comments saying “this is disgusting”. The Billie team knew, though, that this campaign might not land with everyone, but it was core to their DNA as a brand.

“When you try and appease everyone and you become this really beige, vanilla brand. You don't stand for anything, and then you're sort of forgetful.”

When Billie started back in 2017, Georgie launched just with the online store, but she says if she were to launch Billie in 2023 she would immediately also launch into retailers, because the landscape has changed.

It wasn’t until 2022 that Billie landed in its first retailer—Walmart. Georgie and the team worked with a broker to get into the retailer nationwide.

In 2020, P&G tried to buy Billie! Georgie signed the deal, but it took a whole year for the Federal Trade Commission to review the sale and eventually they blocked it, saying P&G acquiring Billie would be anticompetitive in the industry. Georgie was pretty surprised, but ended up selling to another industry leader instead, for $310 million! The new partner helped Billie launch into Target and CVS super quickly and launch new products. Even after the sale, Georgie stayed on at Billie!