Six years ago, the upstart razor company Harry’s looked set for the next growth stage: being sold to Edgewell, the parent company of the Schick and Wilkinson Sword brands, for $1.37 billion.
That deal was eventually blocked on antitrust grounds, leaving the company’s fate unclear. Now Harry’s is laying out new plans for the future.
The company plans to announce on Wednesday that it is rebranding as Mammoth Brands, a personal grooming conglomerate, as it sets its sights on deal-making — and, potentially, an initial public offering.
What began as a single line, men’s razors, is now a collection of shaving and moisturizing products, deodorants, and more. The company’s founders, Andy Katz-Mayfield and Jeff Raider, claim to have created one of the fastest-growing businesses in their category. It reported $835 million in revenue and nearly $100 million in pretax earnings last year, and sales growth of more than 20 percent over the past five years.
To Mr. Katz-Mayfield, the idea was to reimagine how to build a modern-day consumer packaged goods giant. “Humbly, we think it would look a lot like what we’re doing at Mammoth Brands now,” he said.
To be sure, Mammoth (named after Harry’s woolly mammoth mascot) remains a minnow compared with its more established rivals. Procter & Gamble, the owner of Gillette, reported $84 billion in sales last year. Edgewell, its former suitor, recorded $2.2 billion in revenue.
But Mr. Raider and Mr. Katz-Mayfield, who founded Mammoth in 2013, say they have already made great strides. Harry’s has become the second-biggest brand in the $2.8 billion U.S. men’s shaving market, according to Euromonitor, behind Gillette but ahead of both Edgewell’s brands and Dollar Shave Club, the once-booming start-up. Harry’s sister brand, Flamingo, is the fourth largest in the women’s razors and blades segment, according to Euromonitor.
That success, Mr. Katz-Mayfield and Mr. Raider said, arose out of both an ability to sell products directly to consumers via the internet and striking partnerships with major retailers such as Target and Walmart.
The so-called omnichannel approach had its benefits: Selling online allowed the company to scale quickly and figure out what features customers wanted. Selling in physical stores gave consumers another convenient way to buy.
The two founders realized that it was a model they could apply again and again. “All we want to do is continue to build or buy more brands,” Mr. Raider said.
(Not all direct-to-consumer darlings have fared as well. Unilever, which bought Dollar Shave Club for about $1 billion in 2016, sold a majority stake in the business seven years later. Walmart sold Bonobos, the clothing brand, in 2023 for a fraction of the $310 million it paid.)
After the Edgewell agreement collapsed, the company entered a new product category in 2021 by buying a whole-body female deodorant maker, Lume. The Harry’s team furnished Lume with both lessons it had learned and resources and staff to expand, while giving the deodorant start-up freedom to make its own decisions, Mr. Raider said.
Mr. Raider and Mr. Katz-Mayfield later created Mando, a line of male deodorant products, to complement Lume. The approach has worked, Mr. Raider said: Mammoth’s four brands each generate more than $100 million in sales, with Lume topping $300 million.
Now Mammoth is looking to replicate the Lume playbook by buying other consumer products start-ups that could become $300 million brands in their own right.
“We love the idea of having an ecosystem where a bunch of founders are running around building brands,” Mr. Raider said.
Deals are part of Mammoth’s history: Less than a year into the company’s creation, it bought a German razor-blade factory for more than $100 million, making the business a notable shaving products manufacturer.
But for several years now, the future of Mammoth revolved around its next big deal. In 2019, that looked like a sale to Edgewell, which would have put Mr. Raider and Mr. Katz-Mayfield in charge of the conglomerate’s U.S. operations.
That plan was eventually blocked by antitrust officials, who believed it would unfairly consolidate the razor market.
Mammoth has already filed confidentially to go public, according to people briefed on the matter. Mr. Katz-Mayfield acknowledged that an initial public offering was a possibility.
“I think someday that’s the most likely outcome,” he said. “But we’re not in a rush.” He added that the company was profitable and could finance its growth. (Its last fund-raising round, which was held in 2021 and valued Mammoth Brands at $1.7 billion, was meant to help finance the Lume acquisition.)
Going public in the near term appears unlikely, given how volatile the stock markets have been in the wake of President Trump’s raft of new tariffs. Others seeking potential listings, including the consumer lender Klarna, have postponed their plans.
Mr. Katz-Mayfield added that although Mammoth Brands, like many other consumer products companies, was dependent on an international supply chain — including its German factory — he did not expect a major hit to its business from the trade tensions.
“We sell staples,” he said. “The good news is that people tend to buy that stuff in good days and bad.”