If you ever had the pleasure of speaking with Michael Dubin, you'd be having a conversation with one of the world's most impressive entrepreneurs, the businessman behind a uniquely-marketed enterprise and the CEO who masterminded one of the most successful and entertaining online advertisements ever to grace the web.
You would also, however, be talking to a man who feared that all of his work might have been a disaster from the very start, after he nearly became a victim of his own success.
"When the first video launched, we garnered so much traffic our servers crashed," Dubin told Elite Daily in an email interview. "Having invested my life-savings into the business, I was really concerned that we were going to miss our chance. I must have called our hosting company and every single programmer I knew."
Michael Dubin is the co-founder of Dollar Shave Club, that company that helps people save the money they use as they go out to purchase razor blades each month by shipping them right to their doors for as low as $1 per month as opposed to the $20 - $40 they might spend in stores. Dubin also created the sensational YouTube ad that marked a sharp increase in popularity for the company and captivated over 10 million viewers with a highly entertaining video and a simple message: "our blades are f**cking great."
Though things may have looked bad for Dubin when the video caught the attention of so many (literally, too many) people -- with the site down after the ad launch, there was presumably no way for him to actually sell his products -- Dollar Shave Club's site eventually recovered and the company hasn't looked back since, drawing in 280,000 members on their way to accomplishing an ambitious and straightforward goal.
"Our aim is to own the bathroom," the 34-year-old CEO told us, "– we want to be the easiest place for guys to get everything they use everyday in there."
It's a project that Dubin very much believes in, so much so that he's gone to great lengths to make Dollar Shave Club a success, whether it was working in a warehouse himself to fulfill orders by hand or putting all that he had saved into launching the company's website.
Now, with his goal of being the provider of everything you use when you visit your sink, he's found a new product to capitalize on, one that has arrived complete with its own catchy ad that is as blunt as Dubin's last, "let's talk about #2."
It's a product that wants to ensure you leave the bathroom as clean, and as dry, as you entered it and, while it's based on an idea that may have a small touch of humor to it, it is more than legit from an economical standpoint.
"The launch of One Wipe Charlies was indeed a result of a need we saw in the market," Dubin said. "In a survey we did of 1,000 men, we found that 51% used wipes regularly and 16% used wipes instead of toilet paper. With the U.S. toilet paper market a hefty $9B, this was an enormous opportunity that we wanted to capture sooner rather than later."
The selling of flush-able wipes makes perfect business sense for his company, but that doesn't prevent Dubin from explaining the thinking behind his latest idea without applying common sense as well.
"Yes, I prefer wipes to ordinary toilet paper. If you have poop on your shoe, would you just use toilet paper to get rid of it?"
Touché.
While Dubin is proving himself to be an exceptional talent as an entrepreneur, the man has made his mark in other fields as well. He's worked for NBC straight of out college, studied improv and has helped companies, such as LG, Ford and Capital One drive views to their socially branded video, all of which helps explain his knack for writing and producing such great campaigns today.
And though he has intimated in other interviews that he is a writer at heart, he also admits that becoming a businessman was always inevitable.
"I’ve always wanted to start a business. After meeting my co-founder at a party in 2010 and finding out that other men had the same problems with buying razors as I did, I knew I had a good idea for a business."
That idea has now turned into an Internet sensation, hundreds of thousands of loyal members and a path to success that is sure to free many consumers from high costs along the way.
"Our customers feel like they’ve made a decision to liberate themselves from brand name slavery," Dubin told Forbes' J.J. Calao last year.
A journey that he describes as an "amazing ride," that makes Dubin not only a great businessman, but a financial emancipator as well.
