Pee Safe enters Gillette Venus and Veet space with sub-brand Furr

Leading Gurugram-based personal hygiene brand Pee Safe has now forayed into the female grooming segment, with razors and a hair removal cream. First came the toilet seat sanitiser spray, then Domina (a female condom brand), and now, it’s Furr.

Vikas Bagaria, Pee Safe’s founder, seems to be on a mission to normalise, and initiate, conversations in the personal care and sexual hygiene space. Furr is a female grooming brand that will initially offer razors and a hair removal cream, but with a catch. Rather than romanticising smooth and hairless skin, Furr’s proposition is to leave the choice up to the customers. As its tagline goes, ‘Let your Furr go or grow!’

Furr’s hair removal range includes a face razor (Rs 599), a trimming razor (Rs 149), a body shaving razor (Rs 279), and a hair removal cream (Rs 249). In the next 3-4 months, the brand plans to launch multiple products.

The brand’s advertising is ‘woke’, with no celebrities involved.

Says Bagaria, “We are a team of 200, and almost 50 per cent of our team includes women. We did an internal research and found that everyone was quite positive. Their response was like, ‘We can go out with our partner with non-shaved armpits, arms and legs, and that’s absolutely okay with us. That’s how it should be’.”

The brand’s razors are chromium and PTFE-coated, with an anti-slip grip. The blades have been developed by Japanese brand Kai and the body’s made in Vietnam. They are not that much different from what established players like Gillette (Venus), or upcoming brands like Bombay Shaving Company and Sanfe offer.

Pee Safe is an omnichannel brand, with presence in 90 cities and 6,000-plus stores across India. The brand is also present in 10 countries. Before the COVID pandemic struck, the online, offline sales ratio was 50:50. Today, it sells 60 per cent online (40 per cent via the Pee Safe website and 60 per cent via e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Nykaa, etc.), and the rest (40 per cent) through physical stores.

The brand currently sells over 25 products, including toilet seat sanitiser sprays, Domina (female condom), tampons, menstrual cups, intimate wipes (for both men and women), face scrub and wash.

On being asked if post-pandemic, the approach to physical stores will change, Bagaria says, “The share of online sales (pre-pandemic) was about 3-4 per cent of the overall market. But now, it has moved to 8 per cent. In the short-term, online will move to double digits, but it can never cross (overtake) offline. The latter is the conventional mode of buying and, as India is a cash economy, the in-store purchase will definitely be the first choice.”

“Once we’re in a better place and the COVID-induced lockdown is lifted, the consumers will definitely want to feel/use the product before they buy it. At Pee Safe, we’ve also seen O (offline) to O (online) purchases, i.e., the customer checks out the product offline and buys it online. Trust is another factor which plays a major role here. If the product is available at general stores, departmental stores, hypermarkets, airports, etc., a brand is seen as established, and not just a digital-only brand.”

In February (2021), the brand opened its first physical store in Ahmedabad and converted it to a FOFO (franchise owned and franchise operated) model. The target is to open more than 50 such stores across India, with the first-of-its-kind hygiene studio concept, and also target Tier-III and IV cities.

“We’ve noticed that, on a scale of 1-10 (10 being highest), personal hygiene before the pandemic struck was about 2, which went up to the maximum level in April-May 2020. People’s behaviour towards wellness has completely changed, not just in India, but globally too,” Bagaria signs off.