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Gillette's largest customer/reseller, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., and its affiliates, accounted for 12% of sales in both 2002 and 2001.
Customers:.
Gillette sells mainly to international reseller markets such as Wal-Mart, Tescos, Dunnes etc. Who intern resells the Gillette product at a profit.
Competition:.
Gillette's main competition comes from the Energizer owned company Schick and their newly launched four-blade razor Quattro. This razor is in direct competition with Gillettes Mach-3. Gillette have filed law suits against Schick claiming that they have stolen their patent for "progressive geometry", which allows each of a succession of blades to shave closer to the skin than the previous one. Gillette claims that the Quattro would have to employ this technology for the razor to work. The Schick company in-turn has filed a suit agains Gillette claiming their advertising strategy "The best a man can get" as anti competitive.
Gillette also have to compete with the growing numbers of men converting to electric shavers. The company do so through their braun electric shaver which is very successful. By doing this they take from their competitions market and keep their previous razor clients. The company needs to be awair of what its competition is doing and secretive about what its own plans are. For example when Gillette announced to its supply chain of it plan to release Sensor, the 3 blade disposable razor, one of them informed the bic company of the planned release. This inturn gave bic a chance to react to gillettes new razor. For Gillette to respond well to competition threats it needs to be able to move straight away on tackling the problem. Large companies such as Gillette tend to have a tradition of inertia. The company needs to be able to turn on a dime, that is it should be able to focus its resources on new changes without to much hassle.
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Gillettes vision: "The Gillette Company's Vision is to build Total Brand Value by innovating to deliver consumer value and customer leadership faster, better and more completely than our competition.