Produced for $US 4k, the comic-themed video has had millions of views since it was posted on February 23 2012 and the company now has thousands of subscribing customers in the US.

If you go to their website from an Australian IP address you currently get both an announcement and an invitation:

“Dollar Shave Club is coming to Australia!

We’re American, You’re Australian. In the name of light, let’s join forces and fight evil. Enter your email address and we’ll send you a special launch discount when we’re live.”

The business was born out of founder Michael Dublin’s irritation with buying razor blades. He told the US Government’s National Public Radio network “you have to go in the store; you have to find the razor fortress; it’s always locked behind some Lucite case. Then you’ve got to find the guy with the key; he’s always texting his girlfriend; it takes five minutes. And then you get to the register, and it costs 20 bucks — and who wants to do that?”

Confident that many potenital customers share his frustration with the status quo, Dublin is attempting to ride the growing “subscription economy”, which is enabled by digital dynamics that did not exist a decade ago.

Is the Gillette giant worried? They may not be not shaking in their boots, but no doubt they are tracking DollarShaveClub.com’s progress.

Should the big corporate have moved first and attempted to eat its own lunch rather than leave the door open? That’s always a tough call for an established encumbent.

Even if this particular upstart doesn’t survive and thrive over the long haul, who is else is out there engineering a low cost, high impact digital model that will slice into Gillette’s high-margin business?