Bombay Shaving Company’s trimmer is so good it’s killing repurchase

Most customer complaints arrive as defects, refund requests or one-star reviews. The one Bombay Shaving Company just received on LinkedIn is different: a strategist essentially asked why the brand has not given him a reason to buy another trimmer.

GTM strategist NavYug Kumar tagged founder Shantanu Deshpande and said he travels between cities, cannot remember when he last charged the device and that the battery “just refuses to die.” He called the situation “unintentional brand loyalty” and joked that the warranty was becoming irrelevant because the product will not give up.

A complaint that reads like a testimonial

Deshpande’s response suggests he read it the same way. He replied, “I started reading this v scared and smiled immediately :)”. That is the rare customer complaint a founder can enjoy: the product has not failed; it has exceeded expectations so thoroughly that the next purchase is not driven by need.

The replies amplified the joke. LinkedIn creator Suman Jhulki compared the battery to Virat Kohli for refusing to slow down, and other commenters reached for comparisons from Anupamaa, Mumbai locals and Nokia’s famously resilient batteries. The common thread was simple: this thing keeps going.

Why the durability paradox matters

For a grooming brand, long battery life is usually a technical promise. What made this post travel is that nobody discussed runtime figures, charging times or specifications. A functional benefit turned into an emotional, shareable story about reliability.

That is the marketing tension: the product is so good at its core job that it removes the classic repurchase trigger—failure or obsolescence. The customer is still happy, still using the trimmer and still talking about it. That is valuable brand equity, but it also means the next sale has to come from a different job.

From a Jobs to be Done lens, the trimmer has completed its functional job and is now doing a social job: it gives people an excuse to joke about durability and loyalty. The brand can either leave that as a lucky moment or design around it.

What marketers can do with a “problem” like this

Durability is not a defect to correct. It is a proof point to leverage. A brand in this position can:

• Use real customer stories as earned media, not just testimonials
• Create adjacent purchase reasons such as new attachments, blades, travel cases or routines
• Let the founder respond with warmth and turn the complaint into a brand personality moment
• Watch the language customers use and mirror it in future campaigns

The objective is not to make products weaker. It is to separate the loyalty story from the replacement cycle. The trust is already built; the next offer simply has to give a happy customer something new to want.

The customer is still using the trimmer. Judging by the conversation, the battery is not planning to supply a replacement reason anytime soon—so Bombay Shaving Company’s marketing now has to do that work.

Source: Afaqs!