[7][8] Gillette improved these earlier safety-razor designs and introduced the high-profit-margin stamped razor blade made from carbon steel sheet.

Gillette's razor retailed for a substantial $5 (equivalent to $170.00 in 2023) – half the average working man's weekly pay – yet sold by the millions.

William Emery Nickerson, an expert machinist and partner of Gillette, changed the original model, improving the handle and frame so that it could better support the thin steel blade.

[12] The second year, he sold 90,884 razors and 123,648 blades,[12] thanks in part to Gillette's low prices, automated manufacturing techniques, and good advertising.

In the 1920s, as the patent expired, the Gillette Safety Razor Company emphasized research to design ever-improved models, realizing that even a slight improvement would induce men to adopt it.

[13] He was almost bankrupt due to spending large amounts of money on property, and to his having lost much of the value of his corporate shares as a result of the Great Depression.

[1] He was interred in the lower levels of the Begonia Corridor in the Great Mausoleum located at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

[16] He published a book titled The Human Drift (1894)[17] which advocated that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public, and that everyone in the US should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls.

Around 1922 or 1923, he built a residence at 324 West Overlook Road, in "The Mesa" district of Palm Springs, consisting of a 4,800-square-foot (450 m2) main home and 720-square-foot (67 m2) guest house.

After his death, his wife sold the home to Clarence Brown, an MGM film director who held A-List Hollywood parties at the ranch.

In 1952, Bob Hope bought the property, immediately giving it to the Claretian Order of the Catholic Church, which operated a seminary on the grounds for 25 years.

[28] SUA began making plans to expand the campus infrastructure to accommodate living quarters and classrooms for the proposed expansion, but ran into opposition from some local residents, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, environmentalists, and government representatives.

[28] Opponents sought to protect the Chumash ancestral site, the natural habitats and ecology, and the expansive open space viewshed within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, and to prevent a development of unprecedented urban density adjacent to Malibu Creek State Park.

Soka University was prevented from developing any expansion plans at the Calabasas property and began looking for alternative sites to build a larger campus.

The ranch is situated adjacent to Malibu Creek State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains, at 26800 West Mulholland Highway in Calabasas, California.