The Road to Launch; Billie Australia and New Zealand
Earlier this year Edgewell brand, Billie, launched in Australia and New Zealand – their first launch outside of North America! To celebrate this major accomplishment, we spoke to the team on what it took to launch the brand, the driving forces behind the decision to launch in a new market, how the brand is resonating with ANZ consumers so far and more.
1. When did Billie Australia and New Zealand Launch?
Billie Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) officially launched in July 2025. The expansion beyond the Americas has opened the brand up to an entirely new market and a whole new group of consumers. It’s giving the brand an expanded global reach and increasing its familiarity across the globe.
2. What was the motivation behind the launch?
From an internal perspective, Schick is a challenger brand in our market. 3 years ago, Edgewell Oceania set a goal to become the market leading brand in women’s hair removal within the next 5 years. With Schick alone, this was a very challenging goal. However, the team saw the Billie launch as an opportunity to strengthen the total EPC portfolio which would help us achieve our goal.
From an external perspective the ANZ women’s hair removal category is highly competitive and dominated by massive global brands including Schick, Gilette Venus, Veet, Nair and more. Despite a few smaller brands trying to enter this space, there has not been any highly disruptive brands entering the category in several years. Current offerings are primarily designed to meet highly functional hair removal needs, like quality and performance, convenience, and sensitivity / preventing irritation.
With this in mind, we identified a clear target consumer gap or white space in our market – the younger consumer (Gen Z) who may or may not choose to remove hair, but if/when they do, they’re looking for a great performing product at an affordable price point. We quickly reaslised that Billie was the perfect offering for this audience, and we needed to move quick. As mentioned above, the category is highly cluttered and competitive, so if we didn’t act quickly with Billie, we risked a competitor brand launching in market before us and taking up that white space.
3. What do you think will resonate the most with consumers in this region, from the brand?
Having been available in the market for almost 5 months, we are already seeing a great deal of hype and excitement around the brand, with many people across social media channels and at customer trade events telling us how much they love Billie. In fact, in the first week of launch Billie sold 94% of product sent out to the trade – this equates to one product being purchased every 83 seconds1!
In terms of what we think resonates, Billie’s pro-body hair stance is a new concept in the ANZ market – a razor brand supporting body hair is unheard of. Much of the positivity surrounding the brand stems from this. We’ve seen consumers loving that a razor brand isn’t forcing people to shave or selling the societal expectation that hair needs to be removed.
4. Are there any specific products that seem to be doing particularly well in the market?
It is still early days, however the data is showing us a few surprises so far. Our assumption was that one colour handle would outperform the other colour handles. However, all data we’ve reviewed so far shows us that both the Malibu and Purple Sparkle colourways are popular, with Malibu leading the way in some retailers and Purple Sparkle leading the way in others, but always within arm’s reach of each other!
We also thought the Lavender and Bergamot Whipped Shave Cream would outperform the Ingrown Prevention cream but much to our surprise, the Ingrown cream has outsold Lavendar & Bergamot.
Lastly, we also expected there to be a slow take up of our refill packs, as people trialed the kit before returning to purchase again. We’ve been pleasantly surprised to see refill purchases take off right from launch & continue to grow, surpassing the sales and unit targets we had set.
5. Where can consumers in this market purchase products?
Billie is ranged across Grocery, Pharmacy and Variety stores in Woolworths Australia and New Zealand, Chemist Warehouse Australia and New Zealand, BIG W Australia, New World South Island New Zealand. Billie is also available online at Amazon Australia, as well.
6. What are the biggest highlights from the launch?
Billie is the biggest brand launch for the Oceania Edgewell team in recent past, utilising the expertise of many stakeholders both internally and externally. We are incredibly proud of what our team has achieved through teamwork and collaboration – owning it together to bring an amazing brand and fantastic products to market & disrupt the women’s hair removal category!
We’ve been able to leverage our Edgewell portfolio and our brands we have in Shave – Schick and Billie – as part of our overall sell to customers, highlighting the need for both, as they truly do have different target consumers and different product and pricing propositions. In doing so, we’ve seen success - our total EPC Women’s Shave Value Growth is up 25.6%[PR1] 2. We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and couldn’t be more excited for what’s to come!
[1] w/c 23rd July 2025