Save 50% on Ritual’s shave-and-shower line as brand refocuses on the can, man

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Ritual’s business is in the toilet these days, but that’s actually a good thing -- for the company and for you -- because the Hermosa Beach-based Ritual guys are discounting most of their goods by 50% for the next two weeks.

Four years ago, Scott McEwen and Ty Lifeset launched their line of ‘machosexual’ (their word, not mine) men’s grooming products -- including shaving cream, face and body wash, post-shave balm and razor antiseptic, all in black packages emblazoned with a mustachioed man’s mug above two crossed razors.

On Tuesday, they announced plans to pare back their product line (their wording was ‘pause production’) to a single signature product -- a half-ounce dropper bottle of $9 toilet deodorizer drops dubbed Nature Calls, which according to Lifeset is flush with success. (If it sounds vaguely familiar, maybe that’s because we first suggested it as a man-to-man stocking stuffer back in 2008.)

‘The men’s grooming market has changed a lot since we started,’ Lifeset told me Wednesday afternoon. ‘It’s really over-saturated now, and while we have fans, we’re not able to make enough to be competitive.’

Where Ritual can be competitive, Lifeset said, is with Nature Calls: ‘There are a bunch of other competitors [in the toilet deodorizer market], but we’ve found a niche at the high end, and there’s a perceived cool factor, so that’s where we’ve decided to focus our attention.’

So they’re clearing out inventory by offering 50% off all Ritual grooming products (excluding Nature Calls, naturally) ordered off the website through April 15, if you enter the coupon code RIT50.

Nature Calls will continue to be sold in brick-and-mortar boutiques as well as online at Ritual’s site and those of Urban Outfitters and American Apparel. And although Lifeset wouldn’t divulge any names, he said the brand is in the middle of finalizing a deal that could find the water-closet wonder drops stocked in a string of impossibly hip, upscale hotels.

Now that’s what I call the sweet smell of success.

-- Adam Tschorn

Follow All the Rage on Facebook and Twitter.