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The 6 Research Drive headquarters of Edgewell Personal Care in Shelton, Conn., in June 2022.

Bulldog shaving and facial care products line a pharmacy shelf in Shelton, Conn., less than a mile from the headquarters of parent company Edgewell Personal Care whose products vie with the Gillette lines of Procter & Gamble and a number of other big consumer brands.

Edgewell Personal Care CEO Rod Little speaks Friday, June 20, 2022, during the annual meeting of the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce in Shelton, Conn.

Two years after the federal government blocked Edgewell’s plan to buy shaving industry upstart Harry’s, the consumer products company has launched its first startup brand since moving its headquarters to Shelton in 2019.

Fieldtrip is a lotion and cleanser line that does not focus on any one gender identity in its marketing, and which evokes the ethic of sustainability that is gaining traction across consumer products. Edgewell Personal Care CEO Rod Little said it is the company’s first success developing a brand in house, having relied on acquisitions to add new products in the past.

Little spoke Friday in Shelton at the annual meeting of the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce, which has about 500 members in Shelton, Ansonia, Derby, Oxford, Seymour and Beacon Falls. Through Schick, Edge, Banana Boat, Hawaiian Tropic, Playtex and several other brands, Edgewell is a familiar name in many households if the corporate moniker does not ring a bell for many.

Little says Fieldtrip was created by the corporate team leading its Jack Black line of skin products for men — a team comprised entirely of women, he noted. Edgewell is pledging 5 percent of Fieldtrip’s annual sales to the “Retreet” initiative of the Stamford-based nonprofit Keep America Beautiful, which dispatches teams to plant trees replacing those lost in hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Edgewell earned $23 million in the first three months of this year, as revenue rose 5 percent from a year earlier to $547 million. Little said the company recently edged Kimberly-Clark as the No. 2 player for feminine hygiene products after Procter & Gamble, while allowing it has a long way to go to catch the Gillette line of P&G for shaving products.

“We’re No. 1 or 2 everywhere we play, which is a really important position,” Little said Friday. “There’s a focus on health and wellness that has come on since the pandemic.”

In May 2019, the company attempted to close the Gillette gap with an offer valued at nearly $1.4 billion to acquire Harry’s, just five years after its launch. The Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal, asserting Harry’s has benefited consumers as a third competitor to Gillette and Edgewell’s Schick line of shavers, helping keep prices in check.

Edgewell hired Little in 2018 to head finance, then promoted him to CEO the following year after the departure of predecessor David Hatfield who is co-CEO today of a San Francisco cloud security developer called Lacework.

Edgewell’s shares are down 20 percent since Little’s elevation to CEO, trading at $35.35 on Friday afternoon. Over the same period, Procter & Gamble shares are up 44 percent to above $142 during afternoon trading on Friday.

Little said it was his decision to move Edgewell’s headquarters to Shelton after the company’s 2015 spinout from Energizer Holdings based in St. Louis. He said the decision was based partly on his own preference to live in Connecticut, and existing ties of a few Edgewell products to the area — notably Schick in Milford but also Playtex which was based in Westport before Energizer acquired it in 2007.

In Shelton, Edgewell’s headquarters is across the street from Bic’s main office in North America, but the companies do not classify each other as direct competitors given Bic’s focus on disposable razors.

Little said the company has added some new employees in other locales like Chicago, Dallas and Seattle, given the opportunities for remote working that the pandemic brought mainstream. To help employees during the pandemic, the company took a few extra measures like required days off for all, so that no one person felt like they were falling behind colleagues, allowing for a true day away. And Edgewell instituted a ban on Friday meetings to allow people to get caught up on existing priorities ahead of the weekend.

“We’re very virtual, very dispersed — I actually think it helps people like us compete against the Procters & Gambles and the Unilevers,” Little said. “We’re more productive than we’ve ever been, our results are better than they have ever been.”

Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-842-2545; @casoulman