diff --git a/troveclient/tests/test_utils.py b/troveclient/tests/test_utils.py
index 217b5966..835d84fe 100644
--- a/troveclient/tests/test_utils.py
+++ b/troveclient/tests/test_utils.py
@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 import os
+import six
 from testtools import TestCase
 from troveclient import utils
 
@@ -36,5 +37,5 @@ class UtilsTest(TestCase):
         import unicodedata  # noqa
 
         self.assertEqual('not_unicode', utils.slugify('not_unicode'))
-        self.assertEqual('unicode', utils.slugify(unicode('unicode')))
+        self.assertEqual('unicode', utils.slugify(six.u('unicode')))
         self.assertEqual('slugify-test', utils.slugify('SLUGIFY% test!'))
diff --git a/troveclient/utils.py b/troveclient/utils.py
index 0cb9d49e..3e96d502 100644
--- a/troveclient/utils.py
+++ b/troveclient/utils.py
@@ -212,10 +212,6 @@ class HookableMixin(object):
             hook_func(*args, **kwargs)
 
 
-_slugify_strip_re = re.compile(r'[^\w\s-]')
-_slugify_hyphenate_re = re.compile(r'[-\s]+')
-
-
 # http://code.activestate.com/recipes/
 #   577257-slugify-make-a-string-usable-in-a-url-or-filename/
 def slugify(value):
@@ -224,10 +220,7 @@ def slugify(value):
     and converts spaces to hyphens.
 
     From Django's "django/template/defaultfilters.py".
+
+    Make use strutils.to_slug from openstack common
     """
-    import unicodedata
-    if not isinstance(value, unicode):
-        value = unicode(value)
-    value = unicodedata.normalize('NFKD', value).encode('ascii', 'ignore')
-    value = unicode(_slugify_strip_re.sub('', value).strip().lower())
-    return _slugify_hyphenate_re.sub('-', value)
+    return strutils.to_slug(value, incoming=None, errors="strict")