Ivory, Crest, Tide, Olay, Mr. Clean, Pampers.
You recognize those names. But, do you recognize the corporate power behind them? It’s Proctor & Gamble Co. (P&G)
And, now, P&G is wondering if they need to come up with new names- or can they extend those names onto some new formulations.
What sort of new formulation? P&G has developed laundry detergents, hand soaps, and shampoos that no longer contain water.
Basically, the products look like “swatches”- but they are not representative samples at all- these fabric-like units foam when water is added. These new products clearly reduce the needs of P&G for all the water they use in production, plus they are lighter and smaller, cutting shipping costs dramatically. The new products have cut the weight by 80% and the size by 70%.
(It may also mean that P&G can sell the products online, since shipping won’t be a major component of the delivered price. And, since the shelf life is one year, cutting out a link in the distribution chain won’t hurt, either.)
These swatches are not of uniform size- hand soap is the tiniest and the toilet bowl cleaner is the largest. Plus, they are labeled with “hand”, “body”, and images (five fingers, a toilet seat).
And, to show how P&G may be changing its business model, these products were first introduced via Indiegogo.com- both to generate interest and product testers.
Note that the price for these products are not cheap. The face wash will set us back $ 19 for 60 swatches. And, the laundry detergent will go for $ 29 (30 swatches). (Currently, the products are packaged in bamboo to reduce plastic waste.)
The problem is what I mentioned above. P&G has not decided on the product names- new or latch on to the old names. (Right now, the name seems to be DS3 with the tag line “enlightened clean”.)
Are you ready to switch to the swatch?
Interesting, I haven’t heard about these! I wonder if being small and less shipping if that would equal out the price of the product. Thanks for all the interesting posts!
My guess is that we won’t be seeing them on our grocery store shelves for a while, Martha. P&g is going to opt for selling them to select customers.
Roy, thanks for this cool update. And while this is interesting, and saves on water, I do wonder about other impacts these swatches might have, not including the prohibitive costs. Maybe I should start looking into home-made, natural alternatives for these cleaning ingredients more aggressively than I had so far :)?
I believe that most of us will still be choosing our ivory soap bars, our Joy liquid detergent, etc. But, I admit that I stopped buying boxes of dishwasher detergent- since I only use my dishwasher at best once a week, I opt for the pods. They last longer and are easier to use. And, the cost over the whole year is pretty negligible.
Thank you for the update (it was from you I first learned about this, I believe?) So, it may really happen? If they do this I suspect they will stick with the familiar product names but perhaps with a suffix like Ivory Soap NW (no water) or something similar.
The problem with new versus extend is always an issue. Especially if the new formulation develops a problem- then the entire brand becomes tarnished. (Think of 737’s!)
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