Whether it’s floor wipes or no-mopping sprays, convenience holds the key to domestic cleaning product sales.
STICKY floors and grimy bathrooms may not be the most pleasant of problems to contemplate, but helping consumers to tackle them is a lucrative business.
According to Nielsen, the household cleaning category is worth £654m and is continuing to grow.
New product development is driving much of that growth, as consumers look for quicker and easier ways to get their housework out of the way. Wipes, for example, are growing by 3.7% year on year.
Unilever brand Cif has two new cleaning products – Express Direct to Floor and Antibacterial Floor Wipes – exemplifying those trends.
Cif Antibacterial Floor Wipes come in packs of 15, in Ocean Fresh fragrance. They can be used to degrease and add shine to all surfaces: tiles, linoleum, laminate and wooden flooring.
Express Direct to Floor comes in a 750ml bottle in three fragrances: Lemon & Apple Flowers, Antibacterial, and Wild Orchid & Velvet Flowers.
Andreea Sapunaru, brand manager for household cleaning at Unilever UK, said: “Research has revealed that convenience and ease of use are consumers’ main priorities when it comes to selecting cleaning products.
“We also know that fragrance is a key category driver, particularly in floor cleaning, and with fewer homes having carpets, the Cif Express range is perfectly positioned to meet all of these requirements.”
The fastest-growing segment of the household cleaning products market is toilet and bleach. Unilever says it provides some of the UK’s most popular brands in the category, such as Cif and Domestos.
The company reckons a bottle of Domestos is sold every second in the UK.
NPD for 2014 includes Domestos Turbo Fresh Rim Block, Domestos Extended Germ Kill Ultra White and Sparkle Bleach, and Domestos Total Blast Toilet Gel.
The Turbo Fresh Rim Block is, the firm says, a category first, “providing consumers with powerful cleaning that they can see working”. It comes in Lemon and Ocean fragrances.
Domestos Ultra White and Sparkle Bleach was launched in January to address what Unilever describes as “the major consumer concern of a yellowing toilet”.
It says that the product cleans and whitens the toilet using the brand’s patented Extended Germ-Kill formula, which is designed to cling to the toilet bowl and prevent discolouration.
Domestos Total Blast Toilet Gel has a multi-jet nozzle to ensure better reach under the toilet rim. Launched in February this year, it is available in Ocean Fresh and Lime Fresh fragrances.
£564m Value of the household cleaning market
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3.7% Annual growth of wipes as a format
