Laundry: own label cleans up in laundry

Laundry brands are being left high and dry in the supermarkets. Detergents and conditioners have lost £41.3m (3%) combined; brands lost a whopping £48m (4%). Conversely, own label cleaned up to the tune of £6.7m, a rise of 4.6%.

“The category has suffered as a result of consumers continuing to purchase laundry products from the high street and discounters,” says P&G sales director Ian Morley. “The grocers have tried to compete by prioritising own label, which of course comes at a lower price, so this has driven down overall value.”

P&G has been hit hardest, with Lenor, Bold and Ariel losing £13.1m (9.4%), £11.1m (10%) and £10.2m (6%) respectively. The P&G brands measured here have lost £33.6m (5.5%) combined, while Unilever lost £14.1m (3%) and Reckitt Benckiser £2.7m (3.7%).

That’s said, it’s a turn for the better for Unilever, which last year saw its Persil brand haemorrhage £35m (15%), the third-greatest loss outside tobacco. This year it is down a far less worrying £8m, or 4.1%, in the supers.

“Much of Persil’s success is being driven by consumers trading up into capsule and gem formats,” says Unilever VP for homecare Gemma Cleland. Sure enough, in detergents, Persil Powercaps - promising to “remove stains, care and freshen” - came top in terms of growth, followed by Ariel Touch of Lenor.

Morley says cementing the value of pricier capsule formats in shoppers’ minds will be key to driving value back into the sector. He says numbers for the past 24 weeks suggest this process is already underway, with Fairy and Ariel liquitabs up 12%.

“The reality is that no one is going to increase the amount of washing loads they carry out,” he says. “Once you accept this, it’s clear that the only way to drive category value is to provide premium formats.”

Conditioners have taken a similar tack. Comfort’s new Perfume Deluxe lines delivered the highest growth by promising sophisticated, long-lasting fragrance.

But it’s not all about encouraging consumers to pay more per wash. Cleland says growing distribution in the discounters helped drive a 1.9% rise in frequency for Persil.

At the time of writing, Lidl was selling 3.185kg of Persil Powder for £5.79. That’s a saving of nearly 5p per wash on the largest format sold by Tesco (2.6kg at £7). Conversely, Tesco’s largest Persil Small & Mighty Liquid format (1,995ml for £9) weighs in at just under 16p a wash. That’s more than a penny cheaper than buying 875ml for £4.29 at Lidl.

“The category is shifting towards the largest pack sizes,” says Nielsen senior client manager Eva Somosvari. So if you’re not going premium, you’d better go large.

TOP LAUNCH

Day 2, Unilever

There’s no excuse for stinky clothes any more. Claimed to be the world’s first dry wash spray for clothes, Unilever’s Day 2 is poised to “revolutionise” the laundry market. That’s not all. One 200ml bottle has the potential to save 60 litres of water, says Unilever, whose research suggests 40% of the average washload is “not actually dirty”. The product comes in three variants – Original, Denim and Delicates – and claims to leave clothes with a “light and airy fresh linen smell”.