Wipes: A Growth Category in Choppy Economic Waters

Across the hygiene industry, where the migration of growth from developed to emerging markets is well established, wipes—alongside incontinence products—are still far from reaching their full potential. The fact that wipes are still in growth (around 2% in developed markets in 2011) testifies to a category that continues to exemplify technological and marketing developments, which have helped propel wipes into something of a mainstay within the worlds of home and personal care. While diapers and san pro items have seen saturation deprive the category of sales growth, wipes have generally performed strongly and continue to offer significant opportunities for further growth. Economic Castaway Income levels are important to the development of the global wipes category, with $8,000 per capita considered a prerequisite for consumers’ ability to afford baby wipes, the common entry point for the majority of consumers into the pantheon of wipes. Although $8,000 is easily in