After several chaotic years, the away-from-home hand care market is finally resetting – and some recent changes are here to stay.
“The pandemic seems to have caused permanent shifts in the approach to hand care at I&I facilities,” says Laura Mahecha, Director of our I&I Cleaning Products sector. “For example, antibacterial hand soaps are demanded much more frequently now, as are touch-free hand hygiene and paper dispensers. Many facilities’ managers are replacing air hand dryers — which blow germs into the air — with paper towels, and there is a preference for touch-free dispensers to limit germs and the spread of disease.”
In addition, there are more hand sanitizer dispensers throughout facilities that need to be maintained. “Smart” IoT dispensers are a new innovation that have entered the space as well; they involve an Internet-enabled dispenser that can alert janitors’ phones or tablets when soap, sanitizer, or paper products need to be refilled, making lean cleaning staffs more efficient.
In 2020 and 2021, the surge in demand for hand soaps and hand sanitizers caused by the pandemic was unprecedented. During lockdowns, the supply chain was disrupted and, at the height of demand, suppliers, distributors, and retailers struggled to maintain stock. Once supply chain challenges were addressed, the market suffered from unpredictable trends as some end use facilities were closed (schools) or had drastically reduced capacity (office buildings, hotels, and restaurants), while others were using much more hand care products than usual (healthcare). Still others, like schools and universities, were sitting on large stockpiles of hand hygiene products and, in some cases, the products reached expiration dates before they were able to be used.
“Marketers were busy pivoting to meet rapidly changing demands from distributors and end users,” Mahecha says. “These wide fluctuations in demand among customer groups, together with the new trends that seem to have remained in place, have necessitated new research so that marketers can make more informed strategy decisions when it comes to predicting future demand and end-user preferences.”
As such, Kline will field a new survey with hundreds of end users to understand usage, preferences, purchase channels, dispenser preferences, and purchase factor importance for hand soaps, hand sanitizers, and hand cleaning wipes. This market report will provide full survey results along with sales estimates, supplier shares, sales by product form and end-use segment, and a five-year forecast through 2028 for away-from-home hand care products. For more information, visit our website or contact us.
