by Freedonia Industry Studies
January 28, 2021
Several years ago, we helped with a CBS Sunday Morning story about Gojo Industries and its most famous product, Purell hand sanitizer. It was fun for us to participate in a story about an industry we’ve covered extensively and a local company making good. (Local enough that one of our analysts caddied for Gojo’s former CEO some 40 years ago, prior to the introduction of Purell.) At the time, Gojo’s main product was industrial hand cleaner, and the company was still trying to break into the consumer product segment.
But the COVID-19 pandemic really changed the equation for Purell. The pandemic changed hand sanitizer from a product most people used occasionally – when they handled something disgusting or were in the car or somewhere else where regular handwashing wasn’t possible. Now, hand sanitizer has become essential, not only in healthcare environments, but in offices, schools, stores, and pretty much everywhere else.
Increased demand led to a slew of new market entrants, including some temporary suppliers like distilleries and certain major consumer product suppliers. While it seems unlikely that demand for hand sanitizers will remain at the ultra-elevated COVID-19 level, Gojo is betting that the market’s new normal size is going to be a lot larger than it was when we got to talk about it on TV – they’ve done more hiring, increased R&D spending, and added warehouse space. And although most of us hope that our homemade masks became peculiar souvenirs pretty soon, the number of us with hand sanitizer on our desks, in our purses, in our cars, and some other handy (get it?) spot seems unlikely to decrease very much.
For more information and discussion of opportunities, see The Freedonia Group’s extensive collection of off-the-shelf research, including Global Industrial & Institutional Cleaning Chemicals, Global Industrial & Institutional Disinfectants & Sanitizers, Surface Disinfectant Wipes, Global Disposable Masks & Respirators, and Global Disposable Medical Gloves. Freedonia also offers an expanding catalog of COVID-19 Economic Impact reports, which highlight how various industries are responding to the current crisis with a comparison to recent recessions. Freedonia Custom Research is also available for questions requiring tailored market intelligence.