Laundry Care & Detergents

Laundry care products, as the name suggests, are intended to clean and treat clothing. While there are many variations and specialty products, the laundry care product market can be divided into the following categories and subcategories:

• Laundry Detergent
  • Liquid Detergent
  • Powder Detergent
  • Tablets and Packets/Bars
• Fabric Softener
  • Liquid Fabric Softener
  • Fabric Softener Sheets
• Bleach
  • SHC (sodium hypochlorite) Bleach
  • Color-Safe Bleach
• Specialty Products
  • Pre-wash/Additives
  • Fine Washable Detergent
  • Starch
• Static Control/Fabric Protector

In a market dominated by a few major brands, laundry can become even more of an inconvenience than it already is for consumers with specific lifestyle needs not met by the mainstream, such as those with allergies, parents of infants, or green consumers.

Alternately, specialty product benefits or products that solve a particular problem—such as hybrid products (i.e., Tide with a Touch of Downy) or wrinkle reduction detergent—also represent positive opportunities in the niche market.

A fragrant revolution is at hand, and is affecting the laundry care market. American consumers are looking for products that remain true to traditional values of high performance and convenience, but also go beyond these baseline qualities to offer added benefits in health and wellness. Aromatherapy is a branch of holistic healing that has broken onto many Americans’ radars. Many household cleaning products already incorporate essential oils to give consumers an added level of experience that benefits the body, mind and soul. The breadth and depth of aromas and their supposed efficacies is a product developer’s dream. The concoctions are seemingly endless––from the supposed headache fighting benefits of peppermint to the relaxation benefits of lavender.