Clean n' Natural, Germs Be Gone, SmartCare, Safe & Soft and M. Skin Care are just a few brands that have replaced the well-known Purell, Clorox and Lysol sanitizers and cleaners on shelves.
Most of those "new" manufacturers and companies had already been in the cleaning or beauty industries and were able to ramp up production of hand sanitizer or wet wipes once demand surged.
Americans have been gobbling up hand sanitizer and wipes during the pandemic. Sales volume for hand sanitizer and hand wipes was $200 million and $33 million, respectively, from March to July of this year, according to market research company The NPD Group's retail tracking service. That's an increase of 465% and 41%, compared to the same months last year, according to NPD.
The explosion in demand also led to the US Food and Drug Administration to temporarily ease restrictions on manufacturers looking to make sanitizer, outlining that "the agency does not intend to take action against manufacturing firms that prepare alcohol-based hand sanitizers for consumer use." However, that hasn't quite gone according to plan: The FDA has now warned against using more than 100 hand sanitizer products because their ingredients contain methanol or have insufficient levels of alcohol.
Where's the Purell?
GOJO Industries, which makes Purell, says it's been producing Purell at more than double its pre-pandemic levels since February, but it hasn't been available in many stores because it supplies hospitals and first responders before consumers.
All of its plants are operating 24/7, and GOJO began to ship more than two times its 2019 levels to retailers starting in July, the company said.
Clorox said stores will continue to face shortages of its wipes and other products into 2021 because of overwhelming demand.
How other brands filled the gap
Lesser-known brands have popped up seemingly out of nowhere.
Although Brands International has always been in the business of making sanitizer, albeit on a smaller scale, the pandemic led it to ramp up production and focus solely on hand sanitizer, according to Mark Rubinoff, the Canadian company's founder and CEO.
Brands International's 10 production lines were converted to only making Germs Be Gone hand sanitizer. The company sold about 35 million bottles of sanitizer this year, up from 1 million in all of 2019.
SmartCare, a value-products brand of California-based Ashtel Studios, has been producing sanitizer since 2014. President Anish Patel said he had planned to build the brand this year and talk to retailers to get it into stores — and then Covid-19 came to the US and demand was "explosive."
"What we had planned was going to happen in three-to-four years happened in a couple months," he said.
The company already sold soaps, bath tissues and kitchen towels at Walgreens, CVS, Menards and Meijer. Patel said those relationships helped SmartCare set up an ever-expanding delivery schedule.
Israeli company Albaad, which makes wet
