The household cleaning products segment is sparkling with innovation, say its category brand leaders, which contend that retailers have a gleaming chance to turn mops, brooms and cleansers into gold.

"Our products are the durables – the mops and the brooms – and in our category, the grocer makes pretty much of a keystone markup," says Michael Silverman, SVP of marketing for Marlborough, Mass.-based Butler Home Products. "In the grocery class of trade, the ones that look at it as an opportunity and focus on that do well because they create interest and excitement in their stores. Consumers look at them as a resource. But the ones that neglect that category are leaving money on the table."

Silverman acknowledges that the focus in the grocery trade is on consumables. "But if you can make your store more important from a convenience standpoint, with decent products and a decent assortment priced competitively, it is a win-win for everybody," he says. "Retailers don't make a lot of money on consumables, so if we can marry that to low-volume, high-margin products, blending those two things together, it is a winner."

Silverman points out that Butler Home Products is a licensed partner of Procter & Gamble, and is able to tie in couponing and promotional events with P&G products such as Mr. Clean. "That makes it more important to the retailer and the consumer," he says.

On the Green Clean Scene
Another way to build interest in the household cleaning products aisle is to include increasingly popular green products rather than selling them in the natural products section of the store. "That's where shoppers are looking for them," explains Len Harry, U.S. director of sales for Planet People, a division of Toronto-based Siamons International Inc., whose offerings include the IQ line, which uses cartridges of cleaning product that are placed in refillable plastic bottles.

"The IQ smarter cleaner actually reduces the carbon footprint by 80 percent because consumers are using the bottle and their own water with the IQ refill cartridges," Harry says. "We pass on the savings to the consumer, since we don't have to produce the full bottles of the product and they are using their own source of water."

Roughly 95 percent of such bottled cleaning products use water with a 5 percent cleaning agent. "It just doesn't make sense to ship all that water around the country," Harry notes. "People now buy the mainstream product, use it and throw the bottle out; 90 percent of those bottles end up in landfills, and it costs about 1 gallon of oil to make 29 empty bottles. So a lot of oil and resources can be saved by using a system such as ours."

Of course, the key to acceptance of such a system is having a product that works and persuading consumers to give it a try.

"Our products clean as good as the national brands," Harry asserts, pointing to results of independent lab tests. "The big challenge is changing consumers' usage behavior," a job that he says is being addressed through public relations, promotional efforts and securing distribution.

Meanwhile, the global specialty chemicals company Chemtura is also working to increase its presence in the supermarket channel with its The Works brand of cleaners and Greased Lightning brand of multipurpose cleaners for both tough cleaning tasks and everyday use.

Ericka Valencia, category analyst for Philadelphia-based Chemtura, says the company will begin shipping a new all-purpose cleaner this month for everyday use. It also offers Orange Blast, a scented product that's popular among Hispanic shoppers. "It's a product that works – exceeds the mainstream brand – and we are trying to get more exposure," Valencia says.