Purse Perfect
Duane Reade and Acme both provide purse-sized individual wrapped liners.
Feminine care products find their way into the smallest of purses.
While the development of feminine personal care products may have gone overlooked in previous years, today many retailers are giving their store brands a fresh look. Keeping convenience in mind, retailers are offering more and more innovative packaging that can easily be as on-the-go as female shoppers are.
At CVS, Woonsocket, RI, “new” Compact Tampons are not only small enough to fit in the tiniest clutch, but they also saved $1.50 over their national brand comparison product, Tampax Compak Pearl. The small extendable applicator allows them to be compact and convenient. Pantiliners from Acme, Eden Prairie, MN, sourced by Supervalu, under the Equaline brand get the tiny treatment in 22-count packs of pink individually wrapped pantiliners, perfect for purses. The scented liners compare to Carefree and the outer package reflects Carefree’s similar pink and blue packaging.
Duane Reade, New York, NY, known for generating private brands for urban living, offers a modern version with its simply named store brand “liners,” dropping the passé “panti” part. The 22 individually wrapped liners cost just $1.99. The packaging is a plain white box with a purple pattern on the left and purple and yellow strip across the middle with the DR logo repeated as a pattern in the purple strip. Out of the package, a non-descript, white individual wrapper contains the liner making it hard to identify the item once tossed into a purse. The liner itself has flowers imprinted on it.
At Walgreens, Deerfield, IL, shoppers can buy a tiny blue pack of Personal Cleansing Cloths. The 16-cloth pack features a flip-top lid to keep the pre-moistened cloths fresh. The cloths have Vitamin E and Aloe and the purse-sized pack reads, “use them for a fresh feeling anytime,” on the back panel. CVS Cleansing Cloths come in a bigger 32-cloth package, but were positioned with a “hot new item” tag and mention on the package they compare to Summer’s Eve Sensitive Skin Feminine Cleansing Cloths, which retails for a dollar more.
CVS Relief
Walgreens Personal Cleansing Cloths contain 16 cloths and are travel-sized to take on-the-go.
More items from CVS marked “new” include store brand Menstrual Relief Menstrual Complete to compare to the active ingredients in Midol. A 16-count package of the store brand retails at $1.50 less than Midol Menstrual Complete and claims to provide relief from cramps, fatigue, backache, headache and bloating with acetaminophen, caffeine and pyrilamine maleate. To target bloating, CVS maximum strength Diuretic Soft Gels help reduce excess body water and relive menstrual bloat. The medicine is administered in caffeine free, immediate release water soft gels.
For women trying to conceive the new CVS Daily Ovulation Predictor predicts women’s two most fertile days by testing for a luteinizing hormone surge. The store brand compares to Answer Daily Ovulation Tracker for $22.49. When viewing the national brand on CVS’s website, shoppers will see a link below the national brand information that reads “CVS Brand Alternative” and directs them to the store brand listed at $18.99. If shoppers choose to click on the photo of the national brand for more information they will still see the store brand equivalent product pop up in the left next to the national brand photo and quickly note the price comparison. For example, once a shopper suspects she may be pregnant, she can see side by side on the website that a two-pack E.P.T. Certainty Pregnancy Test is on sale for $13.43 while the two-pack CVS Digital Pregnancy Test is also on sale for $11.03. The Digital Pregnancy Test boasts that its “pregnant” or “not pregnant” digital results make it easy to read.
Comparing Brands
Acme’s Equaline brand includes tampons to compare to both Tampax and Platex. Equaline comfortable plastic applicator tampons come in a simple box with blue and pink coloring similar to Playtex Gentle Glide’s color package. The Equaline multipack offers 18 tampons, while Private Label only saw a 36-count multipack being offered from Playtex. While the multipack has a plastic applicator, Equaline’s version that compares to Tampax and is packaged in a similar blue color has a cardboard applicator, making them biodegradable. Sears Holdings, Hoffman Estates, IL, K-Mart, sells at K-Mart, under its American Fare label, a biodegradable cardboard applicator version as well, which uses its Fiber Lock System to hold the fiber together.
A recent survey commissioned by the makers of O.B. tampons and conducted by Kelton research (through an online survey of 1,017 adults nationwide between February 18 and February 23, 2010) found that 10% of women currently use non-applicator tampons as a way to reduce waste, but almost two-thirds of women (64%) have never thought about the environmental waste produced by the tampons they use.
The Organic Word
Organic tampons are popping up on shelves more often now, but with few store brands to compete with.
The National Research Center for Women & Families said in a 2009 report that tampons, used by approximately 43 million women in the United Stated today, are usually made of cotton and rayon. Rayon is a synthetic fiber made from wood pulp. During that process, a toxic byproduct known as dioxin is created. In 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a report that stated that dioxins are known to cause cancer in animals, and probably cause cancer in people. While the dioxin hazard from bleaching has been reduced in recent years as a result of new bleaching methods, dioxin is still detected in tampons - even those made of 100% cotton. The FDA says that the exposure to dioxin from tampons today “is many times less than normally present in the body from other environmental sources, so small that any risk of adverse health effects is considered negligible.” However, according to Dr. Philip Tierno, director of clinical microbiology and diagnostic immunology at the New York University Medical Center and a leading expert on the health risks of tampons, as stated in the report, even trace amounts of dioxin are cause for concern because tampons come in contact with some of the most absorbent tissue in the body. In addition, the effects of dioxin are cumulative and can be measured 20 to 30 years after exposure. The report suggests multiple alternatives for women, including organic tampons.
To that end, under the Personnelle brand, the new Eco Nature line of feminine hygiene products from Jean Coutu, Longeuil, QC, are made from 100% organic cotton that is synthetic or chemical product free. “Even the packaging is chemical agent free,” the chain boasts at its website. “‘So this is the ideal line for anyone concerned about the environment and/or having sensitive skin."
