People cared less about smelling great when they were confined to their homes for months on end during the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s probably why people cut down the time they spent on their daily self care—including using deodorants.
But now deodorants are making a comeback—and it’s thanks to employees returning to the office once again.
The trend appeared in Unilever’s third-quarter earnings released Thursday—the personal care segment grew 8%, with 3.9% of that driven by high volume of deodorant sales. The maker of Rexona, Dove, and Axe continued to build on the growth seen in the last quarters in the use of deodorants, which the group’s finance boss attributed to the increase in office-goers.
“People didn’t use deodorant as much when they were in lockdown or working from home, et cetera. I think we’re seeing some of the recovery of that coming through,” Unilever CFO Graeme Pitkethly said during a media call on Thursday, referring to the impact COVID-19 had on deodorant use.
By comparison, sales in Unilever’s personal care segment, which also includes soap and body wash, slowed in 2020 and 2021 because of lesser demand and usage and began to pick up the following year as pandemic-related restrictions started to ease. In 2022, Unilever’s deodorants were “the main driver of underlying sales” in the segment, the company said in its annual report.
“If you step up to the level of our personal care business group, it delivered a really good growth result with good balance between volume and pricing. And a big driver of that was strong volume growth in deodorants,” Pitkethly said of Unilever’s Q3 results.
New CEO at a tough moment
Overall, the group behind Ben & Jerry’s and Marmite met sales growth expectations for the third quarter aided by price increases that helped offset production costs. Unilever appointed a new CEO in July, Hein Schumacher, who said Thursday that the company’s performance had “not matched our potential.”
“The quality of our growth, productivity, and returns have all under-delivered,” Schumacher said in a statement.
“Today we are setting out our action plan to close this gap,” he added, promising to invest more into the consumer goods behemoth’s “power brands.”
The company has been reeling from a combination of factors, including the unsuccessful acquisition of Dollar Shave Club and a consumer fallout due to price hikes. Schumacher laid out a plan for the growth of the company, which received mixed reactions from investors.
Pandemic lifestyle meant less grooming
People changed their lifestyle in many ways during the peak of the pandemic, when there was little scope for social activity as most people worked remotely.
Among those changes was the lesser time spent showering, wearing fresh clothes, and in some cases, even brushing teeth, according to a 2022 study published by WFH Research and conducted by researchers from ITAM, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.
The study, which surveyed 4,000 U.S. adults, also found that people groomed themselves by putting on makeup or shaving significantly less when working from home compared to when they traveled to work.
But employees have come a long way since. Globally, the return-to-work push has meant that a number of employees now spend at least some part of their workweek in offices. Policies have differed depending on the country, company, and region where people work, but there are more office-goers now than during the pandemic years.
Data suggests that while consumers have started using personal care goods more frequently, inflation has been a factor in their decision-making. Although it remains to be seen how different products might be impacted by soaring prices, for the moment deodorants are winning.