By Martin Schultz
Through a special arrangement, what follows is an excerpt of a current article from Private Label Buyer, presented here for discussion.
The senior care products market is getting ready to explode. The basic premise is that as the baby boomer generation prepares to enter retirement age, the need for products that enhance their lifestyles, improve their health prospects and ease the burden of their disabilities will accelerate.
Interpreting these demands, the food industry is fast developing new kinds of functional drinks and foods that offer a host of specific benefits. These may include diet-control foods, products that conform to diabetic requirements, foods with low or zero sodium, fat, carbs or sugar, foods that reduce cholesterol and foods offering high fiber or an extra nutritional punch. On the horizon, too, are foods that will contain pharmacological ingredients to help reduce, for example, high blood pressure.
Another requirement of seniors in the food category that is only now being recognized is portion control. Divorced or widowed, more and more seniors are living alone, and they tend to eat sparingly.
As Rob Lippucci, product marketing manager of Hospital Specialty Co., Cleveland, sees it, the adult portion of the personal care market, which includes incontinence products, tissues and hand wipes, "has the most potential for growth and will grow enormously once the baby boomers retire. In fact, the need for incontinence products by increasing numbers of seniors will cause the market to burst out of its present configuration."
In the prescription drug category, whole new classes of medicines are likely to be manufactured over the next decade to mitigate the effects of various physical and mental aging issues, including arthritic conditions and advanced coronary disabilities as well as debilitating conditions of the body, such as Alzheimer's and strokes. Once the patents on many of these drugs run out, opportunities will open for generics and various store brands.
A great deal of work is also being done to improve the design and handling of everyday products. Thus, aids for use by physically disabled seniors in the bathroom and the kitchen, for example, are beginning to show some ergonomic improvement. They are designed to be handled by people suffering from disabling conditions in which the inflammation is sufficiently painful to induce the holder to instantly release the product. Walkers would be designed for more comfortable mobility, wheelchairs would require less mechanical strength to move, wall bars to steady people climbing into baths would be textured for a more comfortable grip.
In time, the senior personal care products market will go through a transformation every bit as revolutionary as that of the personal computer or the cell phone. Getting ahead of the coming changes will represent both a challenge and an opportunity for private label manufacturers.
Discussion Questions: Do you think vendors and retailers are prepared for the graying baby boomer generation? What opportunities do you think they are underestimating? Which ones do you think they are overestimating?