WORLD DETERGENT CONFERENCE
At the same time, women “are taking over the world,” said
Bell (just somewhat jokingly). They are living longer and their in-
comes are rising. As a result, formulators must ask themselves,
“are our products helping women?”
Interestingly Bell predicted that global washing machine pen-
etration will plateau at 70% in 2030; therefore, marketers must
not forsake handwashing formulas. Bell noted that while Indian
consumers are moving into the middle class at a rapid rate (by
2030, there will be 400 million of them), they will not reach the
income level to afford washing machines. Finally, Bell suggested
marketers prepare for a new wave of fabric blends—for the sim-
ple reason that the world is running out of room to grow cotton.
In a provocative presentation, Nabil Sakkab, managing director, Sakkab LLC, suggested that the industry, indeed much of the
industrialized world, has become bogged down by incremental
innovation and needs radical innovation to transform itself. He
recalled a decades-old McKinsey study that predicted the cell-phone market would only reach one million. The consulting
group was a bit off in its prediction, as cell phone sales today
exceed two billion.
“Radical innovation forms a new dominant design that
transforms a market or an industry,” he noted. In contrast, the
automatic washing machine that debuted in 1937 has not had a
radical design change even after all of these years. Sakkab went
on to take a shot at the leading tech companies of the day, not-
ing“I love Facebook, but I wouldn’t give up air conditioning, TV
or my car for it. The top 10 value companies in the world, like
Facebook and Google, produce nothing!”
Similarly, since Tide debuted in 1946, laundry aisle shelves have
become cluttered with incremental, not radical, change. As a result,
consumers have little interest in the category or its products.
“How many of you can’t wait to get home to do laundry?” he
asked.“The linear model is not effective for creating radical design.”
“Innovation must be shared within our industry, with other
industries and with our customers,”he urged attendees. •
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