Pampers For Adults

[Baby_David]

Hallo ab/dl Community,

I have started an online Petition aimed at Proter & Gamble to get them to produce an adult sized Nappy for us! The more people i get to support this the better. If you would like to be able to get a Pampers nappy (diaper) made especially to fit you follow the link and sigh up!

http://www.petitiononline.com/db007/petition.html

If enough people sign up you never know they may think it makes good business sense to produce a range of nappies for us!

Regards Baby David

[Frogboy]

I really don't mean to offend, but the grammer is somewhat lacking in your statement and there are a couple of glaring typos on there. Whilst my SPG is not perfect, when writing something as important as this type of document, it's always best to have someone proof read it.

If you wish to pitch an idea to a company, you need to speak to them in a profesional manner. They don't care about meeting peoples needs... They only care about taking money off people. Also what you have to realise is that the statement on the top of your petition represents everyone who signs it. I don't feel that your petition reflects my views enough to put my name on there.

Again, please don't take offence at what I have said... I seek only to help, not to demean!

Froggie

[night0wl]

I second Frogboy. The statement should be amended if possible. I signed it though because I dig the idea.

[Baby_David]

I really don't mean to offend, but the grammer is somewhat lacking in your statement and there are a couple of glaring typos on there. Whilst my SPG is not perfect, when writing something as important as this type of document, it's always best to have someone proof read it.

If you wish to pitch an idea to a company, you need to speak to them in a proffesional manner. They don't care about meeting peoples needs... They only care about taking money off people. Also what you have to realise is that the statement on the top of your petition represents everyone who signs it. I don't feel that your petition reflects my views enough to put my name on there.

Again, please don't take offence at what I have said... I seek only to help, not to demean!

Froggie

Hi Frogboy,

Yes i know my grammer is somewhat lacking, grammer is not my strong point, unfortunatly when i was in the infants i was taught ITA, so cat was spelt "kat". So when i went up into the juniors i had to start learning how to spell and write all over again again. End result bad English!

No offence taken by the way!

Regards David.

[Angela Bauer]

Hallo ab/dl Community,

I have started an online Petition aimed at Proter & Gamble to get them to produce an adult sized Nappy for us! The more people i get to support this the better. If you would like to be able to get a Pampers nappy (diaper) made especially to fit you follow the link and sigh up!

http://www.petitiono...7/petition.html

If enough people sign up you never know they may think it makes good business sense to produce a range of nappies for us!

Regards Baby David

Precious Baby David,

Chances are P&G will be more impressed when you type their corporate name Procter & Gamble

P&G has a different situation legally about adult diapers in North America than in the rest of the world. P&G started Attends as the first major brand of adult diapers. In the mid 1970s Attends took advantage of P&G inventions for Pampers, Baby Dry and Luvs. Years later, when the Depend brand of KCC became the best selling retail brand of adult diapers in the USA, P&G decided to sell the North American factories and brand of Attends to the former PaperPak Corporation, then known for making adult disposable health care products for hospitals and institutions. P&G already was pulling Attends out of retail stores. PaperPak had no experience marketing to the public. A few years ago PaperPak legally changed their corporate name to Attends Health Products.

My own legal research shows that as part of the sale of Attends to PaperPak, P&G agreed to stay out of the North America adult diaper business. For years I politely begged Pampers to make diapers larger than Size 6. Eventually they did make a longer baby active-wear diaper, the Pampers Cruiser Size 7. It is the same width. Size 7 is not sold in the UK.

Frustrated that P&G was ignoring my requests, on the advice of friends working for P&G, I paid a lot of money for the consultation services of Carlos Richer. He started making baby disposables in Latin America and has become the best respected baby diaper consultant. My husband and I were willing to buy a disposable factory if necessary. As a result of everything Sr. Richer taught me I did not buy a factory. I did get to know a lot of firms that do manufacture disposables, baby and adult, on contract. In fact world-wide hardly any of the big name brands still own their own factories. Pampers are made by contractors in several countries. So are the Attends sold outside North America.

P&G Pampers had to create a new diaper making machine for the Size 7. All the other baby diaper machines are at their size limit making Size 6. Only in theory can an adult diaper machine make disposables smaller than adult small. Most adult machines can only make medium and larger. Adult machines make about half as many diapers per hour and a modern baby diaper machine. Clearly when Cruisers Size 7 did not come close to meeting sales forecast, Pampers lost interest in spending money to create a machine to manufacture Size 8 and Size 9 which would have correctly fitted 80 pound people, Size 8 fitting people up to 65 pounds and down to less than 50 pounds, the upper limit of Size 6 and 7. Apparently the design of the Pampers in the larger sizes has been done. So has the engineering design of the new generation machine. Only a few prototype Size 8 and Size 9 were made using an old adult machine owned by a supplier to Pampers.

Since Pampers are made from raw material patented by P&G what I found was assuming I could adjust a machine to make my own Size 8 and Size 9, P&G would not allow me to buy the raw materials to have a diaper similar to a current Pampers. I believe the baby disposable business has changed since 1990. Having an old-fashioned size 8 with no stretch would be useless. They would be too small for ABDL and of no interest to parents.

In my experience even if you do polish the spelling and wording of your petition, P&G will refuse to read it. To avoid law suits P&G will not accept specific design suggestions. Just to make general requests you are required to sign legal waivers. Petitions by non-parent adults will not influence P&G. They cannot sell adult products in North America and feel in the rest of the world they are selling adult diapers as fast as they can make them.

KCC also makes Huggies and Depend. Clearly Depend do not benefit from Huggies inventions. KCC makes GoodNites/DryNights. Clearly they do not want to cut into that market by making smaller adult diapers.

Still, the very best of good wishes on your project.

[diapered charles]

They don't care about meeting peoples needs... They only care about taking money off people

That's the dumbest statement that I have heard in a good while. A business tries to make money by meeting peoples needs. A business can't make money without meeting consumer/customer needs. Who pays for things they do not need? That's a wierd statement.

On the plus side, Attends is doing some heavy recruiting on my campus at ECU located in Greenville NC. Greenville is also the home of Paper Pak and they are about to begin a huge marketing project. They came on campus with their products(how cool) during a visit and were the only firm to bring any products.

[Angela Bauer]

Thank you Angela, detailed and concise as usual!

I didn't know that each size of a diaper product required a seperate machine! thats amazing! I thought that they would have a machine that was, as you said adjustable to be able to manufacture a variety or products. I guess this is one reason that Benetton stopped making their size 6 'colors' diaper, due to the costs and evident low demand ( at the time) for anything in that size. Now I am sure that if they brought that size back, they would sell very well, but one never knows. From reviews I read from parents they were a wonderful product. They still make them, but only up to size 5....which is about equilivant in the US to a size 6 (which meant that their sizer 6 was even BIGGER!)

Anyways, very cool info indeed, but as a side note it is indeed sad that most diapers are manufactured out of the country now, I believe most major manufacturers all use Chinese plants for their products. I know that Secure Personal care is made in China as well as ( I think) ABU stuff, since they have to wait for containers to come in. As far as I can tell, there are no diapers manufactured in the continental United States anymore....again....sad.

It's just says something about the current "state of the Union" when you look on a package and all you see is "made in China"

Oh well

Thanks again!

qwack

Happy Saturday Afternoon, Square Duck,

If you visit the website of Carlos Richer Consulting you will find a list of baby diaper factories all over the world. On the West Coast of the USA cargo containers could be arriving from Mexico and Latin America as well as various places in Asia, including China. Remember, it was Carlos Richer who came up with the business of manufacturing disposables in Latin America. To reduce costs making disposables you need a factory close to a big harbor and fluff which is pulped from wood. It is also helpful to be close to plastics and chemical plants for the outer layers and SAP. Mexico has had an extensive petro-chemical industry going back to the 1930s, with harbors and paper mills. In fact when I was looking to either buy a factory or contract with one I personally concentrated on Mexico. Most of the diaper factory there have very talented staff and excellent quality control.

In fact there are some disposable factories in the USA. Attends is even expanding in North Carolina and Tranquility has a modern plant in the USA.

Most diaper machines are intended to convert from one size to another fairly quickly, but only within a certain range. In baby diapers size 6 and smaller to newborn is practical and some machines go down to premie. I am confident that the P&G machine designed for Size 7 Pampers can in theory make all Cruisers down to the smallest Size 3. However, the word is that series of machines is far slower than other fairly new machines, so it would be extravagant to use it for smaller diapers. P&G uses some of the world's most advanced baby diaper machines, many routinely running >1,000 per minute. Heck, even I do not use that many Size 4 Cruisers in a hurry. I figure my yearly supply of Size 4 takes them 1 minute 20 seconds. What is less clear, because P&G as well as KCC do not discuss details of manufacturing, is how long it would take to set up a machine making an active-wear diaper like Cruisers and switch to producing more conventional Baby Dry diapers. My understanding is that both of those Pampers products are made in the same factory but on different machines. P&G uses many factories to make Pampers, quite a few of those in Mexico. P&G probably uses still other machines to make LUVs.

Typically adult diaper machines are easier to switch from size to size and style to style, so long as all use similar raw materials. For more details read his sections on baby diaper manufacturing on the Richer Consulting website

http://disposablediaper.net/

Please remember that Richer does not claim to be an authority on making adult diapers. For years the go-to designer of adult diapers, especially store-brand generics, was Gary Hirsch. He started the company now known as Secure Personal Products. It is possible Hirsch is retired or semi-retired. He apparently did convince China to invest big time in diaper making equipment, both baby and adult. It seems logical that Secure and Bottom Half might contract with the same factory company. Most contract manufacturers have multiple factory locations. Without inside confidential information who can say if the same machines and factories are used for successive batches. Probably it comes down to which machine has the available time and where the correct raw material arrives. A fast diaper machine idle waiting for raw material is very sad.

Remember all adult machines run far slower than typical baby machines, but going from Size 6 to 5 does not change the speed of production. Clearly in an ideal world larger baby diapers could be made on fast machines to hold down cost. What complicates the business planning is that predicting how many of the larger sizes will be sold. P&G has not hit sales goals for Size 7 Cruisers according to many who should know and the stores are not willing to waste shelf-space. Obviously Huggies figured out the situation and ended development of larger Huggies.

For several years there was a near crisis making pull-ups. Those need still a different kind of machine. Not only are they slow, they used to jam a lot. For a few years there was a push in the baby diaper industry to improve the Velcro-like hook and loop fasteners so that pull-ready toddlers and kids could release their own diaper enough to use a toilet. There would be the benefit of a pull-up with improved manufacturing efficiency. Sort of like the Size 7 Cruiser, test marketing indicated parents rejected the concept. Still the hook and loop tabs were improved. It was more a change in advertising approach.

There still is an in-between size range where a maturing person is too big for baby diapers and not large enough for adult Youth or Small. In 1981 Attends made a "Junior" smaller than the "Youth" of the day. The current Attends Youth Brief was originally called "Small" In 1981 Attends Junior were about the width of Size 6 and the length of Size 7, a good fit up to 50 pounds and snug up to 55 pounds. The old Youth covered up to just over 80 pounds, but could snug down to 55 pounds and still be comfortable. The downside and reason Attends stopped making those was that Junior and Youth sold for double the retail price of Toddler Large baby diapers. Parents are always price sensitive, especially when diapering older and larger kids. While parents of delayed toilet learning kids have a need, the market does not support production.

I have done my darnedest to convince the baby diaper industry to more freely market products. We all know about brands in Japan easily fitting people of 80 pounds which retail for just slightly more than other smaller baby diapers. Why not print some of the packaging plastic in other languages and send containers of those to the USA? I mean cargo containers sail all over anyway. By the way, chances are very good those diapers for Japan are not made there. Costs in Japan are high, so they import this sort of product, often from China.

[timmyc]

Pampers has too much vested in their brand name to soil it producing a product that has sexual implications. If they were to introduce a product aimed at the ab/dl community, their would be a huge backlash and economic boycott from the quote normal people unquote. I don't know for sure about the legal ramifications Angela mentioned but I have no reason to disbelieve them. Good luck in your campaign but 28 names on an online petition are going to turn many heads.

[Aleia]

I'd only be interested if they'd make adult-sized replicas of the late '80s/early '90s Pampers, which probably isn't going to happen. For me, it's all about the thickness.

[curiositykilledthecat]

online petitions are notconsidered legitimate and therefore this would not accomplish anything.

[waynecook52]

Precious Baby David,

Chances are P&G will be more impressed when you type their corporate name Procter & Gamble

P&G has a different situation legally about adult diapers in North America than in the rest of the world. P&G started Attends as the first major brand of adult diapers. In the mid 1970s Attends took advantage of P&G inventions for Pampers, Baby Dry and Luvs. Years later, when the Depend brand of KCC became the best selling retail brand of adult diapers in the USA, P&G decided to sell the North American factories and brand of Attends to the former PaperPak Corporation, then known for making adult disposable health care products for hospitals and institutions. P&G already was pulling Attends out of retail stores. PaperPak had no experience marketing to the public. A few years ago PaperPak legally changed their corporate name to Attends Health Products.

My own legal research shows that as part of the sale of Attends to PaperPak, P&G agreed to stay out of the North America adult diaper business. For years I politely begged Pampers to make diapers larger than Size 6. Eventually they did make a longer baby active-wear diaper, the Pampers Cruiser Size 7. It is the same width. Size 7 is not sold in the UK.

Frustrated that P&G was ignoring my requests, on the advice of friends working for P&G, I paid a lot of money for the consultation services of Carlos Richer. He started making baby disposables in Latin America and has become the best respected baby diaper consultant. My husband and I were willing to buy a disposable factory if necessary. As a result of everything Sr. Richer taught me I did not buy a factory. I did get to know a lot of firms that do manufacture disposables, baby and adult, on contract. In fact world-wide hardly any of the big name brands still own their own factories. Pampers are made by contractors in several countries. So are the Attends sold outside North America.

P&G Pampers had to create a new diaper making machine for the Size 7. All the other baby diaper machines are at their size limit making Size 6. Only in theory can an adult diaper machine make disposables smaller than adult small. Most adult machines can only make medium and larger. Adult machines make about half as many diapers per hour and a modern baby diaper machine. Clearly when Cruisers Size 7 did not come close to meeting sales forecast, Pampers lost interest in spending money to create a machine to manufacture Size 8 and Size 9 which would have correctly fitted 80 pound people, Size 8 fitting people up to 65 pounds and down to less than 50 pounds, the upper limit of Size 6 and 7. Apparently the design of the Pampers in the larger sizes has been done. So has the engineering design of the new generation machine. Only a few prototype Size 8 and Size 9 were made using an old adult machine owned by a supplier to Pampers.

Since Pampers are made from raw material patented by P&G what I found was assuming I could adjust a machine to make my own Size 8 and Size 9, P&G would not allow me to buy the raw materials to have a diaper similar to a current Pampers. I believe the baby disposable business has changed since 1990. Having an old-fashioned size 8 with no stretch would be useless. They would be too small for ABDL and of no interest to parents.

In my experience even if you do polish the spelling and wording of your petition, P&G will refuse to read it. To avoid law suits P&G will not accept specific design suggestions. Just to make general requests you are required to sign legal waivers. Petitions by non-parent adults will not influence P&G. They cannot sell adult products in North America and feel in the rest of the world they are selling adult diapers as fast as they can make them.

KCC also makes Huggies and Depend. Clearly Depend do not benefit from Huggies inventions. KCC makes GoodNites/DryNights. Clearly they do not want to cut into that market by making smaller adult diapers.

Still, the very best of good wishes on your project.

Got to say Angela of all the people that respond to these posts that you have the best ansewers.What ever you do please keep up the good work.Thank you for being here

[Angela Bauer]

Got to say Angela of all the people that respond to these posts that you have the best ansewers.What ever you do please keep up the good work.Thank you for being here

Wayne,

You are very kind.

The frustrating thing is a whole lot of kids world wide either weigh over 50 pounds when they are toilet trained, or if they do not weigh that much, their bellies protrude.

In such cases USA typical Size 6 or 7 are too small and Adult Small are too large as well as being too expensive. This is a world-wide situation. Since the diapers are made world-wide and shipped from country to country as it is, why not market the slow-selling diapers all over the world?

In a perfect world I would have a magic wand so that I could fly to all the folks making diaper marketing decisions, gently tap their shoulders with my magic wand, thus getting them to see the light of reason. If that did not work then I could apply the same magic wand to places where they will be convinced! Sometimes that loving tough needs to be significantly firmer!

[Frogboy]

They don't care about meeting peoples needs... They only care about taking money off people

That's the dumbest statement that I have heard in a good while. A business tries to make money by meeting peoples needs. A business can't make money without meeting consumer/customer needs. Who pays for things they do not need? That's a wierd statement.

Of course... how silly of me... I forgot that businesses make all their products out of the goodness of their hearts as opposed to making a profit.

Why don't kelloggs sell "Froot loops" in the UK, despite my numerous requests to them and the fact that some companies import them for re-sale in the UK? It's obvious that people want them in the UK, yet they still don't sell them here. Could it be that they wont make enough profit out of doing so? That would be them putting their profits before their customers.

How come buses don't travel down my road? There's at least 15people I know of who walk from my street to the next to catch a bus, and I know of at least 10 more people who have informed the bus company that they would start using the bus if it came down our street, especially as it used to come down here years ago and the bus stop is still in place. They still refuse to send the buses down here despite the fact that it will only need a minor change to the bus route... how come that is I hear you ask... Well, the bus company claim that the extra mileage and staff costs are too much to make it commercially viable to come down our street. So could it be that yet another company is putting profits before it's customers needs?

The UK biker scene has a lot to say about chinese made motorbikes. They are rubbish! The electrics frequently fail, they rust before they're 6 months old, the engines sieze up within a few thousand miles, the tyres wear out in no time... the list goes on. The people making these bikes have no interest beyond the point of sale. Once the customer has parted with their cash, they couldn't care less about the shockingly poor quality bike you've just bought... they're just happy you money is now in their pockets!

Even in the NHS, which is now largely run by private companies, community nurses are being told to spend less time with their patients so that the nurses can take on more of them. Why is that??? It's because the private firms running the community nurses get more money from the government if they see more patients. Now that to me sounds like a glaring example of a company putting it's profits above what its patients need!

If you think that a company actually cares about you then you are a bit deluded. Companies care about one thing and one thing only... Profit. They will make products that appeal to you, but they will cut costs wherever they can, often at the expense of quality. They will drop a product quicker than you can blink if it stops making a profit, regardless of whether a few people still by it. They don't make products because we need them... they take our needs and make products that they can sell to us!

[loopy]

If you think that a company actually cares about you then you are a bit deluded. Companies care about one thing and one thing only... Profit. They will make products that appeal to you, but they will cut costs wherever they can, often at the expense of quality. They will drop a product quicker than you can blink if it stops making a product, regardless of whether a few people still by it. They don't make products because we need them... they take our needs and make products that they can sell to us!

Wow, you can be quite cynical . But I do agree, and have seen it done so many times. Big Companies are in it for the cash, and feck the customer. Thats why I like dealing with smaller companies, Ok they're in it for the cash as well, but they have to look after their customers better to get it, and they tend to rely on repeat buisness quite a bit. So better customer service, and happier me .

[Frogboy]

Wow, you can be quite cynical . But I do agree, and have seen it done so many times. Big Companies are in it for the cash, and feck the customer. Thats why I like dealing with smaller companies, Ok they're in it for the cash as well, but they have to look after their customers better to get it, and they tend to rely on repeat buisness quite a bit. So better customer service, and happier me .

Actually you're right... I do come across quite cynical in that! I would like to take this opportunity to exclude Cosy'N'Dry from my cynicism. They are a lovely company and I truly believe that they make love, not profits! lol

[Baby_David]

Precious Baby David,

Chances are P&G will be more impressed when you type their corporate name Procter & Gamble

P&G has a different situation legally about adult diapers in North America than in the rest of the world. P&G started Attends as the first major brand of adult diapers. In the mid 1970s Attends took advantage of P&G inventions for Pampers, Baby Dry and Luvs. Years later, when the Depend brand of KCC became the best selling retail brand of adult diapers in the USA, P&G decided to sell the North American factories and brand of Attends to the former PaperPak Corporation, then known for making adult disposable health care products for hospitals and institutions. P&G already was pulling Attends out of retail stores. PaperPak had no experience marketing to the public. A few years ago PaperPak legally changed their corporate name to Attends Health Products.

My own legal research shows that as part of the sale of Attends to PaperPak, P&G agreed to stay out of the North America adult diaper business. For years I politely begged Pampers to make diapers larger than Size 6. Eventually they did make a longer baby active-wear diaper, the Pampers Cruiser Size 7. It is the same width. Size 7 is not sold in the UK.

Frustrated that P&G was ignoring my requests, on the advice of friends working for P&G, I paid a lot of money for the consultation services of Carlos Richer. He started making baby disposables in Latin America and has become the best respected baby diaper consultant. My husband and I were willing to buy a disposable factory if necessary. As a result of everything Sr. Richer taught me I did not buy a factory. I did get to know a lot of firms that do manufacture disposables, baby and adult, on contract. In fact world-wide hardly any of the big name brands still own their own factories. Pampers are made by contractors in several countries. So are the Attends sold outside North America.

P&G Pampers had to create a new diaper making machine for the Size 7. All the other baby diaper machines are at their size limit making Size 6. Only in theory can an adult diaper machine make disposables smaller than adult small. Most adult machines can only make medium and larger. Adult machines make about half as many diapers per hour and a modern baby diaper machine. Clearly when Cruisers Size 7 did not come close to meeting sales forecast, Pampers lost interest in spending money to create a machine to manufacture Size 8 and Size 9 which would have correctly fitted 80 pound people, Size 8 fitting people up to 65 pounds and down to less than 50 pounds, the upper limit of Size 6 and 7. Apparently the design of the Pampers in the larger sizes has been done. So has the engineering design of the new generation machine. Only a few prototype Size 8 and Size 9 were made using an old adult machine owned by a supplier to Pampers.

Since Pampers are made from raw material patented by P&G what I found was assuming I could adjust a machine to make my own Size 8 and Size 9, P&G would not allow me to buy the raw materials to have a diaper similar to a current Pampers. I believe the baby disposable business has changed since 1990. Having an old-fashioned size 8 with no stretch would be useless. They would be too small for ABDL and of no interest to parents.

In my experience even if you do polish the spelling and wording of your petition, P&G will refuse to read it. To avoid law suits P&G will not accept specific design suggestions. Just to make general requests you are required to sign legal waivers. Petitions by non-parent adults will not influence P&G. They cannot sell adult products in North America and feel in the rest of the world they are selling adult diapers as fast as they can make them.

KCC also makes Huggies and Depend. Clearly Depend do not benefit from Huggies inventions. KCC makes GoodNites/DryNights. Clearly they do not want to cut into that market by making smaller adult diapers.

Still, the very best of good wishes on your project.

Hi Angela,

Thank for your best wishes. You certainly know alot about pampers.

You are probably right and P&G will not be interested, but hell if you don`t try you don`t get anywhere anyway so I felt is was worth a shot! So like I am keep your fingers crossed and wait and see.

Regards David

[abrichiebc]

It has been proven in years past that if the association to AB/DL is mentioned to adult diaper manufacturers regarding changes or modifications, prints, etc., all ties will be cut off. These well known big box manufacturers of adult incontinent products want nothing to do with this community what so ever. They market their products specifically to the senior and or medical field regardless of the retail market.

At a time I belonged to a diaper group which the owner had been in talks with a senior person with a manufacturer that made Tranquility diapers. He had come up with a diaper design and had it in the hands of this person. Talks eventually had broken and the diapers were never produced.

Now he never mentioned to this person at Tranquility that these diapers were for the ABDL community what so ever and had told the members of the group to send in letters or emails not including an ABDL type address so as to not tip them off that they were for the off mainstream market.

Whatever you do, do not mention the word 'ABDL' whatsoever. Do not ask for the diapers to have specialized prints with taping zones, one wide tape, blah blah. This is a red flag. They will shut you out as fast as closing a door in your face. They won't give you the time of day if this is what they know you are looking for.

Just my thought from previous attempts over the years.

[square_duck]

Something else that I had though of is, instead of designing a WHOLE new diaper for the AB/DL community, why not take something like an Abena X, or just an Abena super, and redo the cover in a more appealing fashion, or color combination? use the filling and inner liner form the Abena (I use this as an example because to me the Abena X is the clsest thing for adults to the pampers line in design and function) and just have them covered with a different pattern of plastic (or cloth like if you wish)

The trick is to get the manufacturer to do so, and you might have to provide your own design for the back sheet, in color and pattern etc, and the materials also, which I could imagine would cost a pretty penny. I'm not even sure how this coul dbe accomplished and what negotiations would take place, but I think it would be a better alternative, than coming up with a whole new design, which would require a new machine etc.

Sometimes you have to work with what you have to get what you want.

qwack

[Brutal]

The issue with the petition is that it won't really make that much of a difference. P&G actually considered going into the incontenence brief market but decided against it due to the economic feasibility.

One of the biggest issues is that there are already niche companies that cater to those needs. We have bambinos that make a great product, abena super plus, and a few others. There is a call for a single tape diaper, but not withstanding it's already covered at a reasonable price.

Now I know that some consider the products pretty expensive. But you'd be mistaken to think that P&G would sell for any less than "depends" do if they made the product.

At the end of the day, I simply don't see them making a product targeting a very limited market.

[Angela Bauer]

The issue with the petition is that it won't really make that much of a difference. P&G actually considered going into the incontenence brief market but decided against it due to the economic feasibility.

One of the biggest issues is that there are already niche companies that cater to those needs. We have bambinos that make a great product, abena super plus, and a few others. There is a call for a single tape diaper, but not withstanding it's already covered at a reasonable price.

Now I know that some consider the products pretty expensive. But you'd be mistaken to think that P&G would sell for any less than "depends" do if they made the product.

At the end of the day, I simply don't see them making a product targeting a very limited market.

What a fascinating post, Brutal. My first question is: Are you absolutely sure your inside source actually is a P&G executive?

Remember, it was P&G that took a niche product, paper diapers for traveling kids, and created the baby disposable diaper industry. P&G Pampers and other brands are sold in most world markets. Before Pampers had sticky tapes P&G was hard at work developing Attends, the first successfully mass-marketed adult incontinence diaper.

P&G never explained to their stock holders their reasoning for selling the North American rights in Attends to PaperPak. That sale included the Attends factories in North America. P&G did retain the Attends brands in the rest of the world, along with those factories.

Clearly P&G is still very much in the adult incontinence product business.

Did your inside source read public records showing that in the USA the money made on adult incontinence products if far greater than from the baby diaper business. Not only are gross sales vastly greater, the profit percentage is far better. Where would any sane person feel there is no economic viability to the adult incontinence business?

Of course the majority of adult incontinence products sold are not created for maximum ABDL appeal. Over the past several years in DD we have extensively discussed why the incon community does not desire or need excessive capacity. Nearly all medically incon people prefer to change diapers at least every 8 hours. Professional care givers are mandated by professional standards and regulations to change patients more often.

[d_drew12]

That's very interesting Angela to find out that Pampers actually did produce a size 8 and 9 but it never hit the shelves. Dang!! Well, as in any big business, you keep what sells the most volume and axe the slowest movers. I worked in retail for several years so I know a lot about this subject. In retail, shelf space is prime especially with so many new items constantly rolling out and variations of each you have to choose what you want to put on that shelf and the biggest sellers get the spot. Often, a descent seller would get killed by a better on just because of space issues. Not all stores can carry each and every variety of a company’s product so they put the top 3, 4 or whatever they have room for out that sell the most. It can also be a regional thing. An example I'm reminded of was Lipton Rice Sides had a Wild Rice flavor that sold extremely well, probably top 5 of over 20 varieties in the northern region but was near bottom with the rest of the country so it got the axe. Many northerners were not happy with Lipton but to them, business was business. The only way someone like Proctor and Gamble would be able to sell a size 8 and 9 would be to offer them online or by delivery of some sort only. Just like adult diapers, the markets are so small for these items that you can't just go in and pick up a pack of most lines of adult diapers at any retail store. Size 3, 4, and 5 are the most commonly used baby diaper on the market right now. I know this because where I worked, those sizes were available in several different packaging sizes, were the ones that were available in the most variety from night time to baby dry, cruisers, etc. The size 1, 2, and even premature diapers were even getting the axe in many store sets with like only 1 brand to choose from for those sizes. Nobody really complained so must not have really been a big issue for parents.

As far as the price of a baby diaper vs. an adult diaper, it'd seem logical that if a baby machine can make twice as many in the same time as an adult machine, they'd cost about half as much. Now a days though, there are plenty of parent willing to pay nearly $1 each for goodnites which costs just about as much if not more than an adult diaper. Maybe this is because kids don't feel it's REALLY a diaper and often only one is used a night. It'd get pretty expensive to have an incontinent kid in goodnites all day.

Lastly, thanks Angela for pointing out that often diapers are not made by each individual company and are contracted out. I've been trying pretty hard to get that point across to many here that there's not a machine designed around each size and style of diaper on the market. Nobody seems to want to believe me but we all know you have much more cred than I so thanks for pointing that fact out. Many different companies could have their diapers produced on the SAME machines. Making a different diaper is more or less telling the machine what to make, changing some settings and maybe some tooling and having the raw materials in place to accommodate your requests. A diaper machine has to be versatile enough to produce nearly anything a customer wants and keep up with the continual changes diaper companies make to their product.

Nice write up though Angela on everything, very educational.

[square_duck]

I find it difficult to believe that P&G is having a hard time selling size 7 cruisers! I can't find them in stores I go into, and when I stopped into a Toys R us / babies r us ( Christmas shopping ) there were cases of different sizes of pampers products size 4-5 & 6 piled 4-5 high and equally wide, but the size 7 stack was almost GONE! it had 1 case left, and a bunch of empty space around it, where the other cases had been.

When Goodnites first hit the shelves, they were difficult to keep in stock, everywhere I went and looked for them, the shelves were either empty or had 1 pack left in the void.

By this observation, and I am sure this isn't 100% true for every store in every town USA, but there evidently is some kind of demand for disposable products in larger sizes, for what ever reason.

Maybe P&G has their expectations set to high, therefore larger sized kids diapers aren't meeting this 'supposed' demand and so they pull the plug, or relegate the product to the internet only *shrug*

Why Huggies bailed on the size 7 who knows, other then what Angela suggested, that there was "limited demand" but I feel that they really gave up because P&G beat them to the punch, but who really knows, other than the member of that respective Board of directors who make these decisions.

Just my take on things.

qwack

[Guest toddler82uk]

saying your from the uk there are now pampers for us adults called underjams

[Guest 13obalicious]

Angela,

Thanks for sharing your breadth of knowledge with us.

[d_drew12]

square_duck, there's actually a good reason as to why it may seem this way as you described. Having had ordered for a store before, I can give you some insight to why, not speaking for the world but I'm sure many stores do things this way.

When I would order, I knew certain sizes like the 3-5 sold the best so even if the shelf wasn't empty, sometimes even full, I'd order a case just to make sure we had some on hand as they sold much quicker and as the saying goes, it's hard to sell things out of an empty wagon. We didn't want to run the risk of missing a sale on a sure thing so money was spent on keeping these sizes in stock. On the flip side, we got the size 7 in and it took several weeks just to sell one package(true story). It's fairly easy to notice, gee, we never sell these as you pass by it when ordering several times throughout the week and there's constantly 3 packs there. You get use to knowing what items sell quickly since you're constantly ordering them so you should always have those items on hand and what items are slow, you let them run low before reordering to keep inventory costs down. Basically, for the size 7, they sold so slow, I wouldn't consider ordering them until only 1 package or even none were left because there's no need to keep $50 worth of product sitting on the shelf collecting dust just to make the shelf look full. Typically though, you wouldn't want to wait until there's none because empty shelf space looks bad. If we ran out of 7's, you may upset A customer, run out of the 3-5, you pissed off a crowd and they remember. There were plenty of other items we did this to as well. Say canned brussle sprouts, we have them for those that want them, but sold so slow, we wouldn't jam the shelf full of them constantly ordering as soon as another case would fit or keep overstock on them, but wait until there was only 1 or 2 cans left before reordering. Conversly, canned corn flew of the shelf and we'd have overstock of it constantly. So basically, you really can't go off of what a store has on hand as to what sells the best. The opposite of your theory is more likely true, more in stock, better seller, less, worse seller. If a store filled ever item to the max all the time, with tens of thousands of items over the whole store, you may be talking hundreds of thousands of dollars in inventory on items that are just sitting on the shelves collecting dust and certain items could even expire so now you're throwing money away. Our store had the room to fit size 7 to make that one customer happy, but had we been a smaller store, it would've likely been the first to get cut or never be considered. Goodnites sales were fairly slow too for our store. We ran those down a lot too, not just because they were slow sellers but we didn't want to order a case until the whole case would fit on the shelf, thus keeping overstock or backstock down.

So there you have it a small look into retail ordering.