huggies new packaging less diapers

[wetatnight]

Has anybody else noticed that in the newest packaging from huggies that their are less diapers package then in the previous packaging?

for example Huggies overnights size 6 the previous bags had 18 diapers per pack

the newest huggies overnight have 15 diapers per pack for the same price as the former 18 pack diapers 

what a rip off ?

[beallucanb]

Same corporate BS, make the package different,  pretty while screwing the customer, hoping he won't notice it.

[MegaChar]

Ah yes...its called the "consumer shrink ray". In order to keep the prices the same while keeping up with costs or inflation or profit the product shrinks in amount.

Not very good on the parent.

[BabyJune]

They did it with ice cream, too. Notice that your "half gallon" of ice cream is now a quart and a pint but the price didn't go down.

[diaperboyMKE]

YES..THIS!!  

(Excuse the WALL of text, but I have additional insight on this that I thought I should share with the community)

Yes, the reduction in package count is deplorable, but what's WORSE is.. have you noticed the changes to the diapers themselves!!? 

At least with Overnites (I also use size 6), the new packaging not only comes with less diapers, but the diapers themselves are also completely redesigned!

I complained on the Huggies App, and received the typical canned response, "blah blah, we have made some minor changes to the packaging but they're still the same great diaper you know and love"..  BS.. 

I was lucky enough to find 4 packs of the old style before they disappeared from store shelves, and when I got home I immediately took one out, opened it up, and compared it side by side with the new style, and I can verify that they are COMPLETELY different diapers.

 

Everything about them, from the cut/shape, size, thickness, to the manufacturing process used to make them, and even the materials themselves are different.. and I'm not JUST talking about the graphics either, if you look at the up close, you can clearly see/feel a difference in the material used for everything from the outter cover, to the standing leakguards, the landing zone, the tabs, the insult layer (inside top layer).. all different.

The noticable differences to the size/shape/cut are that the front of the diaper is noticably narrower in the crotch area, including the padding and the outside cover.. as well as the leakguards themselves are shorter and narrower.  

And I know that I'm not exactly the target audience for this diaper, but this is BAD news for people like us because the new (narrower) front and shorter leak guards mean that they no longer stretch wide enough to cover my "boy parts" properly, and no matter how much I attempt to make sure everything is as centered as possible, the lack of material means that the slightest movement in them causes the leakguard to pull to the side, exposing my pants/underwear to wicking leaks.

The old design had nice wide, stretchy, deep, leakgaurds that I could reach down into the front of the diaper and spread them out while gently tugging them up into the areas around the sides of my groin and they would comfortably shield everything in between them, meaning the diaper could essentially be "used" by me, several times, with basically no fear of them leaking or having wetness "wick" out.  And this was all because everything down there was securely covered, in it's entirety by the standing leak guards.

Well, no more..  then new design is so narrow, and the leakguards themselves are so much shorter that even when stretched to the max they don't cover everything up very well, and as I already mentioned.. this has caused several leaks, where the guard shifts slightly, and the edge of my pants or underwear will now be touching the exposed insides of the diaper, and they'll immediately wick a ton of wetness out, leaving me with a high dark wet spot on the front/sides of my crotch, along with having soaked underwear.

This happens a lot with most other baby diapers I've tried, and until the redesign, Huggies Overnite was the ONLY one that didn't have that problem.

I wore them every day, all day, for years.. and was able to wet whenever I needed to, and could wet 2-3 times before the diaper would fail and leak, now, I'll get leaks on the first wetting.

Also, the capacity of the diaper itself is greatly reduced.  It was hard to test this for me because I couldn't wet it enough to get it to capacity because it would usually leak right away, but I eventually tried to see if they were the same, and nope.. the capacity of the diaper is PATHETIC compared to the previous design.

Like I said, I have worn these inside my jeans every day for several years.. and I've also been able to compare new vs old, by switching back and forth. I actually used up an entire pack of the new design, so again I can say that I'm absolutely SURE when I tell you that they don't perform nearly as well. 

I would say that the new "Overnite" is now as narrow, thin, and absorbent as the old version of the Little Movers, as a matter of fact, the tabs are just like the old Little Movers, the landing zone material, the leak guard hight, and the performance is SO similar to the OLD little movers that it makes me wonder if they haven't just eliminated the old Overnites, and replaced it with a version of their Little Movers diaper which they have updated to look more like the old Overnites.

Considering I've heard that they have ALSO changed their Little Movers diaper, it REALLY makes me wonder.. if.. Huggies hasn't rebranded their cheaper "Little Movers" product as the new Overnites (with minor changes made to make them more closely resemble the now depreciated, and more costly to make..old version. 

..and at the same time, they have replaced the Little Movers (and potentially others) with newer designs, which are cheaper to produce.  

Modern diapers are SO good, that cheapening up the design of their standard diapers would likely go largely unnoticed, since parents are changing their babies faster than their diapers are able to fail, EXCEPT for the case of their Overnites, which have historically been a niche product, designed for a specific type of consumer who's needs require a diaper with ultimate performance.

These "niche" diapers were touted as the best in the market, since they were able to absorb aamzing amounts of liquid, at an incredible speed.. but, like with all high-end, specialty products, that increased performance not only shows us what disposable diaper technology is capable of, it ALSO comes at a premium price.

But, with non-overnite diapers performing SO well these days, the gap in performance between Overnites and standard diapers has narrowed, leaving the Overnite diapers to have less perceived value in the consumers eyes, ultimately making them seem like they're just not worth the higher price tag. 

So, with this narrowing gap in performance and drop in perceived value, coupled with increasing material costs, and an increase in competitive pressure from the growing number of diaper brands today.. Kimberly Clark has seen a drop in Huggies' financial performance.

Considering there have been a number of articles in business/financial news..

(here's one:     https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.fool.com/amp/investing/2018/07/11/why-kimberly-clark-stock-has-lost-13-so-far-in-201.aspx)

..talking about how Kimberly Clark has lost market share in the diaper space to other brands, along with rising material costs, they have seen shrinking profit margins since 2017,  one way to attempt to remedy this would be to drastically reduce their cost, and/or increase their prices!

Well, anyone with a highschool level economics education can tell you that you can't just raise prices to increase profit margin without HUGE potential consequences, so one way that corporations "raise" prices, is to sell the product at the same price, except include less product in the package in hopes that the consumer won't notice. (HUGE MISTAKE) especially in THIS market. 

Current diaper consumers (I mean of course, women who have given birth to a baby within the last 3 years) are not only a LOT more educated than any other previous generation, they have ALSO become consuming adults on the heels of one of the worst financial downturns in recent history, and as a result, they are incredibly cost conscious and tend to make much more educated buying choices than previous new mothers.

So they WILL notice the reduction in package quantity.

This MAY fool the casual, first time buyer that MAY reach for that 15 pack of Huggies Overnite, (not knowing that months prior that same package would have had 18 diapers in it), but they aren't fooling the average diaper buyer, or more importantly, their existing consumer base.

This part is where my marketing education and professional background (some of which is actually IN the baby diaper manufacturing industry.. for a competitor of Huggies, don't ask).

This willingness by some consumers to overlook the smaller quantity may be the result of their desire to try something new to them.. but in short order, they will eventually do the math and realize that they are paying 20-30% more than they were paying for their previous favorite brand, and this WILL cause them to do more research, ask online, look at and try alternative brands, likely resulting in a big dip in sales for Huggies.  

And those mothers who haven't switched to something new, and who have been buying other Huggies products (like Little Movers) should immediately notice this quantity reduction for what it is.. a bladen attempt to rip off the consumer by deceiving them with their "new graphics" and "shiney new packaging design" meant to hide their cost-cutting reduction in quality and reduced package quantity.

So unfortunately, I think that this will blow up in KC's face, and when it does, I just hope that the "profit over quality" minded directors in charge of the Huggies brand, doesn't mistake this as market fluctuation.  I hope someone over at Huggies has the insight to recognize their drop in sales as retaliation by the consumers, for producing an inferior product and betraying their trust.. and in the later case, it's possible that they will bring back the old design (or at least new versions of them), but unfortunately.. from what I know about manufacturing, once you make radical changes to your product and have retooled your entire production line (or have moved it to another location all together), by the time you realize your mistake, it's too late because switching back would be financially impractical, or down right impossible in the event that they upgraded their production line, tooling, equipment, workers.. in order to start producing a "cheaper" diaper, which usually means the old equipment/tooling has been destroyed, repurposed, or completely reworked in order to accommodate the new design.  

And (according to history) this is where things get dicey for a corporation.. this is when huge changes in management take place, CEOs get fired or step down, companies go through huge rounds of layoffs in response to their desecrated revenue totals, and that's when the vultures swarm, and brands get bought up by other companies at a bargain.  Not saying this is what will happen to Huggies, because with a parent company like Kimberly Clark, they will likely receive an influx of cash, and with new management they will reinvent themselves likely picking up market share in the process.. but they will never go through something like that and recover to their former glory, especially since they were already struggling, which is what caused the changes in the first place.

Coke-a-Cola is the only company I know of that can change the recipe of their world reknown product, letting their loyal customers down, and removing a consumer monolith from store shelves in the process..and watch its replacement fail utterly before changing it back, only to have the original version surpass the level it was at before the change..

 This unfortunately doesn't happen to most companies, especially ones who can't just tweak a recipe, and tweak it back just as easily.. so we'll have to see how Huggies responds to the inevitable dump in sales they're about to witness.. I for one, hope it sparks a revival in their core competencies, and reminds them what made them the brand they are today (the excellent performance of their diapers, and their commitment to their customers by producing diapers like Overnites, where they pull out all the stops in order to produce the ultimate diaper that surpasses all others in every way. 

So, Huggies, if you're listening.. BRING BACK the TRUE Overnites, and stop cutting corners at the expense of your customers experience with your product.  If you build it, they will pee!

 

..and that's it for me folks.  Sorry for the dissertation.  Stay padded. 

[wetatnight]

I have also noticed the change to the over night diapers also

the outer cover is a stiffer material and the cut and thickness are shorter and thinner then the previous version 

and the rear waistband is wider

 

[GNXL1]

While I generally don't mind companies making money, I do not like it when companies cheat their customers and potential customers. When I say customers, I'm not referring to stock holders, but the people who actually use their products and services.

[NonCommitted11]

They were too small either way

[Dirty Diaper/Maxipad Lover]

(Trying this again since I fell asleep writing my original reply.)

Okay, let me preface this with a bit of background information: Huggies have been my go to diaper since I was a teenager, possibly earlier. My two favorite diaper brands are Huggies and Honest Company, and they're effectively deadlocked for that #1 spot. At least they were prior to this redesign. I'm going to debunk one slight myth about these, but that's about as forgiving as I'll be. I've been keeping an eye on the prices of diapers for at least a decade now, (especially Huggies diapers,) as well as the quantity in various packages. The very first size 6 diapers ever, (Huggies Ultratrim "AKA Snug N Dry" in today's line) came with 18/pack. This number has NEVER decreased below that, and ten years ago was at about 23/pack. The new "Little Movers," ("Huggies Supreme" in the line when size 6 was first introduced,) have now dropped to 16/pack, and I'm pretty sure they debuted at 18/pack as well, but would need to find some photos that prove this. That being said, I have also never seen the price decrease on packages of these as much as I did with the new design. It looks like these have had a dollar, maybe a little more knocked off the price at stores around here, divide that up and you're actually paying less per diaper. Unfortunately, this means nothing when the diapers are so absolutely awful that they might as well come "pre-peed" and "pre-pooped" so you can just have them leak immediately instead of after a couple of hours.

On 4/27/2019 at 5:44 PM, diaperboyMKE said:

At least with Overnites (I also use size 6), the new packaging not only comes with less diapers, but the diapers themselves are also completely redesigned!

I complained on the Huggies App, and received the typical canned response, "blah blah, we have made some minor changes to the packaging but they're still the same great diaper you know and love"..  BS.. 

Everything about them, from the cut/shape, size, thickness, to the manufacturing process used to make them, and even the materials themselves are different.. and I'm not JUST talking about the graphics either, if you look at the up close, you can clearly see/feel a difference in the material used for everything from the outter cover, to the standing leakguards, the landing zone, the tabs, the insult layer (inside top layer).. all different.Also, the capacity of the diaper itself is greatly reduced.  It was hard to test this for me because I couldn't wet it enough to get it to capacity because it would usually leak right away, but I eventually tried to see if they were the same, and nope.. the capacity of the diaper is PATHETIC compared to the previous design.

Considering I've heard that they have ALSO changed their Little Movers diaper, it REALLY makes me wonder.. if.. Huggies hasn't rebranded their cheaper "Little Movers" product as the new Overnites (with minor changes made to make them more closely resemble the now depreciated, and more costly to make..old version...and at the same time, they have replaced the Little Movers (and potentially others) with newer designs, which are cheaper to produce.  

...Kimberly Clark has lost market share in the diaper space to other brands...

Well, anyone with a highschool level economics education can tell you that you can't just raise prices to increase profit margin without HUGE potential consequences, so one way that corporations "raise" prices, is to sell the product at the same price, except include less product in the package in hopes that the consumer won't notice.

Current diaper consumers (I mean of course, women who have given birth to a baby within the last 3 years) are not only a LOT more educated than any other previous generation, they have ALSO become consuming adults on the heels of one of the worst financial downturns in recent history, and as a result, they are incredibly cost conscious and tend to make much more educated buying choices than previous new mothers.

I could quote far more of the post above, but then this reply would be a series of novels instead of just one novel. I'll try to split my comments by the paragraphs above.

The Overnites and Little Movers are completely redesigned. From what I understand a similar redesign was done last year with Little Snugglers which now come in sizes up to size 6, and with Snug N Dry as well. Those are the first ones that I noticed took a quality nosedive.

KCWW really needs to learn that the canned response from the copy/paste intern doesn't cut it anymore. Millennials see right through that marketing BS and move onto the next brand if that's the reply they get. "Your call is important to us" was the equivalent of this for the non-smartphone generation. What's most telling though is that the Little Movers at the very least actually have stickers with photos of the old packaging on the Jumbo packs that say something like "New look, same great diaper" as if to mislead consumers into thinking that all they've done is changed the packaging and the prints, which anyone with half a brain can tell is a lie as soon as they open the package. Oh, and unsurprisingly, consumers aren't falling for this BS either. The Huggies website is riddled with one star reviews from angry moms reporting leaks, rashes, and a marked drop in quality on a product they trust around their little ones most sensitive areas.

The capacity is pathetic as noted above and noted by many others. No one is seeing through this and I'd personally fire every person on the marketing team who thought they could fix the fact that the product sucks with typical marketing techniques like new packaging and updated graphics, which by the way, happen to be hideous. (Does KCWW not have access to actual graphic designers? I don't mean marketing firms with graphic designers, I mean freelance designers who can do something cutting edge without having it become design by committee through a marketing firm. The packaging is fine, but the diapers themselves look awful.)

The Little Movers line is Huggies flagship diaper, it's supposed to be the pinnacle of their diaper designs. The Snug N Dry line is their "bread and butter" line for any parent who wants a decent diaper on a budget. It's a very functional no-frills diaper, or at least it's supposed to be, the last redesign nixed the "functional" part. Overnites are a niche diaper, but the parents who need them really need them. If you have a kid whose a pee super-soaker or does a good impersonation of a pony in a poop pile, these are the difference between washing sheets in the morning and not washing sheets in the morning. They're comparable to Little Movers in terms of cost, but lose features that aren't necessary for a night time diaper to offset the cost increase of additional materials. (Double-grip strips for moving toddlers? No need for those on a diaper being used for a sleeping baby, take them off. Size-up indicators? Cheap overall, but no need to print them on overnights, lose them too.) Little Snugglers in their current form look like they're supposed to be a line in between Snug N Dry and Little Movers, for babies who aren't quite active, but who still need something a step above Snug N Dry. The old Little Movers had great capacity so I doubt that the new Overnites are those. The New Little Movers have the same capacity complaints as the new Overnites, it sounds like an across the board problem with the redesign.

Kimberly-Clark has lost market share because they've gotten cheap, done a poor job of communicating with customers and actually offering what they want, and as has been noted before, they now have real competition from other brands, and that's no longer just P&G's Pampers. Oh, and P&G actually learned from their Dry Max fiasco that they had to interact with Millennial consumers a lot differently than they did with consumers in the past, and had to do so at a much more personal level. KCWW never had to learn this lesson and it's now costing them. If you think Millennials are bad when it comes to wanting this level of personalization, just wait until Gen Z starts having more kids. (The first Gen Zers just graduated from college this year, some who didn't go to college are already parents, and they make Millenials look impersonal with the level of personalization and customization that they expect.) This is only going to become a bigger problem for companies that don't catch up, especially with a product like this, and KCWW needs to catch up now if they want a shot at the #1 spot again. KCWW has also ignored what their consumers have been asking for in a diaper line. 4T-5T Pull-Ups in the "Night-Time" line have been requested for well over a decade now. KCWW came up with a new smaller size in the Learning Designs line that no one wanted or asked for instead, and they did so after shrinking the 4T-5T Pull-Ups so much that parents began requesting 5T-6T Pull-Ups with Learning Designs. Then you have GoodNites. Parents have been requesting XXL GoodNites for years, and as the designs have shrank the number of parents asking for a larger size has only increased. KCWW's reaction? They released an XS size that's smaller than the S/M size, which again nobody wanted or asked for. I almost wonder if this was meant for the people asking for 4T-5T Night-Time Pull-Ups, and if the marketing team just has their head so far up their diaper that they couldn't see how this was going to backfire and blow up in their faces the way that it has. Meanwhile the people who need XXL GoodNites still have nothing and the parents who need 4T-5T Night-Time Pull-Ups aren't looking at GoodNites because they don't think they're for potty training. (They also don't have the same kind of sides as Pull-Ups, which are something that parents of toddlers appreciate that doesn't affect parents of older bedwetters.) That brings us back to the Huggies line though. Within the past three years the availability of size 7 diapers has exploded, as has the demand for them. KCWW sells Huggies in Size P-6, and their 6 has shrunk to the size of some other brands size 5s. KCWW hasn't released a size 7, and this is the company that made size 6 a reality. (Back in 2007 it didn't make sense, but things have changed since then.) KCWW nixed the "Mega" size packaging, which really should have been called "normal," which forces parents into either buying an oversized box that they might not be able to store efficiently, or afford on their budget, and a tiny Jumbo pack that's one step away from being travel size. The "Mega" pack was popular for a reason--it was just shy of $20 and you could get a reasonable amount of diapers in it that would last through your next grocery run. To be fair, everyone has sort of done this, but KCWW's Mega Packs were the ones that most stores had stocked, which would indicate that they were the ones that had been selling. Back in 2017 KCWW did limited edition gender specific diapers at Target, except they didn't say that they were a limited edition item up front. Parents loved them, Target couldn't keep them in stock, and KCWW pulled the plug on them after their limited run. Note that this is when their profits started to slip. This is mind-numbingly stupid! They had a hit on their hands, they should have expanded it, and if retail stores didn't want it, sold the line on Amazon where retail space wasn't an issue and you could store two skus easily. KCWW tried to hide the page for these on their website and didn't. The backlash from angry parents who had lost their new favorite diaper was swift and it was fierce, and it probably cost them more than a few customers. Now add in the constant shrinking of the product and subsequent quality decreases and you have a recipe for disaster.

Unfortunately, it would have made more sense to increase prices. KCWW actually did about a year ago, and a bit before that as well. It was only a little bit, and P&G did it too, but it was very much a "lobster in a boiling pot" situation where the heat was turned up slowly so that you didn't feel it until you were dead, or in this case, paying $2-5 more per package eventually. They would have been better off eating the backlash for a year knowing that P&G would either have to do the same thing or reduce their quality to compete on price than being the company that suffered in the quality department and now looks cheap with the reduced product count on top of that.

There are two other things worth noting about current diaper buying consumers too.

1. It's no longer just the mothers, but also the fathers that actually matter when it comes to buying diapers. There was definitely a time when it didn't matter what dad thought about buying diapers because that was something that mom did while dad was at work, and dad had no interest in being anywhere near a diaper change. That time has ended though and dad is increasingly just as likely to be changing and buying diapers as mom is here in 2019. Increasingly, videos made about baby products by consumers are being done by dad, not mom, and this goes double for diapers in particular. In a world where dad is just as likely to be the parent at home with the kids as mom, dad is just as important to reach as a consumer, and probably even more important since this is really the first generation where dad is taking on as much responsibility in this department and unlike mom, is likely not just going to "use what mom used." You're basically dealing with a sophisticated generation that's cautious with their money, and if you claim you have a premium product, you'd better deliver. It's also worth noting that thanks to the opioid epidemic, grandparents are once again diaper consumers sometimes both for their grandchildren amd themselves. While this isn't a market anyone wants to have in existence to begin with, it does unfortunately exist and getting those people who might have bought Huggies for their baby back for the Grandchildren they're now raising is worth pursuing, especially since it looks like things are only going to get a whole lot worse in this regard before they get any better. This still isn't as big of a market as fathers, but it's large enough to pay attention to.

2. The millenial and gen Z parents that are buying diapers now are extremely environmentally conscious. There's a reason that the Honest Company can charge the kind of markup that they do for their diapers, and that similar eco-friendly diapers cost almost/just as much. One other thing that Honest Company has figured out is the kind of customization/personalization that I mentioned earlier in the sense that they offer a whole slew of prints regularly, along with roughly four limited edition prints for each season that get rotated out around the time that the seasons change. While this started off just as something fun that was a unique way to set Honest Company products apart from the competition, (we're an eco-friendly diaper with cute prints!) it's going to become mandatory if you want to reach gen Z. KCWW is a multimillion dollar corporation, and I refuse to believe that they couldn't apply economies of scale to this concept and create more customized diapers that would attract their gen Z consumers before a competitor like P&G beats them to it. They already offer personalizable newborn size diapers online, but they could do so much more to appeal to the emotional side of their consumers in this regard. On the rational side, right around the time that the Honest Company was starting up, KCWW was offering eco-friendly Huggies in a line called "Pure & Natural" that basically was meant to compete with companies like Honest. The problem was that it only went up to size 5, it was more expensive in the middle of a recession, and the line as a whole looked like a caricature of what eco-friendly diapers were. Honest Company had bright, beautiful, gorgeous diapers that looked as good as a mainstream diaper. Huggies Pure & Natural looked like a Seventh Generation diaper of that era with ugly faded designs that didn't come across as cute or cheerful. (This was a criticizm of most early eco-friendly disposables.) Instead of retooling and updating the line though, KCWW let it languish, and then discontinued it when it didn't sell well, which might have been because test after test showed that they weren't very absorbent compared to other eco-friendly diapers.) Basically, KCWW was too early with the right product and mismanagement killed it. Now we have P&G taking a shot at the same market with Pampers Pure, and while they're not bumping off Honest Company or even other eco-friendly brands like Seventh Generation or Hello Bello, they're keeping the Pampers name relevant in a way that KCWW isn't with Huggies.

KCWW is selling and designing diapers like its 2009 and not 2019, and that's not going to get them very far if they want Huggies to stay on the market. Remember, I like Huggies, I'm not someone who has a "beef" with them, but this latest like is a joke. I cannot in good conscience recommend it to my friends who are parents that are buying diapers for their kids, and I can't even really justify these for myself when Honest Company's offerings are so much better. For awhile I was splitting my diaper purchases between the two because I liked both, but in their current form, Huggies are a mess. It's one thing to make something more efficient, it's another to make it unusable. P&G used to have a second diaper brand that you could find everywhere: Luvs. Then they cheapened them to the point that nobody wanted them and now most stores don't even carry them. (And why would they? They're awful.) If KCWW doesn't want to wind up having Huggies look like Luvs with their shelf space replaced by Pampers and a bunch of new brands, they have to completely rethink what they're doing and make some serious changes.

[fakename]

Damn, I too love my Huggies Overnights 6. They're super absorbent and I rarely ever have leaks in them, compared to my beloved Pampers Cruisers 7s. I love their fit and I especially like their tapes and landing zones. They're also super soft. They don't rustle either and I've successfully worn them out and about under my pants like you have. I just checked and the Overnights in my stash stash say count 18 on the bag, so I must have the version prior to this change. I'm pretty wary about buying new ones now if they've gone to shit.

Maybe I'll check out Honest brand. They look like off-brand diapers to me so I never gave them a chance. If Huggies Overnights go the way of Luvs (which I've heard are garbage, can't get them in Canada though), the only thing on the shelf will be store brand garbage, the eco-friendly line, and Pampers, meaning there'll be only one game in town for DLs out there.

I hate how these changes are always so damn myopic. Huggies probably just wants to increase profitability and lower expenses to create shareholder gains, at the expense of their customers.