Zest soap changed formulation for Walmart

[TheGrooveking]

The wife and I have been curious as to this, since we typically buy Zest (the household soap) at Walmarts. We've noticed over the last 3-4 years that it wears away faster and doesn't foam/suds as well. So as I was digging around in a box two weeks ago (we moved across town in October 2007) I came across a travel container for soap. I opened it up and there it was, a brand new bar of Zest. So I took it with me on my latest trip to LA for a week. I was shocked at how much suds this bar made, so when I arrived home I told the wife about it and she tried it and yep, mucho suds.

So in knowing that many vendors actually have dedicated lines or even facilities to supply the great Walmart, I have confirmed that the product had been cheapened to meet Walmart pricing demands. Now the next part of this will be buying Zest at other retailers to see if those bars are as the old ones were or did they change across the board.

 

[BobK1]

This idea would not surprise me.

As I understand it some tire manufacturers would provide the exact same model and size tire to car manufacturers as was available "off the shelf" but with less actual rubber on the tread area so as to provide a better price for new cars. This would not amount to much loss to the consumer, like lets say ten percent less life on the tire. It would only save the car company a few dollars a tire, but multiply that by four (or five in the old days, and now even more with the silly "donut" spare) but take into consideration how many cars are made a year and it is a significant total. For example, let's say five dollars a tire times four, and a million cars, is twenty million dollars a year!

But wait, there's more! A few years back (when the family business was somewhat tied into the automotive business) we discovered that the car manufactures think along the lines of the total value (or cost) of the end product. What this means is that they take into account the end price of the car, something that at that time was an average of seven times the cost. In other words, a ten cent item installed into the car (and therefore involving labor etc) and allowing for the markup involved in the distribution chain (including the dealer) would cost the consumer seventy cents. The figure that the manufacturer would use is the seventy cents multiplied by the total amount of cars produced, so a ten cent screw, that would improve the overall end product would become (in a production run of a million cars) a seven hundred thousand dollar screw (and as rarely was a single screw needed, and in the old days a million cars was nothing, you could see how it quickly amounted to several times that amount) think about that the next time you look at a car and think "if they only put a few screws here rather than those silly plastic snaps, it would be much better" a few screws in this example would quickly amount to a several million dollar "enhancement" or better yet, look at it from the bean counter perspective, by simply using those plastic snaps, they save several million dollars (on each item that uses them) and that the above example of the tires becomes not twenty million dollars but a 140 million dollar savings! (that's some happy meal)

Screwed up math, I know, but then look at the trouble that the car companies have put themselves into, and you will see that the opportunities the Japanese had to make inroads into the U.S. car market in the seventies were the U.S. manufacturers' doing, not even mentioning the current troubles. I do not say this to down the U.S. car manufactures or their product, past or present, but rather to provide some perspective on the way large companies can look at things in relation to how a typical consumer will look at them.

As always, YMMV

Bob

 

[crocto]

from the few retail jobs i worked most places want to keep their profit margins around 20%. so imagine the "actual" cost to make that $2 3 bar pack of zest soap. its probably somewhere in the neighborhood of like 2 cents for the 3 bars.

anyway what this means is we're all getting screwed, skynet is taking over, the seas are rising and we're all F'd!

 

[Sam Harmon]

Not surprising. Walmart is notorious for squeezing the life out of their vendors. It wouldn't surprise me if they had to reformulate in order to still make any profit out of their sales to Walmart.

Next step of course will be Walmart's "suggestion" to start making the bars in China, where the "partner" factory will further cheapen quality off the books.

Just another in a long line of examples of the high cost of low prices.

 

[Stubblefield]

Not surprising. Walmart is notorious for squeezing the life out of their vendors. It wouldn't surprise me if they had to reformulate in order to still make any profit out of their sales to Walmart.

WalMart will actually demand to visit the mfg. line of their "partners" and will make cost saving suggestions. If you don't go along, they drop you.

Ask Vlasic Pickle what they think; They were almost bankrupted by WalMart.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.html

 

[SRock]

So are they going to introduce a new jingle?

"You're not fully clean because you're zestfully clean"

 

[FrankPoole]

Quite a few classic soaps like Ivory no longer foam nor lather. Mg salts are added to the soap for some u known reasons and they no longer lather. Some of them actually feel slimy as you shower.

 

[Jasonian]

Quite a few classic soaps like Ivory no longer foam nor lather. Mg salts are added to the soap for some u known reasons and they no longer lather. Some of them actually feel slimy as you shower.

Those companies all manufacture body washes too, which sell at a higher profit margin.

I'm not saying that's why, but put 2 and 2 together...

 

[HoratioCaine]

So in knowing that many vendors actually have dedicated lines or even facilities to supply the great Walmart, I have confirmed that the product had been cheapened to meet Walmart pricing demands.

Do you mean "confirmed" or "concluded"? In other words, do you mean you checked with some authoritative source that actually confirmed your theory so you know this to be true, or is this an unconfirmed statement of your own conclusion? Formulation changes happen all the time. While it is possible that P&G did change it to appease Walmart's demands, it seems just as likely - if not more so - that Zest was reformulated for other reasons, and that it is sold everywhere in the newer formulation. P&G also makes the U.S. distributed Old Spice, which many members here know bears scant resemblance to the Old Spice of old. P&G needs no pressure from Walmart to tinker with their products. One such reason for the Zest reformulation may be one you hit on early in your narrative: the newer bars wear away faster. This would be a good reason for a market-wide reformulation, and not one just for Walmart. To realize that soaps that wear out faster mean faster repeat sales, one does not need to be a brain surgeon. Indeed, most corporate marketers seem to have had lobotomies, and treat their customers as though they too have had them.

 

[RazorDingo]

Ask Vlasic Pickle what they think; They were almost bankrupted by WalMart.

Its funny you should mention the story in Fast Company about doing business with Wal-Mart. Its exactly what I was thinking about when I read the first post.

Sometimes companies will cater to Wal-Mart demands by creating a slightly different version of their product to sell exclusively there - look for different packaging or sizes. In the case of Zest soap it may be possible to do a comparison between a bar bought at Wal-Mart and someplace else.

 

[40_Caliber]

While it seems entirely possible (to me) that the soap market changed formulation to satisfy the requirements of Evilmart let's not forget about another possiblity.

There have been numerous reports of soap reformulations of late especially moving away from tallow based. What if the cause of these changes are more about "greening" up gray water recycling or some such. Oil is much harder to remove from water than solids. It kind of adds up....veggie soaps with added salts = less foam and cleaner waste water. Bottom line is it an EPA thing rather than a profit/loss thing?

.40

 

[RazorDingo]

There have been numerous reports of soap reformulations of late especially moving away from tallow based. What if the cause of these changes are more about "greening" up gray water recycling or some such. Oil is much harder to remove from water than solids.

Natural soap, made using animal fats, has been around for thousands of years. And it breaks down completely harmlessly in both municipal water treatment plants, as well as in rural septic systems. (Soap, even all-natural soap, is still a chemical, and can harm wildlife and plants. Don't go bathing in your favorite trout stream..)

The only environmental concerns are from "anti-bacterial" additives such as triclosan (which can break down in wastewater to form dioxins) as well as artificial coloring agents and preservatives.

Whatever has caused the large soap companies to change their formulations has nothing to do with the EPA.

 

[Gruder]

The Wal-Mart Effect (by Charles Fishman) is an excellent text for those of you interested in reading more about these issues. It's highly readable (engaging, even) and much less biased than it could by all rights be. I assign it in some of the globalization courses I teach.

 

[MAK]

The wife and I have been curious as to this, since we typically buy Zest (the household soap) at Walmarts. We've noticed over the last 3-4 years that it wears away faster and doesn't foam/suds as well. So as I was digging around in a box two weeks ago (we moved across town in October 2007) I came across a travel container for soap. I opened it up and there it was, a brand new bar of Zest. So I took it with me on my latest trip to LA for a week. I was shocked at how much suds this bar made, so when I arrived home I told the wife about it and she tried it and yep, mucho suds.

So in knowing that many vendors actually have dedicated lines or even facilities to supply the great Walmart, I have confirmed that the product had been cheapened to meet Walmart pricing demands. Now the next part of this will be buying Zest at other retailers to see if those bars are as the old ones were or did they change across the board.

Such an interesting observation. I knew that designer products were often cheeped for discount malls and the like, but I'll be curious to see if Zest is better at other stores.

Zest was one of the first detergent bars (as far as I know) that relied on detergents rather than soap as a cleaning agent. I would have to wonder why they would create an inferior product in such a competitive market place. I guess this effort is no different from the ever shrinking cereal boxes (some are starting to look more live envelopes) or 5 pound bags of sugar that are now 4 pound bags. Less for more (profit).

 

[Haiku]

I think I have the answer. It seems that they in fact changed Zest from a detergent to a soap. I well remember their old ads to the effect that it didn't leave a soap scum and that was because it was a detergent. That seems to have changed in 2007.

See link below. Halfway down is the discussion about how it's no longer a detergent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zest_(soap)

 

[crocto]

this kind of stuff happens all the time. you pay more get less. go take a look at the dime sized chips ahoy. instead of bitching about how you're getting screwed you could just not buy the product.

in the new united states we should all know that voting with dollars is the best way to show your (dis)approval.

 

[HoratioCaine]

I think I have the answer. It seems that they in fact changed Zest from a detergent to a soap. I well remember their old ads to the effect that it didn't leave a soap scum and that was because it was a detergent. That seems to have changed in 2007.

See link below. Halfway down is the discussion about how it's no longer a detergent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zest_(soap)

Good eye, Ontario. I remember those ads, too. It makes sense the soap bars would lather less, because detergents lather like crazy. I'm a little surprised the soaps wear out faster, but that could partially be explained by the fact that they are smaller bars; besides, I highly doubt P&G is producing triple milled Zest. Mystery solved, it would seem.

 

[FrankPoole]

It seems aobut the time of formula changes for many of these soaps the parent companies were bought out by Henkel KGaA, an international consumer product company headquartered in Düsseldorf, Germany.

 

[some kind of ugly]

Walmart is the anti-christ of retail.

 

[SRock]

The Wal-Mart Effect (by Charles Fishman) is an excellent text for those of you interested in reading more about these issues. It's highly readable (engaging, even) and much less biased than it could by all rights be. I assign it in some of the globalization courses I teach.

There's quite a few articles out there as well. The Wal-Mart effect is very frightening. They are the largest retailer in the US and built their business on their pride to buy American but they are pushing more and more sales to overseas companies to further their effort to have low prices.