Backchannelmedia

Cincinnati Post

By Ellen Byron

A sold-out night at the Millennium Hotel here generates between 8,000 pounds to 10,000 pounds of dirty linen and 872 dirty rooms.

"For my staff, every minute counts," says Terri Muran, the hotel's director of housekeeping. That's why when Procter & Gamble Co. researchers approached her last year with an offer to analyze the way her staff worked, she agreed. "They even helped clean the rooms," she says.

For decades, P&G has honed its products and marketing by scrutinizing women washing laundry, scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets in their own homes. But with consumer brands struggling to find significant sales growth inside households, Cincinnati-based P&G, among other consumer-products giants, is intent on expanding its professional division.

Toward that end, P&G is increasingly reaching out to janitors, fast-food workers, maids and launderers. At the Millennium here, P&G researchers tackled laundry. Rather than the five different industrial chemicals the hotel staff used to launder towels and sheets, P&G's suggested method required two: its Tide detergent and its Downy fabric softener. That shortened the washing-machine cycle times by five to seven minutes, Ms. Muran says.

Using fewer chemicals also meant the linens got worn out more slowly, reducing the 4 percent of laundry normally lost to wear and tear each year to about 1 percent, Ms. Muran says.

P&G researchers noticed something else: Housekeepers were struggling to clean rooms that had been refurbished with more glass and stainless-steel fixtures, requiring several different cleaning products. So P&G recommended its Spic and Span three-in-one professional cleaner, allowing workers to spray and wipe glass, stainless steel and furniture without the hassle of switching bottles.

"I can work much faster with fewer bottles," says Annette Davis, a longtime housekeeper at the hotel, who typically cleans about 16 rooms during her eight-hour shift. P&G researchers have followed the seasoned cleaner during her shifts, looking for clues on how to make her job more efficient.

At the Millennium there was also the issue of fragrance, long the critical indicator of a freshly cleaned room. Hotel guests, many of whom use P&G products at home, would be comforted by the familiar scent of Tide, Downy and Febreze freshener in their hotel room, the company promised, says Ms. Muran, who was swayed. "It's that home- away-from home feeling," she says.

P&G also sells adaptations of its well-known consumer products. For example, Dawn dish soap was adapted for high-power industrial dishwashers, including making the formula less sudsy, so it doesn't overwhelm the system.

P&G senses a big business opportunity: The U.S. market for janitorial and housekeeping cleaning products is a steadily growing one, currently totaling about $3.2 billion, according to Kline & Co., a consulting and market-research firm. That's up from about $2.8 billion in 2002. The food-service cleaning-supply market, which includes dish soap, disinfectant and other surface cleaners, totals about $1.8 billion, while the laundry services business is $850 million, Kline estimates.

Other consumer-products makers with professional lines include Kimberly-Clark Corp., Clorox Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co. and closely held Henkel KGaA. But altogether, the consumer-products companies hold just 15 percent of the janitorial cleaning-products market, while institutional and industrial brand-name suppliers, such as Ecolab Inc. and JohnsonDiversey Inc., control about 55 percent, according to Kline & Co. estimates. Private-label brands and local suppliers constitute the rest of the market.

Another challenge: Consumer-products companies are accustomed to hawking products through clever advertising, snazzy packaging and performance boasts, while buyers of professional products typically favor a no-nonsense approach.

Observing workers at fast-food chain Wendy's International Inc., P&G gleaned that high employee turnover and the resulting need to continually train new employees on cleaning techniques were a major headache. So it offered customized videos and laminated guides for workers on how to properly clean every part of the restaurant. Cleaning supplies and implements were color-coded according to product and task.

To devise the guides, Ed Offshack, associate director of global technology development in P&G's professional cleaning products group and his product-development team worked the late shift at a Wendy's in the Cincinnati area, manning the drive-through window while cleaning the kitchen and dining room between orders.

"We learned that using the right product with the right implement and the right procedure was critical to being fast and thorough," says Offshack. At Wendy's, P&G even calculated how much of its professional-grade Spic and Span cleaner was required to wipe a table, and then found a nozzle that would deliver that amount in one spritz, both for ease of use and to limit product waste.

Text of fax box follows:

Industrial varieties

Along with products specifically developed for commercial use, P&G sells adaptations of its well-known consumer products.

(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.