HEALTH | FIRST AID
Ready for Anything First aid suppliers emphasize consumer-led innovation and education opportunities to spur sales By David Salazar
T
he first aid category is not what it used to be. Even though a majority of trips to brick-and-mortar stores for first aid products are still driven by acute needs — a slip while cutting vegetables or a child’s scraped knee — consumers are changing how they approach the category, embracing the Boy Scouts’ mantra of always being prepared, among other changes driven by COVID-19. Due in part to early-pandemic guidance to maximize the time between shopping trips, the first aid category’s first big shakeup last year was a boom in online sales. “One of the things that we saw right away was people switching to just buying
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everything online,” said Laura Conlon, vice president of marketing at bandage and first aid kit company Welly. “We were available on Amazon and our direct-to-consumer site became really popular as people were just really looking at ways to get prepared and feel stocked up with the things they needed.” As vaccination rates rise, though, consumers seem to be hanging on to their pandemic-era shopping mindsets and growing omnichannel shopping behavior. “Now we’re seeing people going back shopping in-store and shopping online, growing that hybrid approach,” Conlon said. “The thing that continues is this blended wellness journey where people are thinking about being
August 2021 DRUGSTORENEWS.COM
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