Parker Talbot Oral History, 2021/01/15

Out of the Woodwork: Innovation of Sanitation in 2020

A self-account of the exploding market of hand sanitizer and the smell thereof

01/15/2021

Parker Talbot

Parker Talbot

HST643

Arizona State University

audio

English Public Health & Hospitals

sensory history

smell

sanitizer

texture

tequila

PPE

innovation

sensory history

01/15/2021

1/20/2021

01/20/2021

05/26/2022

Parker Talbot

Parker Talbot

32503

Pensacola

Florida

United States of America

Audio

English

00:02:19

A self-account of the exploding market of hand sanitizer and the smell thereof

So as we all know, when COVID-19 started, hand sanitizer completely just fell out of the market and out of the market Well, not out of the market, you couldn't find it anywhere, it was a hot market, you couldn't find it anywhere. So it was funny to eventually to see these all these different brands of hand sanitizer come out of the woodwork things you've never heard before. I feel like before that it was just Purell, or Germ X. But then there's all the different brands, all the different sizes, you know, the small size for five bucks, you know, things like that, by me, and particularly the different smells and feeling of it all, there'd be some that were super nice, and you barely feel them on you once you rubbed it in, there were some that were sticky. I remember one that, uh, my brother- and sister-in-law we brought it over and we thought was about kind of lime-like. They smelled it said it's not exactly like tequila and my sister-in-law who had stopped drinking a number of years prior said that she she couldn't smell it. So it was just unique for me to see through the different brands and the prices how, how we how innovation happened through this and people knew that they had some market and all the different concoctions they came up with some that were super sticky, some of them weren't some of this smelled like tequila. So you have to kind of create a whole new market for for sanitation and and kind of also create a whole new game where Purell Germ X weren't the only two in the in the market anymore. So anyways, that's my my story of the different sounds and fields and brands and prices of various sanitizers that came out of the woodwork representing our ability to find new options and to innovate and and also, I guess, you could say our ability to take advantage of markets that have opened up because of COVID whether for good or for ill that's that's up to interpretation. But anyway, so that's my story with COVID-19.