By Juliet Okafor (editor-in-chief, Certified Products )
In a bid to remain in control of its popular African black soap product brand in the market, Tropical Naturals Limited, an Ikeja lagos based manufacturer of Dudu Osun soap, has launched a market offensive against fakers of it's product.
The company recently re-designed and repackaged its brand of household soap product as way of eliminating the activities of pirates of their flagship brand product.
CERTIFIED PRODUCTS ONLINE Newspaper's recent field investigation across Nigerian markets, shopping centers and customer interractions, reveals that most consumers of Dudu Osun soap have observed some though insignificant differences in the physical features of the packaging of the product. Other differences were evident in the texture, fragrance and foaming level of the two versions of the brand, which were not as the original Dudu Osun soap produced by its bonafide manufacturer. The price variation was also an aspect that indicates that counterfeiters were at work to ruin the soap manufacturing firm.
While the market price of the company's genuine brand sells for between N250 and N300, the pirated version which has already flooded the Nigerian market, sells for as low as between N150 and N200. The company's misfortune was however compounded by the fact that accredited distributors and retail dealers of the Dudu Osun soap could not even differentiate between the original and the fake brands of the product. And some consumers who have unknowingly patronized the fake brands have observed the negative effects of the counterfeit versions of the soap on the skins of users of product.
However, determined to tame the pirates and curtail their evil activities, the management of Dudu Osun black soap manufacturing company, Tropical Naturals Limited, promptly swung into action by repackaging their black soap brand from its well-known beautiful natural green colour packaging to a somewhat less attractive green and white design, while retaining and enhancing its reputed quality and selling points.
Dudu-Osun is an African black soap made from herbs found in the Savannah and tropical rainforest regions of West Africa. The black soap was once only known to people of West African descents.
Dudu-Osun, a Nigerian variant of the soap is among the few brands making for wider acceptance and recognition for this beauty product in the mainstream industry. NNL
