Stop-Smoking Firm Ready to Cash In on Ban : Airlines: A Laguna Hills company is among the businesses seeking to capitalize on the almost total ban on smoking on airplanes that begins Sunday.
The skies will become anything but friendly to smokers Sunday, and Charles Sleichter couldn’t be happier.
Like an air-conditioning salesman sensing a summer heat wave, Sleichter predicts that sales of his company’s “smoking alternative” chewing gum will take off when a smoking ban on almost all U.S. airline flights takes effect Sunday.
The potential is “phenomenal,” said Sleichter, president of Advantage Life Products Inc. in Laguna Hills. “If you look at all the smoking bans, this one gives (smokers) no way out.”
Already, Advantage is moving to capitalize on the ban. It has wooed a chain of airport gift shops to stock its CigArrest chewing gum and has plans for a $4-million advertising campaign later this year.
The Laguna Hills firm has set up displays in department stores, pharmacies and airport gift shops featuring a new slogan: “Help Me Make It Through the Flight.”
The business prospects brought about by the ban have not been lost on Advantage’s competitors in the growing $285-million stop-smoking industry, a market expected to grow by 17% annually through 1995, according to a study by MarketData Enterprises, a Lynwood, N.Y., market research firm.
Dep Corp., the Rancho Dominguez distributor of Ban-Tron stop-smoking pills, says it is trying to negotiate a deal with some airlines in which its gum would be offered to passengers.
Schick Laboratories, one of the largest stop-smoking clinic chains in the nation, is braced for a new onslaught of customers in the wake of the ban. The company is cutting its fees and sponsoring a television special that will highlight the need to stop smoking in light of the airline ban, said Schick spokesman Ed Butler.
The new law bans smoking on all flights within the United States except for a few that last six hours or longer to or from Hawaii or Alaska. Congress passed the law last year to replace a 1988 smoking ban on domestic fights of two hours or less.
But since the ban has received relatively little press attention since it was passed, the president of an anti-smoking lobbying group believes that firms have been slow on the uptake.
“I think there has been very little publicity and very little public controversy (now that) the ban is going into effect,” said John F. Banzhaf III, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health in Washington. “I think the reality of it is that it has yet to hit the smokers. But once it does, I would expect that companies would capitalize on it.”
But not every company in the stop-smoking industry views the ban as a major opportunity.
Merrell Dow Inc., the Kansas City-based maker of the Nicorette chewing gum, is not planning any special promotions. Product Manager Jim Dawson said the nicotine-laced Nicorette is sold only by prescription as part of a medically supervised program to stop smoking. He said a promotional campaign to call attention to the airline smoking ban would encourage use of the gum as a temporary aid, rather than part of a permanent solution to a smoker’s habit.
Unlike CigArrest or Ban-Tron, Nicorette is recognized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a proven aid to alleviate the smoking urge. By contrast, the key ingredient in CigArrest and Ban-Tron--lobeline sulfate, a non-addictive derivative of Indian tobacco--is considered “unproven” though “possibly helpful” to smokers trying to kick their habit, FDA spokesman Bill Grigg said.
Dawson would not comment on the success of Nicorette, but one private marketing study found that sales have more doubled since the product hit the pharmaceutical shelves in 1984. It ranked 89th on a list of the 200 most frequently prescribed drugs in the nation last year.
Advantage’s CigArrest does not contain nicotine and can be bought without a prescription, making it easier to market to air travelers trying to survive a flight without lighting up, Sleichter said.
Sleichter has had his share of ups and downs so far in his effort to win the hearts of smoking air travelers. CigArrest is now stocked in gift shops at about six major airports and the firm is talking with other major operators of airport gift shops as well, he said.
But CigArrest has failed to ignite much interest from the airlines on its offer to let flight attendants hand out free samples of the product to frustrated smokers. To alleviate airline officials’ concerns that passengers will stick wads of gum on airline seats, Sleichter has gone so far as to demonstrate how the gum can be tucked back into the packaging foil.
If that doesn’t work, Sleichter has another solution: a new version of CigArrest in throat lozenge form.
Hoping that the airline-smoking ban will help sales, Sleichter predicts that his publicly traded company’s sales will increase to $12 million when its current fiscal year ends in April, up from $5.5 million in 1989 and $1 million in 1988.
Founded in 1986 as Advantage Entertainment--a distributor of exercise cassette tapes--the company changed its name to Advantage Life Products to reflect its move into stop-smoking products. Advantage claims to have 10,000 letters of endorsement from customers. And Sleichter proudly notes that there is only a 2% return rate on the product’s money-back guarantee.
“If this was totally worthless, you would have a higher return,” he said.
The average smoker doesn’t kick the habit on the first or even second try, Sleichter said, which means that a single customer may try CigArrest several times. The product is also pitched to ex-smokers to “curb the urge to smoke.”
He said the company is careful in its claims about CigArrest. “We’re not saying it’s going to help you stop smoking, just help with the withdrawal.”
THE STOP-SMOKING MARKET
1989* 1995** Avg. Growth Segment $ in millions $ in millions 1989-95 Smoking cessation $49.8 $67.1 5.8% clinics and programs Acupuncture 6.8 8.9 7.0 Hypnosis 40.8 44.5 1.5 Prescription and 187.6 457.0 23.9 non-prescription products TOTAL 285.0 577.0 17.1
* Estimate ** Forecast
Source: Marketdata Estimates & Forecasts
