New Cat Litter Promises an End to Odors
Cats may be warm and cuddly, but their litter boxes have traditionally been the bane of a cat owner’s existence.
Now the $1.1 billion a year cat litter industry is being shaken by an innovation aimed at ending the odor problem, and it’s spreading fast to pet stores and giant retailers nationwide.
It goes by names such as Crystal Clear Litter Pearls, Ultra Pearls and Pearl Fresh, and is touted as the biggest advance in cat hygiene and odor control since clumping litter was first sold a dozen years ago.
Litter Pearls works by locking up odors in hard little white beads of specially designed silica gel. It’s unscented, dust free, nontoxic and biodegradable. And a 4-pound bag is designed to last a month.
The epicenter of the silica litter revolution is in this town about 25 miles west of Minneapolis, in the offices of Harvest Ventures Inc.
Litter Pearls went on the market in January 1998. Despite a relatively high price tag, the company already has grabbed about a 2 1/2% to 3% share of the market--and accolades from the pet product industry.
“We truly eliminate the odor rather than mask it,” said Daniel Schlueter, president of the company.
Harvest Ventures first brought out the product under the Crystal Clear Litter Pearls label, sold mainly through pet stores. It now also packages the same product as Ultra Pearls for mass-market retailers and grocery chains, and as Pearl Fresh, a private label for Petsmart.
The product is available in about 5,000 pet stores nationwide, including Petsmart and Petco, and at big national and regional grocery chains such as Kroger, Safeway and Albertson’s. It’s coming soon to Kmart and Wal-Mart. And requests keep coming in from retailers all over the world, Schlueter said.
It’s not just “dirt in a bag” like conventional clay-based cat litters, Schlueter said.
Litter Pearls work by soaking up cat urine and absorbing the moisture and odor from solid waste, he said. The water starts evaporating almost immediately, but the odor-causing molecules remain trapped inside the pearls. Within a day or two, all the moisture in an individual pearl is gone, and it’s ready to reabsorb again.
All the cat owner needs to do is remove the dried-out solid waste. Schlueter recommends doing that daily. Because the pearls don’t clump like other litters, there’s no need to add more litter to the box.
“One bag, one cat, one month,” is the company’s slogan. In practice, the product lasts longer with some cats, not as long with others.
Harvest Ventures expects the silica segment will grow to 25 percent of the litter market in the next few years, spokeswoman Cindee Kohagen said.
The company already has some competitors, including a couple of big names. Ralston-Purina recently brought out a version under its Tidy Cats brand. Clorox is introducing one soon under its Fresh Step label. Some smaller players also sell silica litter under names such as Litter Secret and Magic Litter.
Schlueter said not all silica litter is created equal. He said some rivals use the most common type of silica gel, usually used to protect foods, electronics and other goods from humidity. That kind of silica, he insisted, is not designed to absorb liquid, and the beads shatter into ineffective bits when wet.
Schlueter said he and his partners got interested in the litter business when they learned of a version being sold in Japan. But that product wasn’t right for the U.S. market. So they worked with a supplier in China to develop a different kind of silica gel specifically engineered to absorb liquid waste--and keep working.
“We know if we get you to try it, we’ll keep seven to eight out of 10 of you,” he said of potential customers. “We know you’ll continue to buy from us. . . . We have a product that works.”
There are a few drawbacks, though.
For one thing, Litter Pearls is pricey. A four-pound package typically sells for $9.99 to $11.99, compared with about $2.50 to $5 for a 20-pound bag of regular clay litter. Schlueter said his product is more economical because one bag of Litter Pearls normally lasts a month, whereas a cat owner might have to lug home up to 30 or 40 pounds of regular or clumping litter a month.
Another problem is that when a cat tracks or knocks Litter Pearls out of its litter box, the beads can roll a long way (covered boxes or mats underneath reduce the problem). While regular litter tracked to other parts of the home might look like sand, a Litter Pearl in another room is clearly a Litter Pearl. To address that problem, Harvest Ventures just introduced a version with a shape that doesn’t roll as easily.
Still, Litter Pearls have won praise from cat owners and the industry alike.
Debi Hastings, of Scarborough, Maine, said she tried Litter Pearls out of desperation last summer because the urine from her kitten, Grace, smelled horrible and clay litters didn’t help. With Grace now a year old, Hastings remains a devoted customer.
“As long as you keep it scooped, you don’t smell it,” she said. “It’s fantastic. . . . It really does do the job.”
Litter Pearls won one of the 10 Editors’ Choice Awards for 1999 from Cat Fancy Magazine. It took second place in the voting for Best New Cat Product at the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association trade show last year. The product was one of 10 to receive the “Build a Better Mousetrap” Award last year from Marketing Intelligence Service Ltd. And Petsmart, which recently gave Harvest Ventures its Outstanding Technology Advancement Award, bills the product on its Web site as “the most significant development in kitty litter in more than 50 years.”
