NY Sun Article Last Week... SECOND Half
(Again from markbird2002 on a Yahoo Board) and thanks to Touch on RB
Neither Mr. O'Reilly nor Mr. Holmes, I'm told, has a financial interest in the product or in Swiss Medica, a 2-year-old Toronto-based company that holds a patent on the 024 process.
The city's pain sufferers will be able to judge for themselves the effectiveness of the product because a sampling of CVS's 428 New York stores, 100 of which are in the city, are in the process of giving away thousands of free applications of 024, which first appeared in the Big Apple in April.
Discussing the promotion, Swiss Medica's CEO, Raghu Kilambi, said, "We want to make a lot of noise."
024 will have to butt heads with a crowded field of well-established painkillers that have already made a lot of noise, such as Advil, Aleve, Tylenol, Bengay, and Icy Hot, as well as assorted aspirins, each pursuing a piece of a lucrative $12 billion market that embraces more than 10 million Americans nationally. The biggest area of this market is said to be the arthritis crowd, the 60-plus age group.
Developed by a German chemist who now works for Swiss Medica, O24 has been on the Canadian market since early 2004. It arrived in America in November 2004 and runs $19.99 for either a bottle of spray or a box of 20 towelettes, or $7.49 for a pack of towelettes.
Swiss Medica has set lofty goals for 024, which is sold in such drugstore chains as Walgreen and Rite-Aid. 024 sales in America ran about $200,000 last year, and Mr. Kilambi figures they'll jump to $8 million this year and to $20 million in 2006.
Whether such buoyant goals will ever be met is open to serious question, given the intense competition among pain fighters. Surely though, the market is there, what with 50% of all adults suffering chronic pain, according to the American Chronic Pain Association. Of these pain sufferers, 76% say they experience daily pain, while 48% say their pain is ever present. Interestingly, half are concerned about side effects and other risks from pain pills.
