Due to the current global health crisis, many cities, states, and countries around the world are under lockdown, asked to stay at home unless going out for essential journeys such as buying groceries or going to work for a job that cannot be performed at home. That means a steep decline in dating and hooking up and rapidly falling sales for one of the world’s biggest condom brands, Durex.
- People just aren’t doing it these days. As The Guardian reports, lockdown in the US, UK, and across the world are “having a toll on the number of intimate occasions,” Durex says. After all, if you’re not supposed to leave home, it’s kinda hard to meet up with a partner or even a one-night stand.
- If you’re not self-isolating together, your options are limited. It’s not hard to understand why Durex’s sales have fallen over the past few months. Generally speaking, if you’re close enough to the person you’re dating to be living or self-isolating together, you’re likely (though not always) past the phase of using condoms. For everyone else, there’s no sense in buying something you can’t use right now.
- The current state of the world isn’t exactly a turn on. As Laxman Narasimhan, head of Durex’s parent company Reckitt Benckiser, pointed out, it’s not only against government guidelines to go out just to get laid but the crisis is likely reducing people’s interest in intimacy at the moment in general. “What you see is this virus is having a toll on the number of intimate occasions in the UK,” he said, pointing out that the same thing was happening in Italy and elsewhere.
- It wasn’t long ago that we thought there was going to be a shortage. Back in March, the world’s largest producer of condoms warned that there could be a shortage of the prophylactics given that three of their Malaysian factories had been forced to close due to the lockdown. Fewer condoms could have been a problem, so it may be a good thing that there’s less need for them at the moment.
