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Lack of floss takes cheese off Mumbai chemists’ smile

Low awareness on importance of flossing among a large chunk of people has led to deterioration in supply of product.

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Varun Khanna is very particular about dental hygiene. Hence, the budding actor was flustered when he could not procure floss at any of the chemists in Andheri, where he lives. “Each and every one of them told me that they were out of stock,” recalls Khanna, who then asked a friend visiting the UK to get him a few boxes.

Suppliers of dental products in the city revealed that there has been a scarcity of floss lately. “Nobody manufactures dental floss in India. It has to be imported from China or Japan. And the supply from these countries has been slow lately,” says Chirag Shah, a distributor and supplier of dental products.

Dental floss, which dentists insist is very important for oral hygiene, is incidentally not a very popular product in the Indian market. “Unfortunately, people don’t realise that next to brushing, flossing is the most important thing they can do to ensure good oral health,” says orthodontist MN Mitkar.

He says that only people who are conscious about their looks, like models and actors, seem to floss regularly. Others who take flossing seriously are those who have had to endure tooth aches or root canals. “Brushing without flossing is like washing only 65% of your body while the other 35% remains dirty,” Mitkar adds.

Chemists and stockists agree that dental floss is not a very commonly sold item in the Indian market. “It is stocked mostly at chemist shops in the vicinity of dental clinics,” says Prasad Danave, honorary secretary general, Retail and Dispensing Chemists Association.

Danave adds it is very common for slow-moving products like floss to be unavailable at chemist shops every now and then. “I would not call it scarcity, but a gap in demand and supply,” he says, adding that bigger brands like Colgate and Oral B are not available in the market, while lesser-known brands like Stim are being sold.

However, people used to a particular brand are not happy with the situation. “I only use floss manufactured by Oral B. And I find switching over to another brand quite annoying,” says BPO employee Reema Nehra who ordered the brand online when she could not find it at her local medical shop. “I paid twice the price on eBay but at least I got the product I wanted,” she adds.

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