Fruugo has seen a significant spike in sales of Echinacea products on its platform over 24 hours. It shouldn’t really be a surprise as a new study suggesting a Swiss product, Echinaforce, effectively kills Coronavirus. Humans being humans, they ignored the fact that this was a very limited laboratory test and rushed online to hoover up suppliers of Echinacea coneflower herb remedies.
As of 11am BST on the 14th of September, sales on Fruugo’s Swiss site were up 220% on last week, a spike completely attributed to the Echinacea news being reported on Swiss TV programmes and media. Due to Fruugo’s facilitation of online cross-border trading, merchants in the UK, Spain, Sweden and the US are already reaping the benefits of the demand from customers in Switzerland.
As people around the world eagerly wait for scientists to come up with effective vaccines and cures for COVID-19, any discoveries related to the virus are met with great enthusiasm, and Governments and consumers alike are looking to get their hands on anything that might help prevent or reduce Coronavirus symptoms. In this case, Echinacea is already available over the counter in pharmacies and health shops around the world, which is why businesses who stock the medicine are now seeing a rise in sales.
So does Echinacea work?
The HMPC (EU Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products) have concluded that ‘purple coneflower herb medicines to be taken by mouth can be used short term for the prevention and treatment of common colds‘. However they also warn that ‘when used for prevention and treatment of common cold, cases of serious allergic reactions (such as Stevens-Johnson syndrome, asthma and anaphylactic shock) have been reported‘.
In other words it might be useful for a humble cold so long as you don’t have allergies. Other than that there’s no real guarantee it can kill the Coronavirus anywhere other than in a Petri dish but it probably won’t harm you. Mind you, washing your hands and strict 2m social distancing (or 1m plus other precautions as the English advice now is) will probably be way more effective than trusting Echinacea to save you once you’ve caught it.
The power of Fruugo
What Echinacea has done is effectively demonstrate the power and reach of Fruugo. As merchants on the platform know, Fruugo works by attracting traffic from search engines – probably a different set of consumers to those shopping on marketplaces. When Swiss consumers started to search for Echinacea, through Fruugo, they found businesses across the EU and in the US that could supply.
This is of course an unusual spike, but if you’re not already selling on Fruugo then you should certainly consider adding it as another sales channel – click here to get started.
“Fruugo exists to open up new sources of global sales for businesses and help them benefit from consumer demand across borders. In this instance, a spike in interest of a certain product from consumers in Switzerland has allowed merchants in the UK to benefit and increase sales automatically overnight, giving them a heads up that demand might spread to other markets as news of the new study travels.”
– Tony Preedy, chief commercial officer, Fruugo
3 Responses
Echinacea is NOT anti-viral!
For Tamebay to suggest ‘it might be useful for the humble cold’ is completely untrue and irresponsible.
Many substances can kill viruses in a petri dish, e.g. sulphuric acid, bleach and even back axle grease. That does not mean we should consume them.
Yes, you did! You report the findings of the EU committee (in italics in your article) then beneath you say:
‘In other words it might be useful for a humble cold so long as you don’t have allergies.’
That’s the Tamebay comment. Complete fallacy. This is exactly how fake news spreads. You claim not to endorse it but you’re repeating it anyway. Sheesh.