Despite the Turmoil, Pakistan Wants Soap

Haji Mirbar, who grows cotton on a five-acre farm with his four brothers in a village outside the town of Matiari in southern Pakistan, says his family’s income grew fivefold in the year through June. That’s allowed him to splurge at bathtime. He now uses Unilever’s Lifebuoy for his open-air baths under a hand pump instead of the handmade soap he used before. “We had a great year because of cotton prices,” explains Mirbar, 28. “As our income has risen, we want to buy nice things and live like kings.”

Increased income among rural dwellers like Mirbar is fueling demand for branded products, allowing consumer goods makers to defy the turmoil in Pakistan, where terror attacks have killed at least 35,000 people in the past decade, according to its government. Big foreign companies such as Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive are sending salespeople into rural farming areas of the world’s sixth most-populous nation, where demand for consumer goods such as Sunsilk shampoo, Pond’s moisturizers, and Colgate toothpaste has boosted local units’ revenue.