Profile: sex may sell but SSL's Garry Watts doesn't rely on that

SSL International, the owner of the Durex condom brand, is booming. Despite the worst financial crisis for generations and dramatic falls in consumer spending, the company is expected to report 20pc growth in annual revenue to over £600m in May.

So the obvious question for Garry Watts, chief executive, is are lovers spending more time in the bedroom because of the recession?

"I don't know, it's an appealing thought isn't it?" he patiently replies, as if it's a question more mischievous members of staff have already posed. "I do think, in a recession people stay in more and consider takeaways versus restaurants and DVDs at home versus going to the cinema.

"Now, if you're at home more, are you going to have sex more? Arguably, yes. Do I really have the hard data? I mean, it's quite difficult data to reliably get."

Watts, 52, has no problem talking about the racier-than-normal nuances of SSL's core market.

There is a story among staff at SSL International that in the 1980s, London Rubber Company, as it was then known, acquired the Royal Worcester china brand just because the then-chairman didn't want to tell his mother he was chairman of a condom company.

Watts, however, calls the job his most interesting and exciting "by far".

"It's not something I find difficult to talk about and actually, when you talk to people, most don't find it difficult if someone else is breaking the ice. You can make a taboo out of it but most people don't want to," he adds.

SSL has come along way under Watts' stewardship. Formed by a merger of Seton Scholl and London International Group in 1999, Watts joined as finance director in 2001 to find a company accused by the Serious Fraud Office of major accounting regulations. No charges were ever brought, but the company's reputation was stung at the same time as under-performing products were making the merger look disastrous.

Watts took the top job in 2004 and has driven growth through international expansion and focusing on the two leading brands – Durex, the world's biggest condom maker, and Scholl footcare.

SSL raised £87.3m in a share placing in January in order to continue its international growth with the acquisition of a Russian business.

Watts believes Durex and Scholl, at present worth about £200m a year each, can become $1bn brands within the next five years.

The enthusiasm of Watts, who commutes from Scotland to SSL's anonymous offices in Blackfriars, London, is obvious. He talks with a breathless lisp and is more than happy to admit that, after training as an accountant at KPMG and then moving into the pharmaceutical industry, not even his wildest dreams saw him as the boss of a successful condom company.

"Those of my friends who I've had since then, don't express a huge amount of surprise that I've ended up at a condom company," he jokes.

Watts' mantra for sexual health care is 'Have fun, be responsible'. He has encouraged openness about the subject among staff in an effort to "normalise" – a phrase he cringes at – sex.

"The world is, I would argue, vitally becoming less po-faced about sex," he says. "I mean, slight generalisation, but most folk are interested in sex for most of their lives."

This ideology has been useful for SSL's recent, and most ambitious, twist to the Durex brand – the introduction of the Play range with products such as vibrating rings and lubricants.

The move has so far proved fruitful – the division reported a 27.3pc rise in sales to £21m in the most recent interim results – and the products can be now found in most of the major supermarket chains, something Watts is particularly proud of after a long and thoughtful launch process.

He says: "The insight from me was that if people want to buy vibrators and lubricants to use in their sex lives, either for medical reasons or to improve their enjoyment, then why not allow them to do that where they are doing their shopping?"

Following intensive consumer research, Watts found general support for his ideas. The next stage was to convince the retailers.

In 2004, Boots balked at selling the Play range after a public outcry. Watts said he was "disappointed" with the decision, but it has ultimately helped to mould the company's strategy.

Marketing and packaging are now kept low-key and Watts encourages retailers to place the products alongside the condoms, even removing a row if necessary. The success of the Play brand where it has been stocked has ultimately made the process easier.

"There haven't been people waving placards outside the shops saying 'Boycott this, it sells lubricant'," he adds. "That isn't the way the consumer has behaved.

"What we don't want to do is to create World War III with the trade by trying to push. People talk about supermarkets as if they have a mind and a will of their own – they're don't. They are businesses, they employ people. If their check-out staff are uncomfortable selling our products then it is not unreasonable for them as a business to say 'We are uncomfortable about stocking them'."

Despite the positive signals, SSL still faces challenges in the short-term. Growth of the Play range may stutter amid the downturn as consumers, although they haven't yet, swap the Durex and Scholl brands for own-brand alternatives.

Watts' is also wary about the company becoming overconfident over its success in expanding Durex. "I think the danger is that we start selling it as 'We are a sex business and therefore you should invest in us'. What we have to make very clear to our investors, and to ourselves, is that we are a consumer business with personal healthcare goods. We don't rely on the fact that it's sex to sell per se."

GARRY WATTS' CV

Age 52

Lives Perthshire, Scotland

Family Married with three children

Drives Range Rover

Favourite Film Truly Madly Deeply

Reading The Endless Tide by Iain R Thomson

Hobbies Fishing, sailing, horses, anything outside