The same sunscreen, twice the price (11 weeks on Israel's online shelf)

A self-tan brand tops the shelf — and a local line matches La Roche-Posay

The biggest brand on Israel's online sun-care shelf isn't a sunscreen at all.

In the season's final week, MineTan — a self-tan brand sold only at Super-Pharm — holds 9.0% of the shelf, the largest share of any brand. Right behind it: Ultrasol, Dr. Fischer's sun-care line made in Israel, tied with La Roche-Posay at 8.8% each.

Add Bali Body to MineTan and self-tan brands hold 17.1% of the shelf. On Israel's online "sun" aisle, tanning is nearly as big as protection.

Three things to know before you read this as market share:

• Assortments barely overlap. Of 397 unique products tracked (508 listings), only 89 were sold by both retailers in the final week (GTIN-matched).
• Life, Super-Pharm's private label, holds 6.2% of Super-Pharm's own sun shelf.
• Shelf share counts listed products — each size counts once, and presence is not sales.

The shelf you own isn't the shelf shoppers see

Listing products is one thing. Being seen is another.

In the five largest sun categories (30+ products), we compared each brand's share of all positions with its share of the top 10 positions of page one — the first screen you see before scrolling.

Just three brands — Ultrasol, La Roche-Posay and MineTan — hold 31 of the 50 first-screen slots, far above their listing weight. And it isn't one week's merchandising: La Roche-Posay held 20–24% of the first screen in all nine comparable weeks.

The other side of the ledger: Avène, with 11.8% of the listings, held zero first-screen slots in six of the nine weeks — and never more than 6%. Uriage and Bali Body never held a single first-screen slot all season.

That's not a listing problem. If it's your brand, it's recoverable first-screen share — and a merchandising conversation.

Identical products, twice the price — and whole brands repriced overnight

For the 89 products sold by both retailers, we compared the displayed online price, GTIN by GTIN, in the season's final week. The median gap is 3.4% — the mean, 10.7%, is pulled up by a few extreme pairs shown below.

The final week went to Super-Pharm: cheaper on 58 products vs Shufersal's 23, with 8 priced identically.

But the sides flip fast. Two weeks earlier, Avène was cheaper at Shufersal on all 12 of its matched products. By August 27, it was cheaper at Super-Pharm on all 12.

The gap is not static — retailers move whole brands at once.

In the week of August 6, Super-Pharm's La Roche-Posay prices jumped ~33% across the board (₪93 → ₪124 on average over 16 matched products) while Shufersal held still. Every single La Roche-Posay pair opened a ~29% gap, overnight.

It held for exactly two weeks. Then prices rolled back to ₪93 on August 20.

If you bought in that window, you paid a third more for the identical product. A monthly price check would have missed the whole episode.

The final fortnight repriced Ultrasol the same way: Super-Pharm lifted most of the local line 25–75% (the kids lotion went ₪36.90 → ₪55.90) while Shufersal didn't move a shekel. That left the shelf's local co-leader with the widest brand-level gap of all — a 32.3% median.

The full brand pattern, in the final week. Some brands hold near-perfect price discipline across retailers; others show systematic, directional gaps:

At peak, two sun products in three were on promotion

Over the season, 53.5% of Super-Pharm's sun shelf carried an active promotion in an average week — peaking at 68.7% in late July. Shufersal's comparable average: 60.4%, peak 65.4%.

The rhythm differs. Super-Pharm runs visible on/off cycles, swinging from 27% to 69% of the shelf within weeks. Shufersal holds consistently high and rises into August.

The mechanics differ too. In the final week, every Super-Pharm promotion was a struck-through was-price — and every Shufersal promotion an explicit percent- or price-off offer.

When more than half the shelf is "on deal," promotion no longer differentiates — it's table stakes.

In one August week, 63% of Super-Pharm's sun prices moved

Week over week, we compared each product's displayed price to the previous week's.

Super-Pharm reprices continuously — about a quarter of the sun shelf moves in a typical week (median 24%). The peak: 62.9% in the week of August 6, the wave that moved every La Roche-Posay price up at once. Then 52% on August 20 — the wave that rolled them back.

Shufersal moves in bursts: 0.6–10% most weeks, then a third of the shelf at once. And near-total quiet in the final three weeks — 0.6% each.

A monthly price check misses most of what happens. By the time a quarterly review lands, this shelf has repriced itself several times over.

None of the top sun brands ran a dedicated banner all summer

We reviewed all 449 unique display creatives shown on both sites across the eleven weeks — homepage, menu and category banners, one by one.

Only 26 (5.8%) show a sun-care product at all. And 21 of those are multi-product sale banners where a sunscreen merely appears in the lineup.

Of the five dedicated campaigns, three belong to Life — Super-Pharm's own private label (an SPF50 range push with an after-sun and a beach-bag gift). The other two: Style's "Sun Hair" SPF line and Lirene.

None of the top five shelf brands — MineTan, Ultrasol, La Roche-Posay, Bali Body, Avène — ran a single dedicated sun-care banner all season. The closest thing in the final fortnight: an Ultrasol 1+1 coupon, one cell in a 77-coupon grid.

Did the one real campaign pay? In the week its banners ran, Life held 14% of the sun first-screen slots — its season high. It never topped 10% again.

The campaigns that did run

actual creatives collected on shop.super-pharm.co.il, June–July 2026

Top to bottom: Life SPF50 sprays at ₪35.90, Life's "Summer Vibes" range with after-sun — the private label talking to its own shoppers — and Lirene, one of only two brand-led sun campaigns of the season.

56% of Super-Pharm's sun shelf carries zero reviews

On Super-Pharm — the only one of the two retailers with product reviews — barely 44% of sun products have even one review. Across both retailers, roughly three sun listings in four carry no review at all.

The volume sits with the French dermo brands: Avène (387 reviews) and La Roche-Posay (350) dominate.

But the shelf leader tells another story. Ultrasol has a third as many reviews as Avène — and the highest rating of any major brand (4.55).

Questions about the data, or want the full tables? Press and data requests: contact@rxradar.xyz