Bottom Story of the Day

Our TP inventory

Last spring we were concerned about the Fear of Running Out. We and millions of others apparently have stopped worrying.

Drop in Toilet-Paper Demand Prompts Kimberly-Clark’s Worst Sales Drop in a Decade

It is a sharp reversal from 2020 when the world’s consumers, stuck at home and hyper focused on cleaning, drove a 6% increase in organic sales for the year as they loaded up on paper towels, cleaning products and other household staples. Consumer-tissue sales last year rose 14%...

Demand for toilet paper shot up in the outbreak’s initial weeks, doubling in the second week of March, and remained elevated throughout most of 2020. Americans spent more than $11 billion on toilet paper last year, up from $9 billion in a typical year, according to NielsenIQ. If the current pace holds, 2021 sales would be less than $9 billion.

We carry our stock of paper goods at higher levels than we used to and no longer wait for a sale to load up, partly because there are fewer sales anyway. This is the same psychology that makes us fill our gas tanks at the one-half mark instead of waiting for the needle to drop below a quarter-tank.

When Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble start having sales on TP again, then we know we're back to normal.