After a year in which the lack of toilet tissue has left consumers looking for squares, sales are falling to pre-pandemic levels.
Bath tissue sales fell in January by more than 4% from the same period a year earlier, before the spread of Covid-19 prompted Americans to load staples from toilet paper to sanitary napkins, according to NielsenIQ figures. The decline, which comes even as legions of Americans continue to work and attend home school, indicates that last year’s stock is beginning to have an effect on sales.
“You never knew when you wouldn’t be able to get it, so every time I went out I got something,” said Marjorie Greenburgh, 62, of New Rochelle, NY. “They kept collecting.”
Mrs. Greenburgh still has 54 rolls, stored in different places in her house: in a guest room, behind a linen closet, in the basement laundry. “I don’t intend to buy for a while,” she said.
Demand for toilet paper increased in the initial weeks of the outbreak, doubling in the second week of March, and remained high throughout 2020. Americans spent more than $ 11 billion on toilet paper last year, up from at $ 9 billion in a typical year. to NielsenIQ.