When a wave of lockdowns shuttered much of the country earlier this year, one unexpected effect was a national toilet paper shortage.
Saturday Night Live riffed on the shortage during its parody of the vice presidential debate. Comedian Maya Rudolph, as Sen. Kamala Harris, ridiculed the Trump administration’s calls for “calm” by posing rhetorical questions to the public. “How calm were you when you didn’t know where you were going to get your next roll of toilet paper? How calm were you when you were staring at that cardboard tube when you finished the roll and thought, ‘Well, it’s technically paper’?” she asked, to audience laughter.
When Rudolph told that joke in October, supermarkets from San Diego, California, to Bangor, Maine, were well-stocked again, but then, rising COVID-19 cases led to additional lockdowns in many states and more reports of toilet paper shortages.
“There was almost none at the supermarket yesterday,” Birch Bay, Washington state, resident Rich Bartholomew told the Washington Examiner. “Branson, Missouri, shelves are running low if not out,” reported Tina Cooper, a local.
Two groups often held up for blame for this shortage are hoarders and resellers. However, while hoarding and reselling do happen, they are not driving the more considerable deficit. That is the message of Will Oremus, a tech analyst for the mixed media platform One Zero, who wrote the groundbreaking essay “What Everyone’s Getting Wrong About the Toilet Paper Shortage” in April.
Oremus showed the toilet paper shortage was a supply problem, specifically, a supply chain problem. Supply chains are what keep both the office bathroom and the residence stocked, the latter by way of the supermarket.
Oremus pointed out two distinctly different kinds of supply chains exist, retail and commercial. They have different distribution systems, customers, even slightly different materials. Since people do approximately 40% of their business while at work, away from home, by telling people they had to stay home, governments were significantly increasing demand for toilet paper from retail supply chains.
People were also changing their buying patterns from the grocery store due to virus transmission’s uncertain nature. They were going less often and stocking up, not for hoarding but to minimize contact with others (aka social distancing).
Retail supply chains for toilet paper could not keep up with the increased demand at the time. Stores implemented strict purchase limits, but that didn’t prevent complete sell-throughs. People scrambled to find more toilet paper, somewhere. Even novelty toilet paper was suddenly a huge seller.
The TP reports coming out of the current wave of lockdowns are of supply chains that are stretched thin but mostly holding. “It sounds like stores are acting more quickly this time to limit purchases, which could help to mitigate the demand shock before it becomes too severe,” Oremus told the Washington Examiner.
He also speculated that retail “supply chains have become more robust” due to a change in strategy on the part of retailers and suppliers. The whole industry used to operate on a “just in time” basis. Many have shifted to what is called a “just in case” strategy.
Willy Shih, a management professor at Harvard Business School, explains the difference between the two strategies from the retailer’s point of view.
“‘Just in time’ means I’ll have relatively little in inventory, relying on my supplier to ship it as I need it. ‘Just in case’ would be the opposite. I want to hold more inventory, which costs money. I want ‘safety stock’ because I don’t want to run out,” Shih told the Washington Examiner.
Jessie Hurrelbrink is a resident of rural Whatcom County, Washington state, who buys toilet paper for six people in her household. She told the Washington Examiner that the less expensive toilet paper brands have already sold through at Costco, virtually hiking the price for all nonearly bird shoppers. At the same time, she chafes at the purchase limitations.
“When I have to pick up a pack for my elderly, at-risk grandmother, I either have to not be purchasing one for my household that day or go back through just with TP. They absolutely will not let you buy two, even if you 100% are not buying the second one for you. Makes things very inconvenient,” she said.
