Flushed?

US: Even in a recession, there are some products that people will always buy, right? Wrong. American consumers are buying less toilet paper, according to industry analysts.

Tom Falk is CEO of Kimberly-Clark, makers of products like Kleenex tissues and Cottonelle toilet paper. Falk says that 5.5 per cent less toilet paper than normal was sold in the US in the last quarter of 2008.

Some people, of course, have switched to less expensive brands, which is not unusual in difficult economic times. But analysts were not expecting a drop in the actual amount of toilet paper sold.

Analysts were not expecting a drop in the amount of toilet paper sold.

Falk believes this is because American shoppers are buying smaller packages and using up the paper they already have rather than buying large quantities in advance. “They are conserving cash and don’t want to build any household inventory,” he told the online media site Advertising Age .

Advertising Age reported that US retailers are also cutting back on inventory, causing the volume of Kimberly-Clark’s toilet-paper and facial tissue sales to fall by 10 per cent in North America.