Saw this thread, and had to do a little shopping yesterday, so I made note of the stock of these products (I didn't need any).
All paper products seemed to be plentiful, even saw some sale tags on some TP. Rows and rows of the little hand sanitizer bottles prominently placed with sale tags (seems like they over-bought during the rush?). The only thing I saw that was limited at this store was ISO Alc, I only noticed the 70% variety in stock (but I never noticed if they carried the other % before either), there was about 2' of shelf space about 2' deep, looked to be about two times that space was empty, and a "LIMIT ONE" sign. But of course, all this could vary day-to-day, store-to-store, area-to-area, etc. Just my observation on that day/time.
Originally Posted by audreyh1 View Post
Or that supply is still lower than normal and hasn’t been able to catch up.
Way more people at home, rarely going out, cooking most meals at home, explains a lot of the imbalance.
The former may be true, the latter how? I said it euphemistically in an earlier post, there aren’t more people so there shouldn’t be more actual usage - and there’s been plenty of time to adjust home vs other usage.
It’s either a drop in supply, or more and more hoarders. Once a hoarder makes that decision, they reach their new target stock amounts, and then it’s normal usage thereafter.
As I said earlier, different usage patterns (being home vs at a business/restaurant) certainly can cause a supply problem, even if the overall usage is unchanged. Products are produced and packaged differently for home use. I imagine the machines for large volume, low margin commodity products like TP and other paper products are very large, specialized/dedicated and expensive capital equipment. I doubt they are made to just change a setting and go from producing the commercial large TP rolls, to the home sized rolls for example. That sort of flexibility is used for lower volume, variable production, the high volume comodity stuff gets specialized equipment, in general.
So the "normal usage thereafter" that you mention isn't normal as far as the supply chain is concerned. All this could be having an effect still.
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I don't understand the reasons behind the shortages, but then I have never been involved with any kind of retail or distribution operations. My totally uninformed guess would be that retail and distribution businesses might have their own difficulties with employees being out sick with the virus or having to stay home to take care of their kiddies instead of going to work.
You may consider yourself uninformed, but I think your observation makes perfect sense. It would be hard for me to believe that the supply chain business, from production to distribution to retail haven't all been affected. Our production lines had areas of lines of people, sitting close to each as the product passed each station for whatever hand work it needed. Those people probably need to be spaced 6' now, which is probably about twice the space they used before. That cuts production in half unless you can find more space, set up more work stations with all the conveyors and support equipment (lighting, exhaust fans, etc). Efficient operations don't just have unused space laying around. So they need to spend more money, or cut into some other production. And the space may not even be available. It could take a very long time to set up a new facility, for what might not be needed later.
-ERD50
