After hamsters and sales slump: Germans are buying more toilet paper again

At the beginning of the corona pandemic, many Germans stock up on tons of toilet paper. In the short term, demand seems to outstrip supply. Until the paragraph breaks down. But now people are accessing it more often.

First hamster purchases, then slump in sales: After the ups and downs of the first months of the corona crisis, the demand for toilet paper is slowly normalizing again. This comes from figures from the market research company Nielsen. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung" (FAS) had previously reported on this.

Although the demand for toilet paper at the end of June was still around 20 percent below the level of the same period in 2019, the trend is heading in the direction of the previous year. This could indicate that supplies are soon running out.

At the beginning of the corona crisis, sales of toilet paper had skyrocketed since the end of February. In individual weeks, more than twice as much was sold as in the same calendar week in 2019, according to the Nielsen data. A few weeks later, the consequence of these hamster purchases became apparent: sales slumped at the beginning of April – in some cases demand was more than 40 percent below the previous year's level. According to the FAS, the industry expects demand to normalize.