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Consumerism

Recycled tissues vanish

Recycled tissue boxIt would seem that my favourite brand of tissue — the only recycled ones on sale — has disappeared from the supermarket shelves — both Coles and Safeway. I do switch to the softer Kleenex’s (non-recycled) aloe-vera and eucalyptus tissues at times of extreme snottiness, but for daily use the recycled tissues are pretty good.

So I rang up the company to ask about it. They sounded surprised, and said they’d have someone look into it. No reply yet.

I generally have three or four boxes of tissues on the go at once, distributed at strategic locations around the house, so it might be a while until I run out. Hopefully they’ll turn up again before then.

The same company makes recycled napkins, which (so far) are still in plentiful supply.

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

8 replies on “Recycled tissues vanish”

The last two times I’ve done the shopping, I’ve discovered 2 different things we regularly buy have been ‘discontinued’ or just no longer available on the shelf. How is it that things we like buying are suddenly unpopular enough to be no longer in the stores? I guess, like you, we’re going to either have to start buying another ‘brand’ of similar item, or try another store.

The local Safeway seems to be going through major reorganising at the moment. Noticed lots of imported tinned veges.

And a new Safeway generic brand (but with coloured labels). The place of manufacture is the same as the Home Brand version, so whose betting that they’re the same product?

I understand that products are not being discontinued because sales are down. Coles, etc are reducing the number of brands so consumers will be forced to buy their homebrands.

If your local supermarket is not selling enough of certain branded product, they do discontinue stocking it. Might be worth while to ask for the particular product to be stocked again at your local supermarket. I notice even ‘home brand’ products do disappear from shelves when low sales and no-one asks for them. Even the supermarket next suburb over may have different items in stock because they are more popular.

I thought that Coles are supposed to have fairly uniform stock on a state-wide basis. At least I was doing a uni project for a small company that already sells products through Coles/Safeway about the viability of selling a new product through Coles. It had to be worked out on a state-wide average between every store. That is, sales at stores where sales of the product would be high, have to make up for sales where they are low. I think if there were too many stores where the sales are too low then Coles wouldn’t consider the product.

Supermarkets seem to be into ‘supply chain rationalising’, reducing suppliers’ margins and cutting the number of suppliers.

So if a supplier only provides a few lines that aren’t very popular, then they’d likely to get the flick.

Over here (UK) all the supermarkets have phased out the different brands, so that you have no option but to buy the supermarket’s own product. It has nothing to do with supply and demand, and everything to do with supermarkets trying to get richer. If you have a look on the Dick Smith website he explains that the same thing has been happening to his product lines. They are trying to reduce our ability to make our own choices – I still get frustrated every time I go grovery shopping here. Looks as though Oz is going the same way.

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