The coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns led to shortages of toilet paper earlier this year (which I've discussed before here). An interesting aspect of that is the effect on the market for bidets, as Business Insider reported in March:
The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has caused a toilet paper panic-buying frenzy, with customers flooding large retailers like Costco and even becoming unruly over fears that essential items – like toilet paper – may soon deplete.
But it also seems that many people have been outfitting their bathrooms with another option: the bidet. Home product company Brondell, which sells various types of bidet toilet seats and attachments as well as heated toilet seats, has seen an increase in sales over the last few days, company spokesperson Daniel Lalley told Business Insider.
Lalley said Brondell is selling a bidet on Amazon every two minutes, or about one thousand units per day. The company earned $US100,000 in one day this week through Amazon sales, an “exponential” increase over an average day, according to Lalley.
The company’s direct sales have also spiked, and overall sales demand across all of the company’s retail channels has increased by about 300%, Brondell president Steven Scheer told Business Insider over email.
Toilet paper and bidets are substitutes. With toilet paper becoming scarcer, the 'full cost' of obtaining toilet paper increased (once you factor in the difficulty of finding toilet paper when the shelves of many stores are empty). That means that, in terms of full cost, bidets became a relatively cheaper option than toilet paper for some people, increasing the demand for bidets. As shown in the diagram below, the market for bidets was initially in equilibrium where demand (D0) met supply (S0), at a price of P0 and Q0 bidets were traded. The increase in demand to D1 increases the quantity of bidets traded to Q1, and increases the price to P1.
It seems likely that bidet sellers may have been one of the few big winners from the coronavirus pandemic.
[HT: Marginal Revolution]
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