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Comment by stvswn | Hacker News Reader

This analysis ignores inventory costs. Those who can afford to buy in bulk accrue a cost to holding inventory in their dwelling.

This can manifest in two ways: 1) the storage space physically necessary to hold the TP and 2) the capital tied up in owning this before you need it.

To put it another way, maybe poorer people can afford to buy in bulk, but in their apartments they have no place to put a gigantic package of toilet paper. Or, maybe they choose not to tie up $25 in securing future TP when they need that liquidity to ensure they can make a car payment this month.

In either way, they get something of value by not holding inventory in their house. That's why it costs more. It's not completely clear that they'd be better off if they could lock in low TP prices, even if they did have the cash on hand.

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The space issue seems to be a non-issue until you scale up to multiple bulk products. Unless you are talking about people living in either a shelter or the housing units that are basically a bed and everything else is communal.

It's nonsense even with multiple products. At scale, yes, inventory costs make a huge difference. Practically, for most Americans anyway, there is storage room in your place for bulk products.

We have what I like to call a "general store" in our basement that takes up two shelves full of several bulk products. (perhaps 10-15 different products, some small, some not) We're talking about a space that might be 2.5 ft on a side, 1 ft deep. Hardly a ton of space that will require additional capital "tied up in owning this before you need it."

In Tokyo? Sure. In the US? Not so much.

There's not room in my two-bedroom house in Silicon Valley for bulk versions of normal staples. I do not have a basement or attic. I have two closets; one has my clothes in it, the other is full of my daughter's baby stuff. Toilet paper gets stored under the sink in the bathroom. Does it seem insane to you that I don't have space for bulk toilet paper buys? That I'd actually consider storage space during these types of purchases?

Congrats on your basement, do you think apartment dwellers have basements?

I'll bet that you could find the space if you were creative. Also, I'm not saying that storage space isn't considered, only that it isn't a "capital investment" when we're talking about a relatively small amount of space. How many square feet? I bet there is a corner where you could put a shelf.

I have an apartment. I keep the toilet paper at the bottom of my closet. I keep a bulk supply of paper towels in the corner of the kitchen area. I have plenty of places where I can put bulk items. It would look cluttered, messy even, and it would put things where they wouldn't normally belong, but I could do it. But even if I had less space, I could still have space for the most common bulk items. (Now if I had a pet I had to keep the items away from, that would be another issue.)

Also, if you don't have a car, bringing home that 48-pack of toilet paper on the bus may be a problem.

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