What is the market size of toilet paper in the US?

Question

Post and review answers and feedback to answers in the comments section of this post.

Answer 1

To estimate the market size of toilet paper in the US, I will first estimate the number of toilet paper rolls used in the US per year and then multiply that number by an estimated price of one roll.

Let’s start with the easy one: price of one toilet paper roll in the U.S.. A box containing of 12 rolls of 200 sheet toilet paper is usually around $12 so the cost of a single 200-sheet role is around $12/12=$1.

To estimate the number of toilet paper rolls used in the US, I will break down the usage to 3 age demographics of 3 to 10, 10 to 60, and 60 to 80. I will also assume population of the US is 320million and the population is evenly distributed in the age range of 0 to 80, meaning that there are 320M/80 = 4M people that share the same age year.

Here is a quick table to estimate volume of toilet paper used per day in the US.

age group 3 to 10: 3 times per day. each time 6 sheets. total number of sheets used per day in this age group is: 7 years x 4M people per age year x 3 usages per day x 6 sheets per usage =504M sheets per day or 504M/200=around 2.5 million rolls

age group 10 to 60: 2 times per day. each time 12 sheets. total number of sheets used per day in this age group is: 50 years x 4M people per age year x 2 usages per day x 12 sheets per usage= 4,800M sheets per day or 4,800/200=24M rolls per day

age group 60 to 80: 1 time per day. each time 10 sheets. total number of sheets per day in this age group is : 20 years x 4M people per age year x 1 usages per day x 10 sheets per usage = 800M sheets per day or 800/200=4M rolls per day

Total number of rolls per day = 2.5M+24M+4M = around 30million rolls per day

Total number of rolls per year = 30 million x estimated 350 days per year = 10,500 million rolls per year

Given price of $1 per roll, total market size is 10,500 million rolls per year x $1 per roll = $10.5 B

I made a set of assumption to solve this problem : number of sheets per roll, average price of one roll, number of times people in an age group use a toilet paper, number of sheets used per age group.

Comments

Well thought out. Great answer.

---

One thing I would probably add during the discussion: toilet is a zero-sum game, so if someone uses public restroom/ hotel/ work/ school etc. restrooms, he/she would not use the toilet paper at home.

Answer 2

The US has 300 million people. Assuming about 20% are babies, elderly, or sick people who cannot care for themselves, it’s safe to say 80% use toilet papers.

240M use toilet papers. It’s safe to say that each person uses one roll per week. This means about 50 rolls per year per person. There is not much distinction between age group/gender so it’s straight up multiplication and 12B is the market size for TP in the US per year. Since each roll costs about $1, 12B is also the market cap.

Sanity check-wise, this is reasonable. (looks like the number is similar to Anita)

https://www.statista.com/outlook/80010000/104/toilet-paper/north-america#marketStudy says it’s 12.128B so it’s actually quite close.