Alun Newman: The bulk buyers
Attention all bulk buyers. Most of the population seem to be at it in some form. I was casually chatting to a friend when they revealed they had purchased a large amount of kitchen roll. It was something they claimed they used a lot of.
I asked where they kept this high-volume item. They replied that for all their bulk buys they used their small conservatory. Does it get in their way when they’re sitting in the conservatory? Then came the money shot. They said they couldn’t sit in that room because of all the kitchen roll!
Bulk buyers are a canny breed of savers who’ve lost a touch of proportionality. I had no choice but to run this theme through the radio show this week. It was a colourful phone-in of confessions and limited judgment. Bulk buyers of tissues, beans, shower gels, shampoos, the list went on and on. It was a wonderful insight into the lives behind the closed doors of our privacy.
I was surprised by the number of people who have boxes and boxes of fizzy drinks. They take up so much space. Some people seem to have more than Asda. Another theme that emerged was how a bulk-buy obsession can establish itself after a painful “running out of …” incident. The end user promises themselves that it will never happen again. Or maybe there’s some self-protection going on because we seem to get these impossible-to-predict price spikes.
Did you see in the news that some basic, everyday chocolate is now more expensive per kilo than fillet steak? That has to be a first. The payoff could be that we’re all going to eat less. I suggested recently to my family that if they wanted a sugary treat then why not make a cake rather than go to the Co-op. They laughed and then disconnected from any of my further groundbreaking, revolutionary ideas.
There was a good coffee bulk buyer on the show who buys all their coffee pod things for the year every January. The claim was that it saves money. I didn’t enquire how much coffee it was in total. It’s the space this stuff gobbles up.
My favourite was a lady who, during Black Friday, bought four pairs of slippers. She confessed that slippers really were her thing. She liked to have a variety depending on how she was feeling on the day. Now four pairs of slippers, I hear you cry, is hardly bulk buying. However, in this case they would be joining the others in the set, bringing their slipper total to around 42 pairs.
Firstly, if it’s different slippers for how you’re feeling, then I didn’t know there were so many different feelings! And secondly, when does bulk buying become an issue? I’m thinking it might be when you ask for slippers for Christmas just to get the collection over 50?