Kimberly-Clark cuts to the core to boost amount of tissue on a roll

Associated Press

ATLANTA — "Can you spare a square?" might soon be a less-common query.

Kimberly-Clark Corp. is eliminating the cardboard core of two of its toilet-tissue brands to double the number of sheets per roll, hoping to decrease the public bathroom bane — running out of paper.

The company’s new coreless tissue paper is being launched nationally this month after successful tests in nine cities. The two new brands, Kleenex Cottonelle Coreless and Scott Coreless — which packs up to 1,000 sheets by removing the middle — were spurred by building and property managers looking for ways to reduce runout and lower labor costs.

Running out of toilet paper reflects poorly on a business, "especially with high-end office buildings," said Tracy Mark, tissue product manager at the company’s commercial unit, based in suburban Atlanta. "They want to maintain that high-image premium.

"It’s one of the biggest complaints they get, and they spend a lot of money making sure they have maintenance people refilling it," she said.

The new coreless tissue uses an adapter to push indents into the roll, allowing it to turn the same as the traditional model. Company officials said their adapters prevent users from yanking the tissue onto the floor.

"It dispenses just as easily as the others," Mark said. The tissue costs about $1 per roll, about 20 percent more than the company’s traditional paper.

Rival Georgia-Pacific Corp. makes toilet paper that has a gap in the middle about the diameter of a pencil.

Besides offices, Kimberly-Clark hopes to sell the paper in other high-traffic places with public restrooms — hospitals, restaurants, universities, factories and stadiums.

Running out of toilet paper in a public bathroom led to laughs in an episode of "Seinfeld," when Elaine ran out and asked the woman next to her to pass some paper underneath the stall separator. She refused, saying she didn’t have a "square to spare."

Don’t expect coreless paper for home anytime soon. The company said the sheer variety of restroom decor makes it less attractive for consumer use.

"It’s a tremendous retrofit for 100 million households," said Mark Cross, a vice president of Irving, Texas-based Kimberly-Clark.

Steve Howard, operations manager at a Boston office tower, said he decided against switching to the coreless paper because he didn’t want to be stuck with Kimberly-Clark’s adapters in his 70 restrooms if the paper’s price rose.

"We’re already locked in with their soap dispensers," he said. "We don’t want to get locked in with their toilet paper, too."

But John McGowan, restroom manager for a 21-floor office building in Manhattan, said he’d love to switch. He oversees 84 restrooms.

"You got four public restrooms per floor, three toilets in the men’s and five in the ladies," he said. "It adds up, man."