The Bathtub Episode: How the Pandemic Disrupted Plumbing
Odd Lots
Bloomberg
4.5 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2021
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When you think about building a new home, obviously you think of various constraints regarding land, labor, and raw materials. But, of course, you can't build a new home without other basics, like windows, sinks, and bathtubs (or showers). And, just like everything else, these are now in short supply. On this episode, we speak with Trey Northrup, leader of the Americas at LIXIL, which sells bathtubs and other plumbing basics under various brands, including American Standard, Grohe, and about the stresses on the industry and when they're expected to ease.
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| 0:46.0 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odlots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal. |
| 1:00.1 | And I'm Tracy Alloway. Tracy, do you remember our episode from, I guess it was probably a |
| 1:05.4 | little over a month ago now about how difficult it is to buy or to build a home in America right now? |
| 1:11.9 | I know there's a lot going on, but yes, I remember the episode from a month ago. It was a great |
| 1:17.6 | episode. Yeah, so I kind of think of like housing as the culmination of so many different themes |
| 1:26.3 | right now. And of course, we talk about lumber shortages and the lumber market's actually |
| 1:31.2 | cooled back off quite a bit since we talked about it, but land constraints and interest rates and |
| 1:36.7 | demographics and of course labor like everything kind of rolls up into housing, I would say. |
| 1:43.7 | Yeah, that's exactly right. And I remember one of the themes that emerged in that conversation |
| 1:49.8 | was just the idea of how difficult it is to build new supply at the moment. So you had the ongoing |
| 1:57.6 | lumber shortage, which had sent prices really, really high. They've come down a lot since we had |
| 2:02.7 | that conversation actually. But beyond lumber, there were all these sorts of other components that go |
| 2:08.8 | into a house that were also in short supply. So things you might not necessarily even think about |
| 2:15.7 | as you're building a house. But I remember one thing in particular got mentioned and that was a |
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