Kleenex, the brand so synonymous with soft tissues that its lawyers constantly have to fight to keep the company's trademark protection alive, is to leave the Canadian marketplace. It's been wiped out by the generic competition and supply problems, and the brand's owner, Kimberly-Clark, has more lucrative stablemates to focus on.
Fisher added that the decision to pull Kleenex tissues from Canada will allow Kimberly-Clark to shift its resources to focus on its other brands in Canada and "meet the needs of our consumers with continued innovation and value." …
Kleenex posted a farewell message on its website as well.
"Thank you so much for your loyalty to our Kleenex brand facial tissues for the past few decades," the message reads.
"We appreciate you allowing us in your households and want you to know how difficult it was for us to end our sales in Canada."
According to the article, various supermarket-tier food brands like Lean Cuisine and DiGiorno pizza are also leaving the Canadian market, but there's no analysis of why. It's as if that consumer grade one step below premium mediocre is finished there–see also Target's spectacular failure to build out in Canada in the last decade–a step that corresponds roughly with lower-middle class folks realizing they are financially fucked and switching to store brands and basics.
