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When the TSS scare hit, P&G was believed to have trademarked the Rely name to be used on a new minipad napkin that the company was expected to launch this year. The Rely withdrawal will not badly hurt P&G financially, since tampons accounted for less than 1% of the company's $10.8 billion in sales. The remaining makers cannot tell as yet how the TSS tempest will affect them. But it could turn out that in the case of tampons, consumers are less concerned about product safety than the manufacturers. Says a spokesman for Star Market, a New England supermarket chain: "Rely came off the shelf as soon as the TSS reports surfaced. But so far there has been no drop in the sales of other brands."
Company ads suggest that women concerned about contracting TSS might change their tampons more frequently —which of course means they will have to buy more. Unless the incidence of TSS grows alarmingly, all the makers should benefit from Rely's departure. The betting in the industry, however, is that P&G will be back eventually with a safe new product under a new name and that its supremacy on the store shelves will prove itself again. ∙