Friday, July 31, 2020
Buying a bidet is a stupid idea, but if you're going to do it, here are the best ones
Having a hard time finding material to wipe with? Just get a bidet instead!
Originally Published on Inputmag.com By Samuel Polay and Evan Rodgers On July 4, 2020
As the Coronavirus crisis in the United States escalates, you’ve no doubt had the thought of going to your grocery store to restock on food and supplies. If you have, you’ve likely seen one item in particular emptied out: toilet paper. To be clear, there is no sign that any major country was facing toilet paper shortages, or would face them at any point. As some have pointed out fears of shortages in countries like Australia seem to have manifested themselves, and have now ironically resulted in actual toilet paper shortages.
Originally Published on Inputmag.com By Samuel Polay and Evan Rodgers On July 4, 2020
As the Coronavirus crisis in the United States escalates, you’ve no doubt had the thought of going to your grocery store to restock on food and supplies. If you have, you’ve likely seen one item in particular emptied out: toilet paper. To be clear, there is no sign that any major country was facing toilet paper shortages, or would face them at any point. As some have pointed out fears of shortages in countries like Australia seem to have manifested themselves, and have now ironically resulted in actual toilet paper shortages.
There is another way, though. You could order recycled or bamboo toilet paper from one of the several upstart companies trying to disrupt the industry. Regular supermarket bath tissue is terrible for the environment for a litany of reasons, so you’d be killing two birds with one stone. Or you can leave toilet paper behind and join the legions of people around the world who discovered there’s a better way to poo by buying a bidet.
Owning a bidet will drastically reduce your overall toilet paper consumption. Most owners I know only need a piece or two to dab themselves dry after use, making a single roll last up to three weeks. Plebeian poopers may need four or more pieces per task depending on the end result and length of session. In addition, my fellow bidet users report feeling cleaner than ever. So, if the idea of fighting off a legion of “karens” at Walmart for a 48-count pack of Charmin doesn’t seem appealing to you, here are some of the best bidets available. (All were in stock and ready to ship at the time of publishing.)
BioBidet ELITE3
- Available: Now
- Price: $43.90
- Install Type: Retrofit
- Power Required: None
The Elite3 was the most recommended to me before I purchased my own bidet and it’s clear why. The price is attractive and installation is simple. You also don’t have to totally replace your toilet seat unlike some of the other options on this list. It has two dials, one for adjusting the strength of the water and another for the direction of the flow. Do know it only uses cold water; you’ll have to pay up for warm. The Elite3 can also be installed without the need for a professional unlike some more advanced bidets.
TUSHY Classic And TUSHY Spa
- Available: Now
- Price: $80 (Classic) or $109 (Spa)
- Install Type: Retrofit
- Power required: None
You may recognize Tushy from their on-the-nose ads online and on podcasts. Their bidets are a bit more visually appealing thanks to their sleeker design and broad color selection. The Tushy Classic, like the BioBidet Elite3, can be installed without the need for a professional. It has one dial for adjusting water pressure and a small switch for adjusting direction but only puts out cold water. The Tushy Spa can serve warm water but the installation process is a bit more complicated and you may want to hire a plumber to help as it requires connecting your bidet to your sink’s hot water supply. However, the Spa is still one of the cheaper warm water bidets.
Toto Washlet C100
- Available: Now
- Price: $313
- Install Type: Seat replacement
- Power Required: Wall outlet
Toto has been in the toilet game for a while and odds are you or someone you know has one of their toilets. Their bidet toilet seats certainly target the premium market but the C100 strikes the best balance of features and price among their lineup. This bidet has warm water, a dryer, and a button-packed control panel to adjust its many other settings.
If you’d prefer a wireless remote, you can pay another $100 or so for the C200. The downside of this bidet is that it does require a power connection which may not be an option for you depending on the layout of your bathroom. It’s also several times the price of less feature-packed retrofit models, and the added functionality may not be worth that kind of premium to you.
TOTO S550E
- Available: Now
- Price: $1,008
- Install Type: Seat replacement
- Power Required: Wall outlet
For more than the price of a flagship smartphone, there’s the Toto S550e. If there’s a feature you could think of for a toilet seat, this has it. Heated seat? Check. Tankless and instant warm water? Check. Automatic lid? Check. Nightlight? Why would you even assume it wouldn’t have a nightlight?
Are these features worth it? No. But I think we can all be glad that someone made a toilet seat with Jeff Bezos in mind.
Tips for buying your first bidet
We dive deep into all the factors to consider when buying the right bidet for your needs
Let’s face it: toilet paper’s days are numbered. Watching TP all but disappear from shelves earlier this year as people went out of their gourd and began hoarding it during the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic felt like enough to make many question their loyalty to the product in the first place. Add in the costs that come with buying toilet paper in bulk as well as its environmental toll and your weekly purchase begins to seem like more trouble than it's worth. And while the devices have been around for decades, it seems as if many Americans are just getting hip to the wonders of the bidet. Bidets have had a huge year in 2020 and yet there is still some confusion as to which bidet models would be the most ideal for your bathroom. To help our readers sort through the noise, the staff at BDG studios put together this handy list of tips to consider when buying the right bidet for your home.
Go Affordable
Many bidets currently being offered on the market can range from $200 to $500, and that’s before having to assess if you need to make any major changes to your toilet just to accommodate the bidet of your choice. Fortunately for consumers, bidets truly don’t have to be that expensive. Typical bidets redirect your bathroom’s water supply, using the plumbing you already have at your disposal and converting it into a light spritz to clean you up after using the toilet. Take the TUSHY Classic bidet. At $79, this bidet is a steal, especially when you consider all of the money you will be saving on toilet paper.
Keep It Simple
Bidets should be designed with a single purpose – to keep your rear end clean. While some bidets might tout surround sound or smart functions, what you really need is something that will clean you comfortably and that is built to last. TUSHY bidets are designed to provide you with the best cleaning experience that is solely focused on that – cleaning. Its simple design makes the TUSHY Classic the perfect addition to any bathroom.
Consider Installation
When thinking about investing in a bidet, it is wise to look at the layout of your bathroom beforehand. Most bidets are designed to fit standard two-piece toilets. Other bidets can fit on a one-piece toilet when working with a flexible hose connection. If you’ve got a hard pipe connection, you may want to replace it with a flexible steel hose before you purchase your bidet. For most bidets, a nozzle underneath your toilet is powered by an adjuster switch on a side panel so that you can get the right angle, just like how you’d adjust your webcam on those group chats but more discreetly. The pressure control knob is used to give yourself a light rinse or if the job is particularly treacherous, a solid power wash. Consider the easy installation of the TUSHY Classic. Installing TUSHY on a standard two-piece toilet is clean and easy, and doesn’t require the electric routing you would need with a smart bidet. Another bonus – TUSHY bidet installation will take less than ten minutes, or about the amount of time it takes to check the latest viral video roundup on your phone.
Think About Temperature
When thinking about making the switch from TP to bidets, consider the following: do you like it hot or cold? While both are hygienic, this decision is a purely personal matter for each consumer to consider. For those who like the cold refreshing spritz, consider the simplistic TUSHY Classic. For those who want some heat for that bathhouse feeling, consider The TUSHY Spa, a model equipped with a temperature control knob to give you that feeling of “ahhhh” you normally have after a much needed massage session.
With TUSHY, you know you are getting a great product, that's easy to install, without all of the unnecessary bells and whistles. “Many bidets currently being offered on the market can range from $200 to $5000, tout all kinds of unnecessary smart functions and require expensive plumbing to install them," says Miki Agrawal, Founder & Chief Creative Officer of TUSHY. "Fortunately for consumers, TUSHY starts at only $79, installs in 10 minutes flat, requires zero plumbing or electrical and looks like it was actually designed for those who appreciate and care about design. And it also saves people thousands of dollars over time from toilet paper costs and helps save millions of trees from getting flushed down the toilet. It’s just a no-brainer.”
If you’re looking for the best bidet that you can get in terms of function and quality, try TUSHY for your bathroom throne and add in a splash of comfort to your everyday day routine.
This advertising content was produced in collaboration between BDG Studios and our sponsor, without involvement from Input's editorial staff. Learn more here.
Friday, July 24, 2020
Bidet Company TUSHY Wants to Rename Buffalo Bills’ Stadium, Host First-Ever ‘Toilet Bowl’
The luxury bidet company has announced a bid of $12.5 million and would rename the venue “TUSHY Stadium”
New season, new name?
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One Twitter used shared, "Bills football is the 💩!!! (Slogan writes itself)" while another wrote, "This is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. The toilet bowl actually happening."
"Wegmans [sic] field," he tweeted alongside a laughing emoji.
Originally Published on inputmag.com By Nicholas Rice On July 16, 2020
Photo : TIMOTHY T LUDWIG/GETTY
As the NFL's Buffalo Bills await their upcoming season amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, their home stadium — New Era Field — will soon have a new title and one unique company wants naming rights to the venue.
The company, which describes itself as "a provider of bidet attachments that transforms any traditional toilet into a booty wonderland," has announced a bid of $12.5 million and would rename the venue "TUSHY Stadium."
In a letter from TUSHY founder Miki Agrawal obtained by PEOPLE, the Canadian entrepreneur details her offer and what changes she would present the stadium with if her bid is selected.
"Orchard Park is the crown jewel of the New York sporting landscape and one of the great environments in football," she begins. "The city houses the stadium for the Buffalo Bills and, maybe more importantly, is home to the Bills Mafia."
She adds, "The fans who are part of the Bills Mafia love their traditions and possess a continued fondness for them. This includes drinking alcohol out of bowling balls, jumping through tables, and spraying ketchup on each other."
Agrawal adds that TUSHY "would like to deploy portable toilets equipped with its bidet across parking lots and tailgating venues for every Bills home game in 2020 and 2021," and "would like to work to bring a college football bowl game to Orchard Park and host the first-ever 'Toilet Bowl,'" if her offer is accepted.
Bidet company offers to put its name on Bills stadium after New Era drops out... pic.twitter.com/FcEYduPegV— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) July 16, 2020
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Fans had a field day with news of the bid on social media, with some making a stink (no pun intended) about the potential deal.
Meanwhile, Bills cornerback Tre’Davious White suggested a name on social media that would pay homage to the team's past.
"I'm thinking, Jim Bruce Andre Thomas Field," White tweeted, referencing the names of past Bills players. "Pay Homage to the OGs man !! #fourgoatsofbuffalo."
Linebacker Tyrel Dodson also suggested a new name for the stadium by proposing that the name of a popular Northeastern grocery store chain take over the naming rights.
Poloncarz turns down offer from bidet company to rename New Era Field
ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (WIVB) — Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says there’s no way a bidet company will own the naming rights to the home of the Buffalo Bills.
A company called Tushy retweeted an image shared by The Action Network’s Darren Rovell — a note appearing to be written by company founder Miki Agrawal.
In the note, Tushy offers to purchase the naming rights to the stadium we currently call New Era Field.
“With the news that New Era is dropping naming rights to the Bills stadium, Tushy — a provider of bidet attachments that transforms any traditional toilet into a booty wonderland — would like to announce a bid of up to $12,500,000 for the naming rights to the stadium and name it ‘Tushy Stadium,'” the note read.
Agrawal also says the company would “deploy portable toilets equipped with its bidet across parking lots and tailgating venues for every Bills home game in 2020 and 2021.”
In addition, they proposed something called the “Toilet Bowl”, which you can read more about in the tweet below…
Bidet company offers to put its name on Bills stadium after New Era drops out... pic.twitter.com/FcEYduPegV— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) July 16, 2020
Although this appears to be a serious proposition, Poloncarz isn’t having it. The County Executive says Tushy would not get the naming rights even if they gave the highest offer.
I thought at first it was a joke, but a bidet company named Tushy is bidding for rights to the Bills' stadium. Just what Buffalo needs. How about renaming it for Ralph Wilson?— Jerry Sullivan (@ByJerrySullivan) July 17, 2020
Friday, July 17, 2020
Some small businesses are flourishing during the COVID-19 pandemic
Nearly all businesses in the U.S. have been touched, and in some cases, decimated, by COVID-19. The airline industry says it will be bankrupt without a federal bailout; restaurants, salons and retailers — chains and individually-owned — are hemorrhaging, leaving countless hourly workers unemployed.
But surprisingly, some companies have seen soaring growth due to COVID-19. The publicly traded video conferencing platform Zoom, now part of the country’s collective lexicon, has seen its stock rise, as have delivery services as most Americans try to “shelter in place.” Large companies like pet supplier Chewy, meal kit company Blue Apron, as well as smaller businesses and startups have been blindsided by surging sales over the past several weeks as COVID-19 and increased containment restrictions turned worlds upside down.
“We didn’t see it coming,” said Ryan Lupberger, the co-founder of Cleancult, a venture-backed startup that manufactures natural cleaning products in zero waste packaging.
“People are just not finding cleaning products in stores,” said Lupberger in New York City, where half of the 15-person team is working remotely, the other half is in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Cleancult’s Amazon sales have increased eight times over in the past several weeks, according to Lupberger, tripled in retail stores and doubled on Cleancult’s website.
Cleancult’s manufacturing is located in the Midwest without a “shelter in place” mandate thus far. Production of lemongrass soaps and orange zest cleaners, among other products, has been ramped up to meet demand, shifts have been doubled, the work week has been expanded to seven day. Lupberger leaves worker safety measures to the warehouse manager. “All I know,” Lupberger said, “is that it’s been expensive.”
Credit: Nina Roberts
With an immediate recession predicted due to COVID-19, venture capital funding is drying up and startups like Cleancult are worried. “We see this huge demand,” Lupberger said, “but we don’t have the dollars to support it.”
Some of Cleancult’s VC funding has been delayed, and Lupberger and co-founder Zachary Bedrosian have started to look at alternatives like loans and basic lines of credit.
Tushy saw its bidet sales skyrocket when consumers began to have a collective melt down about toilet paper scarcity. Founded by Miki Agrawal, Tushy makes portable, self-installable bidets, allowing users to clean themselves with water rather than toilet paper. Bidets are popular in many countries, but have yet to catch on in the U.S.
In early March Tushy’s CEO Jason Ojalvo said he had projected a possible bump in bidet sales due to concerns about health and sanitation. But when videos of frantic shoppers pushing carts piled high with economy size packages of toilet paper went viral, sales exploded. “The toilet paper hoarding,” conceded Ojalvo, “caused the really significant boost.”
Over two weeks Tushy’s sales doubled, quickly tripled and are now holding at ten times according to Ojalvo. Tushy bidets are sold out on Amazon and back ordered on the Tushy website. With bidets currently being manufactured in Asia Ojalvo aims to fulfill back orders by late March or early April.
When Ashley Tyrner, the founder of Farmbox Direct, a subscription service that delivers boxes of fresh produce, woke up on March 14, she thought there was some type of bug in her computer system. “There’s no way we could have taken that many orders overnight,” recalled Tyrner recently, “but we did. We are doubling the company every 24 hours.”
Many of Farmbox’s new customers are located in areas where supermarket shelves sit empty. Others new customers set up deliveries for parents and grandparents who are not risking infection by leaving their homes to shop.
Scough, a mash up of “scarf” and “cough,” is a Brooklyn-based company that makes stylish wrap around scarves and bandanas in funky patterns with attached hidden masks. The immunosuppressant community has typically purchased Scough masks, according to founder Andrew Kessler, as well as airplane travelers, motorcycle and bike riders. In early March masks were in such high demand that Scough’s entire stock sold out.
“We went from like, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a bit of an uptick,’” Kessler recalled, “to ‘Uh-oh, everything’s kind of breaking,’ to, ‘Oh, no, we’re going to be out of out of stock in two months,’ to ‘We’re going to be out stock in two days.”
Kessler is scrambling to produce more masks, but Scough’s supply chain has been thoroughly disrupted, so he’s looking at alternatives. “Our inboxes are just flooded with people asking questions about masks and what to do and how many they can get,” said Kessler, who hesitantly said he might resume production in four to six weeks. “But factories are shutting down” said Kessler, “and who knows anything anymore.”
Fardad Zabetian, founder of the multilingual web conferencing platform Kudo said they’ve recently had more than 200 inquiries a day about Kudo’s services. “They’re looking for a solution for, let’s say, tomorrow,” said Zabetian with a laugh, “that’s kind of the state of where we are on the technology side.” He estimated his business has increased 400% since COVID-19 spread to Europe and then North America.
Courtesy of Kudo
Kudo is similar to other video conferencing platforms like Zoom, but with live, simultaneous translation in multiple languages. Zabetian said international meetings that had been slated for March, April and beyond, are being conducted on his platform. It has about 2,000 professionally trained interpreters, many of whom are in lock down cities across Europe, willing to work from their home offices.
“What COVID-19 is doing for Kudo,” said Zabetian, “is speeding up that adoption curve of people trying a new technology. Because that’s the only way they can meet.”
Feelings on profiting during a pandemic
Some business owners have mixed feelings about the sudden surge in sales during a global pandemic.
“It’s really complex,” said Lupberger, of Cleancult’s rapid growth. While he’s happy Cleancult’s products are in demand, he’s aware it could be perceived as exploiting the situation.
Cleancult has just launched a new initiative, for every customer order placed on their website, they’ll donate a bar of their lemongrass soap to NYC Relief.
“There is some ambivalence around our cultural moment happening, coinciding with a really kind of scary time for so many Americans,” said Tushy’s Ojalvo. “But at the same time, what’s important to note is that we haven’t really changed our marketing positioning or stance.”
“We’re kind of just doing more of the same,” Ojalvo said. “Actually, we’re doing less of the same,” he corrected himself, referring to a humorous Tushy ad they recently pulled (made 18 months ago) featuring two guys competing for the last roll of toilet paper in a bodega. “[We’re] trying to be extra sensitive,” Ojalvo said.
With the increased volume, Farmbox’s Tyrner said she feels good about keeping some of her Kansas City supplier’s employees from getting laid off, since supplying hotels, schools and restaurants has evaporated. She’s also hired several new people to work in Farmbox’s customer service department.
Scough’s Kessler has become accustomed to spiking mask sales during catastrophes, such as wildfires. “We try and just remember the reason why we did it in the first place,” said Kessler of designing scarves with hidden facemasks, “so that sort of keeps us going.”
“It’s not a happy moment,” said Zabetian despite Kudo’s booming growth, “the consequences of coronavirus is much bigger than Kudo or Zoom or any of this.”
Bidet Company Offers A Job Paying $10,000 For You To Poop
Originally Published on balleralert.com By Thewisegem On July 8, 2020
We are halfway through 2020, and the headlines are getting stranger by the day. Although nothing at this point is too far off for the kind of year we are all having, a bidet company is hiring if you’re in need of a job. Tushy was founded in 2015 by Miki Agrawal with hopes to influence people into buying bidets. According to their website, Tushy claims that their modern bidet will help you save money, save the planet, and ultimately save your ass.
The job vacancy is for a three-month position as the VP of Fecal Matters. Yep, you’ll be offered $10,000 to “test and study your pooping habits and document it via TUSHY’s social media.” The contract job lasts for three months. According to their website, applicant qualifications include; “A real pooping human with 21-121 years of pooping experience, strong poo-ject management and skills and one who embraces an “open-door policy” when discussing what happens in the bathroom.” The remote job opportunity requires a 90-minute minimum daily commitment to using the bidet.As part of Tushy’s #Bidet2020 campaign, they are accepting applications through July 10th, and the lucky candidate will begin work on July 22nd. The Brooklyn, NY based company hopes to revolutionize the way people relieve themselves by “giving people a healthier, cleaner alternative to toilet paper.” The company also offers bamboo toilet paper as an alternative to tree-based products and eco-friendly sustainable bamboo towels. In the early days of the pandemic, finding toilet paper was a luxury as many stocked up for fear of not being able to leave their homes. By switching to a bidet, you would eliminate the need to buy toilet paper altogether and ultimately do the environment some food by saving the trees.
Thursday, July 16, 2020
‘My parents helped me pack lube’: from sex toys to bidets, the lockdown businesses that boomed
Polly Rodriguez of Unbound sex toys company in New York. Photograph: Chris Buck/The Guardian
While some firms have been devastated as Covid-19 grips the planet, others have seen their sales go off the chart. How have they coped?
For most businesses, the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic were an economic horror story measured in job losses and plummeting sales graphs. But this was not the case for everyone. As lockdown measures were imposed around the globe, certain companies struggled to cope with sudden demand from a confined populace with new, highly specific needs.
So what was it like to be the focus of such frenzied consumer interest? How did they cope with self-isolating staff and faltering supply chains? And what are their hopes now the world is tentatively reopening? Here, five different companies reflect on their accidental boom.
‘We’ve donated product to nurses’
Polly Rodriguez, CEO and co-founder of Unbound, in New York
At the beginning of Covid-19, on 31 March, someone tweeted: “All my strongest soldiers on life support” with a video of all these vibrators charging. She tagged us, and it went viral; I think a million people watched it. Suddenly we had all this traffic. The second surge happened on 15 April, which, it so happens, was the day the US federal government gave a lot of people a cheque to get through the crisis. People had this discretionary income that they were spending on our products.
From then we were at a new normal: sales were up by 150% compared with this time last year. This is usually our slowest time of year, because people are travelling and spending on vacations, but every day we’d wake up and say, “Are the numbers going to go down? Is this the day it ends?” It’s like being on a rollercoaster, thinking, it’s got to stop somewhere. And it honestly hasn’t.
We have a stimulating lubricant that has sold really well – 8,500 units in three months – which is probably down to couples trying to make sex a little more interesting. I moved back to the Midwest to stay with my parents for a while, and my mom, dad and boyfriend had to help me get about 2,000 lubricants into packaging. Vibrators are our bestsellers – particularly Bender, a £55 dual stimulation product; pretty soon we ran out of inventory. We were scrambling to set up remote working systems and paying an exorbitant amount to ship product from China, because so many of the commercial flights we use were grounded.
Morale has been tough. We’re a small startup and it has been hard to hear people on the team say that they miss being in the office and seeing other people. I’ve encouraged staff to take a mental health day when they need it. For me, there was one day when I was working from home, I had no groceries, an investor call in 10 minutes and a new, five-month-old puppy. I ran downstairs to grab some delivered food, the puppy freaked out because he didn’t know where I was, and when I came back up he had sprayed diarrhoea everywhere. I burst into tears.
We made more than $400,000 in April which, traditionally, is our slowest month; there was a wholesale order for $70,000 in a single day. It’s weird to have your business doing well during such a sombre time. But I don’t feel guilty; I feel proud. We’ve donated product to nurses. It’s a remarkable thing, that in such a horrific time people are still giving themselves permission to experience pleasure. I think [sex toy] sales will stay at this level until there is a vaccine. It’s going to take a while before normal human behaviour – and the option to have sex with someone you don’t know that well – returns. Humans are sexual by nature. That’s not going to change.
Miki Agrawal and Jason Ojalvo of Tushy, with one of their bidet attachments (just seen in blue). Photograph: Chris Buck/The Guardian
‘Bidets used to scare people. Suddenly it was like we were on a rocket ship’
Miki Agrawal, founder, and Jason Ojalvo, CEO of Tushy, a bidet attachment company based in New York
JO In early March, we started to see a little uptick in sales and my first instinct was that [because of the virus] everyone wanted to be more hygienic, and that a bidet would give them that. We ship internationally, and the Tushy Classic – our bestselling bidet attachment – costs $79 and takes 10 minutes to install [it fits under the seat and is attached to the cistern with a hose]. Then the viral videos of people fighting over toilet paper came out. On 9 March, we did twice what we’d normally sell; the next day it was three times; the day after that it was maybe 20 times, and we had a million dollar sales day when we sold more than 10,000 bidets.
We had a team night out – we call it Forced Fun – and it was this last hurrah, where everyone was on edge and weirded out in this empty bar. The early challenge was production capacity, which we managed to up by about six times. A big part of that was convincing our factories in Asia that it wasn’t just one crazy day, or one crazy week. In April, we changed our revenue target for the year, from $20m to $50m. We also had to hire a dozen new people.
We also sell bamboo butt towels, for people who want to stop buying toilet paper and pat dry. A new, two-month shipment sold out in two or three days. So people are going zero waste and to the next level. I don’t think people will go back now they have discovered bidets, because it’s a game changer – it’s like being given an iPhone and then having to go back to using a rotary dial.
MA It’s a weird product that scares some people. A lot of the negative connotations come from the fact that US soldiers in the second world war associated bidets with the French brothels they visited, so they came back to puritanical America and shunned them. We fully launched Tushy in 2016; the last four years have been about getting people to go against generational attachment to toilet paper and say, “OK, I’ll wash my butt.” We’ve been using humour and a ton of education to lead them towards that cliff edge. So the whole coronavirus thing was just like everyone jumping off at once.
I was in California on sabbatical when everything exploded. I remember FaceTiming the team and everyone was like, this is fun. But after a few days, we were trying to forecast how much stock we needed – and we just couldn’t; I felt the pressure and sadness of the world. It was like we were on a rocket ship, so after a few weeks of the insanity I decided to come back to New York.
If we hit the $50m target, the team will earn a double bonus. Down the road, we’re planning a heated bidet seat. Even though the toilet paper shortage has passed, things are not going back. That part of our body has been neglected and deemed taboo for societal reasons for so long. What we’re saying is, clean it properly, respect it and honour it.
Paul Bodger, managing director of Origin Fitness. Photograph: Robert Ormerod/The Guardian
‘Two refurbished rowing machines sold in the 60 seconds it took to put them online’
Paul Bodger, MD of Origin Fitness, an exercise equipment company in Edinburgh
A lot of our products are manufactured in China and Taiwan, so we started hearing about factories shutting in January, and that home fitness sales were taking off in Asia. But in early March, our website went bananas. Online sales jumped 1,900%; revenue from those jumped 2,300%, an increase of more than £1m. We were getting a million page views a day and our website, which isn’t built for that traffic, kept crashing. We put a couple of refurbished rowing machines on the site one day and in the 60 seconds it took our web manager to add them, they were sold.
On 17 March, we stopped accepting new orders online, and did the same for two weeks in April. It took the heat and emotion out of the situation. We don’t specialise in retail – about 98% of our business is commercial sales to gyms and other organisations. So I had to furlough most of the staff; when gyms do reopen, the market is going to be slow. Before we ran out of stock, the e-commerce was a lifeline. And I, with other senior management, have been working dispatch, driving forklifts and packing 100kg weights. It’s tough work, but has helped me understand the business again.
Our product range covers everything from £8 dumbbells to exercise bikes costing £5,000; a lot is high-end and not designed for home use. Equipment for online or app-based circuit training – medicine balls especially – exploded. Olympic bars ran out; I thought that would mean the plates that go with them would stop selling, but they didn’t. I imagine there are a lot of people out there lifting our weights with broom handles.
For a lot of customers, it was almost like we were sending their medicine. They would tell us we were helping not just their physical health but their mental health. A good home gym will set you back £10,000, but we had people spending twice that. I keep thinking, are people going to keep this stuff, or is eBay going to be flooded with it? I hope they will keep hold of it, because they won’t want to get caught out again.
Lincoln Romain (far right) and Georgina Taylor (on counter) with the team at Brixton Cycles. Photograph: David Yeo/The Guardian
‘People can’t believe you’ve transformed their bike from a garden ornament into something useful’
Lincoln Romain and Georgina Taylor, workers at Brixton Cycles, a staff-owned bike shop in London
LR I’ve been here 30 years. When the pandemic started, I remember thinking that if we had to shut for three months, I didn’t know how we would survive. We’re a non-profit organisation and it’s hand-to-mouth.
Then after Boris Johnson’s announcement about the lockdown [on 23 March], we found out bike shops were an essential business. People started turning up with bikes for repair, left, right and centre. You couldn’t move in the shop for bikes. One morning in April, we sold six in 30 minutes. They were shotgun sales, where people just wanted to ride out on something.
Very quickly we had to bring in social distancing, allowing only four people in the shop at a time. I had one guy approach me, so I put my hand out to get him to stay back, and he was offended. I was like, “Wow. There’s so much going on, people are dying, and people of colour like me are high risk. But you’re getting your nose slightly twisted because you didn’t want me to put my hand up?” On the whole, though, people have been good. More people are cycling, and I’m seeing local families out on bikes with their kids. I like that.
For many people, buying a new bike is not an option. So when you can revive a rusty old thing by giving it new cables and tyres, and oiling up the chain, their eyes light up. They can’t believe you’ve transformed this garden ornament into something useful.
GT It started with fixing zombie bikes: things that had been pulled from gardens and still had snails living on them. Now, a lot of new bikes in Europe and the UK seem to have sold out, so it’s incredibly frustrating – if our suppliers had more bikes, we’d be selling them. You develop a skill for letting people down gently. Every day people would call and ask for the same thing – a hybrid bike that costs around £400 – and I could hear in their voices that they had already phoned around 20 shops and were distraught.
All the money we’ve made has gone into future-proofing the co-op rather than on bonuses or pay rises, because you never know what’s round the corner. Even though we wish it was under different circumstances, it has been important for us to be open and help so many people. We pushed NHS staff up the queue, and we gave a second-hand bike to a psychiatrist who offered us free group therapy as part payment. I said I’d have to talk to the other co-op members, but maybe after this, it might be quite good.
I’m a cynic, and think maybe only 20% of people will stick with cycling. But those of us who rode a bike during lockdown all saw what a pleasant place the city could be with cleaner air and fewer cars on the road. I don’t like the idea of going back to how things were. The world has got a chance to make things a lot nicer – and riding bicycles can be a big part of that.
Jamie Stanford of Liberty Games. Photograph: David Yeo/The Guardian
‘A pool table isn’t a miracle product, but it brings families together’
Jamie Stanford, managing director of Liberty Games, a game table retailer in Epsom, Surrey
Our business started with renting coin-operated equipment to pubs and clubs 20 years ago. But, of course, the pool machine in a pub has been replaced by a dining table now. What we’ve found is that people want to replicate the experience at home, with air hockey, football tables and table tennis sets that start at under £100 and top out at £50,000.
In early March, people started asking, “Can you deliver before lockdown?” When the announcement came, people piled in. Demand was spiking at around four times the average level. A normal March might mean 80 transactions each day – we were selling more than 400 in a 24-hour period. We didn’t run out of stock immediately. I’d love to say that was because I’d been some wizard and predicted it; really, it was because after Christmas you have leftover stock. But then that got depleted, and, working from home, we were a company with one hand tied behind our backs.
I can picture a moment about two weeks into lockdown when I got back from the office at about 7pm, and looked at the sales graph. I refreshed and it jumped up by the equivalent of a week’s sales in one day. I had dinner, thought about how we’d manage that volume. Then I refreshed it again, and another week’s worth of sales had happened in an hour. That was overwhelming. But our delivery companies were set up to deal with seasonal changes in demand, so took on extra staff and vans. My staff were clocking overtime; our more experienced suppliers ringfenced stock; and I was driving sackloads of pool cue chalk to the post office. It was seven days a week, but we muddled through. There was a slightly guilty, awkward feeling to it, when things are so desperate for other businesses. But this stuff does give people a bit of a lift.
One lady who bought a table tennis top said, “This is the first time I’ve seen a smile on my teenager’s face in three years.” Most of us are introduced to games tables on holiday. They are not a miracle product, but they bring families together. If you’ve got a kid playing Xbox all day and not interacting with his dad or his mum, and a pool table turns up, the family has a communal, enjoyable game that they can try to master.
When restrictions started to ease on 13 May, we thought, OK, that’s it, things will settle down. But we still had the same level of demand. I think this [crisis] is changing the psychology of a lot of people. Going to a restaurant, you’ll just become hypersensitive to every cough, every droplet in the air. It will probably take as long as lockdown lasted for these attitudes to wear off. I’m sure the desire to buy a pool table or a football table will eventually wane. But this has surprised me every single day. So I’m done making predictions.
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