Originally Published On Bizjournals On December 21 2018
Tushy founder and "Disrupt-Her" author Miki Agrawal
How you wipe your behind is Miki Agrawal's business.
In a recent podcast interview (link below), the New York-based entrepreneur told me about the launch of Tushy, a startup that looks to bring bidets to mainstream America.
This isn't the first time Agrawal was inspired by an awkward topic. Before Tushy, she founded Thinx, the “period-proof” women's underwear company. Prior to that, her professional life was more conventional: she opened Wild Restaurants, a gluten-free pizza pub in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Guatemala.
These days, however, her focus is on butts:
My focus is on the taboo spaces — the spaces that people are very uncomfortable talking about. Nobody wants to be told how to eat. Nobody wants to be told how to deal with their period, especially since talking about it is uncomfortable for so many people. And poop? Oh my God. People want to wipe and run out of the bathroom as fast as possible and pretend it wasn't them. You know?
The majority of U.S. bathrooms, including those in the fanciest hotels, lack a bidet. And encountering one abroad is likely to confound someone born and raised in North America. Meanwhile, in Asia and parts of Europe and South America, people find it unsettling to enter a washroom devoid of a bidet.
Through Tushy, Agrawal wants to change all that. Indeed, she has a daunting task ahead of her.
After all, success hinges on a huge behavioral shift among the masses. Tushy is going up against the billion-dollar toilet paper industry, which is dominated by three companies — Georgia-Pacific, Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) and Kimberly Clark Corp. (NYSE: KMB). In 2018, the industry as a whole generated more than $13.7 billion in revenue (h/t Statista.com).
Agrawal remains confident, pointing to how investors who once scoffed at Thinx are now eating their words. Since Agrawal resigned as CEO last year, the four-year-old company has continued to scale in size.
Now, it's all about the so-called "Tushy train." With her on the journey is Jason Ojalvo, an e-commerce pro from Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) and current Tushy chief executive.
Ojalvo also joins the podcast to discuss the company's fundraising efforts and why investors should be bullish when it comes to bidets:
It's not a speculative product. It's been selling for three years and we're right on the border of profitability now which is great. It's little risk and [investors] have to agree with us that bidets could be ubiquitous and there's no reason why it hasn't taken off in the U.S. This is the right company to change it.
Our conversation didn't end there. We also discussed Agrawal's new book, "Disrupt-Her: A Manifesto for the Modern Woman," and why she refuses to let those misconduct allegations from her time at Thinx keep her down.
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