Step Into Your Full Poo-tential with TUSHY
Ever since I was a young girl, I’ve been in love with bidets.
What is a bidet, you may ask? According to our dear friend Wikipedia, a bidet is a “plumbing fixture or type of sink intended for washing the genitalia, inner buttocks, and anus of the human body.” Although they come in many forms, the first one I ever encountered was my aunt’s fancy toilet when I visited South Korea for a length of time when I was three years old. I can remember marveling at the myriad of buttons that allowed me to control everything from the angle and position of the water stream to the temperature of the water and subsequent air stream. Given that I don’t remember much else from that trip, that bidet must have made quite an impression on me.
A few months ago, I stumbled across a Facebook ad featuring a white toilet set against a background of pale blue with accents of green plants. From the toilet emerged a jet of water, carrying in its stream a group of smiling adults contorted in various, vaguely yogic positions. To top things off, the image was accompanied by the slogan, “Stop wiping your butt, start washing with TUSHY.” It’s even weirder than you think. Check it out at hellotushy.com (NOT tushy.com, lest you want to be directed to an aptly named pornographic website). Needless to say, I was intrigued.
Founded in 2015, TUSHY focuses on selling affordable, easily installable bidet attachments that clip onto your toilet. Unlike fancy luxury bidets (which can run you upwards of $1,000), their two main products, TUSHY Classic and TUSHY Spa, are priced at $79 and $109, respectively. Both Classic and Spa (available in nine different color patterns) offer pressure control and a self-cleaning nozzle; the main advantage of the TUSHY Spa is that it offers temperature control options, whereas the Classic only has a single temperature mode.
In addition to bidets, TUSHY sells a small selection of bathroom products designed to enhance your toilet experience, from Bamboo Bum Towels to the TUSHY Ottoman, a fancy toilet footstool scientifically proven to help you poop better. They also sell a line of T-shirts with various images and slogans written across the front (my personal favorite is one that reads, “Ask me about my butthole.”)
Toilet products aside, what really caught my eye about TUSHY is its branding. In an industry that tends to take an overly sterile approach when it comes to actually talking about poop (challenge: try to find a single mention of the word “poop” on the websites of major toilet manufacturers like KOHLER or American Standard. I couldn’t), TUSHY addresses it head-on. As shown by the abundance of defecation-related puns on their website, they revel in displaying an infantile love of poop jokes that makes our inner five year-olds clap our hands with joy (or at least, my inner five year-old).
This straightforward approach to addressing conventionally taboo topics is not a characteristic uncommon to TUSHY’s founder Miki Agarwal, who also co-founded the period-proof underwear brand THINX in 2013. THINX utilizes a similar frankness when it comes to discussing menstruation, which is arguably an even more taboo topic of discussion in popular culture (the tagline for the brand’s website is “For People with Periods”). Skeptics may consider the directness of TUSHY and THINX’s marketing to be attention-grabbing gimmicks, and they’re probably correct; the founders wouldn’t have adopted this strategy if they didn’t think that it would work. But the novelty of these brands is precisely what makes them so refreshing — they give users permission to avoid circling around everyday topics like pooping and periods with pointless euphemisms just for the sake of upholding good table manners.
In addition to employing an abundance of blatantly quirky poop-related humor, TUSHY has also adopted a strong sense of social responsibility. Referring to themselves as a brand of “toilet crusaders,” the team strives to convey the importance of reducing wastefulness and improving sanitation conditions throughout the world. According to the company’s “About Us” page, creating just one roll of toilet paper requires approximately 37 gallons of water. Assuming that most people use an average of 1.5 rolls a week, just wiping your privates requires about 55.5 gallons of water per week. On the other hand, using TUSHY only requires about 1.3 gallons of water and the harming of 0 trees. In a world where over 80% of investors consider environmental, social, and governance factors (ESG) factors when making investment decisions, it has become increasingly important for emerging brands and existing institutions alike to offer more than just a good product.
Last but not least, it definitely doesn’t hurt that TUSHY’s website is gorgeous to look at. When it comes to topics like UI design, I am the ultimate novice; I can tell when something looks good, but I couldn’t for the life of me pinpoint specific factors that distinguish a good website from the best. Still, it’s clear that something about the TUSHY website, whether it be the clean lines or its color palette of earthy greens and light pastels, makes a person feel fancy about shopping for a bidet. And really, isn’t that the ultimate achievement?
Written by: Rurie Yi | IQ Associate
