INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Business at Tushy is booming.
While the circumstances that led to the boom are sobering, the bidet company needed to adapt its strategy
after seeing an uptick in business amid the COVID-19 pandemic
Other companies in this cohort include video conferencing service Zoom, meal kit service Blue Apron and Facebook, thanks to its social
network, video hardware Portal and Oculus Quest VR headset
These companies all have something in common — they offer solutions to problems that, until recently, were not all that urgent.
Founded in
2015 by Thinx founder Miki Agrawal, Tushy aims to replace toilet paper, CEO Jason Ojalvo tells TechCrunch
Ojalvo, who joined the company as CEO in 2018, says North America has been a holdout when it comes to bidets
As a result, the nation flushes about 15 million trees down the toilet every year.
Tushy, which has raised $2.9 million since its founding,
has been profitable for the last two years
That in part thanks to the company focus on sustainability — not just from an environmental standpoint, but from a business one, Ojalvo
That means not over-hiring or spending too much on marketing.
&We&re really careful about doing it in a way so we won&t explode like some
other direct-to-consumer companies can do when they raise too much money and they over-hire and then they have to let people go,& Ojalvo
&That just a debacle that I&ve seen first hand and I don&t want to be part of it
Not only do I not want to be part of it but I don&t want to be the leader of the company that does that.&
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic,
Tushy saw its growth double year-over-year
Ojalvo says that partly been a result of having customers who evangelize on their behalf
Fast-forward to around March 9, when sales really started to double beyond the norm; a few days later, Tushy was having days where it
brought in $500,000 in sales.
