Brondell — Waiting on the World to Change.
Brondell — a company that manufactures and sells home improvement items like water filters, air purifiers, and, notably, bidet toilet seats — got started because its original founder came across the toilets while in Japan. They were everywhere. It seemed like only a matter of time until they would be shipped over to America. Like the Walkman or the Gameboy. But in your bathroom.
Well, he was right about bidets. Just a few years early. It turns out, Americans can be pretty stubborn about changing the way they do things behind bathroom doors. So, what did Brondell do in the meantime? They stayed ready.
When Steve Scheer, Brondell’s current president, remembers the slow going early on, it boils down to something pretty simple: lack of awareness.
“When we first started Brondell back in 2003, if you talked to a dozen friends, not one of them would know about the product,” he recalls.
It was a long 6 years, but then, around 2009, there was a noticeable shift in the market. Steve draws a comparison to the moments everyone decided that they were going to start using electric toothbrushes in the matter of a few years. At first, you may not see why someone would spend a hundred dollars on a toothbrush when they can get one for a couple bucks at a convenience store, but when you really learn about the difference it makes for your health and hygiene, suddenly, a hundred dollar toothbrush doesn’t seem so crazy anymore. The same thing happened with bidet seats.
In those early years, back when awareness remained low and bidet skepticism ran high, Brondell could barely even convince big retailers to carry their products on their website. Simply, no one had any idea what bidets were. However, when the public at large began to take a look at where they could begin to make healthy improvements to their homes, the bidet was something that fit the moment perfectly. Suddenly, people were asking about them. And when the time came for those same big box stores to put bidets not just up online, but on their store shelves, Brondell was there to meet the demand.
Their first in-store program finally gave Brondell a solid footing financially so they could branch out from bidets to offer other products that fit in with their goal to offer healthy home products. Brondell maintains the same quick and agile mentality as it did back in those early days as it looks to improve and innovate in the space that has become top of mind for a large swath of consumers.
To hear from Steve and Brondell’s director of sales about the path Brondell walked from struggling manufacturer to healthy home product giant, check out their episode of Mark Cuban’s Founder Focus.
