Starting a hygiene movement
Goulds man and brothers hope to be flush with success in bidet attachment enterprise
There’s an old maxim that suggests business and blood don’t mix, that it’s an entrepreneurial avenue fraught with innumerable risks.
So it’s a good thing Goulds native Ed Barrett isn’t biologically related to his brothers Mark and Carlos Barrozzi, his partners in Florida-based Superior Bidet, a company that sells adjustable attachments that convert regular toilets into functional bidets.
But technically speaking, Barrett and the Barrozzis, who hail from Venezuela, are not even really brothers anymore.
The long and the short of it is this: Barrett was somewhat estranged from his biological father for most of his life and, when they reconnected a little over a decade ago, Barrett found himself with a stepmother, a stepsister and two stepbrothers.
After a chilly start, the boys — all around the same age — eventually grew close. So close that when their parents divorced in 2013, the sibling relationship they had cultivated remained intact.
“We’re really proud of the relationship we’ve created, especially now from a business standpoint,” Barrett told The Telegram from Florida, where he was visiting his second family for the American Thanksgiving weekend. “The fact that we can present ourselves as brothers, but also as business partners, it’s very impactful for us.”
Mark launched the company in 2015 after his own father, visiting from Venezuela, lamented the absence of a proper bidet, standard in most South American privies.
“(Mark) went out and bought a bidet attachment, very cheap, very basic, just to try it and he used it once and he says that it changed his life,” Barrett recounts.
“There’s a lot of improvements that could have been made to the unit he tried and once the idea started flowing he ended up taking the initiative, took a few trips, spoke with some manufacturers and developed our very own model.”
Carlos, who was working as an investment banker on Wall Street at the time, left New York City to become the full-time chief financial officer, and Barrett, who was working in sales in Ontario, came on board fulltime this year as the company’s vice-president of sales.
As he’s learned, selling bidets in the North American commode market is not without its challenges, the largest of which is education and awareness. “Everybody’s concerned about healthy eating, healthy living, but realistically the way you use the washroom is something that you do multiple times a day and that should be very much involved in that.”
The reality, Barrett says, is that water cleans better than paper alone.
“I tell people, if you were to get feces on any part of your body and I were to give you a piece of paper towel to wipe yourself off, you would think it’s disgusting, you would not feel comfortable until you wash yourself in the shower, so why treat your undercarriage in any different way? “Realistically, when you use paper a lot of times you’re wiping, you’re just spreading it around and it causes a lot of opportunity to spread bacteria to other areas, causing urinary tract infections and if you want to just be widespread on it, it causes you to be not clean.”
Barrett, like most of the millions of people on this continent, grew up using toilet paper alone, but he’s now converted to the bidet to the point where he misses it if he’s travelling away from home for more than a week.
“It forms a habit and what we’re trying to do, is create a paradigm shift in the way that people think and view their toilet hygiene and I have already experienced that paradigm shift and I tell you my life has been way better since and all of ours have.”
Another challenge in marketing and selling the product is that using the facilities is a private experience.
“It’s not something that comes up in conversation. You’re not comfortable speaking about it. It’s not something that you think there’s an alternative for, either.”
As for the product, Superior Bidet offers four models — base, standard, deluxe and supreme — ranging in price from US$60 to US$90.
The most popular model is the supreme, which offers dual spray nozzles for men and women and both cold and hot water.
“That’s been our bestseller for that reason because it’s already uncomfortable enough the first time you use a bidet,” Barrett says.
The product attaches to 95 per cent of the toilets on the market and installation is as simple as removing a toilet seat, attaching the device to the toilet and then attaching the water line. It requires no electricity and no batteries.
Barrett says they’ve sold close to 5,000 units so far, primarily through their own website (superiorbidet.com) and through Amazon. Two years in, he believes there’s plenty of opportunity to grow.
“I was on the phone with the president of the crohn’s and colitis foundation and he didn’t even know that they existed. This is someone that uses the washroom 15 to 20 times a day.”
Barrett and his brothers are also hopeful that a pitch filmed for the CBC show “Dragons’ Den” will make the cut.
“We’ve already appeared on promotional videos on the show this season, but due to contractual obligations I can’t tell you how anything went, but I can tell you we’re very hopeful,” he says.
“We put a lot of work into it and if we’re able to successfully appear on that show, I think that will cause a lot of traction in Canada.”