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[You’ve heard it from me before. If I ever … repeat, EVER! … give you anything that seems like investment advice RUN THE OTHER WAY! Having said that I can’t see how toilets in the U.S. are on the brink of a revolution to catch up with the rest of the world. If you can find the right company with the right product and distribution to take advantage of this, take the kids’ tuition fund and put it in toilets! SB SM]
Kohler, watch your back(side). Japanese toilet- and bidet toilet seat-maker Toto is setting its sights on conquering the American market, promising to triple its showrooms in the US from 100 to 300 across 63 cities by the end of next year, the company’s CEO said in an interview with Nikkei Asia.
Toto brought the bidet to the masses in Japan in 1980 when it created the washlet, a bidet toilet seat attachment. The company boasts 60 million washlets (currently $350 a pop) in use worldwide and a range of high-tech smart toilets that cost anywhere from $6,000 to over $22,000.
Already widespread in Japan and other Asian markets, Toto toilets use less water and offer features your boring dumb toilet could only dream of: flushing systems that blast off streaks on the bowl, oscillating bidet streams, and memory settings for users.
Big picture: Toto has backed off growth efforts in China after years of falling sales, which it attributes to a slowing real estate market. The company thinks it can instead tap the US market and ride the pandemic wave of bidet obsession.—MM
And just because today’s post is short … here’s the group Tota doing Rosanna: