Reuters/Duane Tanouye
A Costco store in Carlsbad, California, which had mostly run out of toilet paper.
- As the ongoing coronavirus outbreak has led to an uptick in toilet paper sales, some bidet brands are seeing their sales soar.
- Brondell, a home product company that sells a variety of bidet attachments, says sales have increased over the past few days. Bidet distributor Hygiene for Health said the same, and Crunchbase recently reported that bidet startup Tushy has also seen a spike.
- The surge in interest comes as people around the world have been stockpiling toilet paper, prompting some retailers to impose limits on how many rolls one customer can purchase.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has caused a toilet paper panic-buying frenzy, with customers flooding large retailers like Costco and even becoming unruly over fears that essential items - like toilet paper - may soon deplete.
But it also seems that many people have been outfitting their bathrooms with another option: the bidet. Home product company Brondell, which sells various types of bidet toilet seats and attachments as well as heated toilet seats, has seen an increase in sales over the last few days, company spokesperson Daniel Lalley told Business Insider.
Lalley said Brondell is selling a bidet on Amazon every two minutes, or about one thousand units per day. The company usually generates around between $30,000 and $35,000 in revenue via Amazon sales per day, but it earned $100,000 in one day this week, according to Lalley. Brondell's direct sales have also spiked, he said.
"We're seeing a lot of traffic, a lot of interest," he said.
Despite the heightened demand, Brondell isn't struggling to fulfill orders, according to Lalley.
It's not just major brands like Brondell that are seeing a boost in traffic and sales. Hygiene for Health, an independent bidet distributor, said it's seen a "huge uptick" in demand for bidet seats and attachments in an email to Business Insider.
The GoBidet 2003C model, a chrome bidet attachment that sells for $146 on Amazon, has seen a 50% increase in demand over the last 14 days, Hygiene for Health's Debbie Chamberlin said via email.
This model is usually popular during the summer months, says Chamberlin, so the company has already received large shipments that have prepared it for this increase in demand. However, the coronavirus has resulted in a slightly delay in shipments, according to Chamberlin.
Tushy, a direct-to-consumer bidet startup, has also experienced a spike in interest. The company's revenue from bidets has tripled in the past week, according to Crunchbase.
The surge in demand for bidets comes as some retailers have imposed limits on the number of toilet paper rolls purchased per customer as people begin to stockpile goods over coronavirus fears.
Australian retailer Woolworths, for example, has limited customers to only buying four packs of toilet paper at a time, while some Costcos has also imposed certain purchasing limits.
Social media feeds have been flooded with images of long lines outside of retailers like Costco and empty store shelves. One arcade owner in England even filled one of his crane machines with toilet paper rolls instead of toys, as CNN reported. This is all despite major toilet paper producers saying there's been no indication of a shortage, according to reports from the South China Morning Post and the Australian Financial Review.
"There's a lot of interest in our products," Lalley said. "We wish it were under different circumstances."