I'd thought that toilets were pretty much a commodity product and that most were purchased primarily on price. But on a recent trip to Tokyo, Japan I experienced something that completely changed my mind - the Toto, "Washlet," toilet seat.
The Washlet, as it's name implies, takes care of the dirty work of going to the bathroom. After the toilet-user has done his or her business, there is a "cleansing wand" that, with the push of a button, extends out of the underside of the toilet seat a couple of inches and sprays the buttocks area with a warm pulsating mist of water. The type of spray, the target of the spray (ladies), the water temperature and the water pressure can all be adjusted. The seat is also heated with an adjustable thermostat. Once the cleaning is done, a temperature adjustable flow of air that dries the users bottom. One version of the Washlet even purifies the air along the way to make sure that the air stays sweet smelling.
Washlets run between $800 and $1900 dollars and the top of the line model actually opens the lid as it's approached and closes the lid after the person leaves. Toto claims to have sold millions of Washlets all over the world. They also state that over half of the homes in Japan have at least one Washlet.
The reason that I think that is an interesting product is that there really isn't a great deal of technical innovation involved. There are a number of tasks that have to be done very, very precisely, but most of the technologies have been around for quite a while. The real breakthrough in this product is in identifying a target market (Japan) that is very sensitive about germs and cleanliness and identifying a task that they wish could be automated - to the tune of many, many Yen. I don't know enough about the history of Toto and the Washlet, but I would be willing to bet that this wasn't done based just on someone's hunch, I'll bet that they conducted quite a bit of market research to understand what would work and what wouldn't work. And then they must have placed models in a number of places to have people use them in their own home in order to get a real read on how it really worked out for customers in the long run.
The Washlet wasn't a simple product to bring to market either, in fact Toto had to create a line of special distributors for their products (mostly higher end home stores with high- touch sales and service capabilities). Knowing that a standard toilet seat costs well under $100 and the thought of having a toilet seat clean your backside automatically is a very, very foreign concept, they've implemented a trial program through most of their dealerships (which is a program that must have some interesting terms in order to motivate the dealers to sign up for customers returning used toilet seats).
This is an example of a product that could have been shot down for a million different reasons, but someone at Toto believed in the concept and kept pushing through a great many challenges to launch a very unique and expensive product to great acceptance in the marketplace.
Know Thy Customer - Very, Very Intimately
Chris Hawkes
