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Loo Seating Made Warm and FriendlyThis is serious business. Dave Samuel and Scott Pinizzotto are telling me why they're pushing a better toilet seat. A way better toilet seat.
The Swash.
"Since everybody goes to the bathroom every day," Brondell Chairman Dave Samuel tells me, "you might as well make that experience better."
"We want to be No. 1," Samuel says, "in the No. 2 business."
Pinizzotto, chief executive of the San Francisco company, takes me through the features of the Swash 600, which sells for nearly $600.
Heated seat with temperature settings. A built-in his or hers warm-water wash with temperature and water-pressure settings. A remote control box. (Hon! Where's the remote?). And a warm-air dryer.
"It actually blow-dries your bottom," Pinizzotto says.
Yes, Pinizzotto, 35, a product-design guy who has worked for Sony and Indian Motorcycle, and Samuel, 32, who founded pioneer music site Spinner, know people have trouble taking high-tech toilet seats seriously.
"Our friends, at the beginning, were making fun of us," says Samuel, who can afford to take some ribbing after selling Spinner to America Online in 1999 for $320 million.
But after using whiz-bang toilet seats in Japan, where they are very popular, Samuel and Pinizzotto say they found a business opportunity right under their, uh, noses.
more: seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/bu... (93)
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12/4/2005 | Viewed 6,848 time(s)
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