It looks like the perfect business opportunity. Every house has one. Everyone uses them. And one Japanese company is making the most technologically advanced products of their kind.
But while the world may beat a path to your door for building a better mousetrap, Toto Ltd has found that selling a better toilet requires more patience.
Toto, the world's dominant maker of high-tech loos, made toilet history in 1980 when, improving on a US model that combined the bidet and the toilet, it produced the "washlet" -- bringing warm water to the user's nether regions.
"We did what others were reluctant to try -- we brought electronics into the water closet," said Hiroshi Kobayashi, Toto's general manager of restroom product research.
Sometimes dubbed "super-thrones," top-of-the-line washlets now come with wall-mounted control panels as sleek and complex as those of stereo systems.
Their manifold buttons allow adjustment of the nozzle position, water pressure and type of spray, plus blow-drying, air purification and seat warming for those cold winter mornings. Water and seat temperatures are adjustable.
The controls can also be set so the lid rises as the toilet is approached.
Japan has embraced the high-tech toilet. Government statistics show that combined toilet/bidets are now installed in 52 percent of Japanese homes compared to just 14 percent in 1992.
Toto -- which employs around 1,500 engineers -- dominates that market with a 65 percent share. Its closest rival, Japan's Inax Corp, trails at 25 percent. Numbers for Japan's overall toilet market share are similar.
But where Sony's Playstation, Toyota Corollas and Pokemon have all blazed paths into western popular culture, Toto's high-tech thrones have not traveled well.
Toto officials blame matters both cultural and practical.
A relatively long history of flush toilets in the US and Europe -- around 100 years -- has resulted in many competitors and cheap toilets.
Westerners just aren't used to shelling out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for high-tech versions.
Most Western bathrooms also lack an electric socket near the toilet, something that people in Japan, where central heating is rare, were keen to install when the seat-warmer was introduced.
But after making some inroads in the US with more standard models, especially with the advent of low-flow toilets in the 1990s, Toto's washlets are starting to make an impression.
Its US washlet sales, which began some eight years ago, have risen to over 1,000 units a month this year from 600 two years ago.
"It's not the same amount of numbers but the trend is very similar to what we saw in Japan 20 years ago -- low figures for about five years and then a sharp J-curve. We have great expectations for US sales next year," Kobayashi said.
But marketing toilets is not easy. Building showrooms is expensive and some analysts estimate it will take another five years before overseas revenues, now only 5 percent of Toto's total sales, climb to 10 percent.
And some cultural barriers seem to be just too hard to break -- witness the European market, where Toto has only one distributor and sells a mere 5,000 washlets annually.
"You'd think that because Europeans are used to the bidet, they'd be more interested. We just don't know why they aren't," said Kobayashi.
Some analysts even argue that tackling cultural norms isn't worth the effort and that Toto would be better off pulling its washlets out of the US and Europe altogether and concentrating on more receptive Asian markets like China.
HORMUZ ISSUE: The US president said he expected crude prices to drop at the end of the war, which he called a ‘minor excursion’ that could continue ‘for a little while’ The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait started reducing oil production, as the near-closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz ripples through energy markets and affects global supply. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) is “managing offshore production levels to address storage requirements,” the company said in a statement, without giving details. Kuwait Petroleum Corp said it was lowering production at its oil fields and refineries after “Iranian threats against safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.” The war in the Middle East has all but closed Hormuz, the narrow waterway linking the Persian Gulf to the open seas,
Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技) yesterday said the DRAM supply crunch could extend through 2028, as the artificial intelligence (AI) boom has led the world’s major memory makers to dramatically reduce production of standard DRAM and allocate a significant portion of their capacity for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. The most severe supply constraints would stretch to the first half of next year due to “very limited” increases in new DRAM capacity worldwide, Nanya Technology president Lee Pei-ing (李培瑛) told a news briefing. The company plans to increase monthly 12-inch wafer capacity to 20,000 in the first half of 2028 after a
Taiwan has enough crude oil reserves for more than 100 days and sufficient natural gas reserves for more than 11 days, both above the regulatory safety requirement, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday, adding that the government would prioritize domestic price stability as conflicts in the Middle East continue. Overall, energy supply for this month is secure, and the government is continuing efforts to ensure sufficient supply for next month, Kung told reporters after meeting with representatives from business groups at the ministry in Taipei. The ministry has been holding daily cross-ministry meetings at the Executive Yuan to ensure
RATIONING: The proposal would give the Trump administration ample leverage to negotiate investments in the US as it decides how many chips to give each country US officials are debating a new regulatory framework for exporting artificial intelligence (AI) chips and are considering requiring foreign nations to invest in US AI data centers or security guarantees as a condition for granting exports of 200,000 chips or more, according to a document seen by Reuters. The rules are not yet final and could change. They would be the first attempt to regulate the flow of AI chips to US allies and partners since US President Donald Trump’s administration said it rescinded its predecessor’s so-called AI diffusion rules. Those rules sought to keep a significant amount of AI
RSS