When it comes to doing business — not startups but that other kind of business for which you have a whole separate room in your house — we need to talk about wipes. Wet wipes are great for your tush, but awful for the environment. It turns out not everyone is fond of dry wiping, but while bidets and smart toilets are on the uptick, they’re typically pretty expensive.
For a few years, the startup Fohm had a solution: a specially formulated soap that can be dispensed onto toilet paper, turning them into wet wipes that can be disposed of safely in the toilet. Sounds silly, perhaps, but 50,000 customers can’t be wrong, can they?
With a mission to provide an eco-friendly alternative to traditional wet wipes, Fohm, now rebranded as Saintly, has been bringing up the rear (ahem) in an effort to address the environmental and infrastructural issues caused by microplastic-based wet wipes. By introducing a foam-based cleansing solution, Fohm offered a novel approach to personal hygiene that was both skin and eco-friendly. The company tells TechCrunch it has prevented thousands of pounds of non-biodegradable waste from polluting waterways.
In addition to the name change, the company opened to existing customers preorders for its new product, along with an announcement that the old product and refills would become unavailable soon.
“As we embrace this new chapter, we will phase out support for the original Fohm dispenser and its refills, focusing on bringing you the best with Saintly,” the company writes in an email to its existing customers, seen by TechCrunch. The irony of claiming you are an environmental company but stopping to offer refills for an existing product, relegating it to the nearest landfill, isn’t lost on anyone.
“Our plan is to continue to sell refills for the V1 dispenser for the next 6-12 months, if customers want to stock up. After this point, we will provide discounted offers to legacy customers to upgrade,” said Jerry Staub, co-founder of Saintly, in an interview with TechCrunch.
Still, Saintly’s new product line represents a significant leap forward. The company says it has enhanced its cleansing formulations, is launching a sleeker dispenser design, made it easier to replace the cartridge and another improvements, including … a phone holder?
The Saintly Dispenser Kit is $99 on subscription or $109 as a one-time purchase. Refill Packs are $36, which the company says works out to about 8 cents per use. The redesigned hardware and brand relaunch are officially going into effect on March 22.
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