KarunaNews Story

Toilet paper shortages in the US during pandemic lockdowns in 2020 supercharged sales of bidets, which clean with a stream of water, rather than tissue. “You couldn’t get a bidet if you wanted to,” says James Lin, founder of Bidet King, an online marketplace. Miki Agrawal of bidet-attachment start-up Tushy says its revenue grew fivefold during 2020 and 20% year-over-year since. Sydney Cano, of Arlington, Va., who bought and installed her bidet attachment during the pandemic, wishes she had listened earlier to her Muslim friends who had recommended the appliance. (The Quran has specific instructions about cleanliness, and bathrooms in Muslim countries tend to have bidets.) While the US leads the world in per capita toilet paper usage, it lags behind many other countries when it comes to bidet ownership.