Samira Far
Don Norris
A year ago, Samira Far launched No. 2 to sell environmentally-friendly toilet paper. Made entirely from bamboo, in plastic-free packaging and covered in recycled paper sporting attractive prints, the product seemed to be selling steadily.
Then the COVID-19 crisis hit, a national toilet paper frenzy set in and demand went through the roof.
Turned out, consumers unable to find TP on store shelves started desperately searching the web for alternatives. And, of course, in the process, they stumbled upon No. 2, which is sold on the company’s web site and through Amazon. “The high demand for toilet paper gave us a lot more exposure,” says Far. (Fun fact. Americans consume 20% of the world’s toilet paper).
Other eco-friendly toilet paper startups, like Who Gives a Crap and Bippy, have also experienced a surge in demand.
For the first month or so, Far was able to meet the demand, while also filling subscribers’ orders. (The company has a subscription model, through which customers order on a schedule of anywhere from weekly to every three months). Demand peaked in the middle of March and, by the end of the month, she completely sold out—a 5,200% increase on Amazon.
By the middle of March, the product completely sold out.
Far is now taking pre-orders and expects to be back in stock later this month or early May. She’s ramping up production eight times more than usual. To stop consumers from going wild, the web site asks them to, “Please order responsibly”.
Far got the idea for the company after selling a nail salon chain she founded in 2006. Searching around for a consumer product idea, she discovered that toilet paper was begging for disruption. Conventional TP sold by the usual suspects, like Procter & Gamble and Kimberly Clark, was made mostly from live trees cut down for the purpose of turning out TP and that took many decades to recover from harvesting. And the manufacturing process required a lot of water, energy and various chemicals.
So Far decided to make TP made from bamboo. According to the company’s web site, not only do bamboo forests mature significantly faster than most trees, but they grow in difficult settings, like mountainsides and steep slopes. And bamboo releases 30% more oxygen into the atmosphere than other plants. Also Far decided to use recycled paper as packaging using eye-catching prints, the better to turn the product into a decorative element, rather than something to hide in a cabinet under the sink.
She launched the company in April 2019. For the first year, according to Far, sales were strong for the product, which comes in 8-, 24- and 48-roll cartons. But the March surge caught her completely unawares. “We weren’t really sure what the connection was between the pandemic and toilet paper. It’s not like the product is going to go bad,” she says. “Face masks—that makes sense.”
The unexpected exposure, Far hopes, also has provided a fortuitous education for consumers about both bamboo-based TP and the benefits of ordering the product online. According to Far, searching for TP via the web isn’t the usual way consumers buy the stuff. “Most people buy it as an afterthought,” she says. “They’re not out looking for a new toilet paper.” She plans to start selling in retail stores, when brick and mortar shopping starts up again. “There’s the consumer discovery experience,” she says. “First you discover something in a store and next you continue to buy it online.”