Luxurious toilets complete with heated seats and cleansing jets of water are so common in Japan they’ve become almost synonymous with its culture. They’re now taking off in the U.S. — thanks in no small part due to pandemic-induced shortages of toilet paper.
Japan’s largest toilet maker Toto Ltd., which introduced the Washlet in 1980 as a high-tech version of the bidet, said sales of the device more than doubled in the first quarter of 2020 from a year earlier, and jumped 18% in the first quarter of 2022 from the prior year. The outlook for further growth is bright, despite the "toilet paper panic” being over, company executive Shinya Tamura said in an interview.
"Although Washlet sales in the U.S. have grown significantly, they are still far behind the penetration rate in Japan,” said Tamura, who is the managing executive officer in charge of Toto’s housing equipment business in North America and Europe. "I still see a great room for growth in the U.S.”