"Yes, what is it with you Americans?" he wonders. "It matters so much to you to be so terribly fastidious and clean, and yet certain areas of the body you insist on cleaning with a dry piece of paper?"
He would love to continue this line of inquiry, but the phone is ringing again, and he has to fill another order.
"It's actually intriguing," remarks Hal's wife, Judi, who has just popped in from a room at the back of the warehouse where she creates gift baskets for corporations. "Americans are immaculate, they insist on their daily showers, and yet there's this peculiar taboo around toileting habits and the area that's affected..."
"Ah," Hal says, as he hangs up, "that was a woman who had found an ad for our product in a 1998 issue of Mainstream magazine. Her husband has ALS -- Lou Gehrig's disease, you know. A deterioration of the nerves. She has been having to assist him with toileting. At first she didn't want to go into it, but once people start telling me these squeamish things, the floodgates open."
The phone rings again.
"Good afternoon, Lubidet USA. And how did you hear of our product? Well, absolutely. Ah, he does. And so then he requires assistance on the commode? Yes, I believe so. We'll send you some materials out straight away then, shall we?"
"We never," he insists, as he disconnects, "send out any sales materials unrequested. For every ten calls that come in, we sell three units."
"But we could do better," Judi says brightly. "You just must try it! You'll absolutely never feel better in your life. I use it every day. Not to have it is a hardship."
And this is why: According to the Bregmans' oft-stated position, the practice of cleansing the perineal region with dry tissue is woefully inadequate. People with European backgrounds have long been accustomed to using a bidet for such matters, but even most Americans, even if they've seen a bidet, don't know how to use one. "And who," Judi asks, "has time to disrobe from the waist down? And who has room?"
Enter the Lubidet, the ingenious device that Hal invented nearly a decade ago, when stricken with ulcer-induced constipation. Essentially a toilet seat attached to a water reservoir and a hot-air fan, the Lubidet makes it possible to turn any toilet into a wet-cleansing, bidet-like device.
"All right, this is our bare-bones model," Hal says, as he begins a tour of the warehouse's showroom. "It offers a jet stream of cold water, and that's it, $49. Very adequate. Go up to three hundred and you get warm water. For another fifty, a warm breeze dries the region. They can be operated from the right or the left side and attached to any toilet, any size, from Australia to Cyprus to Israel to Switzerland. They eliminate the need for toilet tissue. We go through perhaps one roll every six months at our house, and that's probably used by our guests, who don't understand the Lubidet."
Of course, they could learn, if they just asked. But they don't. And therein lies the Bregmans' central business tragedy: People don't want to talk about Hal's invention, because they don't want to talk about what it was invented to do. "People think I'm absolutely nuts," Hal says. "For this reason, and also because of this terrible American squeamishness about the bathroom, they just won't try my product. They'll look me right in the eye and say that it sounds wonderful, but they won't sit down upon it."
When he began mass-producing the Lubidet, Hal was no stranger to marketing. The founder and CEO of Roberta's Schmaltz, a Capetown-based manufacturer of kosher, cholesterol-free, vegetable-based chicken fat -- "Even the chicken won't know the difference," went the slogan -- he'd built such a loyal customer base that Denver's surprisingly large population of South African Jews still clamors for the product during major Jewish holidays. But after a messy divorce put an end to that 25-year-old business, Hal moved to America, met his new, also elegantly accented wife, Judi, and decided to concentrate his marketing efforts on selling the Lubidet. Within a decade, he predicted, few American homes would be without his bathroom device.
"Who wouldn't it benefit?" Judi remembers thinking. "Children being potty-trained. Those about to engage in sexual activities or those who have just finished. Women who are menstruating..."
"Gay men!" Hal adds. "I would think they'd find it terribly useful. Or anyone who realized that dry paper is inadequate, I would think."
He would think wrong, as it turned out. Despite the housing boom that Hal had predicted, America in general turned its back on the Lubidet. In the meantime, bidets we still did not know how to use were installed in fancy new houses, and our nether regions continued to be detailed with dry paper. And yet Lubidet USA stayed in business -- continued to grow, in fact. And why?
"Forty million Americans you've never heard of," Hal explains. "That's how many cannot handle the toilet function without assistance, and that number is growing. For them, our product has been a dream. Think of the factors. Extreme obesity, advanced arthritis, if you're a quadriplegic, if you have MS or muscular dystrophy. These are the people I talk to every day on the phone -- these, and the people who take care of them. Let me tell you, it can be heartbreaking. Children, as I have learned, are prepared to take care of their elderly parents until they have to deal with bathroom activities. Amputees -- have you ever imagined how they would cope with the wiping segment?"
"One day not long ago, we had an occupational therapist come in to see us on behalf of a 500-pound woman," Judi recalls. "This woman could not reach that part of herself and, of course, this created a major problem with bowel sanitation. She also cracked toilet seats on a regular basis."
The challenge proved irresistible. Enlarging and adapting a hollow plastic (but extremely sturdy) toilet-seat riser, Hal created a custom seat for the large woman, then equipped its accompanying Lubidet with a foot-long handle in case she couldn't reach the flush button.
"It worked very nicely, thank you," Hal says. "The OT was grateful, I know."
And so, in retrospect, was Hal, who had discovered a whole new market niche: bariatrics, or the medical treatment of the morbidly obese.
"I've truly made a study of it," Hal explains, holding up one of his heavy-duty toilet seats. "The opening is somewhat larger, and where her tush was once painfully squashed, it is now gently pulled apart so that water can spray onto the tush before, during or after elimination -- it's up to her. There's no end to the engineering details. I've had my head so deep into this toilet bowl," he sighs. "There is absolutely no one who knows more about the subject."
And within this subject, Hal has found contentment. Too modest a man to expound on such big themes as Being of Service to Mankind, he will nevertheless sometimes offer an illustration or two.
"We had a unit sent in for repair after five years," he says, "and after we sent it back, the same household ordered another. I asked, 'Why? Is something wrong with our repair?' And the man said, no, he just wouldn't want to be without it again, even for a week, that it's a wonderful product. We've gotten a Best New Product from the American Society for Aging, and more recently an Adix award, though I don't have the slightest idea what that is."
More detailed testimonials can be found around the office...somewhere. Ah, yes. Back in 1997, when he was toying with the idea of hiring a sales staff, Hal had a marketing assistant compile a notebook of praise and comment. The sales idea never took off -- too many Lubidets languishing in stores that sold bedpans and crutches. But the letters stand as the eloquent outpourings of people who had previously kept their mouths shut and their emotions -- and more substantial bodily fluids -- bottled up.
"I am 94-year-old man, incontinent, with severe arthritis," reads one spidery, handwritten note. "Your L. is a blessing. I have not been able to wipe. You have given me back my independence."
"My son is 14, with multiplex congenita, limited arm use. The Lubidet has given him the privacy so appreciated by young adults."
"...as a mother of two handicapped children..."
"I would recommend it for anyone who is handicap, that has limited use of arms and hands, like myself, or who have hemorrhoids, or who enjoy extra cleanliness..."
"Since I cannot scarcely move because of MS the Lubidet provides an independent means of efficiently cleaning and leaves me...happy. The point is why won't MD in your area tell all of your patients about the system???"
"Before the Lubidet I would have to sit in the bathroom for several hours waiting for my wife or best friend to clean me up, which was no fun..."
"Sir I know I rattle on at times but you must understand what I'm trying to say. Lubidet gave me my DIGNITY back."
"I got my Lubidet for Xmas and I can't put into words how much I love it."
"Some people have only one hand, like my son. I cannot sit on a regular bidet because my right leg is paralyzed and I would fall off. You have helped us..."
"I have short leg stumps and no arms. The long handle you attached by my request was very helpful. I don't know how I lived without it."
"Mr. Bregman: Congratulations is insufficient, but will have to suffice. It is as though you invented the toothbrush or automobile electric starter. A very messy business has been converted into not unpleasant detail."
"Oh! This is the greatest advance in personal hygiene since soap!"
Westword, too, has tested the device and found it to be shockingly unusual -- but also came away cleaner than usual. And yet, the public persists in its denial.
"Of the most basic function!" Judi exclaims. "Every day you do this, from birth to death, and if you should miss one day, it's off to the Metamucil! And we could be so helpful with that..."
"Did you know that Preparation H is the most shoplifted item in national drugstores?" Hal asks. "People are simply too embarrassed to pass it through the checkout. We could help with that, too."
If we might permit one more illustration, he offers the recent health expo at the Windsor Gardens retirement complex. "There was one woman just taken with the product," Hal recalls. "She asked her husband to buy it for her for a birthday present, and he wrote a check straight off. But we also had a drawing, with a free Lubidet as a door prize. The person who won it refused to accept it. Apparently he wasn't that 'far gone.'"
"It's as if there were an association with death, or illness, though there doesn't have to be," Judi says. "But I tell you what, Hallie, let's go get some lunch, shall we?"
"Yes, let's."
And so the Bregmans set off to tend to one bodily need, comfortable in their knowledge that when the time comes, they have the proper equipment to deal with its inevitable outcome. In this business, all's well that ends well.
