A $1M Toilet Funnel Business?!
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Hey, Michael here. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous, the internet's number one podcast about buying and selling small businesses. Today, we did a deal that was, well, kind of involved a lot of bathroom humor. So we really had fun, me, Chelsea, and Heather. So stay tuned. Here's the episode.

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So I put up the deal. I was like, hey, do you guys want to do this one? And you both laughed hysterically, which was great. So can I pitch you on this deal? By the way, it's from San Antonio. Can't wait to hear. Okay. It's from BizBuyCell. It is a specialty medical product that converts any toilet into a urinal. It's relocatable from San Antonio, Texas, which sounds good as a resident of San Antonio. I think you should get this out of here.

uh so they have a picture and there are two designs one where you basically have a plastic barrier that turns a bucket into a urinal and another one that turns a regular toilet into a urinal basically creates a giant like barrier that you pee into the barrier and you make it happen there they have these two designs they're asking a million dollars cash flow is not disclosed

They have no revenue disclosed, no established date disclosed, all that kind of stuff. So, oh my God. All right, let me read you this. It's called the Eurofunnel.

U-R-I-F-U-N-N-E-L. It was designed for any age male with or without a physical or mental disability. It is utilized by males of all ages and abilities. The UroFunnel allows a user to urinate from a standing position to promote hygiene, dignity, independence, and safety for all, including caregivers and families. It is very humiliating for an impaired adult to urinate all over the floor or floor and walls. Um,

It offers a full spectrum of use from potty training to special needs patients to elderly patients that are recovering from major surgery to the site impaired. It is a low maintenance, cost-effective solution for healthcare settings such as hospitals, clinics, acute rehabilitation, SNFs, long-term care facilities, as well as home and hospice.

Man, they just keep repeating the same stuff over and over again. Okay, here's the context. The inventor, owner, operator is seeking an acquirer or a business partner with an established business with a proven marketable healthcare product. The Ear Funnel is patented and trademarked and has been sold online on various online platforms such as Amazon and Walmart.com. The product reviews on Amazon average four and a half stars and has for a considerable time.

Effectiveness is well documented and repeat purchasers comment as well as secondary purchases for adult bathrooms. It has been sold in all 50 states as well as internationally.

They talk a bit here about how demographics of aging populations are benefiting this device. And then they have a website, eurofunnel.com, as well as the five additional models that are available. It is a very attractive opportunity for individuals or companies with experience in healthcare, medical device, consumer product retailing, or manufacturing. International business experience would be an asset also. Current owners are trying, but would be willing to perform as a consultant for product enhancements and business development upon request."

And man, like my first reaction reading this and I don't know what you think, Chelsea, but like, it's kind of an admirable thing. Like I know we were kind of like joking about potty stuff, but in like the way they talk about the why of this is pretty cool. Like it's giving folks dignity that are going through challenging stuff. Yeah.

This reminds me of a deal I did with a client where basically a product is you're buying a product here. The deal I did, the product was already profitable and the buyer had sort of a way that they knew they could grow it and they've been successful in doing that. This sounds like because they didn't give us anything other than a purchase price that it may not be profitable at this point.

That was my question, because it's basically a medical device. That's what this would fit into, like given that my first thought was potty training. But I saw it. I was like, I would love for my sons to have this. But I do think that there's a medical it. It's a medical device more than anything, but it it's patented. So it almost feels like this is more about an IP play.

than actually buying or I guess not. Well, the patent's IP, but like you're buying the actual product, the design, the patent, and they're wanting to do the acquisition more for it sounds like distribution channels. I mean, that's kind of how it's being pitched. But I like the I like that it the way that they've positioned it. Right. I think the broker did a really good job of selling the value of it.

And for at least for lab members, I will say that a lot of our members are very much values driven mission based folks, right? Like they're buying companies to do good for their community. They want to buy something they believe in that they feel good about. And so I think this would be appeal to those types of buyers.

Somebody that has like we have a couple of doctors, right, and surgeons and all of that that join the lab. And I feel like like a euro specialist, somebody that has connections or someone that comes out of like senior living that has a clear way of getting this adopted across large health systems would be really a good buyer.

I'm curious how patentable this really is. It looks like a big piece of plastic with some- It's pretty simple design. With something sticky on the outside that kind of folds to make a toilet into a urinal. Well, so my first instinct, why I kind of giggled as it does, it looks like the big wall flip charts that you take to strategy sessions. It looks like the base of that.

And there's just like folded and put in the toilet, which at the end of a strategy session, I've had that desire before to pick the whole strategy. That could be another, that could be another version of this product actually. But I didn't know. But the more I look at the picture, the more I realized, I think it's actually formed. Like, I think it's not like a flat thing that you like,

I think it's actually built that way. And so I think it's more than just a piece of plastic that's flat. Hey, everybody. If you've listened to the show, you've probably heard us talk about franchises. While franchises can be a great path to business ownership for the right person, there's a lot of pitfalls. And it's important to be really careful as there are certainly good franchises to be in and bad franchises that you don't want to be in.

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You know what? I think they're going the wrong direction with this. Because I think we all giggled because we've all dealt with little boys and kids who have the worst aim in history, right? And you spend your whole life cleaning up toilets with little yellow spots on them and you're just like...

you know, just pay attention to where you're shooting. Like just do this. And I think something like this, I, in an era where we are today, where people buy every single product that could possibly be something to make them a better parent. This feels like something like, how cool would this be if there was like a little target on it and you had a little kid like trying to shoot and get points and stuff like that. Like,

Like I would almost take this a different direction where I love the mission, but the opportunity actually feels much more like selling to suburban parents. I have to agree. Like potty training we did, we bought every little thing and especially the urinal stuff for our kit for our sons. There was one, I remember that like,

Like when they peed, it like spun the thing. Like it was like they were aiming for something because it was like, again, trying to get them to stop peeing on the floor. And so I'm with you. My initial reaction was potty training. And it does mention potty training once in the listing, which could be like a diversification strategy. Right. It's like it's been established as a medical device. Now you go and remarket it, make it friendly, right?

I'm wondering about shipping costs, just looking at the size of this. I mean, a child's size would be better. But to your point, if it's formed like this already, you're not like bending it into the, if you could ship it flat, it would be pretty easy to ship and pretty cheap. But if it's actually formed in the shape that we're seeing in this picture, that's a big box for a pretty lightweight product. That's, you know, kind of a clunky size, I guess. And I think the shipping might be kind of expensive. I'm going to look it up and see if it's cheap. Yeah. Yeah.

So Heather, who do you think should buy this? Who do you think should get involved in this? I mean, it's a single product. So I'd love to see somebody buy it kind of like Chelsea said, somebody that's got medical background, whatnot. But also somebody who's already got other products that are similar and this is an add-on.

I think that would make more sense. There is actually a target on it. Oh, um, which is adorable. Um, it is like, it looks like a snap system, so it's flat and then it snaps into shape at the base and then gets inserted. And so the, it looks like it's flat. Mm-hmm. It looks like there is indeed a target one though, different color targets you can buy potentially. They've got a couple on their website. I like the website. The website's nice.

Okay. It's a product that's got some potential for sure.

Are there, it's patented but it seems like someone could make something very similar to this pretty easily. That's, I mean, is there really a moat around this even with the patent? No. I mean literally you could just take a piece of plastic. Right. And just, which I'm hands down kind of, although the design of it, right, like the way that it, when I looked at it, if you were to take a piece of like plastic and bend it, you're going to get a funnel. Right.

Right. It's not going to have this shape the way that they've cut it. Now it would be pretty easy probably to cut it. But anyway, I do think it looks like it was invented by doing that though. Like somebody, Oh, we could get it molded like this and make it a little better and let's get a patent on that. And that's, that's what it looks like. I do like, I do like deals where they've actually gone through the stage steps and patented the design just, you know, from a strength, a value lever perspective for the sake of, you know,

Yeah, I think the right person for this would be like a young hustler who's like willing to live on ramen for a while. And I think that person can come in, come to Cliff, who's the broker here and say, Hey Cliff, like you're not going to get anybody to pay for this, but I can maybe turn into something, you know, let me work, let me work on it and let's come up with some kind of structure where I can earn my way in by doing sales. Cause I do, I do,

not think there's anybody who wants to pay a million dollars for a patented P conversion thing here. I mean, again, if it's got cash flow and they've got relationships and there's a reason for it, fine, right? Like all day long, I think strong businesses have good reason to be acquired. Not disclosing cash flow to Heather's earlier point makes me think it's not. There's none.

I know. I wish they, I so wish they would just say, instead of not disclosed pre earnings or whatever they want to say, you know, but they have reviews. So like people are selling some, yeah. So like, I guess my reaction to this listing, when I saw the million dollars and I mean, no disrespect to the owner is it feels like a value thing.

a price of like I put a lot of time and energy and vision to this it's worth a million dollars versus a business valuation that was my initial reaction right when it says no cash flow disclosed it's like when you talk to sellers and the sellers always think it's worth 10x even though they tell you it's not but they don't feel that way when you actually tell them like what's the price and then they tell you and you're like that's a 10x and so I think this is potentially the value that the inventor placed on it like

Yeah, I'd sell my business for a million dollars. Yeah, basis bias. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. This is what I put into it. That's the price that I need to get back out. I will sell the lab to anyone that wants to pay me $100 million. Oh, I got some kids for sale too. I won't sell my kids. But, you know, anyway, I get it. Value pricing, right? Yeah.

uh this is cool this is cool i'm glad we talked about this one so yeah thank you all right so anybody's making an offer here i'll make an offer to learn more but no i think the other angle here is it looks like they've built these to be reusable i think there's certainly a market that would buy these if they were disposable especially in healthcare and then it becomes

a recurring revenue purchase where it's like, hey, you know. You don't want to clean these. You don't clean it. What you do is you just throw it out and we replace it with a new one. Kind of like the toilet liners. Yeah. It's like a urinal thing that you just flush it on the toilet. Toilet liners? Is this something that happens in ladies' bathrooms that I don't know about?

It's in the Midwest, right? Isn't it a Midwest thing? Yeah, they have mechanisms on the toilets that push out a toilet seat liner. Oh, yeah. I don't see those as much anymore.

Maybe you're not going to classy enough places, Michael. I don't know. I guess not. I mean, it did also get me thinking about when I was 18 years old, I went to college expecting that the ladies' bathroom, the men's bathrooms would be disgusting and the ladies' bathrooms in the dorms would be pristine and

And then one time I was like over at the ladies dorm and they're like, okay, well like here, we'll watch the door. You go in and use the ladies bathroom. So I go in there and it was disgusting. It was like the filthiest stuff. I was like, how do you guys as a species like smell so good?

And you're so clean all the time. And then your bathroom looks like this, like it was just disgusting. So anyway, that I, I don't, that's not relevant to this deal at all, but it's true. Thank you for sharing. It's gross. Anyway, you learn a lot of college. Sometimes that was just supposed to. All right. You guys want to wrap it up here? I think we should. It's going downhill fast. Great job, ladies. We'll talk to you later.