Poo-Pourri: a before-you-go toilet spray turns a taboo into a $30M business

Poo-Pourri began as a kitchen experiment by Suzy Batiz, a Dallas entrepreneur who had already been through more than a dozen failed businesses and two bankruptcies. At a dinner party someone asked whether bathroom odor could be trapped; Batiz, who had worked with essential oils for over a decade, realized that oil floats on water and could seal the smell beneath the surface.

She spent nine months formulating and testing the blend, drafting friends and family as guinea pigs. In 2007 she and her husband Hector invested $25,000 of their own savings to begin manufacturing, and Batiz started selling the spray in small boutiques, door-to-door and out of her car. The company grew slowly for six years, mostly through gift shops and word of mouth.

In September 2013, with a tiny budget, the company released 'Girls Don't Poop', a two-minute ad in which a poised, British-accented actress in a blue dress sits on a toilet and talks frankly about the social perils of leaving a stench. The video got 13 million views in its first month; within four days Poo-Pourri had more than $4 million in backorders, and its sprayer manufacturer initially could not ship for 16 weeks.

By early 2016 CNBC reported 17 million bottles sold, annual sales above $30 million and distribution in 20,000 retail outlets, with the company debt-free and investor-free. The ad had been seen more than 37 million times, and 'before-you-go' toilet spray had become a product category of its own.