The noise and the smell. In our society, there is a plethora of terribly natural things that are nevertheless the subject of insurmountable taboos. The question of the toilets, or rather of what one does there, is one of them. If we can throw without scruple at a whole table that we are absent to “go pee”, we try on the other hand to be discreet when it comes to the other commission. An embarrassment that can take on unsuspected proportions in the early stages of a romantic relationship, when the time has come to do what you have to do, and the other is just on the other side of a door still too thin. This problem, Jérémy Briffaut was confronted with it, except that instead of giving up, he sought, and found, a solution: splash foam.
To go back to the origins of splash foam, you have to look back no less than three years. A blessed time, without coronavirus, without war in Ukraine and which marked, for Jérémy Briffaut, the beginning of a fiery love with the one who still shares his life today. “Everything was perfect between us, we got along wonderfully. Quite quickly, she started leaving things at my house, but I did not understand that she systematically left every three or four days, ”recalls the 30-year-old, from Pas-de-Calais. Was there a wolf? To get to the bottom of it, Jérémy took his partner between four eyes and she ended up telling him the unmentionable truth: out of embarrassment, for fear of judgment, it was impossible for him to poop at his lover’s house.
“Poop-shaming”, a very widespread phenomenon
Stunned by this revelation, Jérémy undertook research on the Internet on this subject. “That’s when I realized that this was a real social problem. What is called ”poop-shaming” concerns 76% of women and 62% of men in France,” he explains. Jérémy obviously didn’t immediately think of inventing splash foam: “We tried toilet paper at the bottom of the bowl, but it’s neither effective against odors nor ecological,” he admits. The genius idea came to him when he asked an ex for advice: “She told me to test the dishwashing liquid in the toilets. It didn’t work, he recalls, but I told myself that we still had something. »
All alone, in a (small) corner of his Parisian apartment, Jérémy has improvised as a chemist, mixing ingredients to obtain a foam dense enough to cushion the fall, avoid splashes, contain odors while being harmless for the behind and nature. “Between my job as an actor, the server side, it took me three years to develop the right formula, the one that is on sale today”, assures the 30-year-old. And when he launched his product last August, mainly on TikTok, Jérémy did not expect such enthusiasm. Under the splash foam presentation videos, some Internet users swear in the comments that this invention has “saved their lives”.
Orders are pouring in, so much so that production no longer follows. Allow 4 weeks to receive your foam. Recently settled in Strasbourg, the entrepreneur only devotes himself to his miracle product, which is still manufactured and packaged by hand in his bathroom. “I didn’t think I would make it my job one day, and here I am looking for investors to develop myself and buy a machine that would allow me to increase production,” he is surprised. Especially since the interest in splash foam now goes beyond the borders of France: from Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Quebec, the thirty-something is in demand. Like what, the embarrassment of some can make the happiness of others.