How Who Offers a Crap constructed its model by tackling taboos
Who Gives A Crap’s distinctive patterned wraps make it a loo roll that people want to show off. Here we examine how it became a brand with ‘purpose’ before the term’s current ubiquity
When Who Gives a Crap was born in 2013, things were very different to how they are today: the Australian toilet paper company was a D2C brand when the term D2C barely existed and offered a loo roll that dared to do what none of its competitors would – it was designed to be proudly on display in the bathroom. Plus, it was a brand with built-in purpose long before the word took on the relentless ubiquity it has today.
The idea behind the brand was to make toilet rolls that directly responded to the fact that 2.4 billion people around the world didn’t have access to adequate sanitation. “It was the most off-track of all of the development goals that existed, because toilets are a bit icky and gross and you can’t take beautiful photos of them the way that you can someone drinking water out of a well for the first time,” says Simon Griffiths, Who Gives a Crap co-founder and CEO.
“We saw that there was an opportunity to take a product that everyone needs and use the proceeds to help people in need – and by doing that start to engage people in the conversation around what toilet paper is actually used for, rather than marketing that’s built on puppies, pillows, bears – things that are completely unrelated to toilet paper.”
No other brand could come after us, because they’re built on things that were completely unrelated to toilets