We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amy WASSERMAN. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amy below.

Amy, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

My husband and business partner, Aaron, came up with the initial idea. After running an award-winning remodeling firm in Manhattan for over a decade, he wanted to do something a little different, but most importantly, something that had the capacity to scale. He came up with two ideas: the first being that “bathrooms in a box” would be a great launch focus, and the second was that I should be the CEO. I laughed. I had no interest in working on a bathroom startup and I most definitely had no interest in working with my spouse. But I was newly pregnant, had just secured childcare for my toddler, and was struggling with the idea of reentering the workforce in service of someone else. I spent my entire career building brands and commercial strategies for businesses of all sizes – from early stage startup, to global juggernauts – always with an entrepreneurial spirit, but never actual entrepreneurship. And so I rolled up my sleeves, and I got to work.

I dug into any research I could get my hands on. I wanted to truly understand the category, the opportunities and the risks. I listened to Aaron’s stories about client meetings and projects of the past, and gleaned insights from his tales. A recurring theme regarding decision fatigued clients became an aha moment in refining our idea and defining our positioning.

With a clear offering – designer curated bathrooms without endless decisions, delivered to your door – we started to execute on our idea. We began onboarding designers with tremendous success. They were as excited about our idea as we were and wanted to join us in our mission to make great design just a little more accessible. We built a robust supplier network of trusted bathroom material vendors and secured a national logistics contract that enabled us to deliver entire bathrooms to our customers in a single, professionally-managed drop-off. We focused on building a beautiful site that showcased who we are as a brand, but also gave space to the beauty of each Collection in our online catalog. We brought on PR to make sure that our story was shared the way we wanted it to be told and we hired a handful of key contributors who were both smart enough and kind enough to navigate the pre-launch phase with us as we structured internal systems to enable the commercialization of a bathroom design.

Within a year of nurturing our idea, we launched to the public.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My entire career has been centered around innovation and disruption – long before they were both buzzwords. I was always interested in being a part of the next big thing, and was lucky enough to hold multiple roles within various emerging categories – from eSports to legal cannabis. I think my attraction to innovation was a result of my underlying desire to build something of my own. I eased into entrepreneurship during the pandemic when I started my own consultancy to help businesses identify new ares of growth, but it wasn’t until I joined my husband, Aaron, in the buildout of The Unoriginal Bathroom Company that I get to wear my founder and CEO hat with pride.

Through ongoing collaborations with the interior design community, we take one-of-one bathroom designs, and make them one-for-all, by selling them as a complete “Collection” on our platform – we even suggest accessory pairings in our Accent shop for all the small details that make a space truly feel like home.

We built The Unoriginal Bathroom Company as a design and retail solution for time-strapped homeowners who want to be on the receiving end of great design, with minimal involvement in the process.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Online! Of course, this wasn’t a founder matchmaking service, it was an online dating platform. We met, had a long-lasting, long-distance romantic relationship, eventually got married, became parents, and then decided we might as well also work together.

We started to date seriously in 2018, and got married in 2021. Pandemic marriages are weird because you literally spend 24/7 together which is not good for anyone. But somehow we found our rhythm and figured that if we are going to be spending all this time together, we should find a way to monetize it. And while the idea of working with your spouse was initially horrifying to me, the reality of it has been wonderful.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Aaron and I both divested from some of our investments and reinvested it in our business. We were entirely self-funded until we launched, at which point we decided to set up a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) which allowed us to raise additional funds.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.unoriginalbathroom.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unoriginalbathroom/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61553792051235
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-unoriginal-bathroom-co

Image Credits

Professional Headshots: Sissela Johansson