Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - A $1M Toilet Funnel Business?!

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

This episode dives into a patented bathroom innovation business that might just be the future of hygiene and dignity—yes, really!Business Listing - https://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/specialty-medical-product-that-converts-any-toilet-into-a-urinal/2311299/💰 Sponsored by Capital PadLooking to buy a small business or back someone who is? Capital Pad is a game-changing marketplace that connects acquisition entrepreneurs with capital. With standardized terms and governance, it makes investing in small businesses simple and transparent. Visit 👉 https://www.capitalpad.com and tell them Acquisitions Anonymous sent you!🏪 Also Sponsored by Connor's Franchise WorkshopsThinking of buying a franchise? Connor, a multi-unit owner and franchise consultant, helps buyers pick the right opportunity. Connect with Connor or join his newsletter here 👉 https://www.connorgroce.com/Episode Summary:This episode analyzes a $1 million business listing for the "Euro Funnel"—a patented product that turns toilets into urinals for use in homes, hospitals, and senior care. They explore everything from its potential IP value to consumer appeal in potty training. With no financials disclosed, is this a mission-driven opportunity or just a plastic funnel?🔑 Key Highlights:- Breakdown of the Euro Funnel’s functionality and use cases- The importance of financial disclosure in valuations- Exploring alternative markets: senior care vs. toddler training- Patent strength and the product’s design mechanics- Best buyer profile: medical professionals or hustling entrepreneurs- The team’s take on value-based vs. market-based pricingSubscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

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. Who's the episode? It's Bill. And I want to tell you about maybe the most exciting sponsor we've had in a long time on the pod. It's called CapitalPad. And it is the thing that I wish existed when I started my journey of operating and investing in small businesses. So CapitalPad is a marketplace for acquisition entrepreneurs. That is people who want to buy a business and need capital to list their business. to list their deals and solicit capital from other people who want to invest in acquisition deals.

So if you want to back somebody buying a small business, CapitalPad is a place to do it. And if you want to buy a business and need capital, you can go on CapitalPad to be introduced to investors. So the really great thing, too, from the investor side is that CapitalPad takes care of all of the details that can get hairy with small business acquisitions. They handle standardized terms, standardized governance, standardized distributions all up front in black and white. Basically, CapitalPad professionalizes investing in small businesses. And the returns can be really, really good. I'm so stoked that they exist. It's founded by my friend Travis, who is a phenomenal entrepreneur in his own right.

So if this sounds like something that's appealing to you, if you want to buy a small business and need capital, or if you want to invest in small businesses, go check out Capitalpad. and tell them that Acquisitions Anonymous sent you. It's myself, Michael, and the two lady co-hosts. So I put up the deal. I was like, hey, do you guys want to do this one? And you both laughed hysterically, which is great. So can I pitch you on this deal?

By the way, it's from St. Antonio. Can't wait to hear. Okay. It's from Bizby Cell. 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. 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. URI, 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 Eurofutonel 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 impaired adult to urinate all over the floor, floor, and walls. 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 health care settings, such as hospitals, clinics, acute rehabilitation, S&Fs, 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 syncing an acquire or a business partner with an established business with a proven marketable healthcare product. The Eurofutonel is patented and trademark 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, urofundle.com, as well as the five additional models that are available, and is a very attractive opportunity for individuals or companies with experience in healthcare, medical device, consumer product retailing, are manufacturing, international business experience would be an asset also. Current owners are trying, but we'll 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 the 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 the, and my first thought was potty training. When 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's a medical device more than anything.

But it's patented. So it almost feels like this is more about an IP play than actually buying, or I guess not an IP, 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 an 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 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 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, like, kind of giggled is it does. It looks like a, you know, like the big wall flip charts that you take to strategy sessions. Like, 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 take the whole.

The strategy. The whole strategy, right? 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 realize, I think it's actually formed. Like, I think it's not like a flat thing that you like fold. 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, like 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. Connor Gross is a friend of the pod and a resident expert on franchises. And Connor not only owns and operates his portfolio of multiple franchises, but he's also a franchise consultant and helps others work through while picking the right

franchise for them. So as he's sponsoring today's episode, everyone should totally click in the show notes below to join Conner's newsletter and attend one of his Gateway to Franchise Ownership workshops. If you're ready to move and move quickly, schedule a call with Connor and his team today. 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 like pay attention to where you're shooting.

Like, just do this. And I think something like this, 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? You had a little kid like trying to shoot and get points and stuff like that. 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 sons. There was one I remember that 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. I'm wondering about shipping costs, just looking at the size of this. I mean, a child 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 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 this you know kind of a clunky size I guess and I think the shipping might be kind of expensive I'm gonna look it up and see if it's shit if it's yeah so Heather who do you think should buy this like who do you think should get involved in this I mean it's a single product so I'd I'd love to see somebody buy it kind of like Chelsea said somebody that's got, you know, medical, 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, which is adorable. It is, 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 it looks like there is. 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. It's patented, but it seems like someone could make something very similar to this pretty easily. 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 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 it's not going to have this shape the way that they 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 exactly oh we could get it molded like this and make it a little better and let's get a patent on that. That's what it looks like. I do like deals where they've actually gone through the steps and patented the design just, you know, from a strength, a value lover perspective, for the sake of, you know, the podcast. 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 could 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. Because 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 so wish they would just say instead of not disclosed, pre-earnings or whatever they want to say, you know, something. But they have reviews. So like people are selling some. Yeah. Sell it.

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 price of like I put a lot of time and energy and vision to this. 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, that 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, base is 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. If you were, I won't sell my kids. But, you know,

anyway, I get it. Value, value pricing, right? Like, this is cool. This is cool. I'm glad we talked about this one. So, yeah. 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, right? Especially in health care. 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. And yeah, go from it. Kind of like the toilet liners. Yeah, right? It's like a, it's like a euro. urinal thing that you just flushed on toilet. Toilet liners?

Is this something happens in ladies' I don't know about? It's in the Midwest, right? Isn't it a Midwest thing? Yeah, like, they have, like, mechanisms on the toilets that, like, push out a toilet liner, 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, you know, 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 then one time I was like over at the ladies' dorm, 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 don't, that's not relevant to this deal at all. Girls go through a phase in that age that it is filthy. Yeah, it's true. Thank you for sharing. It's gross. Anyway, you learn a lot of college. Sometimes not what you're 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.