HapeeBum

Founding Story

HapeeBum is my second startup. And the second time around, you don't start with the same assumptions.

My first experience as an entrepreneur taught me how exciting it is to build something from nothing, but it also taught me how quickly circumstances outside your control can change everything. When that business ultimately closed during COVID, I had to decide whether I ever wanted to put myself through the uncertainty of entrepreneurship again.

For a while, I wasn't sure I did.

But I never stopped noticing problems or questioning why things were done the way they were.

Having spent years working in healthcare, I had become increasingly conscious of what goes into the products we use on and around our bodies. We scrutinize food labels, skincare ingredients and the products we give our children, yet there are everyday essentials we use constantly without giving them a second thought.

Toilet paper was one of them.

The more I researched the category, the more fascinated I became. But what ultimately became HapeeBum wasn't just a question of what toilet paper is made from. It was a much bigger question:

If every family already has this product in their home, why couldn't it do something more?

That was the moment the idea changed.

Instead of seeing the wrapper as packaging to be torn off and thrown away, I started seeing it as unused space, something that could make a child curious, start a conversation, teach them something new or give a parent and child a reason to connect.

That thinking became HapeeBum.

We created premium bamboo and recycled toilet paper with original educational wrappers covering everything from dinosaurs and vocabulary to kindness, movement, careers and creativity. A child might discover something on a roll in the bathroom, bring the wrapper to the dinner table, turn it into a game or ask a question a parent wasn't expecting.

The toilet paper is the product. The wrapper is the experience.

I bootstrapped HapeeBum because I wanted to prove the idea before asking other people to believe in it. That has meant doing things the hard way, learning manufacturing, packaging, logistics, e-commerce, retail and customer acquisition, and working through the inevitable mistakes and setbacks that come with building a physical consumer brand from the ground up.

There have absolutely been moments when I've questioned whether I was crazy to start again.

But being a second-time founder has given me something I didn't have the first time: perspective.

I've learned that entrepreneurship isn't about having every answer before you begin. It's about having enough conviction to keep moving when other people can't yet see what you see. It's learning quickly, being willing to change what isn't working and continuing to show up when the excitement of starting has been replaced by the reality of building.

HapeeBum started with toilet paper, but the vision is much bigger than toilet paper.

I want to rethink everyday household products through the eyes of families and children, to ask whether the things we already buy can be made more thoughtfully, more sustainably and with more purpose.

Because sometimes innovation isn't about inventing another product.

Sometimes it's about looking at something we've used our entire lives and asking: why has nobody thought to do more with this?