Tyler Collishaw left home at 16 to pursue a career as a professional soccer player, a journey that took him from his native England to Iceland and the U.S. When he was sidelined with a career-ending ACL injury during a Major League Soccer combine in 2017, he turned to act two – and his little blue book filled with different business ideas.
There’s a concept inside for a wine startup. The pages also include ways to improve soccer’s standing in the States.
The first idea he’s launching from the list is a new Cincinnati-based consumer packaged goods brand: Epiphany, a spray that aims to make towels cleaner between each use by removing harmful bacteria.
The product is set for an official launch in the next three to six months.
It’s a problem Collishaw faced as an athlete but one that has received little attention. The stats behind it are both shocking and off-putting.
More than 80% of people reuse their towel more than once. Towels can become infested with more than 260,000 bacteria and fungi over a 24-hour period. If you use the same towel for over a week, that number multiplies to 650 million.
This bacteria is responsible for acne flares, virus spread, infections and irritation. It's a problem roughly 79% of the population is unaware of, he said.
At the end of his pitch deck, Collishaw wraps it all up with a bow: There’s “more E.coli on your face from a two-day towel than if you dunked your head in a toilet and flushed it,” microbiologist Dr. Charles Gerba writes.
“There’s always that one person in the room (when they hear that) with a look of total shock or horror on their face,” Collishaw said. “I'm not trying to scare anyone. I just wanted to solve a problem no one knew about. Even if you wash your towel every day, there’s the climate impacts and cost of doing laundry. We can prolong the use of your towel so you don’t have to wash it as often. We think there's a huge market to help people.”
Collishaw landed in Cincinnati about four years ago. His wife is a Queen City native. He started building Epiphany during Covid, about a year and a half ago.
The spray was developed in part by a scientist at University of Cincinnati and another at Johnson & Johnson.
Collishaw said he had a short list of requirements: It needed to be skin safe and smell great. It needed to be effective as an antimicrobial, not just as an antibacterial. It needed to kill viruses and fungi, too, both of which are prominently found on towels.
It also needed to refresh the fabric. “It should feel like the towel’s been newly washed,” he said. And the spray depletes calcium levels, found in water and left behind, which can dry out the skin.
All those elements make Epiphany different than a product like Febreze, a Procter & Gamble staple. “We’re also completely towel focused. Febreeze is a Jack-of-all-trades,” he said
There’s also a focus on the smaller details. Most sprays are big and bulky. Epiphany comes in a 6-ounce bottle. That makes it easily transportable. The bottle is transparent “so you can see what you’re spraying,” Collishaw said.
The design is aesthetically pleasing, he said. “If we can create something that looks good, people are more likely to leave it out. If they leave it out, they're more likely to remember to use it and buy it more often."
Even the sound of the mist was considered.
“I do a lot of research on CEOs, and (former Apple leader) Steve Jobs always talked about the MacBook chargers – they have those magnets," he said. "The sound of that magnet when you plug it in has this profound effect. I wanted the same thing with our sprayer. It sounds different than other products.”
To start, Epiphany will be sold direct to consumer. “If we go on a (store) shelf, we’re going get lost,” he said.
But Collishaw also sees a business-to-business play. Possible partners include hotels – 50% of hotel guests that stay more than one night reuse their towel – gyms, even truckstops and indoor soccer arenas.
In terms of cost, he plans to price Epiphany at $5 to $8 a bottle based on consumer feedback.
The goal is to create an AI subscription service, with timed deliveries based on frequency of use. Most people, he said, turn to Epiphany four to five times a week in early studies.
So far, Epiphany has received local support from Main Street Ventures, which awarded the startup one of its signature “Launch” grants in 2021, earmarked for early-stage companies. The funds allowed Collishaw to finalize the product’s formulation. He was also able to trademark the company name and file a provisional patent.
Collishaw also took Epiphany through the 1819 Venture Lab at UC and Northern Kentucky’s SoCap Accelerate.
While Epiphany's niche is towels, he sees adding products to the line in the future – a powder, for example, to improve sustainability, an effort that could also include biodegradable bottles – before adding other products that could similarly solve other under-the-radar problems.
“We want Epiphany to be known for towels just like Tide is known for laundry and Clorox is known for bleach,” he said. “It’s a problem a lot of people can relate to, and there's huge potential.”
