GoKawiilI’ve interviewed entrepreneurs who built apps, entrepreneurs who built rockets, and entrepreneurs who built breakfast cereals. I have never interviewed anyone who built an empire out of the phrase “What do you wipe your butt with?” Until now.
It’s a question Sam Nebel is never shy to ask complete strangers. Nebel is co-CEO of goodwipes, the flushable wipes brand he co-founded with Charlie Siciak 13 years ago after the two bonded over baby wipes in a fraternity bathroom at Florida State University. Since then, goodwipes has become a name-brand player in a wipes category that’s now worth billions, landing shelf space at Walmart, Target, Kroger and beyond. This summer, the brand launched Peaches & Cream Olipop mashup and, even more unexpectedly, announced a limited-edition collab with Liquid Death inspired by its sCREAM Soda flavor. As Sam described it to me: “The Liquid Death collaboration represents the expansiveness and depth of goodwipes — it reveals the range we can take goodwipes creatively with our lean team’s capability and output,” adding, “It’s all about having fun and getting shit done, and making people feel good!”
Photo credit: goodwipes | Liquid Death
If you’ve ever wondered how far persistence, a sense of humor and a genuinely better product can take you, Sam’s story is a masterclass. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
Dan Bova: Maybe we could just start from the beginning. How did you and your co-founder decide to do this?
Sam Nebel: The story is really a lifelong journey for both of us. We converged in college at Florida State University, maybe 19 years ago. We were freshmen, two weeks into freshman year, and we had each grown up as baby wipe users — habitual, exclusive baby wipe users. We could never wipe our butts with toilet paper. We met in the upstairs bathroom of a fraternity house and bonded over the fact that we were the two baby wipe guys and started sharing with all our new friends. They said, “You guys are absolutely ridiculous and crazy.” Within 30 days, we had gotten all of them using wipes. We became the wipe dealers at Florida State — baby wipes in Ziploc bags at tailgates, football games, parties, all of it.
So when did you decide you could actually make money from this?
It was a couple of years after college. We looked at each other and said, let’s address some of the pain points we saw. Charlie has sensitive skin, very ingredient-conscious. I have what I like to call ravenous IBS. We wanted to create a brand that addressed these challenges — a product that was better, actually flushable, more premium than what we saw in the market. We wanted it to be relatable, something our peers, millennials, would feel comfortable buying at a Publix or Target or Walmart, because that didn’t exist yet.
Your brand leans into humor, but there’s clearly a line you don’t cross. How do you find that sweet spot?
We don’t want to be crass — we want to be an elevated version of this that’s still relatable. It’s a fine line you have to balance. We like the acronym PEACH: playful, empathetic, approachable, cheeky and honest. Playful really covers all of those — it’s a way of saying we’re going to tell you this product does the job better than toilet paper, but we’re not going to do it in a gross way that turns you off.
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