The original note, as written at the time
BUSINESS IDEA FOR SANITARY TOILETS. A seat and bowl shaped toilet tissue piece that you put over any toilet before you use it, saving you from splashes and contact with the dubious looking toilet seat, while also keeping the toilet clean with no smudges.
Ongoing development
A seat-and-bowl shaped piece of toilet tissue that you put over any toilet before you use it, saving you from splashes and from contact with the dubious-looking seat, while also keeping the toilet clean with no smudges.
The two benefits are usually sold as one and they are different businesses. Protection for the user is a consumer product sold to individuals. Keeping the bowl clean is a facility product sold to whoever maintains the toilet, and that customer has a budget and a purchasing officer.
The second market is the larger one and it is almost always missed. Every office, school, hospital, bus park and restaurant in the country has a cleaning contract and a complaint problem, and the complaint is always the same. A barrier that costs a few shillings per use and removes the complaint is trivially justifiable.
The engineering is in the shape and the disposal. It must hold its form when placed and it must not block the drain when it goes, which rules out the obvious plastic film and points at a paper that is thin, absorbent and quick to break down. Getting those three properties in one sheet, cheaply, at volume, is the actual work.
The distribution is the other half. These sell where people are about to need one, which means dispensers in the cubicle rather than packets on a shelf, and a refill contract that keeps the dispenser full.
It is an unglamorous product and the market is enormous. Most of the world’s toilets are shared, and shared toilets are where dignity is lost.
Solve the small humiliations and you solve a great deal.