There’s often a gap between homeowners looking to renovate a lone bathroom and designers who accept small-scale projects. It’s within that valley that The Unoriginal Bathroom Company hopes to thrive. Founded by married couple Amy Wasserman and Aaron Popowsky, the new venture offers bathroom remodeling packages curated by interior designers including Hema Persad, Emma Beryl Kemper and Marcy Garcia, among others. Customers choose a designer’s rendering, book a consultation, and a few months later receive a shipment of everything their contractor needs to make that rendering a reality.
Popowsky, who ran New York design-build firm Gallery Kitchen & Bath for 10 years prior to launching UBC in April, saw firsthand that there was a significant market for a more straightforward approach to bathroom design: It was a common practice, he recalls, for homeowners to come in with a photo of a bathroom he’d done for another client and ask, “Can we just do this?”
“Even with people who do seek out a design firm like Aaron’s, it’s often the case that they’re not really interested in starting from scratch,” adds Wasserman, whose background is in marketing. “If you think about the fashion industry as a comparison, everyone wants the cool sneaker, every woman in the office has the same brand of handbag—we accept trends and this idea of ‘unoriginality’ in other aspects of our life. We’re looking at this as: Designers are creating this original concept, and we’re commercializing it and giving homeowners access.” Put another way: “[Designers] make the original work, and we sell the prints.”
More literally, the company is selling bathroom finishes, from tile and paint to plumbing fixtures and decorative accessories—all based on a designer’s rendering. Those components are listed on the site much like in any other e-commerce venture, with starting prices for half or full bathrooms. (The final cost will vary depending on the square footage of the space.) Instead of clicking “Add to cart,” customers book a consultation with UBC to discuss the details of their project: Is this a gut renovation, or are they simply looking to upgrade their finishes? From there, the company either works with the homeowner’s contractor or directs them to an app for lidar measurements to get the room’s specifications; the customer then receives a quote on the materials, shipping, receiving and delivery.
UBC orders all of the materials from its suppliers, which currently include brands like Fireclay Tile, Porcelanosa, Phillip Jeffries, Schumacher, and Farrow & Ball. The suppliers send everything to a receiving warehouse (UBC works to find one as close to the client as possible), and once every item is accounted for, delivery is set up with the homeowner.
“It was important to us that the client wasn’t receiving one-off deliveries for months, and that there was a white glove service bringing these items in,” says Wasserman. “Ideally, the contractor will be there to inspect everything upon delivery and make sure everything is in good condition.” Popowsky adds that the arrangement stands to benefit contractors, who receive all the materials they need to complete the project on a given day, and in the end they get to add a designer-quality bathroom to their portfolio. “It also gives contractors a service they can direct indecisive clients to, so they’re not getting dragged into the design elements,” he says.
UBC launched with 20 bathroom designs that represent a variety of aesthetics, and the company plans to add new offerings regularly. Future expansion may also get specific to the user: “We want to focus on additional categories like kids bathrooms, [and] there’s also room to explore designs that are aging-in-place orientated,” says Wasserman.
The current plan is to make designs available for up to one year to see what’s resonating with customers. And while an edited selection is important for the founders, they already have 16 more designs ready to debut down the road. “We didn’t want to run into a situation where there were too many offerings and people got overwhelmed,” says Wasserman. “We have a client right now doing two bathrooms, and they keep going back and forth on which bathroom they want. There’s a fine balance between not overwhelming people with choices but also casting a wide enough net.”
UBC pays the designer a flat fee for their rendering, and will contact them if a material goes out of production or runs into supply chain snags. The designers are given a preferred vendor list detailing the suppliers they can use in their rendering. Once the rendering is complete, the designer’s work is done. Wasserman says that the designers who have been involved so far have been excited to have somewhere to send clients with projects that fall short of their budget minimums. “A lot of the designers we spoke to don’t offer e-design, and they aren’t going to take on a client who just wants to redo a powder room,” she explains. “Designers don’t want to turn clients away with no solution. This is one solution.”
