The Tersa Steam began, as so many inventions do, with a problem. “The three founders, we lived in a fraternity house our first year on campus in undergrad, and we shared a room with five guys, a house with about 60 guys, and one washing machine,” Tersa CEO Charlie Warden told Digital Trends at CES 2018. A nightmare scenario, but it led to a clever idea. “…we wanted something cool to hang on the wall to clean our towels, underwear, shirts, shorts, anything we needed to stay fresh,” Warden continued.
That something ended up being the Tersa Steam, a wall-mounted steam cleaner that cleans clothes quickly, and leaves them smelling good. We wanted to keep it chemical-free,” Warden said, to avoid creating splotches on clothes. The Tersa uses a simple combination of water and hydrosols, which Warden describes as “runoff from the cologne and perfume manufacturing process.”
The hydrosols are contained in biodegradable pods. To clean a shirt, the user simply opens the Tersa and places it inside, inserts a pod, and then the steamer blasts the clothes with steam, killing bacteria, smoothing out wrinkles, and infusing the shirt with the smell of the pod. Finally, the Tersa dries things out. The cleaning cycle takes 10 minutes, perfect when you need a fresh shirt before work.
Tersa launched on Indiegogo, and is still available for pre-sale. The pre-sale price is $399. Once the product hits retail, the price will jump to $499.