Its products are already the gold standard for your buttocks, so it’s no wonder that Toto is now expanding its focus to the rest of your body, too. The Japanese company, long known for its fancy toilets, is now looking into another bathroom appliance — the bathtub. Earlier this week, the company debuted its Flotation Tub, a cradle-shaped contraption that seeks to bring you “ultimate relaxation” by sending you into a trance. Just make sure you don’t fall asleep in the tub and get yourself into hot water (no pun intended).
The tub itself draws inspiration from flotation therapy, and seeks to draw bathers into a trance-like state by getting your brain to slow down a bit. While the Flotation Tub has yet to be priced and won’t even be available until April 2018, it’s already making waves in the high-end luxury market.
And now that Toto is turning 100, it’s looking to shake things up a bit. For the first time, Toto is hoping to target high-income customers not necessarily at home in Japan. Rather, the company is looking at big spenders in Europe, the U.S., the Middle East, and China. “Until now, our thinking has been to come up with ways to sell to the overseas markets products that were developed for Japan,” Toto president Madoka Kitamura said in an interview in Tokyo on March 7. “But now, we’re trying to develop products aimed at overseas markets.”
And the Flotation Tub certainly meets that criteria. Apparently, Toto conducted more than 100 tests to figure out what the perfect balance would be between floating and lying down in order to create the bathtub. Measuring more than two meters in length, it’s about 50 percent larger than your average tub, and is meant for you to really elongate yourself. And for ultimate relaxation, the Flotation Tub has an adjustable pillow, as well as water massage functions.
So if you’re looking to treat yourself … sometime next year, you may want to start keeping an eye out for the Flotation Tub.
