Traditionally, and for obvious reasons, bathrooms have lingered behind closed doors, as a particularly private place, too impolite to openly discuss. Even the phrase 'toilet talk' was coined to define unsavoury and unseemly conversation; and the less said about the way toilet inventor Thomas Crapper is remembered to this day, the better.
It is not that we find a subject intimate to all of our daily lives abhorrent. Indeed, as far back as about 40 years ago, the American television chat show host Phil Donahue made toilet history, so to speak, by dedicating an entire show to the topic. Interestingly, TV's first frank toilet talk-in generated more than 2,000 telephone calls from fascinated viewers.
For that social breakthrough, the chat show teamed up with a specialist bathroom firm called American Standard, which had the distinction of being the inventor of enamelled cast-iron baths, the first with smooth, easy-to-clean surfaces.
The brand continues to lead the industry by setting one benchmark after another in the development of bathroom technology and design.
Over the past three years especially, technological innovations have been flowing thick and fast.
With water conservation a huge concern these days, consumers visiting a Hong Kong flagship showroom of the brand at MegaBox in Kowloon Bay and two outlets in Lockhart Road, Wan Chai may be surprised to learn that they can enjoy an invigorating shower while reducing water usage with newly developed showerheads.
