The Surprisingly Messy History of Wild Wipe

(or: How pissy knickers led to a feminist hygiene revolution)

Let’s be honest: no great invention ever started with someone sitting politely at a desk with a notebook and a cup of chamomile tea. Wild Wipe certainly didn’t.

Wild Wipe started with pissy knickers.
Damp. Uncomfortable. Slightly sour-smelling. The kind of knickers that make you walk like a cowboy because your inner thighs have given up and decided to chafe for the rest of the day.

Yes, we’re going there. Because every woman has lived this particular hell.

In the beginning

Once upon a time, I spent a lot of my life outdoors: hiking, camping, bushcraft courses, expeditions, the whole wholesome catalogue of “Look at me being at one with nature” activities. Nature is wonderful. Nature is freeing. Nature does not, however, provide toilet paper.

Which meant that every wee behind a tree led inevitably to the same crisis:
drip-dry or risk carrying a bag of piss-soaked paper in your rucksack like some deranged human hamster?

Neither option feels very “empowered woman in the wild,” does it?

Like most outdoorsy women, I experimented with the famous devices designed to help you pee standing up. You hold them just so, aim downward, pray to the gods of urethral alignment, and try not to blast yourself in the shoes.
The problem is:

·         They’re bulky.

·         They’re fiddly.

·         And if you mess up? Oh boy. You will never forget the humiliation of hot wee cascading down your trousers like some sort of golden waterfall of regret on day one of a five day bushcraft course with mostly men and only one spare pair of trousers. (I certainly haven’t forgotten and it was nearly 20 years ago)

I very quickly realised something:
I didn’t need help peeing. I needed help wiping.

Because squatting? Fine.
But drip-drying? Absolutely not.

The ‘Sod It, I’ll Make My Own’ Moment

As a nurse, talking about UTIs, thrush, skin irritation, and the dangers of letting urine sit warm and snug in your underwear all day was no issue and I’m the sort of person people like to share their intimate issues with while out in the wilds. One day while on a training hike for the Long Range Traverse in Newfoundland, which I was doing with a friend for charity, we had a long discussion about this problem because my female urinary device which I now only used for wiping was doing my head in in my pocket and she was reluctantly packing out her loo roll – Something clicked!

So I went home, grabbed an old bank card, rounded the edges with scissors, and created the first-ever prototype Wild Wipe.

It was crude.
It was ugly.
But — it worked.

No more drip-drying.
No more pissy knickers.
No more carrying soggy loo roll like a woodland hoarder.

Freedom. In one little swipe.

That ugly little plastic card became the blueprint. And was a godsend during the 4 day hike in Canada. I made more prototypes and gave one to my daughter who also loved it.

I realised I was onto something and that it needed to be:

✨ Antimicrobial
✨ Smooth-edged
✨ Comfortable
✨ Compact
✨ Actually designed for our anatomy

Fast-forward past many prototypes, help from an actual designer, quite a lot of swearing, and extensive field testing…
And Wild Wipe was born.

A product made specifically for the moment every woman knows:
“Oh for f***’s sake, there’s no toilet paper…”