Dave the Dealer on the pros and cons of the smart toilet
CES 2019 was lucky enough to host a contingent from Dodgi this year. Dave highlights his top picks from the techiest tech on offer
Aside from World Octopus Day (8 October), mid-January is my favourite time of year because the world's best tech event consumes Las Vegas for four days.
Dodgi travelled to the desert with a smaller contingent this year, after our head of product procurement Lloydy caused quite a scene at last year's event, involving a pair of radiation-resistant underwear and a smart fridge. Unfortunately CES rejected our appeal to overturn his life-long ban.
Nevertheless, Dodgi's presence made up approximately 0.06 per cent of the 4,500 attendees at the event - still a strong showing.
After checking into our regular haunt - La Quinta Inn and Suites Las Vegas Airport South, overlooking the runway - we went in search of tech to boost our offering and keep the already innovative Dodgi ahead of its dinosaur-like competitors.
So without further ado, here are my top three picks from CES 2019:
The intelligent toilet
Introduced by American kitchen giant Kohler (known in the UK for featuring on the sleeves of Manchester United football shirts), the Numi smart toilet promises a "fully immersive experience" (whether you want one or not is another matter).
Part of a bathroom suite, the toilet offers "exceptional water efficiency, personalised cleansing and dryer functions, a heated seat, and high-quality built-in speakers".
The bog also comes with Amazon's AI assistant Alexa built in - although I'm not sure what questions a user would need to ask her. Personally, I think I'd use the stopwatch function. With data being the new oil, every little helps.
In terms of Dodgi, I haven't considered the benefits a smart toilet would bring to our admittedly average lavs - partly out of fear, and partly because I haven't had time. However, I imagine it would have the same revolutionary impact as the recently installed Dyson Airblade. But priced at $7,000, I think we're more likely to resell them than actually use them.
The smart breast pump
It's no secret that we need to encourage more women to consider a career in the technology industry.
What better way to do so than by promoting a start-up company led by a female CEO, with an innovative product?
This year's event saw Willow launch the second iteration of its subtle hands-free, cordless and smart breast pump.
The product tucks neatly into a woman's clothing and creates minimal disruption, meaning new mums can go about their day.
"The next generation of Willow gets moms pumping faster, which means moms can get back to living their fullest lives faster," chief exec Naomi Kelman says.
The company's first version of the product garnered much attention at CES a few years ago, but this time around a number of companies have milked the concept.
After much consideration, we have opted not to provide product demonstrations because we don't want to unbox the items without securing the sale first. I was all for it, but I think our commercial director bottled it.
The self-stocking beer fridge
It's the age-old problem: you hit the beer fridge at 2pm on Thursday after a long week in the office, only to find that the previous selfish sod has removed the last Tesco premium lager and failed to alert our office manager, Stan.
A solution has finally been created, bringing office beer consumption into the 21st century at last.
The DrinkShift, made by Tokyo-based start-up Shiftall, tracks the number of beers in your fridge and automatically orders another batch when you are running low.
It wasn't difficult to get this approved by our finance director - who is very rarely sober enough to drive to Tesco at lunchtime and replenish the supplies he's rattled through.
The downside of the fridge is that sadly it can only stock 13 beers, so we have bought 10.
We certainly enjoyed trialling the product at CES, but I fear it may have affected my decision to place an order for 500 pet-food bowls equipped with facial recognition soon after. Cheers!
Dave Diamond-Geezer, director of Digital Online Deals and Global Integration (Dodgi) of Dagenham Ltd.