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From left, Dude Wipes CEO Sean Riley, co-founder Jeff Klimkowski, Chief Marketing Officer Ryan Meegan

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Dude Wipes is a rare business that not only was helped by the early pandemic but actually kept going strong later.

When toilet paper was in short supply, Dude Wipes stayed on the shelves and picked up market share as an alternative, said Chief Marketing Officer Ryan Meegan on the newest edition of Ad Age's Marketer’s Brief Podcast. Then, unlike some brands whose pandemic bump was followed by a bust, Dude Wipes has kept growing. According to Numerator, the brand has picked up 1.8 percentage points of market share for the 52 weeks ended Aug. 31 vs. the prior year and now reports more than $100 million in annual sales.

The brand's product lineup includes flushable butt wipes, deodorizing body powder, shower wipes and more.

Founded in 2011, Dude Wipes made it to ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2015 and convinced a dubious Mark Cuban not only to take a 25% stake but also to become a loyal consumer, said CEO Sean Riley on the podcast. Cuban is still the only outside investor, he said, “and has been an amazing mentor” to the first-time entrepreneurs.

Dude Wipes remains a lean operation with only 15 employees. But it hired its first ad agency last month—Cincinnati-based Curiosity—using former Procter & Gamble Co. executive Pete Carter’s Creative Haystack to sort possibilities and do meet-and-greets with candidates rather than a conventional review.

Up to now, Dude Wipes has gotten by on social media and sponsorships. Recently, it leveraged a tweet about a Miami Dolphins “butt punt” into a mention the next day on the Sept. 26 Monday Night Football “Manningcast” on ESPN2. It’s also gotten an on-air shout out from Howard Stern, sponsored a Nascar team and paid to put its name on sleeves of the New York City FC Major League Soccer team and the rear end of trunks for former UFC welterweight champ Tyron Woodley.

Having an agency will mean more national paid media and more help creating social content, Meegan said.

Dude wipes still has plenty of room for growth, with a business still no more than 1% of the $11 billion toilet paper market, Riley said.

Not even the London “fatberg”—that giant ball of wipes and fat that clogged the city’s sewers and became a symbol of the dangers of flushing wipes—will stand in the way, he said. Dude Wipes, along with industry heavyweights like Kimberly-Clark Corp., is part of the Responsible Flushing Alliance, Riley said. “As we do a better job as an industry—all pulling together and doing that education—it's going to open up to a level of growth we haven't seen yet.”

Jack Neff, editor at large, covers household and personal-care marketers, Walmart and market research. He's based near Cincinnati and has previously written for the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Bloomberg, and trade publications covering the food, woodworking and graphic design industries and worked in corporate communications for the E.W. Scripps Co.