Kevin Corey spends his weekdays teaching high school students about real-world examples of the ups and downs of running a business, including his own side hustle.
Corey, 41, teaches business courses at Uniondale High School in Uniondale, New York. He’s also the co-founder and president of Stall Mates, a flushable bathroom wipes brand that brought in more than $3.8 million in 2025 revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. And his students have a front-row seat watching Corey and his co-founder Greg Schipf run the business.
“Every high and every low, including the tariff situation now, is certainly a learning lesson that … I can take back to the classroom and talk to them about,” says Corey. “When they’re talking about, like, ‘Why [are prices] going up?’ It’s certainly a lot easier for me to explain, because I can actually pull up my invoices.”
Corey and Schipf launched Stall Mates in nearby Islip, New York, in 2013, and Corey started teaching at Uniondale the following year. His students have tracked the successes and setbacks of growing a packaged goods brand that began with a $14,000 seed investment — which went toward an initial run of 100,000 units of individual wipes that Corey stored in his house and took nine months to sell, he says.
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Today, Stall Mates sells nearly 250,000 units per year, including “on-the-go” packs and larger boxes of wipes, mostly through Amazon and online retailers like Walmart and Grove Collaborative, says Corey. It’s been profitable since 2015, and the co-founders take $100,000 annual salaries from the business, not including shareholder distributions or bonuses, he says. The bulk of Stall Mates’ profits get reinvested back into the business, he adds.
Corey spends about 20 hours working on Stall Mates each week, mostly nights and weekends, and roughly 40 hours teaching, he says. The one aspect of Stall Mates that he avoids sharing publicly, even in the classroom, is the line-item cost of each wipe — a practice many businesses follow to protect their profit model.
Nearly everything else is fair game, he says. “We actually have a class called Business Math, and that alone is showing them that, OK, these companies can do a million dollars in sales … But it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be, like, living in a mansion [or] driving a nice car,” says Corey. “You have to keep going and building.”
The ‘aha moment’ that led to Stall Mates
Before Corey and Schipf launched Stall Mates, they worked together cleaning pools around New York’s Long Island region. The job required them to frequent public restrooms, which often ran out of toilet paper, Corey says: “That was, like, the ‘aha moment’ of us starting this conversation of, well, ‘What if you could have a wipe on you at all times?'”
Flushable bathroom wipes already existed, of course, including ones sold by gender-specific brands like Summer’s Eve, which markets to women, and Dude Wipes, for men. Corey and Schipf joined the fray with their gender-neutral competitor, pooling their collective savings to fund Stall Mates’ first run of product, the brand name’s trademark, the legal costs of establishing the business and a label created by a graphic designer, says Corey.
Greg Schipf (left) and Kevin Corey are longtime friends who co-founded Stall Mates in 2013.
Source: Kevin Corey
Starting Stall Mates came with a serious learning curve and several stops and starts, he says. After several dead-ends, including a failed Indiegogo campaign and minimal sales from their website, the co-founders decided to list their wipes on Amazon in November 2014 just to “see what happens,” Corey says.
If Amazon didn’t work, the pair knew they’d likely run out of money with limited remaining options and an eventual deadline to unload their stock: The wipes had a two-year shelf life, says Corey. Still, they tried to stay confident. “We knew we were going to figure out a way how to make it work,” Corey says.
Stall Mates joined Amazon “at the right time,” he notes: The tech giant launched its Amazon Seller app earlier that year, and Corey and Schipf’s company was a relatively early adopter among retailers. Stall Mates brought in roughly $300,000 in 2015 sales, mostly from Amazon, says Corey.
‘As early as second period, I’m teaching it’
Corey has a master’s degree in business teacher education from the since-shuttered Dowling College, and landed his first full-time teaching job — at Uniondale — a year into building Stall Mates. Over the ensuing 12 years, Corey’s students have shown enthusiasm for his business’ growth and a propensity for quips about a teacher running a “butt-wipe company,” he says.
Corey prides himself in teaching students to view Stall Mates’ setbacks as learning opportunities rather than reasons to give up, he says. In 2020, he and Schipf bought trademarks like “Body Mates” and “Paw Mates” to launch body wipes and pet wipes. Retailers expressed concern that the move could confuse customers already familiar with the Stall Mates brand — and they were right, says Corey.
After spending roughly $75,000 on product development and launching Body Mates in 2021, the duo abandoned the idea in 2023 following a tepid response from customers. “How do I bring that to the classroom? I share that with them,” Corey says.
“I’m like, ‘Guys, this is how much money it costs me to fail,” he adds. “But then, you have to just keep moving forward [and] listen to your customers’ … I’m doing the Stall Mates thing at night, and then I come in in the morning and, I mean, as early as second period, I’m teaching it.”
When they’re talking about, like, ‘Why [are prices] going up?’ It’s certainly a lot easier for me to explain, because I can actually pull up my invoices.
Corey and Schipf’s business continues to compete against brands like Dude Wipes — which launched a year before Stall Mates and topped $200 million in 2024 revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2025 — and Summer’s Eve. It also contends with household names like Cottonelle and Charmin in a global flushable wipes market valued at $3.1 billion in 2024, according to a Global Market Insights report.
Corey tells his students that he’s focused on sensible, sustainable growth for Stall Mates, rather than trying to match its competitors stride for stride, he says. But regardless of his company’s future growth or struggle, he hopes his students take away one lesson from his classes and entrepreneurial career, he notes.
“You can’t be afraid to fail, because even when you’re failing, you’re actually still taking a step forward and learning [a] lesson,” says Corey. “You could apply that to anything in life.”
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