Method

“And so I guess I'm going to take credit for it because nobody's told us they've done it first of really combining high design and deep sustainability.”

“The barriers to entry was so low that if we didn't bring in industrial design graphically, it'd be much easier to knock us off, which did start happening.”

“Yeah, so I was in London, you know, I love the British press, they're so skeptical, and she said, is it, you know, safe enough to drink? I was like, sure. So we both took a shot at the toilet bowl cleaner.”

“Method really broke the mold by making it cool and luxurious. Tesla did the same thing with electric cars. They didn't invent electric cars. They just made them so awesome for people that people went to them.”

“I was in London, you know, I love the British press, they're so skeptical, and she said, is it, you know, safe enough to drink? I was like, sure. So we both took a shot at the toilet bowl cleaner.”

“What you're looking for is what I call a sea of sameness. And so he put up this photo of the soap aisle and it was just like all a bunch of green bottles. It was like every bottle or every like house cleaner was green in a bottle and it looked exactly the same…”

“There's no such thing as low interest categories, just low interest brands.”

“You can make cleaning products out of very standard things. Things that you can buy in the grocery store. Like water. You know, things like, yeah, of course, water, vinegar, baking soda. These are relatively simple chemicals that don't require a professional l…”

“We paid, we ran the business out of pocket for about two years.”

“We each put in 45,000 dollars.”

“And then build the bottle molds, which, Ate up most of the investment.”

“So we got a grocery store at the end of February to say, yeah. Yeah, it was actually February 28th, 2001. So we had bothered this store manager enough that he said, fine, guys, I'm gonna give you space, but you have to get the product here today. This was in B…”

“The only way we're going to make this work is we had to get the mainstream into a green product, and we thought a lot of it as it's a Trojan horse for good. We had to put our green credentials on the back of the bottle and almost kind of hide them.”

“The first round was a million dollars.”

“We were able to convince him to do it for a lower fee, because he really believed in the project, but also with equity. And he gave, you know, got him to have skin in the game with us.”

“Target gave us a ninety-store test to basically prove ourself out.”

“Oh, they bought initially about 25,000.”

“Well, we didn't hit that target as it turns out.”

“The dish soap that we did, which was the first ever inverted dispenser, so it comes out of the bottom.”

“It was about five years in. So – In five, we became profitable.”

“About twenty-five million.”

“And it's expensive to launch a new product. It's really expensive to discontinue. Because when you see something on shelf that's being discounted for the store to get rid of it, the manufacturer is funding it.”

“You know, I don't remember exactly in dollar terms, but it was, you know, it was in the low millions of, you know, an investment that basically an amount of money we lit on fire.”

“In this case of selling the business to Ecovair, actually the greatest example of that is we were able to build what's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the business.”

“We saw a really big category, which was a sea of sameness, and we started looking at the category and started to see some opportunities.”

“As a founder, you often look to partner with businesses with people who are similar to you, but what you need is someone who's the complete opposite of you to make a business successful.”

“Very simply, Adam's inside the bottle. He understood that the chemistry, the chemical engineering the sustainability behind it, and I was outside of the bottle, which was the design and the branding of it.”

“And you're doing this as a partnership, and I always tell people it's a lot like a marriage, but it's even harder because you can't have makeup sex. So you've got to find alternative ways through it.”

“The key for us was recognizing that it was way more important for the business That we have a constructive relationship than to get our own individual way”

“We did therapy together.”

“Conflict is a great thing, because it's where you are able to build an idea into a bigger, better idea, and You're going to have differences of opinion, and trust is what allows you to evaluate that objectively as something that's a better way of solving a pro…”

“We're going to take credit for it, because we haven't found anybody who did it first, but really the first Eco Chic, a product that was high design and deep sustainability, which is really hard to do, and we were both insistent that it would have these qualiti…”

“You start a business, that's at least a ten-year commitment.”

“We had friends who are raising forty million dollars on forty-page business plans and bragging about a million dollar per page for a raise or doing these lavish launch parties, which seems so ridiculous now to spend funds on a launch party.”

“We didn't have a lot of, you know, money to do custom tooling, and so I started looking for stock bottles, couldn't find anything I really liked. So I had this camping water bottle from Norway that I had found. Just a really simple kind of bullet design with t…”

“We paid, we ran the business out of pocket for about two years.”

“We each put in 45,000 dollars.”

“And then build the bottle molds, which ate up most of the investment.”

“Yeah, it was actually February 28th, 2001. So we had bothered this store manager enough that he said, fine, guys, I'm gonna give you space, but you have to get the product here today. This was in Burlingame in sort of the mid-peninsula of San Francisco Bay Are…”

“And it was the best training, because we didn't know how to sell, and you had 30 seconds to pitch. And so it really helped you learn how to sell the product.”

“We were really big believers that the packaging would have to be the primary marketing vehicle, and you would see it on shelf because of the design. You would buy it because of unique fragrances. You would get home, find out it works, turn the bottle over, and…”

“What we did, we built up these 30 stores, and we called it our paper route, so every morning we'd take turns driving to each store, counting how many you sold, replenishing it, writing up an invoice”

“We didn't have a customer service number, so my cell phone was on the back of every bottle”

“We were able to convince him to do it for a lower fee, because he really believed in the project, but also with equity.”

“And so Target gave us a 90 store test to basically prove ourself out.”

“Oh, they bought initially about 25,000.”

“The dish soap that we did, which was the first ever inverted dispenser, so it comes out of the bottom.”

“I think it's totally pointless to make a green product for green people, right? They're only about five percent of products in the U.S. Market that are sold are green products. And so if all you're doing is preaching to the converted and the five percent, like…”

“And it was a toilet bowl cleaner. And so we both took a shot at the toilet bowl cleaner”

“It was about five years in. So – In five, we became profitable.”

“About twenty-five million.”

“In the short term, it did. But because, you know, they weren't authentic products, they weren't Interesting products. They were just sort of, you know, people would try them once, and they got promoted, so they'd, they'd capture shoppers that way, but then the…”

“And it's expensive to launch a new product. It's really expensive to discontinue. Because when you see something on shelf that's being discounted for the store to get rid of it, the manufacturer is funding it.”

“You know, I don't remember exactly in dollar terms, but it was, you know, it was in the low millions of, you know, an investment that basically an amount of money we lit on fire.”

“And in this case of selling the business to Ecovair, actually the greatest example of that is we were able to build What's probably the most sustainable manufacturing facility in the whole world in the inner city of Chicago immediately after we sold the busine…”