The Laundress: Lindsey Boyd

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You can pre-order the book right now, wherever you get your books, or by visiting gyros.com. We didn't find there wasn't a partner that we had met that really understood the business. And actually one of the meetings, the guys fell asleep on us. We were presenting to them.

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From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Rosin. On the show today, how two friends looked at a mountain of dirty laundry and saw a hole in the market, and how that turned into the laundress, a line of detergents they sold for a reported $100 million. A lot of people ask me to name the single thing that most entrepreneurs have in common.

There's resilience, the ability to withstand rejection, unshakable optimism. You get my drift. But a much, much simpler example is that most of them, before they started, had day jobs, a desk, a phone, a boss, coworkers. And in a lot of cases, that day job was what inspired the business that they would come to be known for.

Sadie Lincoln worked at 24-hour fitness for nearly a decade before she left to start her own fitness brand, Bar Three. Alex Bloomberg was a public radio producer for nearly 15 years before he left to found his own podcast company, Gimlet. Janice Bryant-Howroyd got a job temping as a secretary in LA in the late 1970s, and eventually started her own employment agency called Act One. For Lindsey Boyd, it was a marketing job in fashion, first for Brooks Brothers and then for Chanel that inspired her business.

But not a fashion brand, even though, as you will hear, she did briefly have her own line of t-shirts. But instead, Lindsey's work in the fashion industry exposed her to a jaw-dropping amount of dry cleaning. This was in the early 2000s, and it occurred to her that many of the solvents and chemicals used in dry cleaning were really bad for those delicate outfits. And that's where she thought there might be an opportunity.

So for two years, she and her college friend, Gwen Whiting, dove into the science of dirty laundry, a quest that would lead them to develop a line of eco-friendly detergents that would eliminate the need to go to the dry cleaner. And in 2004, they launched The Laundress, a brand that now sells dozens of laundry products and accessories, and has stores and customers around the world. But for the first six years, as you will hear, they struggled to make a profit, and even to keep the business afloat. They eventually did, of course, and in 2019, The Laundress was purchased by Unilever, reportedly for $100 million.

But long before she became an eco-cleaning mogul, Lindsey thought about becoming a biologist. She grew up in New York's Hudson Valley, and when it came time for college, she decided to major in marine biology at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. But I realized that while I loved science, it wasn't really the ultimate thing for me. I was like, I'm not going to see myself doing that as a career.

And very beginning of my suffering year, I said, I can't stay here. This is not for me. I was taking extracurricular activities at night and fashion, and then my childhood friend was at Cornell University at the textile program. And she said, you should come here.

You should look at this program. You would love it. So I went to visit her, and that was it. I fell in love with the program.

I fell in love with the school. And I had the grades, and I got in. So you went to Cornell to study textiles. Exactly.

And I was thinking about the business of apparel or the science of textiles or both? Both. Yeah. We were learning about, we were in a lab burning different fibers and finding out what the reaction was in different chemicals and understanding the chemical makeup of what celluloses and cotton fibers and really the scientific side of it.

And then the other courses were around retail math and how to, you know, for more of a business side of it. I also did an independent study in color theory, and then art history and sort of fashion history too. So understanding trends and forecasting. So it was a mix of everything that you would need to know to set yourself up if you want to go into more of the scientific side of it or the business side or design.

And when you were at college, I guess, you met a person who eventually, who eventually featured in the story, Gwen Whiting. She was also in the program studying apparel and textiles. Exactly. Exactly.

She was majoring in the design side of it. And were you like in the same dorm or you just kind of met and became friends? Yeah. Actually, the childhood friend I was speaking about before, she was friends with her with Gwen.

So at that point, we became friends and met and then, and that was it. I mean, there was no talk about doing a business in college or anything of that nature. Yeah. And I should mention, we're going to hear about Gwen a little later on, but um, but after college, I guess you went off and like did a bunch of different things.

And what was your first job out of college? My first job was at Brooks Brothers. I was in product development in the high end men's division. I like being hands on, so I got to meet with the seamstress and then talk about textiles and got to go to all of the fabric mills and then price the collection.

It was so much fun. I had the best time. So you were at Brooks Brothers for about two years, I guess, and you get a job with Chanel? Yes.

Chanel. No introduction needed. Did you apply for it? Did they recruit you?

I found an ad in women's birthday. I think it's like one of the few times they put an ad in. And I read that that was my paper. And I didn't know anyone there.

I just sent in my resume and called them and called them and called them. And then I got the job as a junior account executive in Ready to Wear. And working in New York City? Yes.

Working in New York City on Fifth Avenue above the boutique. This is going to be a super dumb question. I'm super embarrassed to ask this because I've been in media journalism for more than 23 years. But I did not realize until I was doing prep for this interview.

I'm just going to say this outright and be transparent with everyone listening. I just thought Chanel made bags and perfumes and sunglasses. I didn't really close. That's okay.

I'm sure you're not the only one. You're not the only one. You're not the only one. You're not the only one.

It'd be only like coats and dresses. I mean, I designed expensive, expensive stuff. Beautiful things. Beautiful things.

And what does it mean to be a junior account executive and sales at Chanel? What do you actually do? So what we did was we did a ton of trunk shows. And what trunk shows are, are you basically schlep around a trunk of samples to different department stores and meet with customers that are coming to that store?

And you sell the collection based on samples. You do pre-orders. So we did a ton of traveling. I think I was in a different place probably every two weeks doing that.

And you would show up with a trunk full of different sizes of different apparel and whoever showed up could buy them and maybe get a deal on it. Well, not exactly. So we would show up with one size of the sample. It was a sample and a sample represented the size of the model war during the runway show or, you know, the show in which it was represented in France.

So we would set up a rack of clothing and then we'd take orders. And that was a big majority of what I did. So I had a lot of interaction with customers. I really enjoyed that.

And we went to France. We got to go to all of the fashion shows. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. So pretty cool life and learning about this kind of brand.

And I read that. You're doing this job at Chanel and you're kind of focused on it. But you had little side hustles. You had a couple of little businesses, like a hat box business.

And then you started a t-shirt brand. What tell me about that? What was that? So I always had businesses on the side.

I liked to paint. And my mom had bought these boxes. They were cardboard, recycled boxes. And they were called hat boxes.

But I used them as storage boxes. And I was painting them. And friends of mine were saying they wanted them. And I said, oh, I should sell them.

And so I did my own. I created my own website. I learned HTML, like kind of website building for dummies. I bought the website domain, sassystorage.com, and started selling them online out of my apartment.

And I did that for a little while. And then I realized I didn't really know what I was doing. So I moved on the hat box business wasn't booming. The hat box business was not booming.

No. Got it. All right. So you know that this is not sassy storage was not going to be the thing.

No, it was not moving the needle for me. Unless you had the royal family as your customers. And it's correct. I had to move to the UK.

So what was the next business you came up with? So a friend of mine. We were tied up. It was a t-shirt business called Jessica Lindsey.

Her name was Jessica. Obviously the other part is pretty obvious. And we were making tie dye t-shirts. We're just tie dyeing t-shirts and people want to know where the t-shirt came from.

And we're like, we made them in our bathroom. But were they just like tie dye t-shirts that many of us. They were Haynes tank tops. Just Haynes t-shirts that you took over bands and tied.

We learned it camp. We had a lot of younger kids. What was so special about them? We had an embellishment.

We had a machine. A grommet machine. Oh, and you could put gems and stuff? We were putting studs.

We were doing rhinestones and studs around the collar to add a little bit of dazzling. I love that. So that was the main differentiator from the regular Haynes tie dye t-shirts. This is like the summer and the summer time of like 2001, 2002.

In 2000? What were you selling the shirts for, by the way? It depended on who we were selling it to. But two ultimately sacks with avenue and Henry Bendel's bought them.

Wait, sorry. People are asking you about your tie dye shirt. Did you mean your bathroom? Then you're selling them to sacks with avenue and Henry Bendel.

There must be something that happened in between. Absolutely. We were selling them for basically nothing. We were selling them for like $25 or something to friends and people that wanted them.

Because it wasn't really about that for us. We were just, I'm in some petty cash, but not. We weren't quitting our day jobs. Let's put it that way.

We saw this demand, me being in sales. She was actually in magazine working for magazines. This is your friend Jessica. Yeah.

And we actually have an article that Time Out Magazine did on our t-shirts that she helped secure that. Yeah. And we saw the trend in the contemporary floors where people were, this is when James Pierce t-shirts were coming out and $100 t-shirts were built or popular. So we called on a few boutiques where we knew people.

And how many would they buy? Like when you went to these buyers, they said, you have a little or $100 or $50? I mean, you were still making them with Gromit, a Gromit in your apartment? Yes.

In the basement of my friends' apartment, we were gromiting. My hand had blisters on them from pressing the machine. And did they ask you, because you were doing a day job and you were working on this on the weekend, I guess. Did they ask you, like, I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of the sax buyer.

So tell me a little bit about your supply chain or where you get your t-shirts. Nothing. Nothing. They were like, great, we'll take $50?

Yes. And what did they price them at? They price them around $80? Wow.

Yeah. And we shifted our quality from Haines to American Apparel. Yeah. So we were buying them at wholesale in the Garmit district and downtown and just buying them by the bundles.

And we didn't have any space for the boxes that came for a sax order that was like 550 shirts or something. We'd seen them out. Wow. And we kind of looked around and were like, wow, we're really in over our head here.

It's a real business. And this is called Jessica Lindsey, the brand, right? Yes. Jessica Lindsey, yes.

I mean, when you were working at Chanel as an account executive, were other people, your colleagues, I was like, like, Lindsey, I was just at Sax. I saw your t-shirts. It's so cool that you're selling the sax. Well, it was something that I was very open about doing on my free time.

Yeah. And nothing that anyone ever questioned because we worked our butts off at Chanel. So it wasn't as if, you know, it was literally weekends. That was it.

And that's something that obviously parlays really well into the laundress because we knew that, you know, you have to work in your free time whenever you can. Yeah, to make it happen. All right. Here.

No, okay. So you got this successful brand selling at some big names. I mean, Sax, Ben Del. I'm thinking, if I'm you at that time, I'm thinking, this is big.

This has huge potential. This is going to be a huge brand. Why doesn't Jessica Lindsey exist anymore? What happened?

You know, it was one of those things where you need a lot of financing for fashion. And it wasn't something that it was well, something we loved and knew. It wasn't ultimately something that we were able to take to the next step. So you just kind of fizzled out.

It wasn't because if I'm hanging out with you at that time, I would hope I would say, Lindsey, this is amazing. Like, you can really, you've already done a lot of hard stuff, but actually that's not true because hard stuff is taking it to scale and really building it out. Because you're financing and capital and infrastructure. And we were really loose about how we were doing the business at the time.

It was a hobby. And then it became before we knew what we had these sacks. It was almost like a challenge. I don't, you know, I think timing is really important.

And the timing just wasn't right. I'm assuming you didn't really make a whole lot of money out of it in the end. Not at all. No.

But I mean, this to me seems like a really cool experience, right? And so many ways, because in some ways it showed you that you could actually start something and gain some traction. Absolutely. I knew that no matter what I do, I'm going to do it 100%.

So that definitely helped gain confidence. That definitely solidified that I needed to do something on my own, especially when my career in fashion was like, this industry that I was in was so specific, high fashion, couture fashion, very few jobs available. I looked around and thought, my boss isn't going anywhere. My boss isn't going anywhere.

And these are coveted jobs. And there's no reason why they would go anywhere. And there was no place for me to go. Like I had hit the, I was a, I was managing my department.

And I had sort of like the highest role that I could possibly have there without taking someone else's job. And I just, I wanted more. I wasn't satisfied. Yeah.

Meantime, your friend Gwen Whiting, what do you mean college? Is she living in New York too at the time? She was in London. And then she ultimately came back to the city to work for Ralph Lauren.

Got it. And we got to hang it out. All the time. And so did you start to think, I mean, when did you start to think first not about the business you would eventually do, but just about maybe, maybe starting a business.

When do you remember what, what, some of the ideas you had in your mind? Yeah. I mean, Gwen and I both wanted to start a business together. And so that's when we started getting, we started thinking together and coming up with ideas of what to do.

We had a fashion brand idea, but then we kind of, you know, fashion is tough because it's tough to chase the trends. It's tough to, you need a lot of capital for production. And we put that aside. We saw, you know what, we like fashion, but I don't think that this is, you know, this is not the idea.

This is not the long term thing for us. And then we looked into beauty and we had a beauty idea. We went, we actually went to manufacturers and like lotions or cosmetics cosmetics, cosmetics, lipstick and blush and things like that. And we had some samples made.

We met with manufacturers. We came up with colors and you really kind of grinding through different ideas. Yeah. I mean, it was fun for us, you know, and I think that's when was by the way, living in New York, by the way, she was in New York.

We were actually at one point, we were squatting together in our friends apartment and watching reruns of Seinfeld every night with like this horrible tacky poster on one piece of artwork. It was a poster on our wall. I remember we put sweaters in our oven. Like we were, you know, typical 20 something with not a lot of money in an apartment in New York City.

What was the poster? It was of this Olympic skier. It was an Olympic skier. Yeah.

We got it free. But it sounds to me that like both of you had a real design aesthetic. Like we could maybe design something that's really great, really nice. Yeah.

We were both very creative and both working at very strong brands, which obviously had an impact on our brand. And we ultimately came up with a laundress out of a need, an avoid that we saw. Like a need that we had and avoid we saw in the market. The concept of doing laundry was nothing that I ever thought I would get into, but the concept of the brand and the product ultimately made a lot of sense.

How did that idea even come to you? Like while you guys are kind of grinding through maybe an apparel brand, maybe like a fashion brand, maybe cosmetics. How did this idea of coming up with detergents or laundry, you know, laundry is clean? Was that your first idea to come up with detergents or was it to actually have like a store?

Yeah. The first idea was a service brick and mortar store. At the time, I was spending a ton of money on my dry cleaning. And when was taking the train to New Jersey to do her laundry at her mom's house?

Because we didn't trust anyone to do the laundry. You know, we had to do it ourselves. I was hand washing in my sink. And by the way, I'm assuming you got really good deals on Chanel apparel and she got really good deals on Ralph Lauren apparel.

So you had a lot of fancy stuff. A lot of really nice stuff. Actually, we were spending more to clean the items and not in the actual items. So it sounds crazy, but it was in fact at the time their sample sales were insane.

They were incredible. And then really just hand washing, even in college, I was hand washing, but washing with baby shampoo and anything super gentle. I didn't like anything that was in the market. And I knew because of my textile experience that I didn't have to.

You know, I didn't have to dry clean. Silk is washable. Casual is washable. Really?

Yeah. And Gwen had had this incredible experience in London washing a cashmere sweater or someone had washed a cashmere service, a cashmere washing service. And so that was sort of like the tipping point of, oh, well, we, a service is a great idea, but we don't, what do we know about service? We know nothing about service.

We know product. We know how to sell product. And we know about how to create a brand. And so that was when we started the wheels started going, you know, we were kind of, okay, let's, let's, we need a product.

We need like a, you know, product that works like a baby shampoo, something that's gentle. It basically sounds like you were thinking of a kind of a service, a dry cleaning service, but not a laundry slash dry cleaning service for delicate clothing that would use very gentle cleaners for people. But then you thought, and this is going to be too, too hard to do because opening a brick and mortar store in New York in 2002, I guess, was already pretty hard and expensive for the vast majority of people. Oh, way too expensive.

So we kind of, we asked the hard questions of like, what are we doing? We don't have any money and, and leaving our jobs was not, not an option. We had to moonlight for two years. We weren't, you know, independently wealthy kids.

Like we were, our parents were like, keep your, you know, when we ultimately left our jobs, they thought we were, you know, we're crazy. We'll get there. But in 2002, when you guys sort of sat down and said, we, let's just focus on, like, how did you focus on instead of having a store focusing on cleaning products? Do you remember how you got to that decision?

Well, we went away from the service quickly when we realized that we didn't have the infrastructure. We visited a local dry cleaner, a green cleaners where we took a tour of their facilities and we were trying to partner with them. And it just was way over our heads. And at the time, we were, both of us were traveling a lot for our jobs.

And I would, my first stop would be the local pharmacies, the local grocery stores, to find out what products and sense that they had that we didn't have. And Gwen had that same passion. We would buy detergents, not just detergents, but deodorants and baby cologne and fragrances and products from all over the world when we would travel. And we were noticing these different trends and things that, and found products that were for delegates that we didn't have in the US that we were using and testing on our Chanel items and on our casuals.

All right. So you said, Alon, let's make a product that people can use at home. Yeah. Okay.

And it sounds like you had experience doing it yourselves. But I imagine if you were really going to do this and jump into this, you had to do some significant research because we're talking about science. I mean, it's, right. I mean, there's fibers and different textiles and there's different things in chemicals and reactively.

So where was your first stop? I mean, where did you go? Who did you call? Who did you call?

Who did you call? Because this is also kind of pre-internet, but the internet wasn't really what it is now, 2002. So where did you go? So we contacted our, we went back to our school to Cornell.

And, but our first, before we actually physically went there, we contacted a professor. She was an associate dean at the time and one of our, she was never our professor, but she was a professor in detergency. And again, we knew these resources that Cornell had, right? That they had these.

We're a professor in what? And detergency. Yes. There's a science of detergency.

Wow. There's a professor at Cornell who's a professor of detergency. That's incredible. And you went to this professor and you said what?

Well, we sent her an email and asked her, told her we had an idea and we wanted to talk to her about creating detergents. We called it fabric hair. And she was over the moon, wrote us back immediately and said, absolutely, let me know when you want to meet. And so we quickly scheduled our time.

We spent a weekend up in Ithaca. When we arrived into her office, we, well, we arrived with two huge bags of detergents again back to that collection of detergents that we had been buying over many years of during our travels. So from bleach and detergent from Argentina, from France, from Greece, and some American brands and things that we had collected and we liked or things that we were questioning because we didn't know what the ingredients said. We just didn't know what that meant.

And she had on her table in her office books stacked so high and sticky notes coming out of the books. And she said, where do you want to begin? Wow. And when did I look at each other like, oh my goodness, this is, did we really sign up for this?

What was the name of this professor again? K. Obendorf. So you started to do some research on what would work best and what did you start to discover?

We discovered that we would spend a ton of time at Kinko's making copies of all these textbooks. Of all the textbooks and Gwen and I split them up and we had highlighters and we highlighted all of the pertinent information and, or what we thought would be, important to educate ourselves on molecular structures and what happens when a fiber hits bleach. These are like, this is like the heralding key of food and science. This reminds me by the way of Ken Grossman who started Sierra Nevada.

He went to the library at Chico State and just kind of buried himself in the science of beer brewing. These were like academic papers with models and equations and stuff like that, right? Yeah. The chemical society books that come out every year.

I mean, those were what we were reading. We were reading them. We loved it though. It was really interesting.

We didn't want to go to a manufacturer and just say, make something for us. We wanted to know what we were making. And I think that's what's woven into the whole business. Is that we wanted to make sure we were in control of what we were making.

So let's remember, when you say delegates, like clothing, that people, we're talking about, cashmere, silk. What else are we talking about? So it's silk, cashmere, woolens, silk blends, things that, I mean, a lot of people obviously dry clean suits and things with heavy construction, like evening gowns, things like that. You can't just throw in the wash.

Yeah. Exactly. And by the way, what is the problem with dry cleaning? I mean, does it destroy, does it destroy clothes?

I mean, besides the expense, I mean, what was your argument for, you know, your stuff being better than dry cleaning? Yeah. So ultimately, the chemicals in dry cleaning are not great for you, for the environment or for the clothing, especially the clothing. It leaves, it's not even really cleaning it.

It's a solution that will take care of stains and it cleans it, but it's not really taking out odor. And it's not properly preserving the fiber. So ultimately, for an example, is when you're dry cleaning a sweater versus washing it, the dry cleaner will strip all the natural oils of the yarn. Whereas washing it will bring out all the natural oils and keep it nice and fluffy and soft, and the reason why we love cashmere.

So those were things, and even with a silk fabric, it wasn't really the best way to ultimately preserve and it degrades fabric over time. And so you were trying to figure out how different chemicals affect different materials? We were trying to figure out why the industry looked the way it did and understand why certain chemicals and things were in the product and if we really needed it or not. And at the same time, trying to find alternatives that would be safe to wash these things that people always think they have to dry clean.

One of the main things for us is that we were questioning everything that the industry was doing. So we were wondering, like, why is everything blue? Is that beneficial to it? You mean the color was blue?

Yes, the color of the detergent's blue, and we wanted to know why. Turns out there isn't a reason why. It goes back to blueing. Well, it goes back to people's perception of blueing agents, and that ultimately is a white nurse.

So that's a very old thinking, but it's something that's stuck in the industry and it's still that way today. And so that helped us eliminate a lot of the things that were in the products at the time. When you started to kind of come across things that might work in terms of cleaning, what kind of ingredients did you come across? So enzymes were the real, and still are the differentiator for us.

The products that work had enzymes, and ultimately the ones that had more enzymes worked better. Because they break down the stains. It breaks down the stains. Yes, exactly.

And then what we did, what we do is we have more enzymes and a higher concentration of them. I mean, assuming you both have, you and Gwen decided we gotta make some of this. Like the guys who started Methad, so made it in their apartment in San Francisco, you gotta make it. Like, where did you get the raw materials to kind of mix and mix your potions?

We went to a manufacturing show where they have contract manufacturers. We wanted a concentrated product, less water, no color. We didn't want any additives. We wanted it as plant-based, no petroleum.

And so we kind of, we identified all of those key things. And then we were able to come up with sort of the real recipe and formula to make everything not blow up. We weren't doing science projects in our kitchen. Meantime, you were both still doing your day jobs.

Yes. How are you financing? I mean, you go to a company manufacturer to make you samples of what this could be. How are you paying for it?

So initial, initial kind of crowdfunding before that was a thing. We threw what we called the soap splash, and that was something, it was a for-profit party, where we invited all of our friends and family and past boyfriends and current boyfriends. And anyone that would show up, we would say we serve them wine and our idea, and we took donations at the door. And we made all these really cute little cutouts of laundry hanging from a line and talked about it.

We didn't even have product at the time. We just kind of spoke about it. And how much do you remember? Like how much money did you?

$10,000. So these were not investors. It's just people helping out. This is just people helping out.

And then ultimately we were able to secure an SBA loan of $100,000. How were you able to do that? We were able to do that through, well, we had really good credit. And we also had our 401Ks from our job.

Oh, good job. So we were able to leverage, yes, that. That was really a blessing for us. It was also scary because probably we're maxing out, putting in $50,000 a year as a young person.

And you were maybe getting a match from your company, and you were putting it on the line. We put everything in the line. You personally guarantee for everything. And that was obviously a risk.

But we weren't scared of that. We were so convinced that our idea was a home run. And I think that's because it took two years of research and development before we actually left our jobs, though. So that was like, we wanted some security.

We were risky, but it was a calculated risk a little bit. And when people asked you, and they're like, tell me a little bit about the business that you're doing, what would you say? Well, we want to basically make products that will allow you to avoid the dry cleaner, to just do yourself. Yeah.

The initial elevator pitch, if you will, was that we were creating products that you could use for your everyday laundry, but most importantly for things that you think you have to dry clean. And that was initially the conversation we had. And everyone wanted to know the price point and the price point was mind-blowing to people. And most people thought we were crazy.

Because why? What was the price point you had in mind? $20. How much is the bottle of Tide?

Like $4.5 bucks? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, depending on the size, but around that range. And you were charging $20.

$20. People were like, what? You're nuts. Nuts.

Who wants laundry? Who wants that? It's laundry detergent. Who needs that?

That doesn't make any sense. That'll never do anything. People aren't going to invest in that. And you know, there was definitely times where we were like, man, we're never going to get any financing.

Or we're never going to get it. You know, how are we going to do this? Because people are just not buying our idea. When we come back in just a moment, how Lindsay and Gwen managed to launch that idea, despite the doubters, and how they would spend the next five years leapfrogging from one credit card to the next, just to keep the business from going under.

Stay with us. I'm Guy Ros and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Ros.

So it's 2004 and Lindsay and Gwen have just cobbled together about $100,000 to launch their first detergent products. And that money comes from all kinds of places, including a party they had for family and friends. And so that was the initial hustle for us. And then we had the SBA loan, but we ultimately had a ton of credit cards that we were able to use to continue building the business.

Nice. Just hopscotch from one to the next. Yes, we got a lot. I don't know, six different credit cards that we were using.

And by the way, what was the first product that you ended up launching with? We launched with 13 products. Wow. Okay.

So like different cleaners for different fabrics? Exactly. So we had our signature detergent, which is like for every day, and then the rest of it was more novelty. So products like Delicat Washwell and Cashmere.

And we wanted to launch with a start to finish laundering experience, all in one cent, because there wasn't that experience for people. And so that created obviously more than just a few products to launch with. How many actual bottles of things did you order? Like $5,000, $10,000 do you remember?

We ordered about 250 of each scale, a very small run. We were able to partner with a small manufacturer. That's not typical. Usually the runs are very high, but like at the time it was like all we could possibly handle.

Like there was no way that we were going. I mean, that would last us almost a year, six months to a year. All right. So you both of you guys still had some connections in the fashion world because, I mean, you had experienced selling your t-shirts to SACS and you were your channel.

So you were working with people who were buying Chanel products. And was the idea that you would sell the laundress products at stores like SACS and Bloomingdale's and Bendel? And was that the idea initially? Yes, yes.

It was definitely what can we tackle first? So that list consisted of friends of friends who had a boutique in the Hamptons, for instance, or in our towns that we grew up in, or even local stores in New York City. And then, Burt of Goodman, they were a client of mine at Chanel. And that was a whole nother.

I mean, going into department stores with a luxury detergent, if you know what a department store or layout looks like, it doesn't, there's no laundry section. So while I had all of these contacts at department stores, it wasn't that simple. I had to speak to almost five or six different departments before anyone really even knew what to do with me or the product. And even then they didn't know what to do.

I mean, I was selling the product at the cash register at the counter because in order to get them to believe in that the product needed to be there. I guess Burt of Goodman was your first big client to say, all right, we'll put this up there. How did you get into Burt of Goodman? Well, first I spoke with the lingerie buyer because we were selling delicate wash.

So this is a product that was very commonly found for women for washing lingerie. And then I was able to navigate once I had credibility with the lingerie buyer, I was able to look at being with the cashmere buyer, and then ultimately with the beauty buyer, which is where everyone would want to be, you know, as far as selling a product like that. And the beauty buyer at the time loved the brand, loved the idea, and you know, they had an exclusive, we gave them an exclusive for six months to be the only people selling the laundress. And this worked out really well.

And by the way, were you keeping absolutely silent about this? Do people know that you're working on this? No one knew. Yeah.

I wanted to make sure that my job was secure if I ultimately didn't take the leap or I always had a plan B. I had a plan B for five years into the laundress. I always wanted to make sure that I was going to be relevant in my industry and be able to get another job. Because you would not quit the job.

Your job yet? No, no. And I needed that income. I needed that income.

I needed that job. And I wanted that job. By the way, I read that you had this really uncomfortable moment at Birdor of Goodman, because when you went there to pitch your laundry products, apparently you ran into another burgdorff buyer who knew you from Chanel. Yes.

So I actually, I actually at that same time, I ran the woman that let me in, you know, through the security. I passed by my buyer's office, the meaning, the Chanel buyer that I work with, to get to this new buyer that I was meeting for the laundress. She was like, Oh, do I have an appointment? I was like, no, no, I'm meeting with someone else.

And I just kind of like just hurried by like there was no, it was really awkward, really uncomfortable. Because she was like, Hey, what are you doing here? Yeah, she thought, am I meeting you? And what did you tell her?

I said, no, no, no, I'm meeting with somebody else. Like we're going out. And she she didn't even question it. Were you nervous that she was going to blow your cover?

I was very nervous. But no, she didn't. It happened so quickly. And honestly, I left there so excited because they wanted the laundress that I think at that point, I didn't really care.

And when did you pull the trigger on quitting your job? Like right before you launched? Exactly. Did anybody, you know your family are going to be say, you sure you want to do this?

My mom, she said, are you sure? You know, she like over and over again. And you know, my family never doubted what I could do or couldn't do. But I think they were worried because then I was going to be there.

And I think when family questioned her as well, I mean, this was, we were leaving coveted jobs and places we were very happy at. But we were passionate. And then ultimately they supported that. So you quit your job and you launched this thing.

And was it like, you know, gangbusters? Was it, you know, just a frenzy to buy your stuff? Like all of a sudden, everybody going for the laundress? Or was it coming more like quick?

Definitely not a frenzy. It was really difficult to get people on board. We had to, I mean, there was there were moments when I made a list of stores to call and I would be calling and calling and calling and people wouldn't call me back. So I would go to the store to meet the buyer and we're talking about boutiques now, the smaller boutiques because that is the best thing.

It was really the bulk of how the brand was built. I actually there's a store in the West Village that I that we really wanted to be in because the positioning was really good for our brand and he refused to call me back. So I showed up with the products and I spent the whole day there and I said, just let me sell the product for you. And you don't have to take it after.

I just want to show you that this is where our product should be. And ultimately he's one of our best clients in New York. When you launched this, I mean, you from what I understand you had you launched with about $110,000. So I'm assuming you're thinking we need to make money quickly to be able to pay our bills and expand and make more product.

But from what I understand, like the first at least three years and probably four years, you were not profitable. You were actually losing money. Right. That is true.

We weren't making any money. We didn't take a salary. We had to write down what our bills were and pay our bills. And that's it.

You know, so we didn't lose our apartments. But we ultimately between 2004 and 2008, we worked with rep groups. So different people that would sell the product for commission. So we positioned our products within showrooms in Dallas and Atlanta and LA and New York and we did showrooms of what showrooms where they had other brands.

So linen, like betting showrooms that would make sense for someone buying linens and betting that they would buy our product. We were also in fashion showrooms where there was clothing and then they would buy our products. So we positioned ourselves in places like that. And we did a ton of trade shows.

So you had you had to depend only on income from this business. But how did you, if you're not getting any income, how are you like paying rent and paying? And how were you like paying rent and buying food and stuff? Well, we had to pay our rent as a bill.

It was like part of our accounts payable through our business in that way. Because everything was personally guaranteed, our credit cards. We used credit cards. And then we would look at our bills and our finances and say, okay, who needs to get paid first?

What's going to be cut off first? But we had orders coming in. So there was always a flow of cash. It's just that we weren't anything that we made went back in, you know, back into the business.

It wasn't like in our pocket. Right. And just curious. In those early years when you weren't making money.

Did you ever, were you ever tempted to try and get outside money just to make sure you didn't collapse? No, we were able to, we had money coming in. So it wasn't, we weren't concerned about collapsing. We probably could have done a lot more at a faster pace.

Not probably. We definitely could have. But we wouldn't have the same amount of control. Our brand would most likely look very different today.

I mean, when investors eventually start to make pitches to you who want to invest, why did you conclude that it was not in your interest to take the money? They weren't going to, they weren't going to give us enough money to get, they wanted a lot of, they wanted a high percentage. They wanted a lot of equity for not, for not giving us that much money. And ultimately the, what we were going to do with that money wasn't going to get us faster in sales.

So wasn't going to get us to where we needed to be any faster. So you were getting some like, firm saying, we'll give you a million dollars for 25%. Right. So we would lose control, but not, we weren't going to be at, you know, $100 million company overnight.

So or whatever, you know, and just throwing that number out there. But like, it wasn't going to be, we weren't going to get there any faster. And we were really happy with the, the direction of the brand. Did you, did you feel like, I mean, when, when you would go to these firms and they offered you, you know, a little bit of money for a huge equity stake, did you walk out of those meetings just feeling like undervalued and irritated?

Yes. All the time. And actually one of the meetings, the guy fell asleep on us. We were presenting to them.

Classy. Yeah. Classy. And he was trying to like act like he wasn't sleeping and, and we noticed right away and we're like, really?

And we, we spent a lot of time presenting and we're very passionate about our ideas and then someone's falling asleep. That didn't really bode well with us. We didn't find, there wasn't a partner that we had, that we met that really understood the business. I think that becomes, that was something that if we found a partner that really got it, I think that storyline would have been a little different.

I read that. Like, yes, there's one, one instance or like one of the customers you had went behind your back directly to the, to the factors that were making your product and had them white label, the same products for them. Is that true? Yes.

Well, we had our, it was probably around 2006. We started selling to Russia and it seems random, but it's not really random because Gwen had lived in Russia and we had some contacts there and there was some really beautiful stores there that, that we knew the laundress would be, you know, perfect for. And we found a distributor to sell the product to all of these stores. We did a huge launch and event.

It was so much fun in Moscow and success, like very quickly in that market. And so much so that we, you know, not having capital, like we really couldn't keep up with the demand. And we also couldn't give anyone special payment terms. We needed the payment terms, you know.

We were the ones that were, the ones that, you know, were struggling in that regard. And a lot of the distributors want, want to give payments over a period of time. And we really needed to be paid in advance before we shipped any goods, especially overseas. What if we never saw that money?

So this specific distributor went directly to our manufacturing company. And we went directly to our manufacturer. And he was buying the product from our manufacturer at a lower price. And so, well, it's not legal.

So what did you do? Well, what do you do when you don't have a lot of money to legally go after somebody? We confronted the manufacturer. We confronted the distributor.

And we just stopped working with him. We owned our formulas and we went somewhere else. I guess you didn't really have money to sue. Yeah, suing him would have been a long headache and a lot of money.

And we needed to move forward. And ultimately, the distributor that we were working with then come to find out, which is even worse than what he was doing with the manufacturer, was that he was making counterfeit product. And we found out from a client because she had a rash. Those are the moments when we thought, oh my goodness, how are we ever going to recover from this?

You know, that was definitely a struggle for us. So the client, we had immediately said to the client, can I see the bottle? Can you send me the bottle? And so it turns out it was in our formulation.

It was our branding, our name. So, you know, looked like it was our product. And the same distributor that was selling our product was making additional units because he had a demand and he wanted to satisfy. And I didn't care.

He was sacrificing. He was buying it cheaper, poor quality and selling it. So we had both products in the market. So he was leveraging self as being a licensed distributor of the longest because he was and then selling counterfeit product at the same time.

Yeah. So that, you know, we early on had all of our name trademarked in any country that we were sold to. So we owned the licensing and the trademarks. And when you sign when you have a distributor, you allow them to use your name and all those things.

But it was really hard for our trademark lawyer to pin that down. And ultimately it would have cost way too much money for not a lot of results. So we pulled from them and yeah. And luckily it didn't become a global issue for us.