December 3, 2018 by Sean Parry
Eco cleaning products and particularly those from Method are favourites of ours and our clients. Not only are they highly effective cleaning products, but also smell great and don’t contain any of the harmful toxic chemicals that the majority of other products contain. For those that haven’t used them, you’ve probably seen their distinctive shaped bottles in the supermarket aisles. Needless to say we love the design as well.
Here at Neat, one of our favourite books is The Method Method, which is written by the two young San Francisco entrepreneurs who built the Method cleaning products empire. Their David and Goliath story is very inspiring and shows how they shook up the cleaning industry – an industry dominated by large companies such as Proctor & Gamble.
The company was founded in the 1990s in San Francisco by childhood friends Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry. Their vision was to create a line of environmentally friendly cleaning products and in elegant and distinctive packaging. After a typically difficult initial period where both founders had maxed out their credit cards, they got their break in 2002 when the company managed to secure distribution to 800 Target stores in the US.
“There were three people working out of our one-room office and getting Target to nationally authorize your product is like winning the Super Bowl of capitalism,” Ryan said.
The rest, as they say, is history. Today Method, makes more than 150 different cleaning products. Ten years after its founding, the company now has 100 employees and generates more than $100 million in annual sales. In 2012, the Belgian eco cleaning products company Ecover acquired them to become the largest green cleaning company in the world.
It really is a great story, and the book is a thoroughly entertaining read. Highly recommended!