PODCAST: Going Beyond Sustainability with Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks of ECOS

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Kelly: So, up until that point, we'd been super focused on green chemistry. But I recognize that at this moment, we also had to think about real, sustainable manufacturing. How are we going to make our products? How are we going to authentically, in every decision we made, be the true and authentic green player in the space? And that meant that we wanted to have our facilities carbon neutral, that we wanted them water neutral, that we wanted them platinum, zero waste.

Announcer: You're listening to CPG launch leaders, the show where we interview new product trailblazers. Get ready for inspiration and secrets from the front lines of CPG innovation. Now, here are our hosts, Darcy Ramler and Alan Peretz.

Darcy: Welcome to CPG launch leaders. I'm Darcy Ramler. Today we are thrilled to have Kelly Velakis Hanks, the CEO of ECOs, join us. EcOS is a trailblazer in the CPG industry. Founded in 1967 by Kelly's father, a greek immigrant with a vision for safer cleaning products, EcOs started in a garage and has grown to become the number one selling green laundry detergent in the United States. Kelly, we're beyond excited to hear about your dedication to sustainability manufacturing practices and to explore how ecos continues to innovate and push the boundaries of CPG. Before we dive in, we love to start every episode with one particular question. Currently, what new products has caught your attention in the market?

Kelly: Uh, well, Darcy, thank you, first of all, so much for having me on this show today. I absolutely love your show, and I'm super thrilled to be here. You know, the marketplace is full of so many great new innovations, and I just love to see that so many people are thinking more deeply about planetary health. They're thinking more deeply about human health. Obviously, that's our mission at ECOS. And right now, if I look outside the walls of our company and I look at to what products are really exciting to me, there's a lot of exciting new inventions coming through the xprize Foundation. I don't know if you've followed the work of Peter Diamandis. I've had the great opportunity to sit on that board for the last several years. And every year, we have different x prizes to solve some of the greatest challenges our world is facing. In 2021, it was the carbon removal x prize. In 22, it was the wildfire xprize. And so you have teams competing all around the globe to come up with solutions to these challenges. And there's a few different teams that just won a round of the carbon removal xprize. And, um, there's a company called the air company that's developed a way to really transform carbon dioxide captured in the air into impurity free ethyl alcohol that can be used in all sorts of products. And so these things are really exciting to me. I'm watching all of these things and what's developing, because we're always looking for ways in which green science can go one step further. And that products aren't just sustainable products, but they're regenerative products. They're products that are actually giving back. And so, um, I would say that following a lot of the inventions coming through the X prize pipeline is really exciting to me today.

Darcy: That's super exciting. And like you said, to get these great minds that are innovating together and pushing each other along this journey where it is, it's a friendly competition, but all for the better of and for a great purpose, giving back to our environment, our world. You know, I have two little ones, nine and twelve. And it's amazing just to, you know, you start thinking about a different way about future when you have kids and what, you know, what their world is going to look like and what my grandkids world will look like and so forth.

Kelly: Oh, it absolutely. I mean, it's something that keeps me up at night, and it's also something that motivates me because, you know, I, too, think of my daughter all the time. And every decision I make for our company, I think of all of our loved ones and the fact that we have one shared home. That's the reality of it. We all live on planet Earth. We all live in this shared planet. And so if we don't collectively make the right decisions, it's really harming each and every one of us. And so, you know, the beautiful thing about Xprize is people are, of course, they're competing for these large prizes, but it forces every corner of the globe to start working on a problem, and the solution can come from anywhere. And so really having something that democratizes things, that opens it up to bright minds who, maybe they're in high school, maybe they're in college, maybe they're a PhD candidate, maybe they've never gone to school. Who knows who they are? But hopefully, elevating them to the forefront and really being able to commercialize some of these great inventions is something that gives me a lot of hope and a lot of optimism for our future.

Darcy: Well, Kelly, I would love if you could share more about the origins of ecos. How did your father's values and experience shape, really, the company's mission?

Kelly: So, my father was originally born 1935, in Crete, in Greece. And he grew up on the island of Cretever. And he grew up during a very challenging time because you had the nazi invasion during World War two, you had civil war. And so when he was 18 years old, hit on a ship, came to this country with $22 in his pocket. A really remarkable story of bravery and courage that so many immigrant families obviously share. But got to New York, didn't speak English, made his way to Illinois. He ended up going to Roosevelt University and studying chemistry because of all the greek root words, because he understood it, and went on to become a chemist in the fifties. And during those early days as a chemist, he was really looking at all of the toxic ingredients that we were using here to make cleaning products. And he was shocked to see that we would be using such corrosive and such toxic ingredients. And imagine this is in. So in the sixties, he started reading Rachel Carson's pivotal work, Silent Spring. And he was really inspired by the work she was doing on the dangers of DDT. And he started thinking a lot about his childhood and growing up in Greece and the fact that his mom used things like lemon and vinegar to clean the home. And so in 1967, he starts our company in his garage. And it's pretty remarkable because you think in 1967, people aren't even talking about organic food, and he's talking about bringing your cleaning. He's talking about making sure that you don't just look at, you know, what's in you and on you, but what's around you. How is that affecting your health? And it was really very progressive, and it was really, he was a trailblazer and, uh, just a great pioneer in this space. I mean, when I joined him in the early two thousands, we were still such a small company, oftentimes making products by hand for natural stores, for co ops. You know, the mass consumer had really yet to understand how much cleaning products affect your health and affect our planet. And so he brought a lot of passion and a lot of vision. And I'm so grateful to have had, uh, the years working alongside him.

Darcy: Absolutely. And what an amazing story, as you said, to just enter in the US, I have to say, personal note, I got the pleasure last September to spend a week on Crete, beautiful island, amazing people. And yes, I know what I got to learn is it's not about even being greek, but the Cretans, they feel very particular to their island and everything that exists there. So I, my husband and I, we got to hike out there. It was beautiful, beautiful country.

Kelly: Did you make it? Perhaps to the Samaria gorge and do the. We did, uh, it's the longest gorge in all of Europe. And Creed is.

Darcy: It is amazing. We spent the day hiking, just the two of us, and it was one of the most beautiful experiences. So has a bit of my heart and the people there as well. Just his story, I mean, you talk about and even how he ended up going into chemistry and just the passion that he found and really going back to those roots, as you said, having lemon, just looking at what were those ingredients that came from his heritage and how his mom cleaned things, and this concept that it almost took the consumers a bit of time to catch up with. Great. Let's think about organic food and what we put in our body, but then we're not going to be concerned what we clean our counters with or wash our fruits with. And that's contaminating things. And it's about, really a, uh, green movement across not only what we put in our bodies, but what we also use on the exterior as well.

Kelly: It's so true.

Darcy: Yeah. I know. You said you joined in 2003, correct?

Kelly: I did. I sure did.

Darcy: And when you stepped into the role about in 2014 of CEO, is that, uh, correct, too?

Kelly: Yes.

Darcy: So I'd love to know some of the challenges. You said, as you said, you were currently manufacturing things and maybe smaller batches or hand doing things, and obviously, ecosystem has grown substantially since you've joined. But what were some of those challenges and even opportunities that you were able to encounter along the way?

Kelly: Absolutely. Well, certainly in a family business, when the founding entity passes away, and he had been at the helm for over 40 years, it's a very challenging moment in any family business. Um, and so losing him in 2014 was very, very hard. Obviously, personally as well, after taking over the company, one of the first things that I did was I realized to really scale for the kind of growth and global growth that we wanted to really continue his vision and his mission. I wanted to build out a team. And so, you know, prior to him passing away, we did a lot of things ourselves, and we did it to the best of our ability. But we all understand that having powerful teams are transformative. And so, you know, I built out a wonderful c suite. More than 50% of my c suite is comprised of women, uh, more than 50% of my executive team as well. I wanted to build a really diverse team of leaders and make sure that when I sat in the room with my team, that I really had the opportunity to hear different thoughts, different perspectives. I knew we would be stronger in the end, because you really can't serve a diverse consumer base if you don't have diverse leaders at the table. Um, I brought on a VP of sales and a VP of marketing and a COO and a CFO and a VP of finance. I brought on a VP of HR and really, really built out our company. I also rebranded our entire line because our company name, which is a wonderful name, earth Friendly Products, also served as our brand name until 2014. But the challenge we faced in 2014 is that earth friendly products became more of a general category term. I said, darcy, hey, do you buy earth friendly products? You'd say, yes, and you might name a different green brand. And so in 2014, our laundry detergent was ecos. And ecos is such a great word because it means home in greek, right? And when you think of ecology, you understand right away that you're thinking of the study of our home and our planet. And so I wanted to take the ecos name and apply it to all of our products. We have more than 200, um, Skus under our ecos brand. And so I made sure that we rebranded everything under ecos, and that was really powerful in terms of lifting up the other categories of product, be it dish or all purpose cleaners or hand soaps, um, and then obviously really scaling, um, sustainably. So, up until that point, we'd been super focused on green chemistry, but I recognized that at this moment, we also had to think about real, sustainable manufacturing. How are we going to make our products? How are we going to authentically, in every decision we made, be the true and authentic green player in the space. And that meant that we wanted to have our facilities carbon neutral, that we wanted them water neutral, that we wanted them platinum zero waste. And so over the next several years, worked really hard to make sure that all four of our manufacturing facilities here in the United States would have all of those certifications. And when you think about being at platinum zero waste, that means that you divert more than 95% of your waste from the landfill. This is something that's hard to do when you're in your home oftentimes, but it's not hard to do when you make it a habit, right? And so we all know that if we do something every day for 30 days or 60 days, it becomes a habit, and it's no longer the same challenge. Now, of course, it took a lot longer in the business because we're servicing some of the world's largest retailers. But we really put our minds to it. We incentivized everyone at every single level. If you were on a production line. You saw a way that we could improve if you were in batchmaking, and you saw a way we could improve if you were in shipping, wherever you were in the organization. We wanted to elevate what we called friends of the earth. These were people that identified an issue, brought it to the forefront, and came up with solutions. And so it was really a connected effort by everyone. Our facility in Illinois, Washington, California, New Jersey, and, uh, we were able to achieve all of these various things. We became zero waste, we became carbon neutral and water neutral. In 2021, we said, hey, listen, sustainability is not enough. We need to become climate positive. So we even took it one step further and said, we're going to start replenishing these natural resources. And we became the first climate positive manufacturer in the United States as well. Um, the US Green Building Council is, as many in your audience might know, they have great certification programs. And they also launched in 2021 their lead, zero carbon lead, zero energy lead, zero waste programs. We got the first three certifications as well, in all of those programs.

Darcy: You know, it's interesting as you go, and obviously, woman to woman CEO here is you step into a business and you look to scale. It is easy to lose sight to the mission and the purpose as you scale. And I hats off to you and the job that you've done. I love just listening of how you've empowered your people to share, and so many of that stays in that c suite. But it sounds, as you're saying is everybody has a voice. You're learning constantly. You're aiming to always improve, to, you know, to take one step forward. And that has led to, it sounds like a lot of how you've been able to scale and keep very close to that mission and purpose that your dad had when he created the company.

Kelly: Absolutely. Listen, the teams, the people, the ecosystem, family in here. I mean, it's something that I'm really proud of, the culture, the connectivity, and the commitment to a shared mission. Right? So, uh, it's not a job, it's a way of living. It's a purpose filled life, I think, for all of us, when our jobs and our careers can really fulfill what our purpose is here on this planet, I think it's a really, really wonderful position to be in. And it's absolutely the collective efforts of everyone. It's also, I must say, you know, remaining privately held. Um, if you look in the green space, obviously, since my father passed away in 2014, all of our competitors have been wired, um, either by private equity or by strategic. And, uh, I've said, you know, I want to do it our way. I want to think of the long term. I don't want to be driven by short term capitalism. I don't want to worry about, you know, quarterly earnings. I want to worry about the company we're building for the long term, for the next generation. I want to build something that's meant to last longer than a lifetime, just as my father did. And so it's, um, it also gives me the ability to run the company, making the best decisions for our planet, for human health, because we're not driven by groups that need an exit or quarterly earnings. We're driven by our mission every day and the decisions we make.

Darcy: I love that. Uh, and part of Ecos and where it naturally sat, um, at the beginning was in these natural stores. But as we know, growth comes. And I think for me, it's sometimes in the past there was kind of a vision of, if you're taking a brand and you're moving it into mass retailers, is that the right place for it? You guys have made that transition. You've been able, which to me is a beautiful thing, because you're able to bring what Ecos brings to that mass market, that mass consumer, and change their life, versus just being for people that are out seeking it in the natural stores. But I'm sure as you moved into mass, there were some strategies that you had to employ to make sustainable products accessible to that average consumer. Can you share a little bit more about that?

Kelly: You know, Darcy, I think all we're success, and the reason that today we're the number one selling green laundry brand in the United States is because from the very beginning, our mission was to make green affordable. We never wanted green to be something just for the affluent. And oftentimes in natural markets or in green stores, the price points were such that consumers oftentimes couldn't pay up for it. So for us, it was always important, how can we make products that are the highest quality at the lowest price points? And that's why we make everything ourselves. So if you come, you could tour, and I'd love to have you, Darcy, tour any of our manufacturing facilities. We love to invite people to come into all we're ecos, see our production line, see how we're making anything. But by not using contract manufacturing and not outsourcing, by making it ourselves, controlling the whole process a through z, making sure that we keep our costs low. That way we could enter these conventional stores and entering the conventional stores and not asking people to pay a premium for green, because the reality is that most people want to do the right thing for their family. They want to make the best choice. And they oftentimes have felt like they just couldn't afford it. But everyone has the right to a healthy home. And so for us, being in the mass channel was extremely important. When I hired people right after my father passed away, I looked for sure, um, outside of just the green space. And I wanted to bring on a sales team member from Coca Cola, person from here, person from there, so that when we entered these markets, we would have a lot more knowledge of those markets. Certainly the club stores have been wonderful for us. Um, you know, there's just many retailers that have really supported our mission. And I'm so grateful for those partnerships. But I really think that what a lot of the other brands did was they just made it so expensive that people just couldn't afford it. And the way of the future, I mean, I imagine, Darcy, there'll be a time when we'll be talking and it won't even be green products anymore. People will only buy green cleaners because they'll be aware of all the dangers in traditional cleaners. And we're still not quite there, right. There's still so much education that needs to be done in the United States, there's no requirement to disclose ingredients and cleaning products. Nothing.

Darcy: Mhm. Which is crazy to me.

Kelly: It's crazy. I mean, you think about it and you're like, it leaves, I mean, cleaning products leave a residue on your plates and glasses. So every day you're eating them, you're drinking them, it leaves a residue on your clothes. Your skin is the largest organ in your body. You're absorbing it through your skin. So cleaning products have an unbelievable impact on your health. Unbelievable. And we still don't have access to information. So another thing that we did as a company from the very beginning is we said, hey, listen, we're going to disclose all of our ingredients so the consumer can pick up the product, they can read the back label, they know what's in our product. Um, we're just going to make the right decisions along the way. And sometimes, Darcy, it didn't financially pay off. Sometimes it took years to get to the point that it did. But now we have a world where people have more access to information than ever before. They're googling it, they're on Instagram, they're on Facebook, they're on all sorts of social media platforms. They're following influencers. And so by doing the right thing all along, consumers are rewarding us now because they're understanding what we were doing from the very beginning. And the interesting thing about the conventional shopper that's buying the conventional brands, they're now adding green brands to their basket. This is a huge trend we see right now, where someone is picking up a conventional product, putting it in their basket, and they're picking up our product and putting it in their basket. And when asking those consumers why they're buying both, oftentimes they say that there's someone in their home that has skin sensitivities or allergies or they have a new baby or someone maybe is going through an illness that is immune compromise. So they're buying both. But I think everyone is beginning to understand, wait a minute, if I'm buying this product for my children and for people with, uh, why am I buying something toxic for myself? Right? Because in the end of the day, cleaning shouldn't mean spreading toxins. It just shouldn't mean that cleaning should mean creating a healthy environment for you and your loved ones. We've gotten pretty far from that standard.

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Kelly: How?

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Kelly: Yeah. So one of the strategies that we employed when we got into Costco, and we're now in every Costco in the nation, was we had demo people at the point of purchase. And so I remember when we first did it, I remember people were saying, how are you going to demo laundry detergent? You can't eat it, you can't taste it, right? But we were going to have educators in the aisle, right? We were going to hire demo people who would be standing at the point of purchase and just talking with the consumers about, hey, do you know what's in your cleaning product? And really talking about the fact that at ecos, we're using plant based surfactants, surfactants that come from nature, things like coconut, things that are renewable, things that are replenishable. We would talk to them about, you know, natural essential oils that we were using in our products, and we would really educate the consumer at point of purchase. And it was a big investment, for sure, to have demo people at the point of purchase talking directly to the consumers. But it really was very important in ensuring that our product stuck and that the consumers came back week after week, month after month, and chose ecos over a lot of the other brands. Um, and then obviously, nowadays, we have even more opportunities to communicate with our consumers because now wonderful opportunities like being on the podcast with you or being on social media. I mean, social media is a great democratizing force in terms of being able to reach larger audiences, in terms of being able to understand where people are hungry for information and meet them where they're at. I remember we did a campaign once at, ah, 04:00 a.m. and I was thinking, when they were presenting this campaign to me, I was thinking, who's going to be listening to us at 04:00 a.m. the reality is that moms that were nursing their newborns, they were up at 04:00 a.m. they were on their cell phones and they were hungry for information. And so meeting them at 04:00 a.m. when the noise was quiet and they were feeding was a great moment and a great opportunity. So there's all sorts of, you know, really wonderful ways to meet our consumer and meet them where they're at. And share the information. Um, but obviously, we need to do so much more of it. I mean, I still, we've been around 57 years, and I'm super proud of that. I'm super proud that, you know, one of the things that's hardest to imitate with a brand is you can't imitate its history. But I still feel like we're so much in our infancy, even today, because the consumer is still just finding out about this. So many consumers believe that when they walk into a retailer, if a product is on a shelf, someone has checked it for human health and safety. And that's just not true in the cleaning product space. The FDA, there is no government agency checking cleaning products. So as manufacturers, they can put whatever they want in that product and sell it to the consumer. And so we really want consumers to understand that they must be an active shopper that really understands. They can't just say, okay, it's here. Someone has checked it, because nobody has. And I certainly have been fighting very hard, Darcy, for labeling for, you know, a, you know, cleaning products, right to no act that would require everyone to disclose ingredients. Because the honest truth, RC, is even a natural product. Maybe you're allergic to lavender. You have the right to know if I have a product that has lavender in it. Right. And so I hope to see one day in our nation, if we're not going to regulate these dangerous ingredients, that we at least agree that the consumer has the right to know. And the reality, Darcy, when you hear other companies say, oh, but it's proprietary, that's ridiculous. They can reverse engineer my product. I can reverse engineer their product.

Darcy: We're not asking for formulas here.

Kelly: We know it's the consumer that doesn't know. Right. The consumer doesn't know. Just let them know the ingredients. Let them make an informed choice.

Darcy: Absolutely. And I think one of the neat things that I'm seeing also in the movement is retailers taking a stance a little bit on, you know, really leaning into green products, really leaning into, you're seeing, you know, some of the retailers of obviously, Target has been around in sustainability, but you've seen Walmart taking a big bet on sustainability and again, helping to also communicate to their consumer, obviously a value retailer, but that they're also prioritizing and going to bring in brands that are green and are going to be focused on sustainability. So the movement is happening. Um, it's happening now, which is exciting. Never in the day did you think, okay, the same products that we were seeing at a Whole Foods would show up at a Walmart shelf. But that mass distribution is there. And as you start and as ecos is eliminating these barriers, as you said, we're allowing the consumer to make the right choices, and we're putting them in front of them, which is an exciting point in time.

Kelly: And, Darcy, we were actually the first green brand to go from Whole Foods to also be in Walmart. And I remember at that time, everyone was like, oh, there's no way that you can sit side by side in those two different retailers. But if our belief is that everyone deserves a healthy home, and if our belief is that green products should be affordable and they should be available, there was no way we shouldn't make that decision. And I'll never forget 2008, going down to Bentonville, Arkansas, and listening to Walmart talk about their sustainability goals. It was so exciting to me because here we have the world's largest retailer talking about the things that we'd been passionate about for so long. And that's been a really wonderful partnership for us, really being able to expand our ecosystem, offering in retailers like Walmart.

Darcy: And that, I mean, that just brings up, I'm sure when your father started the company, you know, the demographic that you were targeting is so different than today, what it looks like. Can you kind of expand on how that has evolved for you, how you guys look at the consumer now compared to, like you said 57 years ago, what that looked like is very different now where you have such a reach and such an audience.

Kelly: Well, so many things have changed. I mean, you know, when you think about it, at that time, we were really targeting women. We were targeting women who were staying at home with children. We were really, you know, looking at that demographic, and through the years, it's changed dramatically. First of all, 40% of our shoppers are Mendez. And I'm so thrilled to see that change. And so we're targeting them. We're meeting them where they're at. A lot of our shoppers now, they're not moms. They're 21, 22, 23 years old. They're university students. They've moved out. They're in the dorms. They're making their first purchasing decisions. I mean, we really see Gen Z and millennials really passionate about rain brands, right? I mean, it's so fun for me. My daughter is 20 years old, and when I moved her into college, she took our ecos liquidless laundry sheets, and she's, like, walking around handing them out to all of these people. Uh, and she used it like social capital. Hi. Great to meet you. Here, try this. And it was so fun for me, and it was so fun, uh, for me to see young people excited to get this liquidless laundry sheet right. And so it's just, you know, an anecdotal story, but really, that 21 to 34 year old audience are really powerful and passionate about green brands. Um, we've seen things happen that were even unexpected when we launched our liquidless laundry sheets, and we really thought about really targeting just Gen Z and the millennials. We then saw the baby boomers love it because it was light. Sometimes the bottle is heavy to lift, hard to pour, makes messes. The sheets are light. There's no plastic, easy to use. And so we have a much bigger audience to speak to today, and we're able to target very different messages to the various different audiences. But it's no longer just limited to a small demographic.

Darcy: Absolutely. And some of those innovations and changes in a digital world where Covid kind of pushed us in, you know, e commerce started to explode. It also has allowed different categories for you guys to enter and be more of players within that. You know, when you're shipping plastic, as you know, with liquid in it, not only is it expensive because it's heavy, I mean, it can also be messy and a lot of other things. So being able to have these sheets that now you can ship and can be delivered is also an amazing, you know, it's amazing for accessibility, it's amazing for, as you said, storage people how, you know, limited space, everything that goes within that.

Kelly: Yes. And that's why, you know, with anything, we're always trying to sort of advance in green science, advancing green packaging, and it's about taking the consumer on a journey. Right? And so those liquidless laundry sheets, those really came out of our desire to. All right, we want to reduce plastic, to get rid of plastic, need to get rid of water, we need to dehydrate it. And so once you dehydrate it, then you can concentrate the surfactants. You already have water in your washing machine. It's there already. So if I can just deliver you the concentrated surfactant, you can drop it into your water. You could have a wonderful laundry detergent. We just launched this year a detergent in our aluminum cans. They're infinitely recyclable, and they're just the surfactant. We took the water out of it. So super concentrated. So looking for all these ways to really think how to reduce plastic, because all of these challenges we've been thinking about for a long time, but it's about getting the consumers engagement I remember many years ago where we put refill stations into whole foods. And Darcy, I was so excited about those refill stations. I was like, this is it. Everyone's going to come in, refill their bottles. No one did it. No one would do it, right? And so, okay, now, in Europe, you know, we've had success with it, but we couldn't get that same level of success here. So, you know, went back to the drawing board and said, okay, they won't come in to refill the bottle. So then how can we remove the bottle? And what are the other things that we could do? Um, but you also mentioned Covid. And Covid, I must say, was such a challenging time for us, but also a time of unique opportunity, because cleaning products took center stage. And in March of 2020, it was a national conversation, how to clean. And so I appreciated the fact that at the time, we could really discuss a lot more about how to create a healthy home. And I worried a lot about the pendulum swinging too far where everyone wanted to disinfect, disinfect, kill, kill, and trying to remind people that, hey, listen, when you seek kill claims, you, too, are a living organism. So be careful, because you're trying to kill, kill, kill everything, but you're also damaging your own health. And if you looked at the CDC's website, you would have seen the CDC said, step one is to clean. Clean is the removal of viruses, germs, toxins with cleaning products, with regular hand soap, you know? And obviously, listen, if you have someone in the house that has strep throat or you're in a hospital setting and you have a bacterial issue, okay, you might use a disinfectant here and there, but using it every day is not a good idea. I mean, we understand we shouldn't take antibiotics every day. We understand that if we take antibiotics every day, it disrupts our gut. And we understand that we need to take probiotics to replenish the good bacteria. The home is also a biome. Right. And to have a healthy home, there's healthy bacteria.

Darcy: Yes.

Kelly: Yeah, you need healthy bacteria. And so, um, it was really an interesting time during COVID because we really wanted to make sure that people didn't forget, make sure you're not creating a very dangerous environment, a home that's full of vocs and things that compromise your lung health when you're trying so hard to keep your lungs safe and healthy. It was also, in terms of leadership, a, uh, really, um, really unbelievable time, because I've always enjoyed the beauty of running a company where I never think about safety issues. There's nothing that's going to burn someone or hurt someone. We're using really safe and clean ingredients in all of our manufacturing year. And suddenly, when Covid hit, we stayed awake every night from 08:00 p.m. to midnight trying to read all the science. And I was just super proud of the fact that our teams were able to work not just one shift, but two shifts, three shifts, um, and stay safe and healthy that entire time. We actually had zero spread of COVID in any of our four facilities in all of 2020. And we rose up and we met the need of our country and of the globe. And in 2021, it just. It still brings tears to my eyes. I, you know, every single facility, members of Congress came to recognize our employees, um, for their patriotism. And that's, you know, when you think of a leadership journey, I never imagined being down on our factory floor saying, like, we have to rise up when our nation needs us the most. Um, and it was. It was a beautiful thing when everyone did here at ethos, and I'm still so proud of them all these years later.

Darcy: So, so powerful. You talk about it, and as you said, there were opportunities within there for the brand. Um, and again, I go back to this education that we talk about, and you guys are in categories that the consumer, there's such a psychology behind what the consumer does. So when we talk laundry detergent there, as you said, when you have a mission to reduce plastic, being able to be innovate and bring new ideas to the category is an amazing thing. But you're also against consumer psychology of, I always pour my cap of laundry detergent. It goes into the laundry. And so as we talked about is, how did you do any consumer insights? Did you, how did you explore those paths as you approach different forms or different ways to kind of reinvent a, you know, a nostalgic category. Love, um, to hear more about kind of that, how you explore that.

Kelly: Absolutely. Well, I have an amazing chief innovation officer, first and foremost. So I have to give a lot of credit, uh, to my chief innovation officer, Jenna Arkin. She leads a wonderful team, a great R and D team, and, um, is constantly innovating. Right. So, you know, we give our team members the freedom to think, to create, to innovate, to ideate. Um, every Friday, they take many hours to just tinker with things and create whatever they're thinking about, whatever their heart's dream is. And so we've really created all sorts of different things in our library, but at that time, because we had seen that we weren't really getting the engagement with the refills. We knew that we had to figure out a way in which we could answer the call because so we're so mission driven, right, that, hey, we have to reduce plastic. And so we do that in three different ways, right. Still, if you look at our bottles, right, we're using pcr, we're reducing gram weight of plastic. We're doing different things. We're using biomimicry so that we can utilize information from nature to make bottles stronger with less plastic. We're making sure that we never use dyes or colors in the plastic. You can see our plastic is clear so that it's always 100% recyclable. So there's no reason that it can't be recycled and reutilized. We're always making sure, obviously, in our facilities, that we're tracking that all the recycling actually gets recycled because we know only 12% gets recycled. But we're doing that on the plastic bottles. Then you came over to the sheets and we knew it was going to be sort of a leapfrog, innovative technology. And certainly we run, you know, in home usage studies, we do consumer focus groups, we take a lot of feedback, but we're also really thinking a lot when we create our strategic plan about what is the needs in this world, what is really happening, because sometimes, you know, we get too far ahead of where our consumer is at. But it's still really appropriate to be thinking about it and to be doing it, because I believe wholeheartedly, Darcy, that some of these things will become a climate emergency, will become something where we just must make these different decisions. And we want to already be there, right. And we want to do everything we can. So in this case, we said, okay, we're going to do everything we can to reduce the plastic in our laundry bottle. Then we're going to launch a line of packs. A lot of people are familiar with the pack format, but we're going to make sure that we put that also in a, uh, plastic free offering and that we get rid of any sort of plastic container. They're familiar with the packs. Let's make sure they have that option. And then the sheets would be this sort of third option. And we really wanted to give the consumer a choice because we know that consumers like to have choices. They don't like too many choices because then they'll choose nothing but giving them three solid choices in three different formats and allowing them, no matter what, which one of those three choices they make, they're making a choice that's better for their health and better for the planet.

Darcy: That's perfect. I mean, it is, as you said, you're meeting them at every stage, right? Some may be more progressive and willing to try something that's a little bit of a different form, but if there's some hesitation, there you go. They can still make. They can still make the right decision. So it's, it's kind of that simple philosophy of, you know, putting everything in front of them, like you said, not too much that it's going to overcomplicate the true process, but everything that is needed to make the right decision and help guide them into a greener home.

Kelly: Exactly. And then no one has to feel bad, you know, if they want to do things a certain way, no problem. I mean, every product that we make is going to have the same healthy, safe, clean ingredients in it. And I think that, you know, my real goal is just to empower people. Empower them, let them know that in a world where we feel like so many people we know are affected with so many illnesses, so many struggles, what can we do? Sometimes it feels very complicated, but there are a few things that we can do every day. And making decisions about the products we bring into our home is one of them. You know, we want people to vote with their dollars and vote for, uh, a healthier life for everyone.

Darcy: Well, we've talked a lot about the journey of ecos. Looking ahead, what is your vision for the future of ecos and the cleaning product industry in general?

Kelly: Oh, I mean, like I said, I still feel like we're in our infancy. And so, you know, people would often ask me about, like, oh, you know, are you competing against green brands? No, uh, we want to compete against the conventional brands, and I want us to be doing the type of volume, uh, and dollar sales that the conventional players do. And I look forward to that future, certainly building sustainable manufacturing facilities in other parts of the world. Uh, I opened our, um, offices and our manufacturing in Greece back in 2018 to service Europe, at least in Africa. But I look forward to really expanding our footprint and really showcasing that business can be used as a powerful tool for good and making sure that the cleaning space, the future of cleaning, is really creating a healthy environment that we get away from all of the misinformation, that people stop thinking that a dye does something to clean clothes, or they stop thinking that a lot of foam does something, and they start realizing that the real things that work can come from nature, that nature is always our most powerful ally and, uh, that we need to return to those roots to make sure that we have a viable, healthy future for all of our loved ones.

Darcy: Absolutely. Well, Kelly, thank you so much for talking about the eco story today. Your professional journey and the innovation of ecos provides crucial insights into successful, sustainable business operations in the CPG industry. It is stories like your father's, yours, and Ecos that remind us to keep innovating, stay inspired, and let's continue to redefine the world of CPG innovations. Thank you so much.

Kelly: Oh, uh, Darcy, thank you so much for having me. It was a true honor and pleasure to be with you today.

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