Sarah Paiji Yoo, Blueland: Changing Consumer Behavior – Well Made E97

It's hard to believe that Blueland only launched this year. In fact, it's hard to believe that stores are still stocked with single-use bottles of cleaner. It's definitely not easy to change consumer behavior around CPG items, but Blueland has already made a real splash with their just-add-water cleaning tablets and this is just the beginning.

We've heard how Leaf Shave, Seed, and Ollie have embraced the refill model, now, Blueland founder Sarah Paiji Yoo is sharing how she took that model and dehydrated it. Listen in to go behind the scenes of Blueland's rapid growth, the struggles to find a manufacturer for their cleaning tablets, and pitching on Shark Tank.

“This industry has grown up to really be optimized for retail and shelf space.”

Blueland uses Lumi Services to engineer their corrugated packaging.

On this episode, Sarah shares why she used her years of startup experience to launch Blueland (1:41). She talks about how they chose the products they launched with — and the product she had to put on the backburner (6:27).

Consumers aren't the only ones who needed to shift. Sarah talks about her team's quest to find a manufacturer that could create dry formulations for cleaners (10:26). To go with the tablets, they needed to design a bottle that could last forever. Sarah talks about why — despite their plastic-free product focus — the Blueland team chose on acrylic bottles for their cleaners (15:19).

Blueland is still riding the wave of their Shark Tank appearance a few weeks ago. Sarah shares more about her pitch to the sharks, and what didn't make the final cut on the episode (15:19). She and Stephan talk about life after Shark Tank and some of the Silicon Valley skepticism around the show. She takes us back to her time at Launch where she helped to start and lead brands like Rockets of Awesome, Trade, and M. Gemi (33:55). Finally, Sarah shares what it was like raising a newborn while also raising money for her newborn business.

Also mentioned on this episode:

Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute
Shipping Things Live — a live event at Lumi HQ, ft. Asher Hunt co-founder of Bite Toothpaste
Launch, a startup studio
A clip of Blueland on Shark Tank
M. Gemi on the Well Made podcast and Unboxing Things
Rockets of Awesome on the Well Made podcast and Unboxing Things
Trade Coffee
Snapette, Sarah's first company
Sarah and Betsy Fore (founder of Tiny Organics) have a conversation about breastfeeding while raising money.
Open jobs at Blueland

You can find this and all future episodes on iTunes, Google Play, and here on the Lumi blog. This episode was edited by Evan Goodchild.