Kristi Lord's son had eczema. Like many new moms, she was sure she was to blame. Going down a research rabbit hole, she found that many cleaning products included ingredients that could irritate sensitive skin, and started DIYing her own.
At the same time, Lord had been talking with her friend Lindsay Droz about starting a business. Droz had a similar epiphany about non-toxic products while pregnant and looking at a warning label on a bottle of floor cleaner.
The pair created L’AVANT Collective, a Seattle-based luxury home-care brand featuring effective plant-based products that look good on the kitchen counter. Current top sellers include a multipurpose surface cleaner, dish soap, laundry detergent and hand soap.
“Love at First Belly Bump”
Lord and Droz had a lot in common when they met at a friend’s wedding, both nearly nine months pregnant.
“It was love at first belly bump,” Lord says. Both were in high-powered corporate careers, Lord in finance, Droz in medical device sales. Each would go on to have three children.
After kicking around a few business ideas, the partners settled on non-toxic, plant-based home products. The goal was to create something that would actually clean (unlike many “natural” products on the market), and that would fit a modern aesthetic.
The first challenge was that neither Lord nor Droz had a background in consumer products.
“We really needed a formulation chemist,” says Droz. She found a candidate through connections on LinkedIn. But there was just one problem: She wasn’t interested.
Droz persisted, suggesting a coffee meeting and promising to go away if it didn’t pan out. The chemist is still with the company, advising the founders about other essential parts of the manufacturing process. They spent about a year on formulas, including 30 or 40 rounds of revisions. It took about three years for L’AVANT Collective to reach the market.
Community Support Was Key
Lord and Droz bootstrapped their new venture, splitting their savings equally and launching online-only in December 2020. Early marketing involved sampling with Seattle friends and Instagram. They hand-labeled and hand-filled the first bottles.
The L’AVANT Collective team describes their products as “eco-luxe,” meaning that they look and feel as good as they work. Lord notes that a lot of sustainable products have “a little bit of a crunchy, very basic packaging formulation. We wanted to elevate that.”
“If you're launching a product today, it better be safe, and it better be good for the environment,” says Lord. “That’s table stakes. … [But] no one's going to come back and buy a $28 dish soap if it doesn't work.”
L’AVANT Collective is now available at nationwide retailers including Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and the Container Store, as well as many local home retailers and online. But the founders can’t say enough about the importance of the Seattle business community in their success.
Seattle retailers, including Watson Kennedy, City People's and Metropolitan Market, were the first to stock their products. Having a solid local network also helped — something that Lord points out is a benefit of starting a business at mid-career.
Droz advises entrepreneurs to lean on those connections and to reach out and ask for help or insight.
“People will say yes to you,” she says. “But if you don’t ask, you’re not going to get an answer.”
