Andrew Kung
Jonathan Bostock, left, and Alex Reed founded a direct-to-consumer cleaning solution company called Truman’s earlier this year. Bostock is the former president of Big Ass Fans, and Reed is the company’s former global marketing director.
Despite its squeaky-clean image, Jonathan Bostock and Alex Reed noticed a tremendous amount of waste and inefficiency in America’s surface cleaner industry. The average grocery store, they found, stocks 57 different cleaning products, most of them packaged in single-use containers and offered in a rainbow of not-so-natural colors and scents. Additionally, there was little to distinguish the brands in terms of product design and positioning. They all looked pretty much the same and promised a similar result.
“We couldn’t believe how boring cleaning was—just the entire category,” Reed said. “It had devolved into a couple of camps—really old, stodgy brands that had been around for a century and sound chemically by name, and then you have the aspirational, lofty, green brands. It’s just so ordinary and undifferentiated.”
Bostock and Reed, the former president and global marketing director of Big Ass Fans, respectively, saw an opportunity to do better.
The result is Truman’s. The Lexington-based start-up offers direct-to-consumer cleaning products sold through its website on a subscription basis. A starter kit includes four reusable plastic spray bottles and a six-month supply of four non-toxic, concentrated cleaning solutions that cover the entire home—floors, kitchen, bathroom and glass. The kit’s packaging is designed to minimize dead space and weight, and ships directly from a facility in Toledo, Ohio, that developed and manufactures the cleaning solutions exclusively for the brand. The owner of the facility is also the third partner in Truman’s.
Robert Wagner
Truman’s cleaners are formulated, manufactured, and packaged at a facility in Toledo, Ohio.
Customers fill the spray bottles with tap water, insert one of the four cartridges into the bottle’s neck and screw on the top. A propriety sprayer system releases the concentrated cleaning solution into the water in a colorful plume and the product is ready to use. The company’s standard subscription plan includes four refill cartridges of each cleaner type shipped every six months at a cost of $3.75 a four-pack with free shipping. Customers may also pause or customize their plan based on their cleaning needs.
“The way we look at it is you’ve got a $30 billion industry that’s completely broken,” Bostock said. “The rate of products going from factory to distribution center to store shelves to homes will never be as small as it is today. It’s only going to increase, so brands have to think differently. And, the fact is, more people expect products to be delivered to their homes. For us, what that meant was let’s remove the water—that’s not a new thing, concentrates have been around forever—but big brands have relied on having products sit on the shelves and doing things the old way. You need a proper product for shipping. You need the smallest volume and the lowest weight.”
You should also make it fun, the founders decided. “Because 99 percent of people don’t like to clean—it’s just something we have to do—so why does it have to be so boring from a product design and brand messaging standpoint?” Reed said. “Let’s have some humor in there.”
The Trumans.com website sports a colorful design and is filled with informative, often snarky, messaging. The site also features Instagram-style photos of customers using the products in a lifestyle setting. The names of the cleaners themselves—Floors Truly, The Glass is Always Cleaner, etc.—also convey a relatable attitude, as does the automated text messages customers receive when contacting the brand to request refills.
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Robert Wagner
Truman’s lineup of nontoxic, concentrated surface cleaners covers the whole home—kitchen, bathroom, glass and floors.
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Robert Wagner
Truman’s lineup of nontoxic, concentrated surface cleaners covers the whole home—kitchen, bathroom, glass and floors.
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ROBERT WAGNER
Truman’s lineup of nontoxic, concentrated surface cleaners covers the whole home—kitchen, bathroom, glass and floors.
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Robert Wagner
Truman’s lineup of nontoxic, concentrated surface cleaners covers the whole home—kitchen, bathroom, glass and floors.
The company’s offerings and approach seem to resonate with consumers. Since its launch earlier this year, Truman’s has grown to include several thousand customers worldwide, the founders say. In April, Fast Company recognized Truman’s as part of its third-annual World Changing Ideas Awards contest.
“We’re not here to be a small online ecommerce company. We’re here to completely change the way the industry works.” —Truman's co-founder Jonathan Bostock
Despite Truman’s initial success, Bostock and Reed continue to be strategic and deliberate with their growth projections, especially as they continue to prove their concept and better understand exactly what consumers want. “We could probably create 20 jobs tomorrow, but the net benefit to the company right now—and to the customer specifically— isn’t there until we create the work and until we understand where those investments should be made,” Bostock said. “We’re not pressed right now, because of how we’re structured, to deploy a vast amount of capital in a short period of time, which I think drives a lot of bad decision making.”
While the growth may be measured and cautiously optimistic, the founders’ ambitions are gauged for a much grander scale.
Says Bostock: “We’re not here to be a small online ecommerce company. We’re here to completely change the way the industry works.”
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GEORGE RUPERT more than 4 years ago