the method method tease-athon #1

Hey method lusters! So, you might have heard a word or two down on the street corner that method is about to drop their big new book, the method method! Or, if you're a perfectionist, their slightly longer title of the method method: seven obsessions that helped our scrappy start-up turn an industry upside down! Whew! So to celebrate method's new pride and joy hitting store shelves on September 15th, I thought I'd present some Q&A and teaser quotes from the book starting today! Ya know, something to get your juices flowin', method style! So without further ado, here goes:

the method method tease-athon question #1 : What were method's first three products? In order of their debut! (example: Perhaps you'd think 1) hand wash, 2) candles, 3) laundry detergent) I'll reveal the answer during the next tease-athon! So, comment away! And don't forget...


"To celebrate the upcoming publication of the method method: seven obsessions that helped our scrappy start-up turn an industry upside down, co-founders Eric + Adam will be hosting an interactive webinar on Wednesday, September 7th for budding entrepreneurs and fans of the brand.

the guys will tell candid stories about the first ten years of method’s success and share principles at the heart of our business philosophy. but they also want to hear from you! whether you’re interested in talking about being an entrepreneur, finding inspiration or you have a burning question for Adam or Eric, it’s sure to be a lively conversation.

want in? simply pre-order a copy of the book and email your receipt to methodbook@methodhome.com. you’ll then receive log-in details to join the conversation on Wednesday, September 7th at 9:00AM PT/12:00PM ET. enter by Wednesday, August 24 to be included.

learn more about the book and webinar here."

let's get method!

Sing it with me,now! (To the tune of Physical!) "Let's get method, method, I wanna get method, let's get into method! Let me hear your dishes talk, Your bathroom talk, let me hear your method talk!" Cause it's all about the method method!

And check out this rockin' cool deal for early bird lusters!

"to celebrate the upcoming publication of the method method: Seven Obsessions that Helped Our Scrappy Start-Up Turn an Industry Upside Down, co-founders Eric + Adam will be hosting an interactive webinar on Wednesday, September 7th for budding entrepreneurs and fans of the brand.

the guys will tell candid stories about the first ten years of method’s success and share principles at the heart of our business philosophy. but they also want to hear from you! whether you’re interested in talking about being an entrepreneur, finding inspiration or you have a burning question for Adam or Eric, it’s sure to be a lively conversation.

want in? simply pre-order a copy of the book and email your receipt to methodbook@methodhome.com. you’ll then receive log-in details to join the conversation on Wednesday, September 7th at 9:00AM PT/12:00PM ET. enter by Wednesday, August 24 to be included.

learn more about the book and webinar here."

+

How awesome is that! A book revealing lots of method obsessions that made them who they are today! And it features a case study on none other than your very favoritest in the whole wide universe method blog, method lust, and a webinar where you can chat with the big wigs (but they're really nice big wigs, I promise!) via your computer! It doesn't get any better than that! (Well, if you had some nice gooey chocolate chips cookies and milk to eat while you were talking to the method founders, yeah, that would be even better! Keep that in mind for the big day!)

Don't delay, you're last chance for this amazing deal is August 24th!

have you hugged a tree today?

Over on treehugger.com, you'll find a new interview with method co-founder adam lowry! AND, you can listen to the interview via podcast (right click to download), or read it the old fashioned way!

"Adam Lowry, The Man Behind the Method (Cleaning Products)
| by Jacob Gordon

method cleaning products are the fitting accoutrement for the style and hygiene-minded ecophile. But Method is more than boutique toilet bowl cleaners; it is booming into one of the great success stories of the new economy. Adam Lowry, with his business partner Eric Ryan, has reinvented his field (and made huge returns). Method is a certified B Corporation, its products bear the Cradle to Cradle seal, and renewable energy and upcycling are daily fare. Adam Lowry explains to TreeHugger what’s new in the lab, and divulges Method’s problem-solving motto: “What would MacGyver do?”

TreeHugger: Give us a quick perspective on the size of Method—what's the reach, the size, the revenue?

Adam Lowry: Well, we try not to pin down our revenue numbers (specifically because there are a lot of people that want to know that info) but we're north of a $100 million company; we’ve got 100 employees or so, and we've gotten there in about seven years, which is pretty quick when it comes to soap companies.

TreeHugger: Method is certified as a B Corporation. We recently we spoke with Jay Coen Gilbert, the co-founder of B Corporation, and we heard his perspective on this. But I'd like to hear yours. As an entrepreneur, what does it mean to be a B Corp?

Lowry: I was really excited when I met Jay and heard about his vision for B, because what it does is codify and make legally binding what Method is already doing in its business practices. What's really missing right now for sustainable business is a clear and transparent set of metrics for what is environmentally and socially good in a business.

And what they're doing is filling that gap, the social and environmental version of generally accepted accounting principles, so that we have a standard measuring stick that we can use to assess the social and environmental quality, along with the financial quality, of a business. And because it's publicly reported and it's completely open and transparent, it also creates an incentive to improve over time. It's a real apples-to-apples way of measuring businesses versus one another, as well as creating that incentive for all businesses to strive to get better over time.

TreeHugger: Method is also certified as a Cradle to Cradle business. Method must be one of the few companies that carries both of these badges. What do these mean, how do they work together, and do they overlap at all?

Lowry: I think that's a great question because there is a proliferation of environmental quality labels or eco-labels out there. We like the ones that are most broad-based, the ones that assess the broadest set of things, not just a product but an entire company's practices. And the B rating system goes all the way down to the way that your business is governed and its board composition, for example. And Cradle to Cradle assesses the entire life cycle of a product and how it's made.

So those are two very broad-based validators of environmental quality, and therefore ones that we really like. And we've chosen to go ahead and get certified by both of those agencies.

There are also other product certifications that are narrower. We have the Design for Environment recognition from the US EPA, which is about the chemistry that you use in the product. That's another nice one.

But ultimately, I think the role of each one of these is really just to have an objective third party validate the environmental and social quality of the product or service that you're providing. And then it's our job, as the people running the business, to make the brand meaningful to consumers so that they understand that the product experience they're going to get is superior to what they might get with another brand.

TreeHugger: Do you feel like these certifications have provoked you to change the way you do business, or are they really just a way to, as you say, codify what is already underway?

Lowry: Michael Braungart and Bill McDonough have been a great inspiration of mine personally, and they also have been a great inspiration to our business. And the same could be said of Jay and what they're doing over at B Lab. But really, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily changed the way we do business. It's inspired us to do the way we do business better.

TreeHugger: You were invited to Washington recently, along with a gaggle of other leaders in the new economy (the founder of Twitter and others) to advise the Obama administration. What did they want to know?

Lowry: That was a really interesting meeting. We were asked in advance to put together some policy ideas, things that we thought the administration should be doing that either they weren't doing yet or the previous administration hadn't done.

And when we got there we really learned that that was just a thought exercise and that, really, the administration knows what policies don't work. They know that there are perverse incentives created by subsidies to oil and gas companies and the wrong type of agriculture, for example. And also—because they've got tons of policy experts—they know the right policies that would work.

The problem is, they can't get from point A to point B because they don't have the popular support. And so what they were doing was enlisting us business leaders—or, as they said, young entrepreneurs that are exemplary new-economy businesses—to make an example of us. They wanted to be able to point to companies that are not asking for handouts from the government yet are still succeeding, and doing so using an ethos of business that doesn't create collateral damage socially and environmentally.

And if they can point to us as great examples, they can start to build popular support around a new way of doing business and actually enact some of the changes they already know are necessary.

So I really thought it was an interesting meeting, and really inspiring. I was impressed with the caliber of people that are involved in the administration. I was really impressed.

TreeHugger: Method makes a family of products that, typically, are very petroleum-intensive. Do you feel like you are head-to-head with the petroleum industry? Are they the bad guy in this scenario?

Lowry: I don't think so. I think the bad guy is more just convention. I think that our economy is very much a petroleum-based economy. That's a fact. And even at Method we have to ship our products around. We use a little bit of biodiesel transport to do that, but most of it is regular old diesel transport.

We do everything that we can, but we still aren't de-linked from that petroleum economy. And I think that when you really get down to brass tacks about how to change that paradigm, it's something that's going to happen through a series of small innovations that are catalysts for larger innovations.

I mentioned biodiesel, for example. We have two biodiesel trucks that we're using in a pilot program in the State of California. They're actually the cheapest trucks that we run. And so it's a great proof of concept that doing the green thing can also be the economically viable thing. We're trying to expand that program now, a tiny program that can build into a much bigger one over time.

You have to think differently and from the ground up if you want to try to change those set conventions.

TreeHugger: When we interviewed Gary Hirshberg on Treehugger Radio—the guy who started Stonyfield Farm—we asked him why the type of plastic they use for their yogurt cups is not recyclable in most areas.

The answer that he gave was very counterintuitive: they can make a lighter package from this particular type of plastic. No, it's not recyclable in most areas, but the reduction in the carbon footprint, strictly from transporting a lighter product, far outweighed the benefit of being able to recycle more of their plastic containers.

What's going on at Method that might be a counterintuitive measure?

Lowry: We've got a bunch of things going on. That yogurt cup example makes me think of a particularly interesting example that we recently did with wipes packaging. At Method we have a mantra. It's a very cradle to cradle-esque mantra about our packaging which is: we want every package to have a past and a future.

And so we think about designing packaging from what it was before it was a bottle or a flow pack or whatever, to what will it be when you’re done with it. We don't like the types of tradeoffs that are inherent in that yogurt cup example: where you either use less plastic that's not recyclable or you use more.

And that exact thing came up when we had a canister for cleaning wipes. It was a recyclable HTPE bottle made largely out of post-consumer recycled resin.

We did a lifecycle analysis and we realized that if we made it out of a flow wrap film, like a potato chip bag, we could cut the plastic down by about 80%. The problem was that flow wrap plastic is a multilayer film and it's not recyclable.

At Method we fundamentally believe that any time you get one of these environmental tradeoffs where you are saying, “yeah, this product has no future because it's not recyclable, but there's less of it so it's better in the present.” That trade off is just a symptom of poor design.

We set out a couple of years ago in partnership with a film company, we developed the world's first recyclable flow wrap film. Actually if you buy Method wipes product today, it is made out of a single film, not a multilayer film. You can put it in your recycle bin and it's 80% less plastics.

We've created a win on both the present and the future and we're now working on making that film from post consumer recycled resin so it can have a past, a present, and a future.

We really try to bring that to every package and every ingredient that we use..."

Head on over and read the rest!

scrubbing bubbles, method style

Ok, I think these pics are adorable! Especially the one with the two founders frolicking in a bathtub. Yeah, I'll leave that one be! This article comes from Inc.com. Enjoy!

"How Two Friends Built a $100 Million Company

The Rise of Method Home
Childhood friends Adam Lowry (left) and Eric Ryan didn't set out to reinvent an industry. But the combination of modern design and eco-friendly ingredients has made Method Home, the company they founded in 2000, into a $100 million behemoth. The story behind Method's now ubiquitous bowling pin-shaped containers of soap and dishwashing liquid is more than your typical bootstrapping saga. Think soapy concoctions mixed in bathtubs, drained checking accounts, and a business that barely squeaked through the dot-com bubble. Here's how Method did it.

Step One: Differeniate Yourself
While living in San Francisco in the late 1990s, Ryan and Lowry, who grew up together in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, spent hours brainstorming about products that they could reinvent. They decided to reimagine the most prosaic of household items--cleaning supplies. At the time, large corporations like Procter & Gamble and Clorox dominated the market with fairly generic products that contained harsh, toxic chemicals. Method's cleaners would be environmentally friendly and would feature elegant packaging. "Method has to enter a category with a huge disruption," Alastair Dorward, then Method's CEO, told Inc. in 2007. "The story cannot be copied overnight or eroded by existing [companies]. It has to have disruptive packaging, ingredients, and fragrance."

Step Two: Persistence Pays - Even In A Recession
Lowry and Ryan produced their first product just as the Internet bubble gave way to a recession that hit the San Francisco Bay area hard. The company quickly bled through the $100,000 in savings the partners had put up as seed capital. The founders mixed the first few batches of their all-purpose cleaning solution in a bathtub and delivered orders in a beat-up truck. By the Spring of 2001, Method had hired Dorward as CEO, but the founders would soon max out their credit cards. At one point, they had just $16 left in the bank and payments to vendors were three or four months past due. "We had to appeal to the inner entrepreneur of each of our vendors," Lowry told Inc. last year "We had to sell them on the fact that Eric and I could do something that had never been done before."

Step Three: Branding Isn't Just For Big Companies
Within a year or so, Method had fought its way to distribution in 800 stores--including shelf space in Target--and had secured enough capital to remain afloat. But Ryan and Lowry believed it wasn't enough to build a niche, green brand. They had the audacity to imagine Method outsmarting the big boys in the very field they had basically invented: brand building. But first Method’s founders had to woo one of their favorite designers to lend a hand. "The design goal is to reinvent the banal dish soap that looks like a relic of the 1950s and sits on every sink across the landscape of America," the founders wrote to Karim Rashid (pictured), a New York City-based design impresario. Though Rashid received about 15 unsolicited pitches a week, he liked Method’s boldness and the company’s concept. In 2001, Rashid agreed to come aboard as Method's chief creative officer.

Step Four: Stay Nimble
Whereas giant companies can take years to bring a new product to market, Method has built up the wherewithal to introduce a new product in only a matter of weeks. Lowry and Ryan have focused the entire company around speed and innovation. Production is outsourced to more than 50 separate subcontractors, designs that don’t take off are pulled quickly, and Lowry and Ryan focus their energies on staying one step ahead of the corporate giants in the cleaning products space. Today, Method makes more than 150 products SKUs. "When you run through the legs of Goliath," Ryan told Inc. in 2007, "you need to spend a lot of time thinking about how to act so you don't put yourself in a place you can be stepped on."

squeaky green: the method men

The Times Online UK has a nice method article (which includes Adam drinking some method bathroom cleaner! Gah!):

"Lydia Slater

Eric Ryan pours out a tumblerful of pale-blue, frothy lavatory cleaner, lifts it to his mouth and swallows. “Hmm,” he says, licking his lips. “Not bad, actually.”

Encouraged, I take a sip too. It’s sticky and acidic, and tastes of mint and eucalyptus. While nobody is recommending that any kind of cleaner should be consumed, the fact remains that if you drank a shot of Toilet Duck, you would be on your way to hospital. As the co-founder of Method, the ecological home-care company that’s put the glam into green cleaning, Ryan is proud to be able to say that he can put his products where his mouth is.

What is perhaps more revolutionary is the packaging design. The washing-up liquid comes in an hourglass-shaped bottle created by the award-winning industrial designer Karim Rashid, which squirts fluid from the bottom through a nifty leakproof spout. It’s also recycled and recyclable. No wonder, then, that you will find Method cleaners in Stella McCartney and Madonna's cupboards.

The label has also become set-designer shorthand for right-thinking cool, appearing on gleaming sinks in Will & Grace and Desperate Housewives.

The germ of the concept came to Ryan, 35, when he was sharing a bachelor pad with four twentysomething friends.

“It was probably the dirtiest apartment in San Francisco,” he says. Cleaning up after one particularly wild party, he realised that it wasn’t so much the stench of stale beer that was making him feel ill as the products he was using. “There’s a reason that your eyes water and you have to hold your breath with all those harsh cleaners,” he says. “They contain a lot of toxic chemicals, so you’re polluting when you’re cleaning — you’re using poison to make your house healthier. And that didn’t make sense.”

Coincidentally, one of his flatmates, Adam Lowry, was a chemical engineer and environmental scientist. Together, the pair launched Method in 2001, with four spray cleaners, made and bottled in the grotty flat. Even in green-leaning, early-adopting San Francisco, they struggled to survive at first.

“I expected us to fail, quite honestly,” Ryan says. The pair borrowed money from their family and friends. “That’s pressure, because you really don’t want to let grandma down. So you keep going forward, no matter how bad it gets.”

At one point, they had £8 in the bank, £51,000 owing on credit cards, and their label company refusing to make any more until the outstanding bill was settled.

Finally, funding came through from an investor: Method became profitable three years ago. It now has a turnover in excess of £51m and is widely available in the UK (at shops including Boots, The Co-op and Waitrose).

The latest range is a collection of cleverly designed baby products, inspired by Ryan’s daughter Anya, 2. The cute, squeezy, otter-shaped bottle of children’s body wash is designed to be used with one hand, while you hang on to your slippery baby with the other; the baby hair and body wash has a cap that doubles as a rinsing cup.

Ryan has also written a book with Lowry, called Squeaky Green: The Method Guide to Detoxing Your Home, which makes unnerving reading. Did you know that most big-brand toothpastes contain pesticide? Or that non-iron sheets are often treated with formaldehyde? Or that fabric softeners are made from beef fat? The good news for ecoworriers is that Ryan insists detoxing even the most chemically dependent home will take only two weeks, and you will have not only a healthier house, but a cooler-looking one, too."

recipe for success

You know you've written A LOT of posts on method, here
on method lust, when you go searching for a great new photo of those
masters of clean design (or is that designed cleaning, or clean-up
design, or design"ed" to clean, uh, I don't know...) and when you
stumble upon a pic, you say to yourself "Hey! That looks like a great
photo of the guys! I think I'll use that one!" and you click on it, and
it takes you to...

method lust. Ha ha! THAT my friends, is when you a) realize the Alzheimer's is setting in fast; and b) know you have a big obsessive problem with m.e.t.h.o.d (Hey, that could be their spy name! Yes!)

Anyway, I've found a great new article for you (Uh, I think. I'm telling ya seriously, it's becoming hard to remember what I have and haven't posted! I've done 490 posts this year! Whew, that's a lot! YES it is!) Actually it's a great new old article for you! But I always lust finding these, so I can read how it was, what they were thinking way back then (if 2006 can be considered way back then?) and to see just how far they've come (real far, baby, real far!) So without further blah and blah from me (though I know you love my blah, now don't you! You know you do...)

"By Ilana DeBare, San Francisco Chronicle,


Six years ago, at the height of the Internet boom, Eric Ryan’s friends laughed at him as he turned down one dot-com job offer after another to start a company in the stodgy, low-tech business of household cleaning products.

Today, many of those dot-coms are long gone.

And Ryan’s company, Method Products, was recently named the seventh fastest-growing private company in America by Inc. magazine.

Method, with its minimalist design and trendy-looking soap bottles shaped like teardrops and bowling pins, is a familiar sight to shoppers at stores such as Target, Safeway and Office Depot.

Its revenue of about $45 million is just a drop in the wash-bucket compared with long-standing industry giants like Clorox, which had total sales of $4.4 billion in 2005.

But Method has managed to grow prodigiously at a time when the cleaning products industry overall is largely stagnant.

And the young San Francisco company’s determination to shake things up is changing practices within the industry, as well as turning heads in the design world.

“Method has reoriented how people perceive these household cleaning products that they used to shove under the sink,” said Hsaio-Yun Chin, an assistant professor of industrial design at San Francisco State University. “It’s very sexy. It’s something you can display proudly on top of your sink. It’s another accessory to “cool,” almost a lifestyle item rather than a cleaning item.”

Today, Method has 132 products – everything from pink grapefruit cleaning spray to cucumber-lemon dishwasher cubes, mint window washing liquid and vanilla-apple air fresheners.

But six years ago, the company was little more than a wild idea shared by two high school buddies from Michigan who were rooming together in San Francisco.

Ryan, now 33, was working in advertising and his friend Adam Lowry, now 32, was a chemical engineer who had worked for a foundation researching global warming. The two were intrigued by companies like Apple Computer Inc. that had used a cutting-edge design sensibility to become industry leaders.

“We started to discuss different industries that needed to be reinvented from a design standpoint and from an environmental standpoint,” Lowry said.

The two became intrigued by household cleaning products. It is a huge industry, with annual sales of about $18 billion. But it hadn’t changed much since the 1950s. Companies talked mostly about how well their products killed germs; brands like Cascade and Comet changed little from decade to decade.

“The household cleaning aisle was so big, yet everything was so boring,” Ryan said.

Ryan and Lowry decided to create a brand of household cleaning products that would appeal to the fashion sensibilities of hip, young urbanites.

“Your house is this high-interest, high-emotion place, but the products people used for it were just commodities,” Ryan said. “We were the first ones to treat cleaning as cool. The category treats it as a chore, and to a lot of people it is a chore – but it’s also therapeutic, a ritual, with a sense of purpose to it. Method is very much about design, fragrance, the romance of it and trying to tie (cleaning) back to your home.”

They started working with exotic scents like cucumber, lavender and mandarin orange. They developed a sleek, uncluttered style for their bottles and labels. They looked for nontoxic, non-polluting ingredients, although they consciously decided not to market themselves as a “green” brand.

“There are plenty of eco-brands out there, but it’s a very small category,” Ryan said. “If you go out and call yourself a green cleaner, you’ll just steal shelf space from Seventh Generation.”

Their first product was an all-purpose spray cleaner. They drove around to local supermarkets, pitching it to store managers as they arrived at work at 6 a.m. Once they got a few placements, they conducted in-store demos themselves. They drove by the stores each week to count the bottles on the shelves and replace ones that had been purchased; their first week, they sold a total of four bottles of cleaner.

Ryan and Lowry eventually beefed up their capital by bringing in outside investors, including former Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Tim Koogle.

Their big break came with Target in 2002. Lowry and Ryan felt their approach would be a good fit with Target, which was coupling famous designers with affordable prices. So they contacted award-winning industrial designer Karim Rashid, known for bringing high-end design concepts to mundane items like wastebaskets.

Rashid designed what became Method’s signature product – a bottle of dish soap shaped like a chess pawn or bowling pin. It was built to let soap flow out the bottom of the bottle, so that users wouldn’t have to turn it upside down.

The design proved to have some glitches: Early versions didn’t close well and leaked all over store shelves. But it succeeded in putting Method on the map and getting them in the door at Target.

“Their idea on the packaging side was very novel and carved out a niche,” said Tom Vierhile, an analyst who tracks new products for a company called Datamonitor.

“It was quite polarizing,” said Method CEO Alastair Dorward, who had joined the company full time in 2001. “One group of customers thought it was groundbreaking. The other said, ‘That’s weird, I’ll go back to Dawn.’ ”

From there, Method expanded into products such as teardrop-shaped bottles of hand soap, ultra-concentrated laundry detergent, specialty cleaners for surfaces like leather and granite, and most recently, air fresheners and candles. Revenue shot from $156,000 in 2002 to $3.4 million in 2003, according to Felicia McClain, a research analyst with Mintel International.

In many categories, Method’s growth rate far outstrips its behemoth competitors.

For instance, Method’s dishwasher detergent sales grew by 28.5 percent over the past year, even though overall sales for that category grew by less than 2 percent, according to Information Resources Inc., a Chicago research firm. Method’s sales of liquid hand soap grew by 68 percent during that same period, while industry leader Softsoap grew by just 12.8 percent.

But the risk of basing a brand on iconoclastic design is that design can be easily copied. And competitors did start adopting some of Method’s innovations, such as the eclectic scents and the ultra-concentrated detergent.

Emulation by larger, long-established competitors is only one of the challenges currently confronting Method. The company also faces the growth of private label or “house” brands, one of the biggest trends in the cleaning product arena.

“Private label brands have grown so much, to a point where you have premium upscale private label brands,” McClain said. “That will be huge competition for years to come.”

road warriors

Who'd a' thought? Here's a quick video "advertisement" featuring method's co-founder, Adam Lowry, discussing why he loves his Blackberry. The promo campaign is called "Ask Someone Why They Love Their Blackberry."

Personally, I wish it were for the iPhone, and uh, I was one of their road warriors, an was given an iPhone, and uh, yeah, anyway...

the clean team

The Independent (over in the UK) has a nice write up on method.

Clean team: the young entrepreneurs set to mop up the eco-market
By Josh Sims

That Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan should receive a Valentine's Day card is not surprising. Both in their thirties, they are brainy, clean-cut, all-American business types. That the card should be made of cut-up packaging is unusual. But that it should express love for their range of household cleaning products is plain off the wall. And yet this is not unusual: Method, Lowry and Ryan's eco-friendly brand of floor polishes, disinfectants, leather cloths and other friendly cleaners, which is now being rolled out across Britain seems to attract fanatical followers.

Indeed, in taking a stance in an industry that has done its best to ignore the need for green alternatives to the toxic chemicals with which we routinely douse our homes, Lowry and Ryan have made products associated with chores hip and desirable. Their safe liquids, sprays and gels come in the kind of sculptural, minimalist packaging that appeals to the iPod generation. And they are as new wave in their business practices – using solar energy, supporting workers' rights and fair wages – as their products. They are the Ben and Jerry of the toilet bowl – with a loo cleaner made from lactic acid, wipes made from sustainable bamboo and packaged in the world's first fully recyclable film pouch, and a mop made from recyclable, plastic they were told was impossible to manufacture.

"A lot of customers buy our products because they look cool. But the reason why most of them stay loyal is because they're green," reckons Ryan, a former advertising executive who speaks of Method being "an organisation of fun", whose employees gather for a "Monday huddle" to crack jokes and talk business.

Their beliefs are not, however, something the duo have been keen to bludgeon customers with. The greenness of the products is only passingly mentioned on their packaging, though it is explained on their website. Rather, touches of humour aim to provoke thought: "Does your home have a chemical dependency?" asks one tag-line; "You may not know what your bathroom tiles taste like, but your kid does," states another.

In many ways, their range's designer aesthetic is a cynical one, an admission that few people are likely to be converted to using green cleaning products on eco-credentials alone: stylish design is a Trojan horse to get into the homes of people more concerned that detergents and cleansers should smell nice or match the cupboards. But the strategy is working. In 2005, Method recorded sales of $15m (£7.7m). Last year they were nearly $100m. "When you're David against Goliath, the likes of giant companies such as Unilever and Procter & Gamble with endless dollars to spend, you're never going to win playing their game," says Lowry, a former chemical engineer and climate scientist who worked on the Kyoto Protocol and whose business title is now chief greenskeeper (Ryan's is ripplemaker). "You have to redefine the game."

That said, their beliefs have had to be strong even to get their brand this far. First, there were factories to persuade. "Normally, they solicit a brand for business, but we had to make the sales pitch to them: I'd walk in, tell them we had no money to buy shelf space in stores, show them a rendering of a funky bottle that's hard to make and tell them we wanted to fill it with a substance others were convinced could not be made. Oh, and that we didn't expect to sell much," says Lowry.

Resistance from manufacturers was followed by doubt from retailers. According to Lowry, with sales of household cleaning products in decline, the market offering nothing distinctive and the major manufacturers squeezing retail profit, interest in anything new, green or not, has been at an all-time low.

John Lewis was the first UK retailer to take on Method, and it's now sold in Waitrose, Boots, some Sainsbury's, Co-op and Tesco stores, as well as many independent shops. Finally, consumers have had to be lured into a new way of thinking. "There is still this misconception that "green isn't clean", that such products don't work," explains Ryan. "A lot of that comes from the big companies who are constantly drumming on about 'new and improved', that they deliver superior cleaning power," he says. "And we grew up with a lot of these old brands, so we don't look at that as evil, as they potentially are – there are chemicals in those products that really shouldn't be there. Ours is a simple mission: a happy, healthy home."

Thanks to their success in the US, they may not be alone on that mission for long. Lowry and Ryan suggest that it is, in part, convention that has stopped major players from tackling the green market. But there are also, they add, philosophical barriers. "There has been apathy, a lot of saying 'green cleaning products can't be made' or sitting on the sidelines asking, 'is this green thing going away, or is it going to stick around?'," says Lowry. "It shows these companies have no spine in having a clear point of view people can buy into. We don't want to wait to see if green thinking becomes the norm – we want to make it happen. Now those giant companies are realising there is a market for green products, they're going to try to out-Method Method."

That, potentially, is good for the planet. It proves a big problem for Method. But the duo draw a parallel between their company and Apple, which keeps being imitated but is always innovating to stay ahead. Method has new products in the pipeline, among them a concentrated laundry detergent it promises will be revolutionary, as well as moves into personal care, including new baby and kids' lines – all while pioneering new and, of course, chic bio-packaging. There's also a book, Squeaky Clean, a guide to detoxing your home.

"They're a way to bring delight into drudgery," says Lowry of their products. "And they're green. But all cleaning products should be."

pod people

From Podtech.net:

"Can cleaning and washing be a green process that actually brings beautiful products into the home? Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan, entrepreneurs and co-founders of Method (”People Against Dirty”), believe so. They have created an arsenal of health-conscious cleaners, soaps and detergents based on green chemistry. And those green products come in bottles with funky designs made from biodegradable materials. In this first issue of Green Design, Lowry and Ryan talk about their vision, the design process at Method and how to build a sustainable company."

Check out this informative video featuring a peak into method, and what they're all about!

let the countdown begin!

UPDATE Now with an excerpt from the upcoming book!

Nine days (April 1st, and I can guarantee you this isn't a joke! Dirty cleaning is the only joke here, folks; the only joke!) 'til method's first book, "Squeaky Green" shines brightly in stores! Yay! (Or, order the exclusive HSN edition before anyone else, and gloat! ...I would!)

And while we're waiting those nine days, be sure to head on over to amazon.com, and check out their great sneak peek! Pages and pages!

Here is an excerpt from the book:

"Why Detox?

Reason #1: the line where your home ends and you begin is more blurry than ever.

We believe a home is more than just a box: it's sort of a second skin. It could be a third skin if you're counting clothes. So why would you clean your tub with harsh chemicals and then soak in it?

This is why all of our bodies are literally polluted.

This toxin buildup is called a "body burden" because it does just that - burden our bodies with toxic crap. A recent study proved this burden isn't just shouldered by adults: 287 chemicals (including pesticides, garbage waste, and flame retardants) were found in the bloodstream of newborn babies. Of those 287 chemicals, 180 are know to cause cancer in people or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects in animals. Think about it: these babies were just released from what you'd think is the most sterile environment around, the womb. Talk about innocent victims.

It's disturbing information.

But don't freak out. Take a few deep breaths. Now, slowly walk over to your kitchen sink, then your bathroom sink, and throw away all the cleaning products you've stashed there. Wasn't that simple?

Danny's Tip: While you may think it's green to throw away all our toxic cleaning supplies into the trash and start fresh, think again. By tossing them in the trash, you're actually improperly disposing of household hazardous waste, which could end up leaking into our waterways. Instead, use up what you have and buy green the next time you stock up on cleaning supplies. But if you can't wait, then visit Earth911.org and find a local household hazardous waste drop-off site near you to dispose of these toxic cleaning supplies properly..."

Pick up the book (and check out the sneak peek) to read more!

fighting dirty

Check out this great new article over at grist.org featuring Eric and Adam (the method founders, of course!) And what's this about "two new revolutionary products a year"! We know one of those might be the lil' bowl blu and le scrub bathroom items just released; but they mention the products will be in two different categories! So what is it we might be seeing later this year? Let the speculating begin... And, enjoy the article!

big idea! (but we already knew that!)

It's just a video crazy kind of week here at method lust! That's what happens when you're still waiting for Target to get it together and start shelving the new method bathroom line (It still hasn't shown up here in ole' North Carolina. Oh lil' bowl blu when will you be mine? I long for those intimate moments, with only you and the toilet. Wait, wait, ok, that just sounds oh so wrong, let's just move on, shall we? Nothing to see here, nothing to see here...) So until then, I'm roaming the net for wonderful method videos! Here's another great one (I'm not sure when this show first broadcast, but again, these are more for just getting to see more of method in action!) It's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch, talking with the method founders. Check it out here! (And is it just me, or should that title on the show actually say "The HOT men behind method"? Ok, ok, a small thing, I know, but really now...)

adam lowry

And just to balance things out, here is a short video (around seven minutes) with method co-founder Adam Lowry. It's from March of 2007, but these videos are less about their "newness" and more (at least for me) just a chance to get to see the guys in "live action" so to speak! Check it out here.

eric ryan

Here's a great online video I've found featuring method co-founder Eric Ryan. The complete video is about forty-five minutes in length, and it may not all be useful to view; but the first five minutes feature a great news piece on the brand. The rest gives you the chance to see Eric in action, discussing method and the design of it's packaging; among other things. Check it out here.

can you hear the squeak?

Check out a couple preview reviews on the method founder's new book "Squeaky Green", out in April! I haven't had a chance to peruse it myself yet, but I'll let you know my thoughts when I do!

"Frankly, I'm a bit over eco-consumerism, especially after reading this New York Times article a while back... So I was skeptical when I received a copy of Squeaky Green (Chronicle Books), the new eco-cleaning guide by the Method guys Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry. To be expected: a lot of veiled Method product promotion. Not so expected: smart tips that don't require buying more products, like how to clean sponges (zap them in the microwave for a few minutes), plus advice on products to avoid (like paper towels, which contain a plastic that makes them hard to biodegrade)."
- Ratha Tep, Assistant Features Editor, Food & Wine

"I’ve written a few books and had my writing featured in others, but by far my proudest collaboration so far has been with the guys at Method Home on their soon-to-be-released book Squeaky Green. Method makes all those great-looking home cleaning products you see at Target, Home Depot and even Gristedes. The products aren’t just eco-friendly, they’re people-friendly. Meaning, no pesticides or other nasty things (yes, there are pesticides in some of the products you probably slather on your skin on a regular basis). You can pre-order the gorgeously designed (by Nate Pence) book at the Chronicle Books site or Amazon."
- Rima Suqi, blog.rimasuqi.com

I just found out you can also purchase it at Target (of course!)

read it and weep!

Weep with joy, that is! Coming this April, Eric Ryan + Adam Lowry have written a book! Check it out:

"When Adam Lowry and Eric Ryan founded Method, the environmentally friendly brand of cleaning products, they used packaging stylish enough to showcase on the countertop and pleasant aromas such as green tea and cucumber to transform household products into must-have lifestyle accessories. And when they coined the phrase "People Against Dirty," they weren't just talking about the stuff you track in on your shoes—they also meant the toxic chemicals that make up many household detergents. Packed with helpful tips and surprising facts, their first book, Squeaky Green, is a totally informative and completely entertaining room-by-room guide to giving dirty the boot. Squeaky Green is rehab for chemically dependant homes. "

The book will be a 158 page paperback, and will retail for $16.95. (A steal! But uh, don't, ok. It's just the nice thing to do.) The book will see an April 1, 2008 release date! I can't wait!

green living

Check out this great new article I just found at gliving.com (which stands for Green Living.) I realize this article is from October 2007, but I personally had not seen it before. And what's really great about this article is it's the first time I've gotten to see the method founders in action (and "live", there's a video section!) - Pretty great, check it out!