The Method Method: Green, Nimble and Disruptive

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You've probably seen Method cleaners -- they're on the shelves at retailers large and small, including Costco, Home Depot and Fred Meyer. But it's almost as likely that you've noticed their eye-catching, unconventional-looking containers without realizing just how green the products within are.

Founded by two innovators who describe themselves as "people against dirty," Method designs all of its products to meet rigorous environmental sustainability standards, both for those stylish containers and the cleaning products themselves. The company maintains dueling lists of "clean" and "dirty" ingredients to guide their development, and will work with suppliers to create brand-new, environmentally friendly chemicals to keep homes clean. In the process, the company has uprooted the old ways of thinking in the $15 billion cleaning-products industry.

I spoke with Joshua Handy, Method's senior creative director, about how being small, nimble, and always keeping an eye on sustainability, has made the Method method a success.

Matthew Wheeland: Josh, thanks so much for taking the time to talk. The first question I have is really just about the genesis of Method. What did the shelves of your local Safeway look like in 2001 when the company started? What direction did the company set out hoping to shift it to?

Joshua Handy: Well, I think the thing that the founders noticed when they set about thinking about starting Method was that in many categories in CPG, all the competitors are really closely aligned to each other. So it's almost as if everyone is sort of copying what everyone else is doing. So they felt that everyone was really talking about problem solution in a really basic way. So no one was really talking about the experience of cleaning. And it kind of seemed to them that people had been sold this bill of goods where cleaning was this terrible chore. And it really didn't need to be like that. It could be something that was actually quite pleasurable.

MW: Method products stand out immediately from when you first see them. And then as shoppers get more into it they learn about the environmental benefits and all that. Have you seen any shift in what neighboring products look like? Is there a trend to a little more thoughtfulness in design of cleaning products?

JH: So one of the things we set out to do was to disrupt these really boring categories that we're in. So now the key way that we do that is we try to bring this combination of both style and substance to the categories. So the style of Method is all about getting people to notice the product, pick them up, get engaged in them, use them, get pleasure from using them, want to use them again. The substance side of it, which is a deeper story, is all about how green they are, how good for the environment they are, how they are non-toxic and don't add toxins to your home and that type of stuff.

Now, I think what the genius of Method is that we don't ask people to sacrifice to be green. You know, a lot of the green products out there they kind of either don't work as well or are very kind of -- they have a certain look, which I think is kind of pretty ugly. What we're trying to do is to not make people think about sacrificing either performance or how the bottles look or how the product looks to get what they want.

And I think people are starting to realize as green has become more and more mainstream that just being -- having a green product out there just kind of makes you part of the noise. So it's kind of -- it's becoming more and more the price of entry into the cleaning category that you have an environmentally sensitive solution. Once you're there then you ask yourself, "Well, now what?" Everyone kind of had similar amounts of effectiveness. Everyone is kind of green. You really gotta start looking at more higher order benefits than those to make your products stand out and have a really sort of sustainable and competitive advantage as everyone else.

So over the time we're seeing as people enter into these categories and their own brands mature or they see Method taking market share from them, they're sort of -- a lot of them have responded by making their products more aesthetically pleasing. Paying more attention to how the consumer uses and lives with the product in their home rather than just looking at the solution -- the problem solution. The, "I've got a dirty countertop I need to clean up." Sort of moving beyond that into more sort of experiential realms.

MW: And one of the best examples of the effect that Method has had is with the ultra concentrated laundry detergents, where your company was the first to introduce that and how everybody is doing it.

JH: Yeah. That's a huge green story for us actually. We often talk about that. We managed to move an entire category in a way that makes the category itself a far more green and sustainable sort of part of the department or the supermarket now. So as you said we were kind of the first to introduce three times concentrated laundry detergent probably -- I think it was back in 2004. Quickly sort of copied by -- well, copied is sort of a strong word, but others moved into the space.

And the reason they did is because it makes so much more sense that what was currently on the market in the sense that the bottles become smaller. The amount of water you're shipping around the country becomes smaller. It's easier to use. The consumer finds it easier to use. There's so many wins there that translate from doing that. And the wins are often -- can be thought of as environmental ones.