Right here’s the tough reality behind private care merchandise: you’re largely shopping for water and plastics. The principle ingredient in a bottle of shampoo or bathe gel is water, and by far. It’s blended with a bunch of energetic components. And since it’s a “pre-mixed” product, corporations spend some huge cash on plastic bottles to move these merchandise to your toilet.
French startup 900.care desires to attempt one thing new. As a substitute of shopping for a brand new bottle of bathe gel each time you want some bathe gel, the startup focuses on the energetic components.
In your first order, you obtain an empty, reusable plastic bottle with a pump. You set a tiny stick of compacted powder within the bottle, add some water and wait a couple of hours. It’s then prepared to make use of. The subsequent time you want extra bathe gel or shampoo, you solely want a brand new stick (and a few faucet water).
“You keep all the benefits of using shower gel, for example. Our shower gel lathers, it has the same texture, it smells good, etc. But you didn’t buy any plastic and you didn’t carry any water,” co-founder and CEO Aymeric Grange advised me.
And 900.care raised a €21 million funding spherical a few months in the past ($23 million at right now’s alternate fee) as its merchandise have been working fairly properly in its dwelling nation. Lombard Odier Funding Managers is main the funding spherical with current traders White Star Capital, Swen Blue Ocean and Founders Future additionally taking part.
900.care adopted the direct-to-consumer playbook as clients can solely purchase merchandise on its web site. As you all the time want new private care merchandise, the corporate additionally determined to promote its merchandise as subscriptions completely.
In 2023 alone, 900.care generated €10 million in income ($10.8 million). The startup has 90,000 shoppers with 235,000 energetic subscriptions — every consumer can have a number of subscriptions.
Along with shampoo and bathe gel, 900.care additionally sells foaming hand cleaning soap, dish cleaning soap, laundry and dishwasher tablets, in addition to a couple of different merchandise. The corporate estimates that it prevented the equal of three.5 million plastic bottles of waste.
The small prints
900.care’s merchandise additionally characterize a very good enterprise alternative. Each few weeks, clients obtain an envelope with new sticks for his or her hygiene and residential merchandise. As a result of these compacted powder sticks are fairly small, they slot in a standard envelope and might be despatched as regular mail. 900.care saves cash on delivery charges.
Equally, factories and manufacturing strains are fairly small as they don’t want large basins to combine water with energetic components. They solely want to combine up completely different powders and compact the combination to show it into tiny sticks.
“For the compacting and industrialization stage, the big challenge was that there was no one who knew how to do that. Initially, we started working with people who were involved in cosmetics,” Grange mentioned. “But we soon realized that this wasn’t going to work. They couldn’t keep up with the pace, and the factories weren’t designed for it. So during the second quarter of 2023, we opened a factory in Saint-Etienne, dedicated to compacted powder.”
This new manufacturing unit will work completely for 900.care however continues to be operated by a associate. However the truth that all the pieces has been particularly designed for 900.care’s has drastically improved the corporate’s margins.
The startup thinks it may attain €100 million in income inside three years as it’s about to increase to different European nations past France, Belgium and Switzerland. However the firm nonetheless expects to show a revenue this yr.
