The Laundress: Lindsey Boyd

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2020

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the late 1990s, while working in high-end fashion in NYC, Lindsey Boyd came to despise the weekly ritual of dry-cleaning; not only was it expensive, but it often did damage to her clothes. So she and college friend Gwen Whiting studied up on the science of dirty laundry to create The Laundress: a line of eco-friendly detergents gentle enough to be used at home on "dry-clean only" items like cashmere and silk. For years, the company operated on credit cards and faced hurdles like snoozing investors and counterfeiters. But The Laundress grew a loyal following, and in 2019, it was sold to Unilever for a reported $100 million. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New Year's is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey there, it's Guy here, and really quick before we start this brand new episode of the show,
0:32.0	how I built this isn't just a podcast, but also a book.
0:37.0	A book filled with stories and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs about the gift of failure, the beauty of ideas, and the path to building something meaningful.
0:48.0	You can pre-order the book right now wherever you get your books or by visiting gyros.com.
0:58.0	We didn't find there wasn't a partner that we had met that really understood the business.
1:03.0	And actually one of the meetings the guys fell asleep on us.
1:06.0	We were presenting to them.
1:08.0	Classy.
1:09.0	Yeah, classy.
1:10.0	And he was trying to act like he wasn't sleeping, and we noticed right away, and we were like, really?
1:15.0	We spent a lot of time presenting, and we're very passionate about our ideas, and then someone's falling asleep.
1:21.0	That didn't really bode well with us.
1:23.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
1:32.0	A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:39.0	I'm Guy Ross, and on the show today, have two friends looked at a mountain of dirty laundry and saw a hole in the market.
1:48.0	And how that turned into the laundry.
	...

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