Where once you had to go to a specialty store to find natural cleaning products, they’re now on shelves in places from supermarkets to Target. And a Wisconsin-based company is ending up with products on an increasing number of shelves around the country.
Rebel Green launched its first product nine years ago - a spray to wash fruits and vegetables. Ali Florsheim, co-founder and co-owner of Rebel Green, shares why it is important to use something beyond water to rinse produce:
"Farmers and growers have to spray their crops to in order to resist rain. Tap water is pretty much like rain water, you're just not going to get that off unless you use a wash or you peel things or you use that extra effort to really scrub something to get it off."
Florsheim says that their big break was with Whole Foods in Milwaukee. "The product was sitting on the shelf in the sample room forever. [The buyer] said, 'We really should give these guys a try', and if it wasn't for him we probably would have had a much slower start...It really taught us the credit of having local support."
Currently, the brand carries laundry detergents, tree free paper products, household and all purpose cleaners, hand soaps, glass sprays and candles.
As for this expansion, Kristina Nosbisch, director of operations, says that it made sense because buyers were asking about other products. "Household cleaning is a big deal, everyone does it," she says. "And people are getting more and more concerned about what they're using and the chemicals that they're bringing into their home. So it just seemed logical to move in that direction."
