Transcription of Cyndi Prince for the show Maine Suds #274
Lisa Belisle: Today in the studio, I have with me Cyndi Prince, who is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells LooHoo wool dryer balls, a reusable energy-saving alternative to dryer sheets. Thanks for coming in today.
Cyndi Prince: Thanks for having me.
Lisa Belisle: What’s interesting, I think, about your story is that you’re doing something that’s very practical for all of us, really, but you’re doing this with a larger idea in mind. Before we talk about that, what is a LooHoo dryer ball?
Cyndi Prince: Well, a LooHoo wool dryer ball is a reusable energy-saving alternative to a dryer sheet. It’s basically just a ball of wool, and you toss several of them into your dryer. What it does is it helps circulate and separate your laundry more efficiently, and so you’re going to get better air flow around the wet lumps of clothes in your dryer, and so you’ll end up reducing your dry time that way. Then also with the action of the balls against your wet laundry, you’re going to see softening as well. It eliminates the need for dryer sheets which add that chemical materials onto your clothes to soften them, and so we’re able to just to have that natural alternative for your dryer.
Lisa Belisle: I think I first read about this type of approach to laundry maybe in a Chinaberry catalog, maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that, and I never decided, “Oh, I should order this.” But I was at, I believe, our local natural food store, and I saw your product on the counter, and I said, “Okay, now’s the time. Now’s the time to experiment with these.” It seemed like such a simple concept, but it really does work.
Cyndi Prince: It does, it does. It is so simple, and I think that’s one of the things that I loved about it at first. Just to be able to take something so basic, but to add it to your laundry in order to just be able to create these same effects that you’re creating with using dryer sheets, but then also the added benefit of being able to reduce your airflow as well, to reduce your dry time, too, is such a bonus.
Lisa Belisle: I always notice when I’m out running, and I’ll run by people’s houses, and I’ll smell dryer sheets, freshening sheets.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: I really think a lot about, if this is so strong that it can be out in the air on the streets so that people walking by can smell it, how good can it really be for our bodies?
Cyndi Prince: It’s really bad. One of the things that I learned was that dryer sheets were considered to be one of the most toxic household cleaning products in your home, and it’s because they do contain a long list of toxic and dangerous chemicals that are linked to respiratory problems, skin irritations, and then just other health problems. Then also because these dryer sheets, the chemicals in them are designed to stay within your clothes and release slowly over a period of time, so you’re always going to be inhaling them, and then they’re always against your skin as well. All these things are just linked to so many different harmful things for your bodies, and of course for the environment and well, and so it is just time to really make that change.
Lisa Belisle: I would assume that if these are releasing some sort of chemicals, then the next time you put your clothes in the washing machine, then these chemicals could get leached into the water that then goes back out into the world.
Cyndi Prince: Absolutely, absolutely. I think it just sticks around in so many different ways, and lingers, and does become a significant problem.
Lisa Belisle: You became interested in this because you had, at the time, an infant son.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Belisle: Your son is now seven and your company is now six.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me how you got to that place.
Cyndi Prince: Well, when I became pregnant, I think as many of new to-be mothers experience, we want to make sure our home is the most safe environment to welcome in this newborn child. Looking around the household and the different chemicals and things that we had in there, the laundry room was one place that I really examined, and it was because we wanted to cloth diaper our son. Reading a lot of information about that, you learn that you can’t use dryer sheets or fabric softeners because they leave that coating on the diapers, leaving them inabsorbent, which is the exact opposite of what you would hope from a cloth diaper. That was one of those eye opening revelations, and also just learning about the toxic chemicals that are within them that would eventually be close to his skin as well, was that turning point to seek out a natural alternative.
Lisa Belisle: You are fortunate in that you have a science background, so when you started looking into this, you actually had a mental framework to work with.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about that.
Cyndi Prince: The scientist in me loved the trial and error phase, even though it took months of trying to figure out how we were going to make our wool dryer ball so it was going to be super durable and high quality, and using domestic products. It was months of tweaking little things, being analytical, trying different phases, and that was that scientist in me that just had a smile on her face the whole time, just trying to come up with the technical parts of creating something like that.
Lisa Belisle: Your training is in geology.
Cyndi Prince: It is.
Lisa Belisle: One wouldn’t necessarily make the leap from studying rocks and earth formations to creating a wool dryer ball product for the laundry. Can you walk me through how you went from geology to this?
Cyndi Prince: I started in geology, and after graduating university, I worked in that field for a while. I think what a lot of people experience is burnout in that field. I traveled, I worked on a ship for four years and traveled the world, but it takes its toll and I wanted more of a grounding kind of experience, and I started to just phase out of that. It was an exciting life, but challenging. What the next phase for me was looking into photography and doing something more creative. That’s when I ended up in Maine, going to the workshops here in Rockport. After that, settling into a fine art background, working in an art gallery, just settling into the community here, I realized that I wanted to create something of my own, start a business of my own. I just felt like the combination of my science background and creative background, even though I studied rocks, it’s still that analytical mind, I think, just melded into this perfect foundation for an entrepreneur.
Lisa Belisle: Why did you study rocks in the first place?
Cyndi Prince: I still find it fascinating. I think it’s one of those sciences that gets overlooked sometimes, but to be out in the middle of the ocean and drilling down into the sea floor hundreds of meters down, and bringing up these things that people have never seen before, but that tell a story of what happened decades ago, it’s phenomenal. It was just a mystery, unraveling mysteries all the time, which was really neat.
Lisa Belisle: Was there a moment when you were a child that you said, “I’m going to go study rocks”?
Cyndi Prince: I’m sure my mother could tell you that I had a rock collection and was fascinated just by these objects, but other than that though, I think it was more of a curiosity. When you’re going through and looking at the course catalogs for universities and trying to decide, there was a spark when I kept reading about geology and the different courses, and studying about all the different aspects of it. It was really fascinating.
Lisa Belisle: I often wonder about the interests that we have as children and how…. Because some of these fields that we go into, maybe it’s geology or maybe it’s another type of science, they have very specific occupational paths that we don’t really realize even if you love rocks and you love studying rocks, you may not be able to find a job that’s going to continue that interest.
Cyndi Prince: Right.
Lisa Belisle: You may have a very different sort of job.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: I guess that’s more of a statement really than a question. It seems like things that we start getting interested in when we’re younger, we’re not always able to continue that passion.
Cyndi Prince: I agree. I think for me, one of the things that never inhibited me was where it was going to be. I think a lot of my friends, people who graduated the course, wanted to stay in that area and so they tried to find something in that area. Maybe it didn’t work out kind of thing, but for me, when I looked for a job it was, “Where in the world could it be?” I think if you have that more of an open perspective, you can find those things that you’re really, really wanting to do.
Lisa Belisle: As we’re talking, I’m interested as to whether the fact that you traveled, and the fact that you were on a ship, and you were out there actually looking at what was happening to the environment, if that contributed to your desire to do something that would actually make a practical impact, a positive impact on the environment.
Cyndi Prince: I definitely think so. I think that that’s always been an underlying course within my life, is just knowing and seeing what the effects on different things that we put in the environment are, on different cultures, different places. It’s really incredible, and knowing that we have this great big responsibility to take care of it and to improve it, and to try to tread as lightly as we can as well, I definitely think that that’s a driving force in the business, and in the vision of what I’m trying to accomplish, what the business is trying to do.
Lisa Belisle: Did you have a strong sense of environmental responsibility when you were younger?
Cyndi Prince: I grew up on a farm, and I think that I just had a greater respect for a lot of things, where our food came from, growing and cooking and canning our own…. Just everything was done right there, in a sense. I think that that’s a good background to it, even though I wouldn’t say that we recycled and composted 40 years ago, but still, I think that seeing that cycle of life on a farm and the contained environment in a sense, in a small rural community, I think it helps with having a strong sense of that bigger picture and being able to be sustainable.
Lisa Belisle: Well, if you think about it, the fact that you chose something that is so practical, it really goes along with that idea that you’re trying to be self-sufficient. You’re trying to do something for yourself, and we all have to do laundry.
Cyndi Prince: Right.
Lisa Belisle: I mean, I assume. I have to do my own laundry. I’m assuming that most people who are listening have to do their own laundry. You are looking at something that’s very… Well, you used the word before. It’s very foundational.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: It’s something that you can do and feel good about, and you’re doing it for yourself.
Cyndi Prince: Right, right. I think that that’s one of those things. I know a lot of people will probably question why they’re making or doing a certain thing in their business, but for me it’s always… It makes so much sense where it is just that practical but also sustainable portion of what people can incorporate in their everyday, and so I think even though it’s such a simple product in a sense, it just has, to me, a bigger presence, a bigger meaning behind it.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been surprised in talking to people about your product, and about you, and the fact that you were coming in to record the radio show, at how many people actually are aware of your product, are using it in their homes. It’s not just people who have a specific environmental mindset. It’s really, there’s a broad variety of people who have started to use the wool balls that you’re putting out there.
Cyndi Prince: Yes. It really is amazing, because people will gravitate towards them for various reasons. Like you said, it could be an environmental drive that, “Yes, I want to make that change in my laundry.” But then a lot of times people will come up to me and just say, “We’ve had such bad skin irritants, eczema, different problems. We can’t use the long list of products with any kind of fragrances or anything like that, but when we found your product, it was something that could help us in our laundry, but knowing full well that we could still not be worried about the effects of all these other things that are in their dryer sheets.” Then with kids and families, it goes together so well with cloth diapers, so I know a lot of … That’s where I connected initially when I got into the market. It was the cloth diapering moms, and the families, and the stores in that respect, and that’s how I got started as well. It’s interesting how and when people gravitate towards them, and learn about them, and understand them, and start to use them.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been awarded, actually, several different things. You are the recipient of an MTI seed grant award, a Spanx by Sara Blakely Leg Up promotion award, and you’ve recently been selected as the Small Business Association’s 2014 Home-Based Business Champion for Maine and New England. From what I understand, just recently your presence in Eileen Fisher stores has expanded dramatically.
Cyndi Prince: It has.
Lisa Belisle: You also got some sort of an entrepreneurial award several years ago from Eileen Fisher. What do you think it is about this very, well, innovative but simple product that is capturing people’s interest?
Cyndi Prince: I think that’s just what it is. I think it’s so simple that, like we said, everybody does laundry or has their laundry done for them, that they can relate to that in so many different ways, and I think that this small thing making this bigger impact, people are realizing it, and acknowledging it, and accepting it as well. When we started out a number of years ago, the learning curve was a little bit tougher, and so this product, I would put it in people’s hands, explain it to them, and they’re looking at me and looking at the product, and they’re like, “I don’t get it. Could you tell me one more time?” Now that I think it’s just more of a global acceptance about these natural alternatives that exist out there, I think that just something like this is just being recognized as that little thing that makes that big impact.
Lisa Belisle: Well, before I got the LooHoo balls, which I’ve now been using successfuly for months now, I was using Seventh Generation unscented dryer products. I use pretty much Seventh Generation across the board, but they’re still dryer sheets. They still have stuff on them. I appreciate that Seventh Generation and other companies are trying to minimize the chemicals that are out there, and some of them have very successfully done this, but it still seems like if you can make that next step, then it’s probably a good idea.
Cyndi Prince: Yes, absolutely, especially for something that’s reusable as well. There are many brands like Seventh Generation that do have better chemicals in them. They might be more easily biodegradable. Some of the other ones are still living in our landfills hundreds of years after we’re gone, so to have this product where you can reuse it, you can reuse it for hundreds and hundreds of loads. That aspect of it too I think is just another benefit, where it’s not this take one out, throw it away kind of product. I think that people are really thinking about that as well.
Lisa Belisle: Because you’re talking about reusing, I think about when I was younger, reading something. I don’t know, it was Ladies’ Home Journal or something. It was “Ten Uses For Your Used Dryer Sheet,” and one was, “Rub it over your cat so that you can pull the leftover fur and he won’t shed all over the floor.” Now as we’re talking, I’m horrified that that was even a possibility.
Cyndi Prince: Poor kitty.
Lisa Belisle: Exactly, but you’re right. We don’t like the fact that this is a one time use thing, these dryer sheets, and yours is something that you can use over and over again.
Cyndi Prince: You can hang onto them for a long time, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m horrified. I don’t even know, how do we even get to the place where we thought that doing some of these things with these chemical covered…
Cyndi Prince: Was okay?
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, how is that, that that happened?
Cyndi Prince: I don’t know.
Lisa Belisle: But that’s a tangent, so I’m interested in… You have this science background. You obviously did the experimentation. You have a fine arts background. You were up in Rockport originally because of your photography.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: Then there’s this very strong business sense that you have, and I’m guessing that over the last six years you’ve done a lot of on the ground stuff. You’ve probably been everything. You’ve been the one who’s demonstrating the product, you’ve been doing the outreach, you’ve been doing the sales, you’ve been doing the books. How have you developed as a businessperson and just as a human being in the last six years?
Cyndi Prince: It’s been an incredible journey. I think that this is… As much as I have traveled and experienced so many different things in my geology career, I think that this job has allowed me to grow in so many different ways. Just being able to balance all those hats that you do have to wear is an incredible task, and I’m very self-disciplined, and I can put my head down and do those things that need to be done. Even though Friday afternoon I don’t want to work on my books, I will because I know that it’ll benefit the whole big picture, but it really has helped me grow. I never knew I liked sales before, but I absolutely love it. It’s just one of those things where I have no problem with rejection, so you know that you are going to get a lot of no’s before you get the yeses, but you have to keep working at it. In order for this to succeed, I know that I have to just do all those different things, and so that’s why I keep at it.
It’s interesting, some other people came up to me and asked, “What were your days like? Is this something that I could do?” Explaining how isolating it can be, where I’m basically working by myself a lot of times even though I’m connecting with people all the time on e-mail or on the phone, but it’s a self-driving discipline, and it’s one that it takes practice to learn. Time management is another thing that I really feel strongly about that I feel like I’ve learned to love as well, because I know that if I just spend all day on marketing, then other things are not going to get done, and so if I divide things up and look at my week as a whole, look at the year in the bigger sense, in the bigger picture, that I’m able to put my head down and do it.
Lisa Belisle: What does your husband do for work?
Cyndi Prince: He is a carpenter, and right now he switched over to being a UPS driver, and he also helps me with the business quite a bit too.
Lisa Belisle: How do you balance this very up-and-coming, and I’m guessing increasingly time-consuming, fun but time-consuming business with co-raising your seven year old son and the things that he does, and just being a couple and living in the world, and that sort of thing?
Cyndi Prince: It’s tough. It’s a tough balance, but it’s one that, again, I think it’s that discipline of time management, where on the weekends I don’t check my e-mail as much, or I don’t get back to people until Monday morning, long after I’ve done a number of other things. But definitely just dedicating and isolating time to be there as the bus pulls up and feed my son a healthy snack as he gets home from school, and connect with him instead of trying to answer a couple more e-mails and just get another order packed and ready to go. I know that we have this one precious little bean that is growing up so fast that we have to spend those hours with, and that time with, in order to just develop a strong family unit. I know that my business requires my time as well, but again, it’s a different hat. It’s funny, sometimes if I do have to go up and do something business related on the weekends or something like that, I have to tell them, explain to them what’s happening, because I need that isolated time. I think just as long as I keep having that separate, that that helps instill a balance, I guess, into family and work life.
Lisa Belisle: Having spoken to many people over the last six years of doing the radio show, because our businesses are about the same age, one of the things that I love is when people can take a cause and instill it with love, and move away from fear. Your product is a way that people can do something and feel good, and it’s not that they’re moving away…. I mean, there’s a realization that there’s bad stuff, and you’re moving away from something that’s kind of on the bad side, but really you’re moving towards something that’s good. How do you do this with your son as you’re trying to raise him to be a socially and environmentally aware child in the world?
Cyndi Prince: Huh. Well, I think that that is such an important thing, and just starting with the business, initially I think people were trying to encourage me to market in that negative form, where these things are bad, so do this. It never made sense to me, and it wasn’t going to work with the way that I wanted to run or grow a business. Thinking about raising a seven year old, I think it’s always about, I think, explaining the whole thing. He’s just a sponge right now, and the conversations, it’s amazing what we get into, but then expressing how important it is to be this positive source, this example, because even though he’s seven, he’s older in this classroom, and he is a leader. For him to be watched by these younger kids, I think that he sees us doing it and being more environmentally aware, and different things that we’re doing on an everyday scale, and realizing why and how it’s important to us, but I think we’re always communicating with him in every way, verbal and nonverbal, of all those things that are important to us. You see it, that he realizes that it’s an important thing, and I think it’ll be important to him as well.
Lisa Belisle: Why are they called LooHoo balls?
Cyndi Prince: Originally when the business started, they were called Wooly Rounds, and I had so many come up to me and say, “Hey, I’ve heard of those wooly balls.” That drove me crazy, because going from Wooly Rounds, which I thought was a nice rounded name, to wooly balls, so I knew that I needed to make a change. It was also going around to trademarking the name. When we looked at it, it was too descriptive. We weren’t going to be able to trademark it, and so it was, I think early on, about two years into the business, maybe about a year and a half, I started to look at different names.
At the time, and they still are, my sisters are kind of on my cheerleading squad of being the encouraging ones and being sounding boards to different ideas, and of course I went to them and asked. I said, “I want something fun. What do you think we should call the business? What do you think I should change the business name to?” Of course, they said Lou Who, which was a nickname growing up. I think anybody named Cindy in the last 50 years was called Cindy Lou Who at one point in their life or another, and of course at Christmas time I get more e-mails and calls about, “Oh, I was just watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and there’s little Cindy Lou Who.”
When my sister suggested it, I said, “Absolutely not. I don’t want this nickname I never really liked associated with the business.” But then after going through and trying out all these other names that just didn’t work, LooHoo was just fun, and I like the connection that it does have with me, childhood me. Yeah, and it just worked. All the “o”s in the name as well, and so it evolved into LooHoo, and that’s what it is today. I felt like it was maybe a brand that we could incorporate more products within as well, as opposed to Wooly Rounds. What else could you put under the umbrella of Wooly Rounds? That’s how LooHoo was formed.
Lisa Belisle: We will put information about LooHoo on our show notes page. I encourage people to actually consider and probably buy a few sets of LooHoo wool dryer balls. I’ve really enjoyed mine, honestly. It’s a funny little pleasure that I get out of this every single time I do laundry.
Cyndi Prince: That’s great.
Lisa Belisle: I appreciate your coming and spending time with me, and talking about your process and the work that you’re doing in your little corner of the world up in Camden. I appreciate also the time that your husband, Scott, has put into the business, and that your son, Graham, has also put into the business indirectly. I’ve been speaking with Cyndi Prince, who is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells LooHoo wool dryer balls. Thanks for coming in.
Cyndi Prince: Thanks for having me.