The official guide, powered by On the Road magazine

An Interview With Angie Tran From Kind Laundry

Being Kind With Your Laundry

Share

How does one go from owning a fast-food restaurant to operating an eco-friendly laundry detergent sheet business? Well, you got to care about the environment. Back in April, Angie and her business/life partner Bernard started Kind Laundry, an eco-friendly alternative to regular liquid laundry detergent.

Since launching their online store in August, their product has been flying off the virtual shelves. Here’s why.

The idea for the business started back at Angie and Bernard’s fast-food restaurant. As Angie stated, “I remember how much plastic we were going through at the restaurant.” After a run as fast-food chain operators, they decided to shift their career focus to e-commerce-based businesses. This was 5 years ago. Over the past half-decade, Angie and Bernard have started a few e-commerce businesses that enabled them to “learn the basics of running a business and the basics for advertising.” Their newest endeavor is, of course, Kind Laundry.

When many businesses were moving towards sustainable products, Angie and Bernard wanted to strike the iron while it was hot. As “animal lovers”, they wanted to help reduce the amount of plastic polluting the earth. According to Angie, one cause of plastic pollution is the laundry industry. She says, “the big one-time use laundry jugs are major polluters. […] Plastics take thousands of years to biodegrade.” Their solution to the problem, an eco-friendly laundry detergent sheet. “The packaging is biodegradable and the laundry sheet itself is free from chemicals and additives.” The laundry sheets themselves contain 4 main ingredients that are “natural and won’t harm the environment.”

Angie and Bernard run Kind Laundry remotely in Stouffville. Their team of 5 operates on an online basis as well. Fitting for the current global pandemic, but not on purpose. The Kind Laundry team is situated around the world. As Angie remarked, “We ship all over the world. This means our customer service team can reply to our customers in different time zones.”

 

Out of every major polluting industry, why laundry detergents? Well, as Angie puts it, “we wanted to go into a space where no one was innovating. The laundry aisle is just filled with plastic jugs.” After rapidly selling out of thousands of Kind Laundry packages during their test phase, the sheets have just recently gone back in stock. Angie claims, “because of Covid, people are staying at home more. Therefore, they are working out more, cooking more, etc… So, they are doing laundry more.” As well, she believes many people are looking for natural methods to do their laundry as “conventional laundry detergent contains toxic ingredients.”

The next step for kind laundry? “Product innovation.” Kind Laundry is packaged with 60 sheets of laundry detergent. It is currently available in scentless and ocean breeze. Kind Laundry can be found in local natural grocery stores, sustainable boutiques, and on their website kindlaundry.com where they ship worldwide

Read More Local Spotlights