ECOS, the manufacturer of more than 200 environmentally friendly cleaning products, is on an expansion kick.
With the company’s green laundry products now making up 40% of the category’s market share in the U.S., ECOS is scaling its manufacturing square footage and production capacity.
Owner and Chief Executive Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks said that ECOS has been adding newer customers outside the company’s core “green” buyers in recent years. She noted that for the first time, ECOS as a green company has ranked in the top 10 of laundry brands overall.
Driven by this market penetration, ECOS has seen double-digit sales growth every year–up to 20%–since 2020, according to Vlahakis-Hanks; the private company does not disclose financials.
“My father started the company 60 years ago, right in his garage, and he spent so many years talking about the importance of greener cleaning, but the consumers are finally understanding that message,” she told the Business Journal.
After her father, Van Vlahakis, died in 2014, Kelly took over the family-owned business, which is also known as Earth Friendly Products.
Vlahakis-Hanks was named in May to the Business Journal’s first-ever list of the 50 most influential businesswomen in Orange County.
The company won a Business Journal Family-Owned Business Award in 2014, and she was the keynote speaker at the Business Journal’s event in 2022; she also won a Business Journal Women in Business Award in 2016.
New Jersey Expansion
As of March, ECOS has about 500,000 square feet of manufacturing space in the U.S. and is looking to add another 175,000 square feet over the next year as its sales continue to grow, which will require more capacity.
For example, ECOS is relocating from its current 76,000-square-foot factory in New Jersey to a 165,000-square-foot manufacturing plant scheduled to open in 2027. The company is also expanding its 51,000-square-foot Washington factory to 100,000 square feet, doubling its workforce there.
It is also planning to move from its existing 100,000-square-foot facility in Illinois and later may add another 20,000 square feet to its Cypress headquarters, Vlahakis-Hanks said.
The company’s “North Star” is now focusing on “converting people from conventional to a better-for-you offering,” Vlahakis-Hanks said.
New Green Products
Vlahakis-Hanks said she has witnessed the growth of everyday consumers choosing ECOS outside the “green” shopper at the annual Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim.
“It used to be more of the green consumer, and now, there is a really new surge of interest,” she said. “They’re Googling–they’re forensic consumers, they’re hungry for the information, and so the business has grown a lot.”
Laundry detergent is “the lion’s share” of product sales and is ECOS’ largest selling SKU.
ECOS has become the No. 1 selling green laundry detergent brand in the U.S. and ranks No. 9 among all laundry detergent brands, including conventional products, according to Circana and Nielsen data. The company has entered both natural grocers and big box anchors such as Whole Foods, Costco and Safeway.
ECOS recently developed green fabric scent boosters, a laundry additive which Vlahakis-Hanks said is growing popular. The company also added a stain remover and a stain + odor remover pre-wash spray to its lineup this year; the latter was introduced at this year’s Natural Products convention in free, two-ounce sample sizes, which ended up being so popular at the show that Vlahakis-Hanks said she decided to manufacture the spray bottles in that smaller format as a to-go option.
Beyond laundry, the CEO said the manufacturer is looking to grow its dishwashing category and all-purpose cleaners.
At the show in March, the company also debuted a new dilutable multipurpose cleaner that uses a banana enzyme as a preservative instead of harsher alternatives. ECOS is calling it Bana-Tech.
“Nobody has utilized it before in a cleaning product, so it’s novel and innovative,” Vlahakis-Hanks said. “It holds up to all the challenge testing.”