Blueland CEO and Co-founder Sarah Paiji Yoo sits down with Yahoo Finance Live's "A Time For Change" to talk about developing the cleaning product brand to reduce plastic consumption, women in the venture capital industry, and addressing anti-Asian hate.
Video Transcript
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ALEXIS CHRISTOPHOROUS: Welcome back to "A Time for Change." On this first day of Women's History Month, our focus is on female change makers, women who are pushing boundaries in business and beyond. Our first guest is the CEO and co-founder of Blueland. Now, that's a company aimed at reducing single-use plastic by offering cleaning products and hand soap that come in tablet form and use refillable glass bottles and metal containers.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: It sounds simple enough, but the idea was actually revolutionary, and getting the business off the ground took incredible determination. Sarah Paiji Yoo is Blueland co-founder and CEO. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today. Pleasure to have you on.
SARAH PAIJI YOO: Thank you so much for having me on.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: I want to begin with just starting off with why. Why cleaning products to reduce plastic? And which was harder, the science of making tablets or the art of raising money?
SARAH PAIJI YOO: It was all actually quite difficult. But to start with your first question in terms of the why cleaning products and why packaging, when I realized just how massive the plastic pollution problem was and what a contributor it also is to climate change, I looked into plastic production and realized that about 40% of plastic production actually goes towards packaging, which is such a shame because packaging is essentially used once and then discarded.
And so from that point in time, I was very focused on how I could figure out a way to create products that could use less packaging and see if there was a way to eliminate plastic packaging. And ended up starting with cleaning products because one day I was looking at the cleaning sprays that we use at home, and I looked at it, and I was like, huh, that looks like it's mostly water. And when I researched it further, that ended up being the case that about 90% of what makes up a cleaning spray, a typical multi-surface cleaner or a glass and mirror cleaner, is water.
And so my first thought was, wow. Why don't we eliminate that water and create a dry tablet that could be packaged in paper instead of plastic so that when people need more cleaning spray, instead of buying a new plastic bottle each time filled with water, they could just reuse a bottle they have at home, drop in a tablet, and add their own water from home as well?
ALEXIS CHRISTOPHOROUS: Well, Sarah, I want to ask you the second part of Anjalee's question again, and that is about raising money. Because we know that something like 84% of venture fund money goes to companies founded by men only. You recently closed a $20 million series B funding round. Tell us how you're beating the odds.
- Yeah, it certainly has not been easy. And I think a lot of people look at the Blueland store, and it's like, wow, you were able to raise this capital. It seems like you were able to raise this capital quite quickly. And what a lot of people don't realize is that, one, I myself, I've been a serial entrepreneur for over a decade. I've launched four businesses prior to Blueland. I've raised venture capital in the past. It really has been over 10 years of building out that network with venture capital investors, with angel investors that has-- their confidence in me was not built overnight. It was years of getting to know each other as well as years of creating a proven track record.
Additionally, when you look at the Blueland's story, we've been live on the market for just 2 and 1/2 years. What they don't see is my co-founder and I have been working on Blueland for almost five years. To your question of what was harder, raising the money or creating the product, honestly, both were incredibly, incredibly difficult. But on the product side of the world, it took us over two years to bring these revolutionary formats to market.
What we were trying to do had simply never been done before. Blueland is the first company to launch cleaning tablets, to truly create cleaning tablets across a range of categories, from hand soap to cleaning sprays to laundry, et cetera. And that certainly was also a quite long and difficult journey.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Certainly, behind the scenes is something we know takes a long time. I want to talk to you, though, about your position. Not only are you a female founder, but you're also Asian. And I just wonder, can you share if there's been any incidents that you've experienced, either when raising funding or just generally, trying to market your company, considering the recent uptick we've seen in hate crimes against Asians?
SARAH PAIJI YOO: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I have seen my background come into play. It's interesting because Blueland certainly was born out of my identities as a woman, as an environmentalist. But the founding of Blueland had nothing to do with my being an Asian-American woman. That said, I would say in the past year and a half, my Asianness has become inextricably tied to the identity of the company.
It's interesting because I think even before #StopAsianHate and a lot of the more recent media coverage around what's happening, we started to see it on the business side quite early. When the pandemic first landed here in the US in 2020, our president there at the time was talking a lot about referring to the viruses like the China virus or kung flu. We then saw a lot of this anti-Asian sentiment manifested in a lot of the customer inquiries that we were getting into our inboxes, the comments that we were getting on social media.
With our brand, Blueland, as still a smaller brand, I myself as the founder am out there a lot sharing our story, sharing our founding story. And I'm very much so a face of the brand. And I think over the past year and a half, it has been hard to really see a lot of the backlash to who I am and my background. We received almost 2,000 comments referring to our products or myself being called a chink, which was quite hurtful and hard to see.
But we've also had a lot of backlash from consumers who really criticize us. Some of our bottles, for example, are manufactured in China, and we've gotten a lot of commentary on, oh, figured that it's made in China. I'm not going to purchase with your brand. And the irony of that being you get that email, and it says sent from my iPhone.
And iPhones are also manufactured in China, as are many brands like Patagonia, Dove, and Apple that are known for their quality, their safety, and certainly their ethics. But I think what's made it different for us is that we have a founder, myself, that is an Asian-American.
ALEXIS CHRISTOPHOROUS: Sarah, obviously this is an emotional topic for you. I know that for a little while, you were toying with the idea of not being the face of your brand. How are you-- I mean, we only have about 35 seconds left. But how are you handling some of this criticism and hate coming your way?
- Yeah, I think ultimately, Blueland is about, not just from an environmental perspective, trying to make a change and build the future that we want to see, but in so many other ways as well. And so we really have been using the Blueland platform to also take a stand on issues like this. We've made multiple statements on Stop Asian Hate. We've supported organizations that are doing good work to combat the rise in Asian hate that we've seen.
And I think we want to continue to stay true to our values and really leverage the fact that we do have a platform, and we also have so many customers and community members who are very supportive of these values that we espouse. So while it may be easier to take a step back, to be a bit more quiet, we're actually fully leaning in, and more than ever are feeling excited about really trying to make a change in the world in so many respects.
ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Absolutely. Well, we hope that you continue to have the strength to fight that. Sarah Paiji Yoo, Blueland co-founder and CEO, thank you so much for being here.
