Transcript created by AI, there may be transcription errors.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Hi, I’m Anne Marie Mohan with Packaging World. Today I’m speaking with Ryan Lupberger. Ryan is the CEO and co-founder of Clean Cult. And if you don’t know Clean Cult, they make cleaning products with simple plant-based ingredients. Their products are available in a refill system. You keep a reusable bottle and then you just refill it from a paper carton, kind of like a milk carton. Well, they’ve just launched Castile Soap, and I have to say I love the packaging. It’s bright, it’s fun, and it’s totally ’70s. Ryan, thanks so much for being here.
Ryan Lupberger:
Yeah, thank you so much for having me today.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Absolutely. So Castile soap is a big step outside of the core dish, hand, and laundry lineup that you’ve been doing so far. Why did you choose Castile and why now? What did you see in the category that made it ripe for a newcomer?
Ryan Lupberger:
Yeah, well, just as a bit of history. So we’re the first company in the US to launch cleaning products in a milk carton, and really for the last eight years we focused there, is can we get paper packaging on shelf and really change the household cleaning aisle, but in a way that shoppers would actually accept? So for many, many years since 2019 we launched, we didn’t have the right to do this. Now we’re the second fastest growing natural brand in the market. We’re the second bestselling refill now in market. So we’re really starting to win and take share in these categories. So we looked around internally and said, "Where do you want to go next?" We could play with shampoo, conditioner, body wash, but nothing clicked for us. We basically said, "We need to tackle a category that doesn’t yet have mass market distribution, that could be fun and quirky, that could really be an all-in-one product." And we landed on Castile.
And why Castile for us? It’s everything I mentioned. So number one, it was the largest soap category almost like 80 years ago, which is crazy to think. It is hypernatural, but no one really knows what it is anymore. So we though there was an accessibility and packaging issue in the space. Two, it is a super powerful all-in-one, so it saves a lot of plastic because instead of 40 products in this mass age of consumerism, you can have one. So that aligned with our values. And three, it kind of gave us the permission to do something crazy wild and humorous in the packaging, like you mentioned. So we were really excited to say let’s go and let’s try to make Castile fun and mass market at this point.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Wonderful. I have to admit, I’m not really familiar with it. So when I saw on pictures of the back of your carton where it has all the different uses, I was amazed.
Ryan Lupberger:
Yep. Yep, exactly.
Anne Marie Mohan:
So one of the things that’s really unique about your existing product line is your refill packaging, which is a gabletop carton. Are you using the same patented 32-ounce paper-based gabletop carton that you use for those, or did you have to make changes so that you could handle that concentrated oil-based soap?
Ryan Lupberger:
Yeah, so it is a very similar carton. So here’s our crazy fun packaging, if anyone is looking at the screen. It’s a very similar carton because Castile soap is, to your point, very concentrated, so it’s even more aggressive on the paper. So in the early days of manufacturing, when we filled our cartons, it foamed like crazy. We literally had two feet of soap on the floor in places with foaming, like a humorous comical, terrible production runs. And this was one of the first times since our early days that we faced the same production challenges. You have a ton of foaming on the line because it has so much soap in it. You have quite a bit of aggression on the side seals and bottom seals. So it’s the same carton, but even with a few tweaks to make sure that it doesn’t leak on shelf.
And then also another few tweaks on the actual production line because it’s a tricky, tricky product just because of how much soap is packed into a single carton.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Okay. So I understand that the carton, you talk a lot about being plastic-free and you do use some polyethylene as a liner for these liquid products. So in 2023 when we spoke, we reported that your cartons were broadly recyclable at about 60% access, and in 2025 that number grew to 70%. Where does the recyclability stand now?
Ryan Lupberger:
Again, just a bit of history for the listeners. Cartons are broadly recyclable, but it’s been a big push. So right now you have a company called the Carton Council, which has effectively funded a lot of MRFs, which are the material recycling facilities to be able to recycle cartons. This was 40 years ago they got started saying we’re already recycling plastic, but at pretty low rates. Cartons are better because to your point, they’re about 90% paper but do have a lining, but we need to be able to recycle them still to be better than plastic in market, regardless of how sustainable they’re in LCA. So I just pulled it up. So I think we’re at 72% nationwide now, broadly access to recycling curbside. And then the recycled rate is now actually higher than HDPE, which is really, really exciting. So we’re starting to see a lot more downstream uses grow.
And even from a carbon perspective, like an LCA sustainability, cartons are still by far the most sustainable option. And it’s mainly, yes, it’s because of the paper and responsible forestry. Yes, it’s because it’s more efficient in a case versus a plastic bottle, which is less. But one of the biggest reasons for this is because we ship our cartons flat to the manufacturer. So it’s actually like origami on our carton lines so we can fit 26 times the amount of cartons that a plastic bottle can because that comes empty and extruded to the manufacturer. So it saves on massive amount of logistics and transportation. So yes, recycling has grown, but fundamentally from a carton perspective, for many years we’ve just believed that it is the best option in market for liquid products today.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Okay. Yeah, we focus so much on recyclability when we’re talking about packaging and we’re talking about sustainability, but there are so many other things that go into that and you just outlined them all.
Ryan Lupberger:
For sure.
Anne Marie Mohan:
So on this product, most of your products, and I have some, where you have the reusable bottle and then you have the refill. So since this can be used for so many different things, do you have one bottle that people use, reusable bottle, or do they use their own packaging for that?
Ryan Lupberger:
We’re leaning to a BYOB campaign, so not beer, but bottle. So we have it on certain versions of the packaging and we’re really Castile soap again is such a fun category because you can use it for different uses, body wash, shampoo, dog cleaning, mopping, dish soap, hand soap, outdoor cleaning. So for us to design a bottle for that just wasn’t feasible. And again, we’re trying to focus on let’s reduce waste in society, let’s reduce all this crap we have. Can we go back to really clean ingredients in a way that’s accessible? So if you see on the side, you see a ton of uses and I think if we’re going to design a bottle for every use case, we’d have too many SKUs. So that’s one of the reasons we wanted to prioritize refilling existing.
Anne Marie Mohan:
That makes a lot of sense. So let’s talk about the graphics now. I know in the past you’ve worked with Robot Food. Did you use them again? Did you do it in-house or do you have a new agency?
Ryan Lupberger:
This was entirely in-house. And again, we kind of gave the design challenge to our internal marketing team saying, "How do we design something that breaks out?" So our existing packaging for many years, we’ve tried to be similar to the leading brands on shelf, and we’ve done that because the carton is already so differentiated and new. So we didn’t want it... When someone walks a Target, Kroger, Albertson, Safeway, we’re in distribution, they see a carton on a shelf. It’s still a really new behavior use case. It’s like, why is this in a carton? What’s this doing in hand soap? What’s this doing in dish soap? What do I do with it? So we’ve really focused on our design being category similar to ensure we could get as much adoption as possible. So very clean ingredients, similar price point, better efficacy we hope and think. But this one, it gave us just a lot of room to maneuver because this category, A, doesn’t have a ton of retail distribution, so it’s only selectively with one or two brands right now in market.
And then two, the retail distribution that it has. So again, a very similar brand as Dr. Bronner’s that I’m sure quite a few readers or listeners will know about. They have really crazy packaging, but it’s crazy busy and it doesn’t explain the product, and it’s what they’ve been known for for many years. So we said, "Can we take this category and be wild, fun, explanatory, and really comical and joyful?" So we just had a good time with it, to be honest. And it’s been a really fun process because we’ve never just let ourselves run wild with a product. We’ve been very, again, in the category versus outside of the category. And then our designers came back with this just fun packaging. And again, if you can see it, probably be some pictures, it’s alive, it’s colorful, it’s explanatory, it’s kind of ’70s-esque, it’s weird, it’s interesting, and it’s like when you see it, it’s joyful.
And I think especially in this time with all the political challenges and all, I mean, just really heavy news around the world, for us, we were comfortable saying, let’s bring something like this to market. So it’s personally, I think, one of my most favorite products we’ve ever launched just because it brings joy to me and I hope it’ll bring joy to most people as well.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Yes. As I said, I really love the packaging. It’s really fun, and as you said, it’s very joyful. So why the ’70s? Just the idea of something completely out of the box, literally.
Ryan Lupberger:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, we want this too. Castile has a root in history. So Castile soap is not a new product. What it is is taking an organic oil, so it could be coconut, could be palm, could be olive, used to be lye many years ago, and you can make really, really effective ingredients, and it’s some of the simplest ingredient lists with the cleanest clean, hypernatural, and then you go through a process called saponification. And interestingly enough, castile soap was a big thing in the ’70s because it was this all-in-one soap and gained a ton of mass market appeal back then. But then it kind of just fell off most people’s radar and all these very petroleum-based cleaning ingredients, again, like a Dawn or something like that, gained a lot of mass market appeal. So for us, it was a nod to the counterculture movement in the ’70s.
It was a nod to when this used to be distributed in a much bigger way. And again, it was just crazy. So Fred just checked all the boxes and we’re really excited about it.
Anne Marie Mohan:
Great. So let’s take a little bit of a deep dive into the design and the design choices. Although it’s fun, it’s joyful, and it’s very different, you still have to adhere to some traditional design ideas and choices. Could you talk a little bit about the colors, why they were chosen, the fonts, how do they fit that retro direction, but still be clearly readable?
Ryan Lupberger:
Yeah. Well, again, going back to the brief here, it’s like how can we break out a category, but also can we popularize a category? So we both had to be different, but also introduce the use case because it’s such a new category. So as we look at it, we have four sides of the carton. Another benefit to the milk carton, you have four really legible sides. With plastic bottles, you only have two legible sides typically. So we have a lot of room for information. So if we think about a front face, the front face focuses really on three things, that it’s pure Castile soap because a lot of people do know what it is, so we really need to communicate that messaging. So it’s a massive logo font, it’s bold, it’s strong, and that communicates, again, the product use case on shelf. On the bottom, we have a lot of colors around the scents because this is a scent-led category.
Typically in Castile soap right now, it’s about 80% used in body wash, but that is changing rapidly. So we’re positioning that slightly more cleaning forward than body forward. So we wanted to make sure that we had those scent cues in a big way. Then you have the use cases down at the bottom. This is what can you use Castile for? We really have to be education forward for this because we don’t have a marketing budget like a P&G, Unilever. We have to use our packaging to run most of our marketing and advertising on shelf. So it has to work really, really hard for us. So front face did that. The side face is all of the use cases. So it’s not just one, it is literally 20 that we give examples for, and then the dilution requirements thereafter. Because yes, you can use it in body wash or cleaning your tub, but it’s very, very concentrated.
So adding water to it becomes an important part of it so you can get a ton of uses. So in this thing, you actually have 18 hand soap bottles, you have 12 dish soap bottles, you have 36 gallons of cleaning. I got to get the math right exactly. Don’t quote me on that. So the side panel is really okay, you know it’s Castile soap, you know the uses, what are the uses? And then the other side is all about the ingredient purity. This is the cleanest formulation we’ve ever launched and really trying to do those three pieces together. The font type has all been, again, a mix of how can we be different but also very legible because I think retro is fun, but if no one can read the name of Castile soap and the scent, we miss the mark. So again, it’s been this duality of can we be crazy?
Can we be easy to read? Can we be category led? Can we be different than the category? Can we be cleaning? Can we be hand soap? So I think it’s been a good tension on both ends and we’re really happy with the final product alongside a really colorful logo that is less logical, that’s just more fun.
Anne Marie Mohan:
So you also have a QR code, correct? And what can people or consumers find out when they click on that QR code with their smartphone?
Ryan Lupberger:
Yeah, so that basically gives the detailed dilution instructions about the Castile soap. So we have use cases. So the good news about Castile soap, if you think about an all-purpose cleaning product or a hand soap product, typically the soap concentration is around 8% to 14%. Laundry detergent, maybe it’s about 14% because that is the concentration level for that specific product range to do its job. Castile soap, I think we’re almost over 30% at this point, so it packs a lot of soap in the formulation as well as a lot of ingredients and essential oils and a lot of just good stuff in there. The downside of that is you usually need to dilute it depending on the use case. Some people do, some people don’t, but we’re trying to be as clear of the dilution for each product in a way that’s, again, very easy to understand.
Again, how do we make Castile soap really accessible in this form factor?
Anne Marie Mohan:
Well, thank you so much for taking this time with me and for telling us all about this fun and it sounds like very efficacious product, so thank you for your time.
Ryan Lupberger:
No, thank you so much for the questions. Thanks for having me today. PW
