Sean Stanley had no idea that a grocery store job he started at 17 would put him on a path to success in entrepreneurship more than 30 years later.
In 2018, after 26 years at Harris Teeter and three more working for a Maryland-based startup, Stanley founded his own company, EcoTwist Clean.
The laundry detergent startup offers a formula Stanley said consumers would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere — instead of just masking odor, it releases and removes odor-causing bacteria from clothing. It's also vegan and free of 15 ingredients commonly found in other "green" detergents.
Stanley moved to Charlotte in high school and worked for Harris Teeter for more than two decades. During his last two years with the grocery retailer, he managed the laundry detergent department.
"I fell in love with it, from a simplicity standpoint," he said. "I started to learn more about the category and realized there was a huge problem in athletic wear, in that you couldn't actually get the smell out of synthetic materials using regular detergent."
With the desire to push the laundry industry forward, Stanley moved to Maryland to work for detergent startup Hex Performance, a brand created specifically to clean athletic clothing. He said in three years he helped the company grow from "a couple hundred thousand dollars to $4.7 million."
But he still wasn't satisfied, and in 2018, Stanley left Hex to pursue his vision for a detergent that was all-encompassing. That year, he founded EcoTwist Clean, a detergent created with the cleaning power of Hex or Tide but is eco-friendly and sustainable like Seventh Generation or Mrs. Meyer's.
"What really pushed me was knowing there was a hole in the market," he said. "I didn’t have a lot of money but I had a lot of knowledge, and I wanted to do this differently."
The detergent comes in seven varieties, including Free & Clear, Active Sport, Vanilla Sky and Lavender Falls. EcoTwist is also set to release a line of detergents for babies, pets, delicates, and swimwear and hunting/outdoor activities.
Each 50-ounce bottle costs $12.99. In addition to its website, the brand is currently available in Food City grocery stores, located in Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky, and Kelly's Market in Atlanta. Stanley said EcoTwist also has contracts with the Charlotte Checkers, Wingate Football and Spencer Boyd Racing.
