Rob Kabel wanted to be a chef as a kid, but he wound up in commercial cleaners.
With partner Mark Gardner, he established Purteq, a plant-based line of cleaning products. He's already gotten commercial contracts, with companies such as Holiday Inn and Home Depot, and has his eye on getting Purteq into the retail market.
His route into this industry was a bit circuitous and circumstantial.
Back in March 2020, Kabel was working with Perfection Auto Refinish. The City of Memphis was a customer. When COVID-19 hit, he was able to get 950,000 surgical masks for the city.
He then heard of a company in Dallas, Texas, which sold cleaners for the automotive industry.
"But it had its application in the commercial industry," Kabel said. "There was a tremendous opportunity, not only from a business perspective, but also helping to solve the challenges that the world was facing now with the pandemic."
Two days later, he drove to Dallas. In June 2020, he launched a company to bring those products to market. But, Kabel recognized some limits to the products early on.
"We knew that the initial products, which were focused on antimicrobial disinfecting applications, were going to be short-lived," he said. "Those products are short-lived to the pandemic. And as we did our research, we began to realize that beyond disinfecting products — cleaners, in general — that there were some serious health risks."
The main issue was quats — quaternary ammonium compounds, the workhorse element in many cleaners.
Quats can cause rashes and burning. They can increase inflammation and interfere with hormones. They may not pose a problem in ordinary cleaning routines. But with COVID-induced hyper cleaning, exposure rates were way up.
Kabel's Purteq line is quat- and bleach-free. The products use probiotics.
"Probiotics are highly effective cleaning agents," Kabel explained. "Imagine little bugs eating the source of the odor, whatever malodor is causing that foul smell. If you could find the source and spray our product on the source of the thing, it's replacing [it with] the good bacteria, which by the way, we're killing with all the other harsh stuff that people are using."
Among the active ingredients in Purteq products are citric acid, thymol, and graphene.
"Many people have a misunderstanding and their reaction we're finding, interestingly, is 'Well, if it's all natural, it can't be as effective,'" he said.
But, he points out that graphene, which is used in Purteq's glass cleaner, is a two-dimensional material with a lot of applications. It can be used as a replacement to steel, as a lubricant, as a protectant. He calls its cleaning properties "magical."
Included in the line are a glass cleaner, a multipurpose cleaner, a floor cleaner, a carpet and fabric cleaner, and an odor eliminator.
Larry Shutzberg, a board member at Memphis-based chemical manufacturer Buckman, has joined Purteq as COO.
"We set out first to eliminate the problem of bad chemicals. It was prevalent in the industry and growing because of COVID," Shutzberg said. "But, there was an absolute baseline that said, 'You couldn't bring in natural [cleaners] without being at least as effective [as traditional cleaners].'"
According to Shutzberg, not only are Purteq products effective, they are more effective than traditional cleaning products.
Kabel said he often asks his potential clients what keeps them up at night. One, a casino, answered: replacing $27 million worth of new carpet. The regular use of a quats-based cleaner had left the carpet grimy. Kabel told the potential casino client that he had the solution with his products.
They are currently working to open distribution channels, doing a trial run of the products in the retail space in Canada, and they've developed the Clean Cart, which is a mini-car-wash-like machine for grocery carts.
The bottom line is that Purteq products are safe, according to Kabel.
"This multipurpose cleaner is so safe, that you can actually drink it," he said. "We don't recommend it."
