When father-daughter entrepreneurial team, Zoe and Phil Levin, decided to start a company together, they knew they wanted to make something that would benefit both their customers and the environment it was sourced from. And for them, that answer was obvious: toilet paper.
The Levins started their eco-friendly paper company, Ecosentials, three years ago. Ecosentials offers a “luxury” toilet paper called Bim Bam Boo, which is made from, you guessed it, bamboo. Zoe said that she and her father wanted to develop sustainably-sourced toilet paper after stumbling across a troubling statistic. Each day, America, the number-one consumer of toilet paper, flushes 27,000 trees down the toilet.
“It’s a really dirty industry and it plays a huge role in deforestation,” Levin said. “So we asked ourselves, ‘Is it possible to make toilet paper out of something that’s not a tree?’”
In addition to being a dirty industry, it’s also a big one. Toilet paper is a $14 billion industry in the U.S. Last year, Ecosentials generated $500,000 in sales and is expected to make $750,000 by the end of 2017, Levin said.
Traditional toilet paper is commonly made from pine, according to Levin. And although bamboo often thought of as timber, it’s officially classified as a grass, and grows like it too. As one of the fastest growing plants in the world, some types of bamboo grow as quickly as an inch an hour. The Levins source their bamboo from a private grove in China, where it is also harvested and converted into the final product.
In addition to environmental benefits, Levin said Bim Bam Boo uses a secret natural formula that doesn’t use common toilet paper chemicals like chlorine and hydrogen peroxide. She added that it’s also softer and tests high on the most important toilet paper quality factor, “squishability.”
Recently, Bim Bam Boo met its $10,000 Kickstarter goal, making it the first toilet paper company to succeed on the site. The Levins made it to the semifinalist round of the Minnesota Cup, which Zoe said helped grow their business.
“It was a really beautiful experience,” she said. “Being an entrepreneur can be a really isolating experience, so it was great to connect and meet with others going through the same experience.”
Each roll of Bim Bam Boo sells for around $1 and can be found locally at Coborn’s, Lund & Byerlys and Kowalski’s Markets. Levin said they also plan to start selling their product on Amazon later this year, which she expects will increase their sales by at least $250,000 during their first year on the e-commerce site.
“It’s the most challenging and incredible experience I’ve ever had,” Levin said. “It’s not every day you get a business partner you know will have your back. We have a tremendous opportunity, and I’m really excited to see what we can do.”
