Kristi Lord: Co-Founder of L’AVANT Collective

Episode 796

On today’s episode, we welcome Kristi Lord, Co-Founder of L’AVANT Collective — the plant-based, design-forward home care brand redefining how everyday cleaning looks, feels, and smells.

Kristi’s journey to entrepreneurship wasn’t linear. After spending two decades in finance and accounting, she and co-founder Lindsay Droz set out to challenge an overlooked category by creating high-performance, non-toxic home care products that were not only effective, but beautiful enough to live on your countertop.

In this episode, Kristi shares how L’AVANT Collective was built at the intersection of efficacy, sustainability, and luxury — from developing formulas that truly work to scaling into more than 1,000 retail locations nationwide. We dive into co-founder dynamics, trust and alignment, category creation, and what it takes to grow a values-driven brand without losing its essence. A thoughtful, inspiring conversation for founders, operators, and anyone reimagining how functional products can also be aspirational.

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be, we just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Kara Goldin show today. I’m super excited to be joined by co founder Christy Lord, who is the co founder of L’AVANT Collective. And if you have not heard about this brand, or maybe you have heard about it, maybe you’ve seen it on goop or in Nordstroms, or online and Instagram, as you’re flying through social it’s such an incredible group of products, but company, and I’m so excited to be talking to one of the co founders today, the plant based design Forward home care brand, redefining how we think about cleaning scent and everyday rituals. Christie’s path to entrepreneurship didn’t start in consumer goods. She spent two decades in finance and accounting and operations, and decided to make her way into entrepreneurship with her co founder, when they were both trying to answer the question, why are the products we use every day either toxic, ugly or both? So with L’AVANT Collective, Christy and her co founder Lindsay, set out to build something different, and I’m so happy that they have absolutely terrific, terrific products, as I mentioned, but I cannot wait to hear a lot more about the founding journey and exactly more about the brand. So Christy, welcome to the Kara Goldin show.

Kristi Lord 2:15
That was such a beautiful entrance. Thank you so much.

Kara Goldin 2:18
Absolutely well. Thank you. But for listeners who are just discovering L’AVANT Collective, so what is the brand and what problem did you see that existed that you really wanted to solve?

Kara Goldin 2:31
Yeah, so L’AVANT Collective is all about high performance home care, so everything that you need to take care of your home designed in beautiful packaging and with yummy, luxurious fragrances. So the problem really was we were home with our young children, taking care of our home, starting our families, and the products that we were using didn’t make us feel good to use. They stung our eyes. They hurt our you know, stripped our hands of of moisture, and we’re caring for our homes, and we’re like, why I don’t want this around my children? My doctor actually told me not to use these cleaner products while I was pregnant. So what’s happening here in the cleaning aisle? You look at the beauty aisle, and has come so far, and then you look at cleaning and nothing has really changed. So we set out to create these products. We wanted them to work, we wanted them to be safe, but we wanted them to be beautiful and really fit into today’s esthetic. And what happened was we created this brand that makes you feel good to care for your home.

Kara Goldin 3:34
Yeah, definitely. Now, what was the first product that you thought I need to start with this, and how many others did you What was the pattern, I guess, of what happened?

Kristi Lord 3:47
Yeah, so we knew we wanted to launch with so surface cleaner. Surface cleaner is like a heavy header in the cleaning industry. Surface cleaner and laundry are your two, two biggest part of the cleaning industry. But I know that every day I’m using this. I’m wiping my counters down multiple times a day. So what is the profit we want to get in people’s hands? So the surface cleaner was taught for that, and so we launched with that. But then hand soap, as as you kind of think about what you have on your sink, that’s already beautiful, hand soap has kind of already paved the way for that, and so we wanted to make sure that we had a hand soap that went along with that, and so dish soap. And at that time, we had launched what was clean, called cleaning wipes. We currently don’t have those, but those were the four products that we launched with.

Kara Goldin 4:31
And you originally looked at this as a direct to consumer brand. So what was kind of the first step that that you made to actually go and make that happen? Yeah, so I

Kristi Lord 4:45
mean, ultimately, my business partner is Lindsey. Lindsey droze, and her and I came up with this concept and idea. And neither of us have a background in consumer products, so it did take us about three years to figure out what we were doing. And. And we knew you were not going to come to market unless the product actually worked. So nailing that formulation took about two years, and then covid hit. So we launched when we when the product landed on our doorstep, which was December 2020, and at that time, if you think about the three years prior to that, that’s 2017, to 2020 so many consumer brands were, were so successful on direct to consumer so it really wasn’t even, we didn’t, weren’t even thinking wholesale at that time. And so we, we, you know, Shopify has made this so possible for anybody to kind of start a website, get your product out there. And so we put everything online. We have an incredible community in Seattle that just absolutely came out when we launched in December of 2020 it’s also the gifting season. So we had, we had a wonderful launch in December and into January. But then what happened in early 2021 was Apple changed their iOS for privacy, and a whole CPG that was flying to the moon on direct to consumer kind of stopped. And so we never had any any money to really advertise. So from the beginning, we were kind of, this is going to be an organic growth. But because of that pivot that Apple put in place for us very early on, we knew that we needed to kind of look at this from an omni channel perspective, and make sure that from a distribution that we were looking at all angles, which included wholesale, you know, selling it directly into retail, Amazon pop ups, influencers, you know, it kind of takes a little bit of everything.

Kara Goldin 6:49
Yeah, definitely, when you first launched, and I guess with your Shopify, with your first Shopify store, what was the Do you remember the first maybe sale that you got and and kind of, what was, what was that moment like, when you’re finally, you know, you’ve been sitting with this product for, I guess, three years, trying to figure out how to actually create it and bring it to market, and working, I’m sure, with with creative to actually figure out the packaging, what’s goes into the product, all those things, and then finally, you get this sale. What was that moment like? And I guess, what was the most surprising as well about that moment?

Kristi Lord 7:39
That’s a great question. Yes, it feels like childbirth, and the sense that you just have so much wonder first born, like, what is this going to be like? And so when you get those first sales, and that Shopify has that ding, and they start to go off, you’re like, Oh my gosh. So Lindsay and I had champagne and we were popping it, but then we’re like, oh, my work now we have to go pack all these orders. And because we did everything, we did everything, packed and shipped and answered emails, and we’re the it behind the website. So we were doing absolutely everything. But it was so much fun. We had family and friends and husbands come out to, like, unload inventory, pack those boxes. Because it was December. It was a holiday season, the orders were big, and so it was, I think that was surprising. People were buying more than just one product. We had people calling us wanting from a corporate gifting perspective clients, you know. So they’re ordering like, 20, 3040, bundles at a time. And so that opened our eyes, like, Oh, like this could be a corporate gifting play, you know. So those are, like, surprising things that you find out as you as you launch your business. But pretty much every single moment was surprising and exciting and exhilarating all at once, and exhausting,

Kara Goldin 9:04
yeah, and exhausting. Your packaging is so beautiful. Was that the original packaging that you launched with, or has much changed since you launched?

Kristi Lord 9:16
Yeah, that was our those are original designs. Everything is custom. We love to make everything very hard and but, but equal tenants are that these products actually work. They’re actually beautiful, and they smell amazing. So each one of those tenants took a very long time to work through. So packaging was several years of iterations. We worked with a consultant. We hired this young gal at the time. She designed this, these beautiful bottles for us that we still use today. She’s now, she’s now so popular that we can’t even get in her, you know, to see her anymore, and we highly recommend her, but the packaging was so. Important for us, because if you’re going to spend a little bit more on a cleaning product, we think we want to drive you in with that beautiful packaging. You’re going to keep this on your counter. It’s got to be gorgeous.

Kara Goldin 10:12
Did you ever have a moment you and or your co founder, Lindsay, where you thought this would be so much easier if we had experience, right? But the two of you are willing to jump in, and I always say, like experience. You do have experience in professional and business experience. You just didn’t have experience in this vertical, right? And I was the same way I was in tech prior to going into consumer products, but I kept thinking, someone else could probably do this better, and it would be easier for them if they if they did, but then they probably wouldn’t have seen a lot of holes that you were seeing, right? They would have done things exactly the same way, because that had always worked before. Were there any examples where you really thought like you’re doing things a little differently? It’s not normal. Maybe a co Packer that you’re using, or manufacturer that you’re using was like, Oh, it’s just not done that way. But you’re like, let’s try it. Yeah.

Kristi Lord 11:18
I mean, I would think that nothing that Lindsay and I have done is follows probably a normal path. That’s what’s so fun about it. But I do think that you know, for anybody out there that is thinking about starting a business, you don’t have to have all the answers it. You have to, like, really get comfortable and sit back in your heels of your own experience. And we did this when we turned 40, and by that time, our networks were massive. Somebody has the answer. You just have to be able to know who to pick up the phone and call, and then they call somebody for you. And so there’s really power in your community and in your network that we didn’t realize until you’re like, really in it, that like that, there’s so many people out there that can help solve your problems as long as and what’s so great about starting a business is, if you have passion behind it, that’s what’s going to drive you forward every day to solve the problems and figure things out. So I think you know, as from an entrepreneur. We knew what we were trying to solve because we were passionate about this. We were like, This is what’s missing from the market, from my soul. I’m here every day home, cleaning with my kids, and I’m like, I this. Like, I want to feel good about this, and so what’s on the market right now is not solving that problem. It’s hard to like, communicate and bottle up a feeling, but so many products have done that, and so we knew we could do it. As far as manufacturing, you know, it’s thinking through Mike, but who bottled our products for us? We we were going to go with anybody that said, Yes. You know, we called a lot of people said, No, again, this is during covid, right? So you’re like, I want to launch a cleaning product during covid, not people don’t want to pick up the phone because they’re mass producing chloral, right? So our very first manufacturer was actually a shampoo manufacture, you know, manufacturer? It’s still kind of a lot of the same ingredients and shampoo as what our products are made of, because their skincare grade, you know, high quality ingredients. So we were their very first cleaning product on their line, and it worked beautifully.

Kara Goldin 13:33
So, so interesting. What? What were some of the ingredients that were that you refused, that were kind of the, I guess, the the points of of your brand that you just would not give in on, that might have been easier for those co packers or producers to deal with you, but you’re just like, I we just can’t do that.

Kristi Lord 13:57
Yeah, so from, from the start there, our very first hire was a consultant, and she came from, she’s a trained green chemist, so we relied on her, and she was the one that formulated for us. She came from the leading non toxic cleaning line at the time they had been sold, and so she was off grid. She had a lab in her basement, and we found her on LinkedIn. And my business partner loves to dig and dig and dig and become obsessed. And so she flew out to her home and pitched her our idea. And she was like, the world needs this, so I’m going to take you on right. So she guided us every step of the way for what ingredients are yes and what ingredients are no and why, we also looked to there’s a lot of great resources out there. There’s the Environmental Working Group. Goop actually has a no no list. Credo has a no no list. Whole Foods has a no no list. So that helped, because, again, we don’t have a chemistry background, so we kind of we. Made sure and studied all of those and made sure that things that were on important retailers to us and just we wanted to make sure that we were using the right ingredients, we actually looked to the EU. The EU has stringent requirements on cleaning more than the United States. So from an allergen perspective and an ingredient perspective, we’d look to outside, to the EU, to all these retailers who are trying to do the best that they can absolutely do and and formulated based around that. So plant based has to be the core, you know, inside every single ingredient. And obviously, we’re going to strip out formaldehyde. We’re not going to use pesticide, you know, EPA register pesticides that get you that disinfectant. We didn’t want to use petroleum based ingredients. So those were kind of like our guides.

Kara Goldin 15:53
So design and fragrance had to be core, not optional. Can you talk about that a bit as as you thought about your brand L’AVANT and what it meant to you.

Kristi Lord 16:06
Yeah, so fragrance is so key and core to to L’AVANT, it’s so it’s such a beautiful it can be beautiful. There’s we wanted to make sure that that was a component always of this brand, because it does invoke feeling. But we also wanted to make sure that we were formulating and using safe fragrance as well. There’s a lot of information and some good, some bad out there about fragrance. We work very closely with our fragrance manufacturers. We are using manufacturers that are very well known for using natural fragrances. And so with that, we came up they, they presented these beautiful blends of natural fragrances for us to review. And it that is our hardest decision, and we obsess about it daily. I have 30 different choices right now to go through for our fragrance. Number four, like it is so core that to what we’re doing, because once you actually decide on a beautiful fragrance that fits your requirements, the ingredients fit the requirements that we’re looking for. It has to work inside your formulas. Laundry is a different formula than dish soap than hand soap. So there’s some complexities in the fragrance that goes into every single one of them, but we obsess over every single every single one.

Kara Goldin 17:33
Do you have a runaway top seller that is of the three that fragrances that you have actually two part question, the fragrance, and then also the the actual product. You touched on this earlier, but I’d be curious.

Kristi Lord 17:50
Yes, fresh fresh linen, is the fragrance that we launched with. It’s what put us on the map. And so that is our, our number one fragrance. We’ve been around for five years. So it’s had its longest time to be on the market. But fresh linen is just this beautiful mix of floral and citrus. There’s nothing. There’s no real pinpointing which direction it goes. It’s got lemon and sage and lavender, and it’s like notes of Lang. Lang. I mean, it’s just this gorgeous, and it’s so light that both men and women love it and love to clean with it, because that’s number one requirement. Do you want to clean with this scent? You can have a beautiful fragrance on your clothes or on your body, but do you want to clean with it? So that’s core to what it is. So fresh linen been a hit, but we launched ombre santal last fall. It’s a it’s our Sandalwood scent that is just been gangbusters. People are going crazy for it. And then we also have a beautiful citrus called blush bordemont. And then within our products, we call it our gateway drug to L’AVANT Collective. For anybody who’s out there that wants to give it a try, we would recommend giving our surface cleaner a try. That’s our gateway drug. If you use that, you’ll understand what we’re trying to achieve here at L’AVANT, which is core tenants of this product actually works, but it makes me feel so good to use. So that’s gonna your surface cleaner is going to work on glass mirrors, counters, floors, car upholstery. It gets stains out of clothes, like it is a workhorse and all bottled up in beautiful packaging and smells amazing.

Kara Goldin 19:33
I didn’t know that it’s uh, stains out of clothes too. That’s yeah, really, yeah. That’s super good to know.

Kristi Lord 19:40
I know. And like, these are things that we’re finding out as well. But like, my kids will eat spaghetti and they’re sitting at the kitchen counter. Of course, it just all over their clothes. I’ll just spray them down as they’re eating.

Kara Goldin 19:51
Oh, I love it. So that’s great. So you scaled to over a couple 2000 retail locations. That’s no small fee. What kind of unlocked the retail growth. You started out in direct to consumer, but then you ended up going into retail locations. I’d love for you to share that story. Yeah.

Kristi Lord 20:13
So like you said, like the world of direct to consumer changed dramatically in 2021 but we did have a strategic retailer that was always core on our map of who we wanted, and that was goop. We knew if the goop buyer, you know, wanted a product like L’AVANT Collective, that we were going to be successful. And so we worked very closely with the goop buyers, all during product development for those three years, my business partner, Lindsey Jones, like I said, She’s She is no small feat. She she’s going to knock on her door, she’s going to show up, she’s going to keep calling. And she had, she had gotten a relationship with the CMO of goop at that time, and so when we came up with this idea, she opened up the door and let us, let Lindsay fly in and pitch the buying team for the home department of goop. And again, we had nothing. We had something on paper. That was all we had, but the core concept of what it was, they loved it, and they helped kind of guide some of the decisions on packaging and what would be important to that good buyer from a packaging perspective. So goop brought us in within those first six months of launching into their retail doors as well as online, and that is a massive stamp of approval for for the demographic we’re going after, the age group. It just signaled that. And so re other retailers found us through goop, but then doors the distribution really started opening up, from a retail perspective, when we started to go to trade shows. So we go to the home and give trade shows across the country. We set up booths and we pitch and we launch products and throughout all the different markets across the country, and that’s been a incredible way to showcase the brand, because retail buyers can pick it up, smell it. We can tell our story, we can educate them on the products, and then they go into their stores and then repeat that same messaging. It’s massive for for us, from a girl, from a growth perspective, and getting getting our products in people’s hands.

Kara Goldin 22:22
So consumer feedback, I always say, is the it’s often the lifeline. It’s what gets the founder up in the morning, right when they get those love letters. Have you received, I would imagine you’ve seen received multiple love letters, maybe something sort of humorous that you remember that people were using the product for that, or something that they wrote to you and said about L’AVANT that really was memorable?

Kristi Lord 22:53
Yes, I mean, we do. And I for anybody out there who is using L’AVANT, I just want anybody to know that Lindsay and I are in our DMS on Instagram. We read them all, we read the reviews, we see our customer service emails. It fills our buckets, and it’s what fuels us to keep going on a day to day basis, is by hearing this feedback, and it’s and it’s over and it’s over and over and over again. It’s like, you make me feel seen inside my home. Like, who knew that, like a cleaning product could do that? That one is really deeply, like, core to me is from that one customer that says, you make me feel seen. She’s like, I have two small babies. I’m home all day long. I don’t get out much, but having a product that that makes her feel better and makes her feel good and special and beautiful while she’s using it, heck yeah, like, love those, and we get that a lot. But we had, I did have one customer. He, he now is 70 year old man. He emails me about every six months just to check in. Loves our products. Have been purchasing products from from France because he didn’t trust any of the US cleaning products. Ended up finding us, loves us, says that we work better than what he was buying over in France, and has always has ideas for new products for us, but so never met him in person. He invited us to come to England, Lindsay and I to come to England and stay at his estate. He just loves our products that much. He was like, anytime you want to come over. So, yeah, I just love that. Like, this is so cool.

Kara Goldin 24:31
That’s amazing. That’s That’s so great. When you think about innovation. I know that consumers are always asking about they want the newest, latest and greatest. They want the consistent and the stuff that they’ve been using that works or that they love, but they always want more, and especially retailers like you know, sometimes I think retailers can stray you in a direction that is not. Necessarily the right thing for for your brand and multiple categories. But how do you stay disciplined when everyone’s asking you for innovation and the latest and greatest?

Kristi Lord 25:12
Yeah, that is such a great question, and I feel like we could go get drinks and just talk about all day long, because, yes, we get hit on the daily with what’s next. And we have always said Lindsay, and I have always said, like our lane is cleaning. We want to make you feel good about taking care of your home. We definitely have offshoots, because what we have found is that people want more of our fragrance inside their home. We use natural fragrances. They do not stick or stay in the air or stick on stick on clothes, like a synthetic fragrance. So they want more of it elsewhere. So we launched candles and room sprays and reeds and lotion, right? So you could have more scent inside your home. But home is our category. That’s where we’re going to stay and where we want to continue to innovate is, is it’s generally, how do we take care of bringing safe products to help take care of your home?

Kara Goldin 26:14
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve talked about your co founder, Lindsay. What do you think is the perfect formula for co founders to be able to work together, knowing what you know now,

Kristi Lord 26:27
yeah, I mean, we she is my work wife. I absolutely adore her, I think, and we consider each other work wives in the sense that we are as you have a relationship with your spouse or your partner, there has to be that mutual respect in order to build a life together, in order to build the build a business together, there has to be that same core tenants inside our relationship. We think very differently. I think if you’re going to, if you think about wanting a co founder and can work, but your brains have to be different, because both bring we both bring so much to the table, and that helps the business grow and flourish, not only from a management perspective, but how we think about product, how we think about marketing our product, she and how we sell the product, she can, she can be up all night long and and be on those trade shows on her feet for 18 hours a day, and she’s so good at it. And, you know, I, I like to go back and do the analytics and look at the numbers and like, what are our unit economics? And like, what’s driving our revenue? And so between the two, what works that works for us because we are so different, but we still have so much respect for the skill set that we each bring to the plate.

Kara Goldin 27:56
So last question, when you look at what you’ve built so far with L’AVANT Collective and knowing where you’re headed, what are you most proud of?

Kristi Lord 28:06
I mean, we have built an incredible team that is passionate about this product and wants to see it succeed, which is the foundation of how we get through every single day. But I think ultimately, Lindsay and I are so proud of the fact that we had an idea, we brought it to life and and it’s something that people have really opened their arms up to and are repeating and buying it like we’re so proud of that. Like it is hard, and it’s why not everybody does it. It takes your eye on the ball on a daily basis, and we are here, and we are doing it, and it’s and it’s been an incredible ride.

Kara Goldin 28:54
Yeah, no, you guys have done such a terrific job. Christy, thank you so much for joining today and your your story from from one industry and finance and operations to founding a brand and taking this leap with Lindsay is just absolutely incredible. I absolutely love L’AVANT Collective, and everyone needs to go out and purchase it and support you guys, because you’re doing such a great job, especially in the home category right now, and hopefully maybe something further in the future. But really appreciate you coming on and sharing all and thank you everyone for listening too. So thank you again. Christy So, Christy Lord, co founder of L’AVANT Collective. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free. Subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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