Dirty Labs is a home cleaning company that makes high-performance, environmentally-friendly laundry and dishwasher detergent. Available direct-to-consumer via its website and Amazon, the brand focuses on biorenewable ingredients and sustainable practices to set a new standard for the cleaning industry with its better-for-you (and better performing) products. 

How we met   

Dirty Labs was the first company we met and greenlit as the pandemic hit in spring 2020. We were introduced by another peer fund focused on sustainability and consumer. When we met the team, Dirty Labs had a few people that all had different superpowers. David Watkins, the CEO, and Dr. Pete, the mad scientist, stood out. There was a clear, audacious desire to challenge incumbents like Tide and Cascade; the team had a strong combination of talent and naïveté to take on the commercial hurdles facing them. And they were full as all hell with noble intent for the bigger picture: let's do something that's actually better for people. 

It soon became clear that this team was intent on building a big and lasting brand. We loved the opportunity to go wholesale and to offer a viable competitor to the Cascades and the Tides of the world. We got into Dirty Labs pre-launch all those years ago. Here we are nearly five years later, writing another check into the business in 2025. 

What clicked

Consumers don't realize that the things that touch our bodies get absorbed by our skin extremely quickly. When you look at this category, the market leaders have been around since the 1930s, with formulas that aren't sustainable, eco-conscious, and not even necessarily ‘good for you.’ At the same time, this category was littered with well-intentioned, but poor-performing products, where ‘plant-based’ and ‘sustainable’ were the code for ‘means well, but probably won't work.’ 

On the demand side, we looked at Tide's huge market share lead (it reminded us of Gillette and Harry's before we got involved with Harry's back in 2012), coupled with the fact that $500 million of Tide products were sold each year by one retail chain, Target, alone. We saw a great commercial opportunity that if a brand could convince people that ‘better-for-you’ didn’t mean ‘bad performance,’ and delivered on that promise, it could become a viable challenger. 

When we met David and Dr. Pete and learned about their scientific data backed up by a proprietary process, we believed this team could build a cleaning brand that wasn’t only ‘better for you,’ but also performed.

Why we (re)committed 

Following on with our third investment in Dirty Labs was both an easy decision and a hard one. It was hard in the sense that we had first gotten involved through our first fund, and we’re now investing out of Fund Two. After talking to a couple of our LPs, one of them told us, “If there's a way to make money, go do it. We trust you.” 

The team was super focused, the business was performing well, and the product was receiving third-party endorsements from the likes of Wirecutter. It’s been trending up and hitting new revenue milestones even as its cash burn has dropped. Dirty Labs products are resonating with customers via repeat purchase rate, on Amazon they recently stood at 8x ROAS, and Dirty Labs still hasn’t scratched the surface on wholesale. 

We only saw upside and invested again. We are now going to take a more active role in the marketing side of Dirty Labs, helping the brand to get more credit for how good its products are. With each follow-on we’ve made, we remain as excited as when we first got involved. 

Why Dirty Labs will become a big brand

Dirty Labs is on the brink of becoming not only a big brand, but also a no-brainer solution for consumers. The fact that it's gotten to where it is now is a testament to its viability as a company with strong gross margins, and a sober and focused founding team that's attacking its two current categories well. And that's without the boost of wholesale. Wholesale represents 85% of all purchases, so there is a lot more runway for this brand to take off. 

There's a great innovation plan in place to go into other areas that, if we were Procter & Gamble, Unilever or SC Johnson, we might be studying the brand intently. 

In a world where brands are going after ‘better-for-you’ messaging without fully delivering on performance, Dirty Labs delivers at a high level without any compromises to the environment, to your wallet, or to your health. 

Watch Bullish Managing Partner Michael Duda in conversation with Dirty Labs Co-Founder David Watkins below.

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