This brand came to fruition as a combination of everything. It was my own hair loss. My pets were shedding like crazy. The amount of trash produced by sticky sheets, how ugly your typical lint roller is, and ultimately, my own desire to make a difference.”
“This brand came into fruition as a combination of everything. It was my own hair loss. My pets were shedding like crazy. The amount of trashed produced by sticky sheets, how ugly your typical lint roller is, and ultimately, my own desire to make a difference.”
I started the business during the pandemic and everything felt so quiet everywhere. I got opportunities very easily. So we were on Univision, which is a national TV network in the USA for the Hispanic market. All it took was two weeks and the products were listed. I don’t think that would have happened in a normal time period, but I think it was quite difficult to get people to move. Everyone and everything was paralyzed during the pandemic.”
“I wanted something nicer that was also effective. I wanted a product I could have on my coffee table or hanging with my winter coats and feel comfortable leaving it there because it is stylish. De Novo® lint brushes are always on my coffee table.”
I want to be able to get to the point where we are selling brushes made from recycled plastics that you can recycle again, which can in turn be made into another brush. So it would be a perfect cycle. That’s where I would like to take it. That is my goal and dream for the future.”
I think that human connection is really important. You miss it so much these days. You just buy a product and you don’t even think about the fact that people are behind this product. And that human connection is really important because it creates customer loyalty. You’re going to come back and say oh you know what, you gotta buy the brushes from Eliana, you gotta go there because she’s a real person. She sells these great brushes, and you’ll feel like you know me and that’s really important to me.
I do more work until they come home from school, and then I’m with my kids. Then in the evening, I do more work. So it’s a full cycle and around 9:00 pm I’ll go to sleep.
“I have worked since I was about 15 in various retail shops. Following my Masters, I started my career at the National Hispanic Leadership Institute (NHLI), a small nonprofit in Washington DC that promotes Latina leadership. From there, I went on to work in communications and marketing in a range of different sectors – from transportation to the wine industry.
I mostly do B2B, meaning most of my sales come directly from other retailers, but I do generate organic sales on the website as well. Over time, we have brought in around $140,000.
On a usual day, I’ll wake up at four to five, and during that time period is when I’m emailing or speaking with the manufacturers in China. I want to catch them before their day closes.
In a perfect world, I would love for these products to be produced sustainably from recycled plastics because I don’t want to waste any additional material. I’m trying to figure out what would be the best way to use recycled plastic to create a brush because that would be more of a niche item. It would be something that would make my product one hundred percent sustainable, and that would be great.
“If you take out your sticky sheet roller, you’re gonna use at least three or four sheets. And if you’re like me, you don’t actually go and buy the replacement for the sticky sheet. You just go out and you buy a new roller. Also, everything is in a box or it’s wrapped in plastic. It’s like plastic upon plastic upon plastic. And this is a requirement for many retailers. It’s all trash.
“The most important lesson I’ve learned in my career and through De Novo is to not be held back by fear. That’s the biggest lesson. Fear cripples and makes you feel small in this environment. Being an entrepreneur, having a small business – it’s so easy to be afraid of sending that email and to lose a little bit of money.
I did buy one of their templates because I wanted the website to look a little bit different than their free options. The building was a learning experience – a bit of a plug-and-play. I don’t have a background in web design but I found it relatively easy. Plus, they have very good customer support.
That’s why Shopify has been an important partner for me. My biggest goal is to continue with business development. Since I mostly sell directly to retailers, my day-to-day is less busy and I don’t have too many direct-to-consumer interactions. My website is a platform for people and companies to be able to see the products and get to know the company a little bit more. If you want to dive in deep to get to know me better, you should sign up for our newsletter.
I had to ensure that I was not hiring just anyone to produce these products. It was also really important for me to do a social compliance audit and make sure they actually take care of their own team because that’s important to me. We also did a manufacturer audit and a raw material test before we started production. I recommend that you test your products. If you want to be a brand, you need to buy them, test them, see if you like them, test the market out, and then evaluate to make sure you feel there is enough potential for growth with the brand you create.
In my household I mostly use it for pet hair. Our medium-sized schnauzer, Maya, sheds a lot twice a year, so these brushes certainly get put to the test. But you don’t have to have a pet to find these brushes useful. My mom, who has no pets, uses them after the dryer to remove the lint off her clothing. We also have a fair share of clients in northern states and Canada, who find our products helpful in the colder months when they wear sweaters and scarves which leave lint on finer textiles.
Extra Tips
“The product designs are created by a Chinese manufacturer and De Novo® is the brand. I contacted a broker in China who helped me get in touch with the manufacturer.
You don’t want to be just producing just another piece of trash. You’re producing something that has quality and you need to know what is in your products and where it’s coming from and that this factory is treating their employees correctly.
I also felt like there was plenty of opportunity with these products. The reusable lint brushes you find in stores today are all black or white with red bristles, which is just ugly. And the traditional lint rollers with sticky sheets produce so much trash.
However, after everything was said and done, they did not select De Novo® to be in one of their upcoming boxes. This was a giant fall for me but it was also a big learning experience at the same time. Though the door is closed for me this time, going through the requirements has been a great experience and it has made us better for any future opportunity that might come along.”
“If you’re gonna do ecommerce, you need to have a Shopify website.”
“Since delivering my second child, I had been experiencing a whole lot of hair loss. Aside from our dog Maya, we also had a cat who sheds a whole lot. So we had all this hair from everyone everywhere. As a stay-at-home mom, I spent all day at home and needed to find a solution to this problem. It was also appealing to have a job that I could do remotely so that I wouldn’t need to be pulled away from my family. You might think that having three kids and pets is enough, but I’m just one of those people that can’t really sit still and do nothing, so I decided to go for it and give entrepreneurship a try.
The AfterShip return app is also great because customers can start their own return process and then I just click approve and Shopify sends them a shipping label and that’s all it is.
