Chic-and-Span

Indeed, Dorward is banking on the big companies being too entrenched and muscle-bound to rethink their entire approach to a stagnant consumer category that has historically been viewed as unsexy. "We'll never be the core driver of this category, but we can bring some incremental growth to the niche we've been working on," Dorward says. "We're not trying to cannibalize the business of our major competitors; we're looking to grow the category and play to our own strengths.

"We get fan mail you'd expect from a different business," he says with a dry laugh. "We're getting consumers saying, 'We're a Method home. We only use Method products.' You'd be surprised the extent to which our customers become passionately engaged by these cleaning problems. We're onto something ... we're trying to elevate the category from problem-solution to something a bit more inspirational."

James Sanders

Eric Ryan, 31, says he hopes the start-up soap company he co-founded can someday become "the Ben & Jerry's or Snapple" of the category.

James Sanders

Adam Lowry, 29, is the chemist behind Method's colors, fragrances, and environmentally safe formulas.

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• A New Method of Cleaning
  December 24, 2003

More About

• Adam Lowry
• Eric Ryan
• Alastair Dorward
• Karim Rashid
• Tom Vierhile

Such levitation is made easier when one of your products -- in this case, a Method dish soap bottle – pops up on the counter of Courteney Cox's kitchen in an episode of Friends.

There's a downside to success in the grocery business.

"When we went national, it just ruined shopping for us," Ryan says with genuine sadness. "Every time you go to a Target or a grocery store, you go to the section, and you either get upset that it isn't there, or you get upset it isn't merchandised well ...."

"I eat out almost every night," Lowry says, and he's not kidding. "I hate going to the grocery store. I can't do it."

"It drives my wife crazy, because I disappear every time we go inside," Ryan says. "But she knows right where to find me."

Even when he's not in a grocery store, Ryan can't keep his eyes off the merchandise. His gaze floats back to the sprawling shelf of cleaning products in the corner of the conference room – a hulking symbol of the industry's monotonous uniformity and a constant reminder of Method's still-small stature among the Goliaths. "I was on a flight the other day, and someone asked what I did, and I told them ...," Ryan shakes his head sheepishly. "I told them advertising. It's soap – you can't get too cocky."

He continues to study the products, talking almost to himself: "The category's eventually going to wake up, so we're just trying to go as fast as we can right now." Then he sighs, drags his gaze away from the shelf, and leans back in his chair. There's a wistful look in his eye, and the dismissive tone he usually employs when speaking about the industry disappears.

He points at a bottle of Method dish soap on the table in front of him and offers a summary, plaintive wish: "I just hope my grandchildren go into a store someday and say, 'My grandfather started that.'"