Laundry is about as commoditized as it gets. Procter & Gamble and Unilever have owned those shelves for decades. The products are cheap, the marketing is functional, and the category is — to put it charitably — uninspiring.
And then Laundry Sauce showed up.
Built on a brand-first philosophy, powered by subscription economics, and now stocked in Target stores nationwide, Laundry Sauce is one of the more interesting brand-building stories in the D2C world right now. Co-founders Ian Blair and Robert Cardiff recently joined Cart.com CMO Jack Ulrich and Chief Logistics Officer Joe Barth for a webinar on exactly how they did it — and what they'd do differently.
Here's what stood out.
The "easy mode" business philosophy
Ian Blair's previous company, BuildFire, let people create mobile apps without writing code. It had 70 full-time employees at its peak and the kind of entropy baked into software businesses — if you stop writing code, you start dying. When it came time to start something new, Blair wanted the opposite.
"How do you play business on easy mode rather than hard mode?" he asked himself. The answer: move a box from point A to point B.
The specific constraints he looked for: a product people couldn't opt out of buying, limited SKUs, subscription potential, and a category ripe for premiumization. Laundry checked every box. It's non-discretionary, simple to pick-and-pack, built for recurring revenue, and had never really had a premium player.
Robert Cardiff, who came from enterprise software, echoed the point. "There are tons and tons of tools that are already pre-built," Cardiff said. "We use Shopify, and thankfully we have Cart that's got a WMS, but we don't have to go develop our own software."
Brand first. Everything else second.
Most consumer brands treat identity as an afterthought. Laundry Sauce took the opposite approach. "Laundry Sauce — the name was legitimately born out of an internet meme that went viral," Blair explained. The closest analogy is Liquid Death: "It's all brand. They did something so engaging and fun, and that's why they've built such a big business."
That brand-first instinct shaped every decision. When Laundry Sauce pitched Target, they brought Scott Eastwood as a celebrity investor running TV-quality creative, an email list of 300,000+ D2C customers, and a month-by-month marketing plan. The brand did the convincing.
The road to Target: 18 months of preparation
Laundry Sauce launched in Target on March 1st — and promptly sold out. But the path took nearly 18 months from the first buyer conversation. EDI setup (SPS Commerce) took 4 months. ERP setup (Good Day, built on Shopify) took 7 months. Cardiff's advice: if you think you'll get a retailer's green light and ship two months later, you've miscalculated.
Retail is war — so they came prepared
"Retail's war," Blair said plainly. "Shelf space is literally a zero-sum game." Laundry Sauce launched with geo-targeted TV ads near Target locations, paid media on Google and Meta, a TikTok creator strategy, influencer partnerships, direct mail, and a homepage takeover to their D2C audience. The velocities exceeded expectations. They ran out of inventory. That's the best problem to have.
The 3PL lesson: cost optimization is not a strategy
About two years into working with Cart.com, Laundry Sauce switched to a cheaper 3PL. What followed was six months of receiving discrepancies, inaccurate packing, and SLA misses on Amazon and TikTok. "Hat in hand, we went back to Joe and said: we're ready to come back."
"It took us going to another 3PL to realize that the people and the processes at Cart are great. And when there are speed bumps, the leadership team is committed to fixing them." — Robert Cardiff, Co-Founder, Laundry Sauce
Cart.com was running 99%+ SLA compliance on 25,000 orders a month. Laundry Sauce has been back for about a year.
What Cart.com's role actually looks like
Joe Barth framed it simply: control. For a brand selling direct, on Amazon, TikTok, and in Target, that means retail compliance expertise, premium returns handling, and week-over-week consistency from a partner that's listening.
AI as a force multiplier — not a magic wand
Both founders talked about AI practically. Blair: daily AI-generated Target sales velocity reports, agentic Facebook Ads audits, Triple Whale for attribution. Cardiff: every team member should use AI daily — spreadsheet analysis, email drafts, research. Laundry Sauce holds a monthly AI meeting and has an internal "AI czar." It's a cultural commitment, not just a tool purchase.
What's next for Laundry Sauce
"We want to bring joy to the laundry room with high-end fragrance. We truly believe Laundry Sauce can be a billion-dollar company." The roadmap: more product, more retail, more marketing — and the infrastructure to scale it all without the day-to-day changing much.
To learn more about how Cart.com partners with brands like Eastside Golf to scale e-commerce operations, reach out to our team.
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