San Francisco based Method was purchased by Belgium based EU leading green cleaning products manufacturer Ecover on Tuesday. The combined company will be the largest green cleaning company in the world.
Method transformed the Plain Jane green cleaning category with its trendy packaging and product colors, appealing to everyone from Martha Stewart fans, climate change deniers and perhaps most importantly of all, corporate buyers at Target and other conventional retailers who previously didn’t believe green cleaning would sell far away from the granola aisles of natural food stores. Ecover, one of the first green cleaning brands in the world was founded in 1979 and will share its strong EU based manufacturing and distribution base with Method.
Method co-founder Eric Ryan, quoted in the GreenBiz.com stated, “Initially, Method was not necessarily looking for a transaction per se, but in the course of getting to know the team at Ecover we saw the potential to accelerate the growth globally.”
While every acquisition always ends up with PR spin touting the synergy between the two brands, the almighty motivator of the dollar sign is usually easy to see behind all the good will gestures. While this deal will no doubt help green up the spreadsheets as well as those more important things too, it also is unusual in that unlike the normal Big Daddy buys sexy darling type of deal, both brands are growing strongly, could continue to do so on their own, and view profits as only one quotient of their bottom line.
In other green cleaning news, NBN is working on a story about Clorox’ development of its now floundering GreenWorks line in regards to Clorox’ pre launch research and skepticism over whether one of the best selling conventional green brands, was actually biodegradable. We won’t name the purported snake oil brand that Clorox was investigating yet, but stay tuned.
