What The Laundress’s Gwen Whiting did next

Gwen Whiting thought she was done with the laundry room. Having co-founded the eco-luxe fabric care brand The Laundress in 2004, she sold the company to Unilever for a reported $100mn in 2019. After working for 15 years in “a never-ending start-up”, and growing the offering to 85 products, she was very happy to press pause. For a while.  

This month finds Whiting back in the utility room with The Fill, a new line of aromatherapy, plant-derived cleaning products that she hopes will pick up where her first-born brand left off. “A brand needs to be eco-friendly, effective – and wellness-centred,” she says of the new endeavour. Things have changed since 2004. 

There’s also, arguably, something deeper at play. In December 2022, Unilever was forced to recall eight million bottles of The Laundress, citing “the potential presence of elevated levels of bacteria in some of our products that present a safety concern”. It was a severe reputational blow to a brand whose following – including celebrities such as John Mayer – had been near cult-like. 

With The Fill, Whiting is planning to reclaim the market. “I spent 20 years of my life devoted to clean clothes and the community we built, and I felt like I let my customers down [when we sold], so I’m back,” she says. 

I figure if I can add a little kick to someone’s step, why not?

Whiting is speaking in her jewel-box duplex on the Upper East Side of Manhattan – a pied-à-terre sibling to the Bridgehampton home she shares with her husband. It looks across to The Frick Collection. The walls mix abstract collages by Welsh artist Huw Griffith with Florentine flea-market finds; the wallpaper is de Gournay and urns are furnished with exuberant displays of ferns. It’s Edith Wharton with contemporary poise, not unlike Whiting herself.

Starting with 16 products, The Fill was inspired both by Whiting’s obsession with pristine countertops and clean cashmere, and also by her own emotional needs. “I suffered during The Laundress years from anxiety, sciatica… you name it,” she says. “I did yearly wellness retreats to rebuild – in Korea, Japan, Thailand and Denmark. When I thought about my next chapter, I knew that wellness needed to be a major component.” To which end, The Fill has eschewed the perfumes that would typically be incorporated into the product and replaced them with healing essential oils. Says Whiting: “Juniper berry for refreshing and purifying, peppermint for stimulation, lavender for calming, tea tree for its revitalising qualities – these natural oil-infused formulations are designed to clean better and give you a wellness experience at the same time.”

It may seem a stretch to think that cleaning one’s kitchen might be a route to wellness, but the beneficial power of scent does at least have some basis in science. “Scent affects a person’s social life, work life, intimate life, everything – it is connected to memory, emotion and learning, analytical comprehension and more,” says Rachel Herz, a neuroscientist at Brown University who specialises in the science of smell. “When it comes to household cleaning products scent is also associated with being efficacious. People use scent as a signal for ‘this is clean’ – floor cleaner, laundry detergent – and so on. I wrote a paper entitled Proustian Products are Preferred that explores how if a scent is meaningful to a person, they will believe it is more functional.”

“I’m a believer in ‘function and formulation’,” says Whiting, “meaning the function of the product is formulated for the exact purpose, whether that’s for washing woollens or cleaning glass surfaces.” The Fill’s launch collection contains The Detergent Day and Night, The Woollens, The Glass, The Bleach, The Wrinkles, and The Vinegar. Each comes in refillable pouches (from $32 to $40) that can be decanted into bottles. “No packaging is ideal, but flexible, refillable pouches are the lesser of evils,” Whiting says of her containers, which require 60 per cent less plastic than bottle alternatives and leave a lighter environmental footprint to transport. 

Having built a global brand that required constant travel, Whiting is structuring her distribution differently. The Fill will be direct-to-consumer, marketed as a “membership-based model” – no stores, no Amazon. “I want to reconnect with my like-minded community,” she says. “I used to answer all the customer emails myself and I want to have that intimate connection again. This smaller model can support that.”

Whiting is confident about her timing. Consumers are more conscious about the use of synthetic chemicals, perfumes and harsh solvents in cleaning products and are seeking out natural alternatives, often with refillable or biodegradable packaging. The global market for natural cleaning products is projected to grow from $6.3bn in 2023 to around $15.5bn by 2032. 

In the US, where The Fill is launching first (with plans for expansion in the pipeline), brands such as Seventh Generation, Mrs Meyer’s Clean Day and ECOS are proliferating, while the big players – Palmolive, Henkel and even Clorox – are launching green(er) alternatives and recyclable containers. “The data is clear that consumers want brands that push the boundaries of being eco-friendly,” says Afdhel Aziz, co-founder of Conspiracy of Love, a global consultancy focused on sustainable and inclusive growth for companies including The Gap and Sephora. “It’s driven by a growing awareness of the impact of the toxicity in our products and the effects they are having on our bodies as well as on the planet. The big companies see the disruptors in this space and are investing heavily to improve their offerings or are acquiring the disruptors directly.”

The Fill “members”, as Whiting calls her customers, can sign up for either Founding Member ($150 annually), which includes free shipping on products and access to a Cleaning Concierge service, or The Fill Member ($40 annually), which comes with access to the Cleaning Concierge and community content.

“I figure if I can add a little kick to someone’s step, why not?” she says. Besides, her brand is as inclusive as they come. “My customer is a marketing anomaly; from twentysomethings to 70-year-olds. At the end of the day, everyone has dirty laundry.”

thefillclub.com