- When I created Bite, like literally to become an LLC
I did it by watching YouTube videos
and just following the steps.
- Lindsay, you've got something really rare
that very few people come in here
with these kinds of sales.
- Two years later
and not only was Lindsay appearing on Shark Tank,
she turned down an offer from Mark Cuban.
- When was the last time that even happened?
- It's not every day
you say no to a billionaire, but that meant
that I could make every decision that I wanted to
for the best interest of the planet and our customers.
And I get that toothpaste is a really weird thing to
get super passionate about
but I just wanted to solve a problem.
- Did you know over 1 billion
plastic toothpaste tubes end up
in our landfills and our oceans every single year?
- Bite offers a sustainable alternative:
toothpaste tablets
that come in glass jars and compostable refill pouches.
There's zero plastic from start to finish.
- When I first started Bite
it was incredibly hard to not compromise
but it's a hard road, whichever way you go.
So you might as well do what you do what you believe in.
- You just started your dream business.
How much profit would you need to pay your basic
living expenses like rent and ramen?
This is a show on the economics of entrepreneurship
and founders turning their dreams into reality.
This is Ramen Profitable.
- I started Bite in my living room.
- The year was 2017.
- I come from like a TV background.
I was traveling all the time for work
and I was going through those tiny little toothpaste tubes
and it seemed so wasteful.
So I started making my own.
I actually tried
like a hundred different things that didn't work.
I ended up taking online chemistry classes
talking to dentists, dental hygienists,
until I finally came up with a powdered formula
that I put into a tablet.
This is actually how I was making toothpaste tablets
for a very long time.
You just take the ingredients
mix them up and then press it out.
I like have jammed my finger in this machine so many times,
backed up on orders and fighting
with the machine, and I look back it and I'm like, those were
like the best times. I was still working full time
and then I was on Bite
until two or three in the morning, every night
but that really helped me because that same work ethic
and those same hours still apply.
And then we had a video go totally insane
viral on Facebook.
So your first month you get a bottle and a recyclable box,
filled with six months of tablets.
(Notifications beeping on phone)
- I was just getting these notifications on my phone.
Like I thought that my site had gotten hacked.
We didn't have a manufacturer.
We didn't have a fulfillment center.
My boyfriend, who's now my co-founder, jumped
in full-time with me doing the website development
and all of the photos and the creative.
And we basically had to war room the situation.
- There we go.
- I like that.
It's like the Beatles walking across the street.
We need like a little cactus.
- Go get it.
- In its first year Bite had done $6,000 in sales.
After they went viral, they did $200,000 in a week.
- Having a video go viral is like,
literally a dream scenario.
And then actually being in the moment, it was the most
stressful time in my entire life.
We might be pushing the launch like two days.
Right? So we need to have those before and after.
- The insanity paid off.
Through social media, Bite found a customer base
with an interest in sustainability.
Lindsay put the profits back
into developing new eco-friendly products
like mouthwash tablets, and a bamboo toothbrush.
But there was a problem.
- As a small business, the cards are already kind of stacked
against you. Having to have a sustainable supply chain and
and wanting to make these choices,
it just becomes even harder.
- Let's talk about a huge sustainability crisis
you may never have even heard of:
palm oil.
Palm oil is used to make all kinds
of products - cosmetics, food, and even fuels -
but its rapid harvest has decimated forests
in Indonesia and Malaysia
and destroyed habitats for endangered orangutans.
- We initially had Ecocert palm oil
in our toothpaste tablets.
And the point of Ecocert palm oil is that it's supposed to
not come from those areas, but not everything is like black
and white.
Our customers were saying, "You should really look
into the palm oil certification process.
There's a transparency issue."
So I started digging into it.
- And Bite's customers were right. When Lindsay dug deeper
she couldn't verify
that the palm oil they were using was actually sustainable.
- By our customers calling it out
my eyes were opened
to that issue and we decided to completely reformulate.
I think when it comes to making the choice
of how to be more sustainable, it's literally just doing it.
It was not easy in any way
but for us as a business, it was a no-brainer.
It meant like our pricing's going up.
Our sourcing is now different.
Our formula is now different.
- All those changes represented a lot of expense
but Lindsay decided not to pass on the mark ups.
Bite absorbed the increased cost instead,
to do right by their customers.
- On Earth Day of last year, we became 100% palm oil free
and a few months after going palm oil free
our sales basically doubled.
For me, that was just a reminder
that doing good in business is good for business.
It's really important for us to make money and be profitable
because that proves to other businesses that are looking at us
that what we're doing works.
So if you're starting your business to solve a problem
stick with it. It might get hard.
It might be the rockier path
but in the end it's worth it.