How the Founder of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Disrupted the Household Cleaning Market With a Brand Inspired by Her Mom

Shopping at a big-box store in Atlanta, Monica Nassif stared at bottles of sterile-looking marked-down cleaning products on a wooden palate and wondered why they couldn’t look and smell fabulous. Like death and taxes, cleaning was inevitable, she thought. Why can’t the chore be done with products that are more enjoyable?

She envisioned cleaners with pleasing, non-harsh scents, like the Aveda shampoo and conditioner she had at home in her shower. 

Transforming countertop sprays, dish soaps, and hand soaps became an obsession. She sketched out a business plan, raised money through angel investors, and launched a company in 1999, a time when most brands took for granted that clean meant biting smells like bleach and ammonia.

Featuring scents like basil, lavender, and lemon verbena, her company, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day, upended how Americans think about cleaning, shifting it from a bland, chemical-driven process to a lifestyle-driven one. Today, brands from Method to Seventh Generation have made scent and experience central to their identities. Meanwhile, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day helped push eco-conscious cleaning products created with plant-derived ingredients in the mainstream, making them more available to the masses.

Nassif grew the still-thriving business inspired by her mother, Midwestern homemaker Thelma Meyer, to over 20,000 stores nationwide before selling it in 2008. The new owner, household cleaning product manufacturer SC Johnson, took the brand global and continues to innovate with products like a summertime collection featuring scents of dandelion, tomato, and cut grass.

CO— spoke to Nassif to get an insider’s view on how she successfully grew a business that’s become a household name and what it takes to succeed today as an entrepreneur.

CO—: You launched your career as a speechwriter, editor, and publicist with Target, then started a marketing communications agency catering to brands and retail companies. How did that lead to your own consumer brand?

MN: I really fell into the whole retail and consumer products industry. When I decided to try and transform cleaning into a more enjoyable experience, I first launched a high-end brand of aromatherapy cleaning products called Caldrea named after my two daughters. We had scents like pine, citrus, mint, ylang-ylang, and patchouli, and we grew the line to hundreds of specialty stores across the country. But I realized very quickly that 80% of household cleaning products sold at the mass level. If we didn’t sell that way, someone would knock off our product. That’s when we created the Mrs. Meyer’s brand.

CO—: Did Mrs. Meyer’s take off right away? What were early days like?

MN: It was actually kind of a stumbly bumbly start. We had a hard time getting it going, but it turned into a rocket ship. We had three separate brands in the beginning. At the time, we did private label work for Williams Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, and Harvey Nichols out of London, producing store-branded soaps and sprays for them. Then we had Caldrea and Mrs. Meyer’s, too. That was a handful because each brand required different operations. But doing the private label work helped to validate our concept. That was a big boost. We managed to negotiate our name on the back of William Sonoma bottles. I’m a big believer that all boats float in a rising tide. When we saw that Mrs. Meyer’s was really taking off around 2003, we put a lot of resources behind it. We saw the potential, especially in big coastal markets. 

[Read more: How 3 (Very Different) Startups Landed on Target’s Shelves]

CO—: What were the challenges you faced along the way?

MN: Our first big one was raising money. I don’t think there was anything harder. The older gentlemen I was pitching to just didn’t get the concept. I got a lot of “I don’t do the dishes, I wish my wife were here.” But finally, I met a group of investors who saw the potential. We also had to walk away from orders from stores that wanted to split up our products. To be successful, we wanted everything together, like a personal care brand. Whenever I got down in the dumps, which was often, I rebooted this image in my head I had in a store one day of an end-cap full of our products. I thought to myself, “It can happen.”

CO—: You’ve been candid that your first push into big-box retail didn’t go as planned. What went wrong, and what did you learn?

MN: We went into Target prematurely. We weren’t in any critical markets, where we were already in Whole Foods stores. We were not performing, we weren’t ready, so I kicked us out of Target. I’m a big believer in kicking yourself out before someone kicks you out. We worked on building up our specialty stores, and then two years later we went back into Target, which gave us lot momentum to go into higher-end grocery stores.

CO—: In 2008, the business was going very well. Why sell it and retire when you were 53 years old?

MN: Mrs. Meyer’s was on fire, and we could see its growth potential. We dominated the whole idea of a singular fragrance for the whole home. We were talking to Walmart, but not quite there. We’d been approached by private equity people. I asked them, “What can you do for us that we can’t do for ourselves?” and I never got an interesting answer. Until SC Johnson. When they came knocking, I knew these were the guys who can scale this, and I thought we’d be in really good hands. This was a time when organic food and personal care products were being gobbled up by strategic partners and capital investment firms. So, I also thought, I better get out while the getting’s good. It was a bittersweet decision, not easy. Still, after all this time, when I’m at Target, I straighten out the bottles on the shelves. I can’t help myself. It’s like it’s your child. 

[Read more: How Startups Fashionphile, Whatnot, and Ithaca Hummus Convert and Retain Customers Through Personalization]

CO—: What have you been doing since?

MN: I tried to retire, but I failed miserably. I started another business, a high-end luxury sleepwear line for the slightly older woman, Sophia Graydon. It was a beautiful collection, and we were featured in Vogue. I gave myself a budget to invest—it was exhausting to raise funds—and a sales number to achieve. When the latter didn’t happen, I shut it down after a few years. I’ve also sat on a couple of boards for consumer products and made some investments. One year, I decided to ski for 100 days, so I did that. I’ve done some consulting and speaking along the way. During COVID, I took a screenwriting class and wrote three scripts. Then I wrote a book about my mom and the business that I called “I Bottled My Mother”.

CO—: What does it take to succeed today as an entrepreneur?

MN: The first thing you should do is look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Can I do it, do I have what it takes to pull this off?” Do you have extremely thick skin, can you persevere through hell and high water? So, first thing, know thyself. The second thing I tell every entrepreneur is to get off that computer and go look at competitor products in person. Stand in front of that section at Walmart and see all the brands. You better figure out who you’re kicking out, because Target or Walmart is not setting up a wing of the store for you. You have to have better margins and sales than others. All of the answers are not online. I really do believe that the only way to train your eye is to walk around and see for yourself what works and what doesn’t. 

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