Garden Grove’s Earth Friendly Products has a rare projection for a company of its size in this economy: a doubling in sales in 2009.
The company, which makes environmentally friendly cleaning products, hopes to reach $100 million in sales this year as retailers look to offer more green products.
Earth Friendly saw sales of $56 million in 2008, which were up 36%. It has more than 200 employees and factories in Orange County, New Jersey, Florida and Illinois.
The company makes laundry detergents, dish soaps, stain removers and other cleaning products under the Ecos, Dishmate, Wave, OxoBrite and Petastic brands, among others.
Earth Friendly’s brands and those it makes for stores are sold at Whole Foods Market, Albertsons, Vons, Trader Joes, Gelson’s Market, Mother’s Market & Kitchen and others.
The company recently added Costco Wholesale Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Sam’s Club.
Earth Friendly is a family affair.
Founder and Chief Executive Van Vlahakis runs the business with son John Vlahakis and daughter Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks.
Earth Friendly grew out of an industrial cleaning products company Van Vlahakis started in the 1960s. Back then, he made plant-based cleaners before they were chic.
But making green cleaning products wasn’t a lifelong goal.
Van Vlahakis came to America from Greece in the 1950s. He left behind his hometown of Crete, which was impoverished after World War II.
Alone with $22 in his pocket, Van Vlahakis said he wondered if he had made the biggest mistake of his life.
“I had come all that way,” he said. “I didn’t know what to do.”
A fellow Greek approached Van Vlahakis and offered him help.
He took Van Vlahakis to lunch, gave him a short tour of New York and gave him money to pay for a train ticket to Chicago.
“To this day I still owe that kind stranger money,” Van Vlahakis said.
After working at factories, waiting tables and doing other less glamorous jobs, Van Vlahakis saved enough to put himself through Chicago’s Roosevelt University, studying chemistry.
Van Vlahakis worked at a chemical company in the 1960s before getting laid off.
Putting his education to work, he started an industrial cleaning products company called Venus Laboratories Inc. in 1967.
The company grew gradually by selling cleaning supplies to janitorial companies and retailers.
Venus Laboratories expanded to OC, Florida and New Jersey in the 1970s and 1980s.
Son John Vlahakis joined the business in 1980 after graduating from Northwestern University.
He set out to create a green product line when he came to work for his father. Back then, natural products still were obscure to everyday customers and retail buyers.
Large grocery stores saw natural cleaners as less effective as regular cleaners, which made it difficult for Earth Friendly to win shelf space.
So John Vlahakis went after small natural food stores.
“I became a traveling salesman going to independent grocery stores and natural health food stores trying to sell this product line,” he said.
OC Operations
Word of mouth helped Earth Friendly land more accounts, particularly in California.
The company’s OC operation became its busiest, producing more than its other factories.
Van Vlahakis moved to Huntington Beach to oversee the 60,000-square-foot office, which now is Earth Friendly’s headquarters.
He lives in Huntington Harbour and splits his time between OC and Florida.
John Vlahakis works at the company’s Illinois office. He’s the company’s president.
Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, who joined full time in 2002, manages marketing and communications from Huntington Beach.
The family faces plenty of competition.
Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble Co., Huntington Harbour-based Sunshine Makers Inc.’s Simple Green, Seventh Generation Inc. of Vermont and San Francisco-based Method Products Inc. offer green cleaning products.
Smaller rivals, such as Newport Beach-based Ecosafe Products Inc. and Costa Mesa’s Lab Clean LLC, have emerged as well.
Earth Friendly tries to stay ahead by creating products with the help of seven full-time chemists.
Last year, the company got into personal care products with hand soaps, lotions and body butters under the Natural Spa brand.
They’ll be a big push for Earth Friendly this year, Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks said.
The company also is getting into a solar panel installation service, dubbed Earth Friendly Micro Solar Electric System.
The goal is to target homeowners with small solar power systems that produce 8 to 24 kilowatt hours of electricity a day, the latter equal to about a month’s use of a 100-watt light bulb.
Earth Friendly plans to hire about a dozen workers for the solar panel business, Vlahakis-Hanks said.
The company has had buyout offers, but Van Vlahakis said he’s unlikely to sell any time soon.
“I’d like to have something to pass down to my grandchildren,” Van Vlahakis said.
