How two friends built a luxury brand in an unlikely category

They found an opportunity hiding under the sink.

Lindsay Droz and Kristi Lord did not set out to make cleaning glamorous. They set out to solve a problem hiding in plain sight: The products people use every day to care for their homes are often the least considered objects in them.

Before launching L’Avant Collective, Droz and Lord had successful corporate careers and young families. They kept returning to the same question: Why did cleaning products have to be hidden under the sink?

“We wanted products that actually belonged in our homes,” Droz says. “Not hidden under the sink, but on the counter. Beautiful, effective, and safe for our kids and pets.”

Over time, that frustration became a business opportunity. When they started sharing the idea with others, the response was immediate. People recognized the same gap.

“That’s when it shifted from a dream to an inevitability,” Lord says.

Turning an overlooked category into a luxury experience

That idea became L’Avant Collective, a luxury home-care brand built around plant-derived formulas, perfume-grade fragrance, and bottles designed to be displayed.

The company sells cleaning supplies and accessories, including its High Performing Laundry Detergent, High Performing Hand Soap, and Multipurpose Surface Cleaner, in scents such as Ambre Santal, Blushed Bergamot, and Fresh Linen.

Droz and Lord saw an opportunity to move cleaning products beyond utility, price, and harsh visual language into the emotional territory of aesthetics and ritual.

“L’Avant is about elevating the daily routines,” Droz explains. “The scent lingering on freshly laundered linens, the hand soap you reach for with genuine pleasure.”

They believed the category had overlooked an important question. “Walk down any cleaning aisle and the message is the same: power, performance, kill germs,” Droz adds. “Nobody was asking: What does it feel like to use this? How does it affect, or even enrich, the atmosphere of your home?”

Building a brand around emotion and design

The founders saw a false choice in the market: clean products on one side, luxury on the other.

“Natural products were often positioned as a sacrifice or an inevitable trade-off, safer but less effective, better for the planet but worse for your counter,” Lord says. “We believed that framing was false.”

Rather than soften their premium positioning, they chose to protect the vision.

“There was constant pressure to make the products more accessible, to soften the luxury positioning,” Lord says. “We had to fight the pull toward the middle and resist the temptation to dilute that vision.”

Their own frustration became the market signal. They were the customers.

That insight helped them make design a core growth strategy rather than a finishing touch. Instead of simply claiming their products were premium, they invited customers into an experience.

“We described the trace of bergamot in the air, the soft lather at the sink, the way a glass bottle looks catching light on a countertop,” Droz recalls.

From the beginning, the product itself had to communicate value. “The vessel, the label, the weight of the bottle in your hand—all of it communicates before the customer even opens the cap,” she explains.

The power of knowing your customer

As female founders building a luxury cleaning brand, Droz and Lord have also faced skepticism about whether they were serious operators. “The question, sometimes spoken and sometimes not, is whether you’re serious business people or two friends playing at a hobby,” Lord says.

But they believe their closeness to the customer is one of their biggest advantages. “We know exactly why someone reaches for a product and what makes them reach for it again,” Droz says. “That intimacy with the customer isn’t a soft skill. It’s the business.”

They have also embraced restraint, choosing not to chase every trend, expand faster than they could execute well, or dilute the brand to reach a larger market. “We’ve always believed that precision is more powerful than ubiquity,” Lord notes.

When asked what has been underestimated in the company’s success, they point to friendship.

“We can be direct with each other in a way that would break a lot of business relationships,” Lord says. “That trust and candor is probably our greatest operational asset.”

This post originally appeared at inc.com.

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