The trigger spray has always been an issue for me. The only option was the mass produced cheap variety. Other companies with deeper pockets (even the eco-friendly ones) develop "their own" trigger spray with a unique design BUT, using the same 100% plastic materials 🤦♂️😣.
For today's blog, I wanted to provide a little information on how we came to develop our unique trigger sprays. We were fortunate enough to be working with some very cool startups, which placed me in the perfect situation to have a "Eureka" moment.
This story began in February of 2022. After doing some research, I found a startup accelerator program running down in Knoxville , Tennessee. We’re based in Johnson City, just an hour and a half drive from Knoxville. We also have some close personal connections to Knoxville, so we thought it a great opportunity. We put in an application, had a great experience in the interview process and were fortunate enough to be accepted into the Spark CleanTech accelerator program based at UT Knoxville. This program really was a bootcamp. Kay and I went into this experience thinking we had started a business, but quickly realized we had a business idea, but were basically running a hobby. The program quickly gave us a sobering but invaluable experience of what a successful business needs.
We were one of 6 startups that began the accelerator program, and this was one of the coolest parts. We were grouped with some very smart and driven founders. I could talk a lot about all of them but three that we develop strong relationships with were Raev, an intuitive city based electric vehicle sharing program, Frakktal develops biobased materials for interior building work, GroundStar aimed to develop and pioneer carbon capture technology while Windfall was an innovative startup that focused on post-consumer waste, specifically wind turbine recycling. That brings me nicely round to our new trigger sprays. We didn’t instantly begin collaborating with Windfall to create our trigger sprays. I can’t really explain what it was that inspired this path. I remember sitting down in one of the seminars. The seminar was about successful leadership in startups, so not really related to trigger sprays. At this point, we were about halfway through the accelerator program. Immediately after the seminar, I turned to Ryan and asked, “any chance we can make a trigger spray from your recycled wind turbine blade material”. Ryan looked back as his smile faded as he reflected the sincerity I must have been expressing in my face. What ensued was a series of questions and talk about prototypes and agreements…. But that was the moment that started the ball rolling.
We ultimately committed to the wind turbine recycled trigger spray. It has been a costly process, more than doubling the price of the traditional, 100% plastic trigger sprays used by every other company in the cleaning industry, but we felt and continue to feel it is a worthwhile endeavor. The trigger sprays go with our kits, so anyone that orders a Green Llama kit will get their own trigger spray made from recycled wind turbine blades. Truly an innovation unique to Green Llama.
Get your Kit today, and support our sustainable journey :0)
