Building a physical consumer brand from scratch

Tidy was my experiment in building a physical consumer product: a solid shampoo bar designed specifically for men.

After years building digital products, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to experience what it felt like to create something physical.

Solid shampoo appealed because it brought together several things I found interesting. It reduced single-use plastic, there seemed to be a gap in the market and space to create a product aimed specifically at men, and, unlike many physical products, it was something I could develop and manufacture myself.

Launching Tidy meant stepping into an entirely different world. I learnt about product formulation, packaging, manufacturing, ecommerce, fulfilment and customer support by doing them. Working with my friend Jason Hunt, I also had the chance to build a brand from scratch. Together we explored names, positioning and visual identity until we landed on Tidy.

I’d spent years working with businesses that cared deeply about acquiring customers and growing an audience. I already understood that great products don’t simply sell themselves.

Building Tidy meant experiencing that reality first-hand.

As the founder, there was nobody else responsible for generating demand. Every visitor, every order and every returning customer could usually be traced back to something I’d built, written or experimented with. I’d always known distribution mattered. Being responsible for it yourself gives you a very different appreciation of what that actually means.

The business became another product to iterate on. I documented the journey publicly, experimented with different ways of growing an audience and measured what happened. Some ideas worked better than others, but each experiment gave me a slightly better understanding of what it actually takes to grow a consumer brand.

Another observation has stayed with me ever since. Many people genuinely want to make more sustainable choices, but changing behaviour is much harder than changing opinions. The gap between what people value and what they actually do is real, and it’s something I’ve found myself thinking about again in later projects like Glad.

Curious how this experience shaped the way I think about product?

Many of the ideas on my Approach page were strengthened by projects like this, where assumptions quickly meet reality.