Brands In The Spotlight: smol

My previous ‘Brands In The Spotlight’ blogs were on companies Brewdog and Ben & Jerries, who hardly needed any more press. This time I’ve decided to now turn my attention onto (and improve the backlink profile of) a smaller company doing some good in the world. Introducing… smol.

Smol is a company in that wild and exciting industry that is…. cleaning! “Hurrah”, I hear you all cry, “how exciting, I can’t wait to read this blog”. However, even the most boring of industries deserves a disruptor, and that’s exactly what smol are.

Smol are a subscription service who deliver washing machine & dishwasher tablets to your door, as frequently as you need them. Nothing super exciting there. However, what makes them special and in the perfect position to be incredibly successful, is that smol’s products are much lower in chemicals than other detergents, are plastic-free, cruelty-free, and 100% recyclable, as well as being cheaper than the market-leading brands.

Anyone who is trying to live and consume more conscientiously will know that, often, cruelty free & environmentally friendly products tend to cost more than those that are not. Especially in the current climate, consumers sometimes don’t have the choice to spend more on those products, even if they want to. That said, the cruelty-free cosmetics industry is estimated to reach 10 billion USD by 2024 due to consumers becoming increasingly aware of (read: horrified about) the circumstances in which many household products are produced. Veganism is on the rise; The Vegan Society shared that the number of vegans quadrupled between 2014 and 2019, with 1.16% of the UK being vegan. They predict that by 2025 a quarter of the UK will be vegans and vegetarians. You only have to look at the popularity and mainstream take up of  the ‘Meat Free Monday’ campaign to see that, even meat-eating consumers, are bought into the cruelty-free movement.

It should come as no surprise that, in the same vein, consumers are also becoming much more environmentally conscious, and the sustainable products market is growing at a similar rate.

By being cheaper and more convenient than their competitors, environmentally friendly AND cruelty-free, smol are in an absolute sweet spot. In the current climate, you really can’t underestimate how important price point is for your product. Smol come in at 16p per capsule (vs 23.7p for the most popular bio brand). One of the reasons they are going to be able to keep their costs so low is that, rather than undergoing huge and expensive traditional marketing campaigns to absolutely everyone in the UK, smol are doing some very clever, targeted marketing to the exact right audience, in the perfect place… social media.

Smol is the first and only company I have bought from after just seeing just 1 Instagram advert. Normally, I engage, I click, I peruse, I leave, I get retargeted, and then I end up in a marketing funnel for weeks, months or years before I either buy, or don’t.

But smol were different. They had me at hello.

Firstly, they clearly knew their audience (a trying really hard to be vegetarian, Greta Thunberg following, Cowspiracy watching Millenial). Their quirky gif ads were about as interesting as you can make laundry tablets be, and got their main USP’s across straight away. With a free trial as a hook (yes please, always), I signed up there and then. When the time came for me to take the plunge and actually exchange my cash for the products, there was no reason not to continue.

The price is low, there are amazing reviews from over 2,000 people on Trustpilot and over 10,500 on Feefo, and I can delay/change my order in about half a minute because the email communication and the user experience on the website is fantastic.

In short, boring product, brilliant company. I expect great things.