Influx

But six years ago, the company was little more than a wild idea shared by two high school buddies from Michigan who were rooming together in San Francisco.

Ryan, now 33, was working in advertising and his friend Adam Lowry, now 32, was a chemical engineer who had worked for a foundation researching global warming. The two were intrigued by companies like Apple Computer Inc. that had used a cutting-edge design sensibility to become industry leaders.

“We started to discuss different industries that needed to be reinvented from a design standpoint and from an environmental standpoint,” Lowry said.

The two became intrigued by household cleaning products. It is a huge industry, with annual sales of about $18 billion. But it hadn’t changed much since the 1950s. Companies talked mostly about how well their products killed germs; brands like Cascade and Comet changed little from decade to decade.”