“We love the product but it’s too expensive.”
I have lost track of how many times we have seen that comment. It is definitely in the hundreds.
If you are building a brand right now, you have probably seen it too. It is the kind of comment that makes new founders panic. They immediately want to run a discount, drop their prices, or figure out how to shave a few cents off their production costs to appease the crowd.
Some people would call that comment a criticism.
I call it a signal. It means we are doing exactly what we set out to do.
The Race to the Bottom
From the day my co-founder Ian Blair and I launched Laundry Sauce, we were never trying to win on price.
That playbook is cooked. When your only value proposition is being the cheapest option on the shelf, you are signing up for a miserable existence. It ends with constant pressure to cut corners, cheapen the product, and compete with people who are willing to go lower than you.
Eventually someone with deeper pockets or cheaper labor comes along and wipes you out.
That is not a game we wanted to play. We wanted to build a real eight-figure business.
We decided early on that we would rather have a smaller group of people who are absolutely obsessed with our product than a massive group of people who just tolerate it because it happens to be on sale.
Obsession Requires Real Differentiation
We wanted to create something truly differentiated.
People want to pay more for things that make them feel good. They want an experience. But you cannot fake a premium experience with clever marketing. You actually have to build it into the DNA of what you are selling. You have to back it up with a relentless focus on excellence.
For us at Laundry Sauce, that meant three non-negotiables from day one.
- High-end fragrances. Not the cheap synthetic stuff you find in a plastic jug at the grocery store.
- High-performance clean. The product actually has to work and get the job done better than anything else on the market.
- Premium sustainable packaging. It has to look and feel different from the moment the box arrives.
Doing those three things right costs money. It requires a higher upfront investment. It means your margins look different than the legacy brands.
And we were not willing to compromise on any of it.
What No Compromise Actually Looks Like
Let me give you a real example of what this looks like in practice.
We recently launched Brazilian Vanilla. It is our newest limited edition fragrance and our first true gourmand scent. It might just be the scent of the summer.
If we were trying to compete on price, we would have picked a stock vanilla scent out of a catalog, slapped a label on it, and called it a day.
Instead, we worked with Sabine de Tscharner. She is our principal perfumer and an absolute master at what she does. She drew inspiration from Brazil itself. The sunshine, the free-spirited energy of Copacabana, the rhythm of a place that knows how to enjoy life.
We used native Brazilian ingredients to do the heavy lifting to build a highly complex profile.
- Top notes. Mandarin, lemongrass, and almond.
- Heart notes. Whipped vanilla, heliotrope, frangipani, coconut, and caramel.
- Dry down. Brazilian tonka bean, guaiacwood, and ambrox.
Warm amber and silky vanilla up front, coconut drifting in like a sea breeze through the heart, and a dry down that lingers the way a good day does.
That level of complexity does not come cheap. You cannot reverse-engineer that experience on a discount budget. You can read the full story on how we built it here: https://laundrysauce.com/blogs/news/brazilian-vanilla-launch
Some of the best moments in life smell better than you would expect. We are willing to pay the cost to deliver that exact feeling to our customers.
The Cheapest Way to Clean Your Underwear
There are plenty of options out there if someone just wants the absolute cheapest way to clean their underwear.
Walk down any grocery store aisle. You will see a wall of bright orange and blue plastic jugs screaming at you with rollback pricing and extra ounces for free.
That is a massive market. Millions of people buy that stuff every single day.
But it is not our market. This is exactly /blog/why-disruptive-brands-ignore-their-direct-competitors when they are building their strategy.
We are not trying to steal market share from the discount shoppers. We are building a category for people who want their everyday routines to feel like a luxury experience.
When a customer complains that Laundry Sauce is too expensive, they are usually right. For them, it is too expensive. They are valuing the utility of clean clothes over the experience of high-end fragrance and premium care.
There is nothing wrong with that. But I am not losing sleep over it.
Hold the Line on Your Value
The era of printing money with cheap ads is over. You cannot acquire a customer for five dollars and expect them to stick around if your product is garbage.
The current DTC playbook requires a relentless focus on customer retention. What we have found is the people who get it, really get it.
They understand why we use principal perfumers. They appreciate the sustainable packaging. They notice the difference in how their clothes feel and smell.
And most importantly, they stick around.
David Senra says critics do not know sh*t. He is absolutely right.
If you listen to every single person who complains about your pricing, you will end up destroying your own business. It is a harsh truth, but /blog/stop-trying-be-liked-why-brand-needs-enemy if you want to stand for something real. You will slowly chip away at the quality that made your product special in the first place. You will pull yourself away from the exact reason you built your brand.
If you are a founder dealing with the exact same pricing pushback, you need to hold the line.
Look at your product. If it is genuinely differentiated and solves a problem in a way nobody else does, do not apologize for what it costs. Stand your ground.
Trying to be for everyone is exactly how you end up meaning nothing to anyone.
Drop a comment below. What is one non-negotiable you refuse to compromise on in your business? Let me know.