Disruptive brands don’t obsess over competitors.
They borrow bold ideas from totally different worlds.
If you spend all your time studying the guy next to you, you will eventually become exactly like him. You will end up fighting over pennies. You will end up in a race to the bottom.
That playbook is cooked.
Running a business is hard enough without trapping yourself in an echo chamber. Most founders look at their direct competition and ask how they can be ten percent better. How can they make the packaging slightly nicer. How can they drop the price by a fraction.
That is a fast track to nowhere.
When we designed our product for Laundry Sauce, we knew we had to completely break the mold.
We had a clear vision. We wanted to build something premium. We wanted people to actually look forward to doing their laundry.
We did not study other detergent brands to figure out how to do that.
If we had looked at the legacy detergent brands, we would have ended up with a giant plastic jug. We would have ended up with a loud label and a generic scent. We would have ended up fighting for shelf space at the grocery store.
Instead, we looked at totally different industries. We wanted to build a true experience.
Borrowing the Unboxing Experience
We studied Hermès.
We wanted to turn every laundry day into an unforgettable unboxing experience.
Think about what happens when you buy a luxury item from a brand like Hermès. The box matters. The weight of the materials matters. The way the product is presented to you matters just as much as the product itself. The unboxing creates a feeling of exclusivity and excitement.
We took that exact same mindset and brought it to a category that had zero excitement. We made receiving your laundry detergent feel like a luxury event.
Borrowing the Scent Profile
Next, we had to tackle the scent.
Nobody really gets excited about the smell of standard laundry soap. It smells like chemicals. It smells like a generic spring morning. It does not move the needle.
We studied Maison Francis Kurkdjian. We studied Le Labo Fragrances.
We wanted an addicting fragrance experience.
We borrowed the complexity, the depth, and the sophistication of high end luxury perfumes. We brought those elevated profiles directly to your washer and dryer. We gave people a reason to talk about how their clothes actually smelled.
By ignoring our own category, we built an 8-figure business.
Brands are building cult followings with this exact same mindset right now. They refuse to stay in their lane. They refuse to play by the rules of their specific category.
The Power of Flipping the Script
Let’s look at a few other brands getting s*** done by ignoring their direct competitors.
Look at Graza.
For decades, olive oil has looked exactly the same. It comes in a glass bottle. It has a fancy label. It sits in your pantry. And it is incredibly annoying to pour while you are actually trying to cook.
Graza completely ignored the traditional glass bottle.
They put premium olive oil in a squeeze bottle.
They made cooking easier. They made it more fun. They borrowed from the condiment aisle and disrupted the premium cooking oil space. They did not invent olive oil. They just changed how you interact with it.
Look at Liquid Death.
Bottled water brands have always relied on the exact same imagery. Pristine mountains. Peaceful streams. Blue and white labels. It was safe. And it was incredibly boring.
Liquid Death threw all of that out the window.
They put water in a can.
They made hydration feel badass. They borrowed the loud, aggressive aesthetic of heavy metal and energy drinks. They used that aesthetic to sell the most basic human necessity on the planet. And they built a massive cult following in the process.
Look at Vacation Inc.
Putting on sunscreen has always felt like a chore. It is sticky. It is messy. It is just something you have to do before you go outside.
Vacation Inc. changed the entire feeling of the product.
They made sunscreen look and feel like whipped cream.
They borrowed the nostalgic, incredibly fun feeling of a dessert topping and applied it to sun protection. They turned a boring chore into an event.
Stop Staring at Your Competitors
None of these brands invented their core product.
Water is water. Sunscreen is sunscreen. Olive oil is olive oil. Laundry detergent is laundry detergent.
They simply flipped the script on the delivery and the customer experience.
If you are a founder building something right now, you need to stop staring at your competitors. They do not have the answers you need. They are just as stuck in the echo chamber as everyone else.
You have to ask yourself what feeling you want your customer to have. Then go find who delivers that feeling best in the world. It does not matter if they sell sports cars, software, or sneakers.
Look outside your lane.
Borrow smart.
Bring those outside elements into your own category. That is how you stand out. That is how you build a real brand. And that is how you create something worth talking about.
What is a brand that flipped the script and made you think, “Damn, that is smart”?
Drop a comment below.