What is Soak Wash?

Soak Wash is a huge Canadian success story...there's also has a ton of sustainability built right into Soaks production.  A perfect fit for this season on What's This Place?

Jacqueline Sava wanted to build a laundry detergent from a skin care perspective: Something that is as gentle on your hands and smells just as great as the soaps we use on our bodies.

 "People sometimes think of clothes so passively. It's actually incredibly hard work from a design standpoint, to make fabric fit on the human body in a way that's comfortable and functional. It's complex to make clothing great! So enjoy it and appreciate that, and take care of it because it's an important part of your life."

Forget about those other laundry washes, this is the one you've been searching for.

Who is Jacqueline Sava and what is Soak Wash?  Let's go inside to find out.

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Transcript

Soak Wash

[00:00:00] Miranda Black: Have you ever been intimidated to buy a wool sweater or a cashmere sweater cause you didn't know how to take care for it? You don't know how to wash it without ruining it. Well, you're definitely not alone. Because the synthetic fiber business, it took over natural fibers back in the early two thousands and at the moment, no one is looking back. I know, statistics are boring, but these ones are pretty jaw-dropping! In 2020, synthetic fibers, meaning polyester, nylon, all that jazz, made up 63% of all textiles produced everywhere. Worldwide. 

But wait, there's more. That is set to increase to 75% by 2030. Meaning natural fibers will only be available to an elite 25% of the world's consumers. If we keep buying them, that is. And the ironic thing, is natural fibers are easier to take care of. They repel spills. They really do. 

They are naturally antibacterial versus whatever chemical they use to make polyester not as bacteria friendly. I mean, that's why poly got such a bad rap in the seventies: it holds bacteria. 

That's why it used to smell. But now now it's treated. And those chemicals they use that's soaking into our skin. Natural fibers also feel better. They last longer, and this is a big one: they compost. Meaning they return back to the earth. Whereas that staticky sweater made entirely out of petrocchemicals, it's going to be around for 2000 years give or take. So let's say you want to try it out. You check your labels the next time you shop and you buy something 100% cashmere. Yum. But also yikes! Well, by the time we're done today, you're going to know exactly how to care for that garment.

Jacqueline Sava didn't start out in the laundry business. She was in hats and scarves, which is why she knows exactly what wool and cashmere customers need. Something easy and something that smells great. 

And that's how Soak Wash was born. So who is Jacqueline Sava and what is Soak Wash? Okay. So I found Soak through a lingerie store. I purchased it and I put a dress shirt, because I was in menswear and I wore dress shirts all the time. And it lifted the stain almost before my eyes. But not only that, I had been dry cleaning. So this was a dry cleaned shirt that was still clean.

And I put it in cause they didn't get the stain out. Not only did it get the stain out, but it lifted deodorant that had been in the garment. There was like a slime, sorry to gross you out if you're eating, if you're eating your breakfast. There was a slime that lifted out of the pits and I was shocked that there were still that much gross dirt inside the shirt after dry cleaning.

So what is what magic formula? What are you putting into this Soak that makes it so easy to clean your clothes? 

We talk about invisible dirt a lot, and that's what you're talking about. Invisible dirt. So I was at the gym this morning. I wore my favorite black sports bra. I took it off. I hang it on a hook in my bedroom cause it's wet. So I don't put it right in my laundry basket but tomorrow, like if I'm lazy, it is dry and it is still black. So it looks like it's clean, even though I know it's not clean, so it's invisible dirt. If you have grass stains and you have grease, cause you work like in construction or something, or you're like under a car, like that's a different kind of cleaning that you need.

[00:03:45] Jacqueline Sava: And so Soak works on a balance between being gentle on fibers and fabrics gentle on your hands and the environment, but also available to like weave through the fibers of the fabric when they're wet and pull the dirt off really gently lock it in the water and take it out with the water. So you need that movement of water.

That's why you can't be like stingy on your water if you're soaking something. I can't put like 20 things in your kitchen sink or in a basin. You need the ability for the water to move through so that they're lifting the dirt off the surface basically is what we're doing.

[00:04:15] Miranda Black: But How? Who? W s in that bottle? What's w I don't want you to give your, I'm not asking 

[00:04:20] Jacqueline Sava: yeah.

no, it always depends on like how technical to get in terms of chemicals. So There are cleaning agents. There are softening agents. There are, stability agents because you are keeping it on your shelf for awhile. but essentially what you're doing is the water and the D the soap together, like loosen the fibers and loosen the dirt. And then the chemical, reaction between the dirt and the cleaner is stronger than the dirt on the fabric. So the cleaner is like, Hey, we're going to have a little battle and I'm going to win. So I'm going to pull the dirt going to trap it. And then I'm going to bond it with the water.

So I'm taking it off the fabric because your deodorant is still on the surface of the fabric. it's not like, coffee's a harder stain to get out on fiber because it goes through the whole fiber and it's a stain. So it actually like changes the color of the fiber. That's why you can use like tea to dye something, It stains the fabric as opposed to like our ambient dirt on a shirt or a deodorant, or like sweat that sits on the surface of the fibers. So we're just trying to get under it and agitate enough that it releases a bit so that the soap can grab it and bring it off and attach it to the water.

And then it bonds with the water on a chemical level and it stays with the water instead of staying on the clothes. And that's why you can do a quick rinse. So if you have a really thick sweater, You don't have to rinse it over and over and over and over to get it actually clean. You can just give it a quick rinse okay. So are you a chemist? What is your background? How did you get in a laundry detergent? 

yeah, that's a great question. So my background's product design actually industrial design. And, when I was in university and doing my thesis, I took machine knitting in the textile departmentand I fell in love with the knitting machine cause I always loved knitting and I always love fiber, but I didn't, hand knitting takes really long time.

[00:05:49] Miranda Black: yeah. 

[00:05:50] Jacqueline Sava: more of a faster, I run at a faster speed. So machine knitting really appealed to me to and then I started designing knitwear after that. and I was designing knit accessories. and then people were asking how to take care of them.

So when I was doing shows or consumer shows, trade shows, whatever, and somebody would buy a hat and scarf set, they were not inexpensive. They were wools, cashmeres And I found myself giving them like a little cleaning lesson, especially if someone bought a set for a teenager or a young adult who might not be, in their washing skills prime.

And I would say don't throw this in the washing machine. This does not go in the dryer. you have to hand wash this, you have to lay it flat to dry. You have to take care of it. 

[00:06:26] Miranda Black: And as soon as you say handwash to people, it's Like

they yeah, They get a whoa, I can't even, what do handwash. 

[00:06:34] Jacqueline Sava: Or actually even wash because a lot of people have knits and then they just don't wash them you have to wash your knits before you put them away because moths, especially  are attracted to the oils in your skin that are on the fibers. They're not trying to get the fibers. They're trying to eat the oil off the fiber. And that's what makes the hole, So I was designing knitwear people were asking how to take care of it. And then I was telling them to use like snuggle or baby shampoo or all these things. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. And the more I started wholesaling my knits, the more I realized that I should have a product that completes the sentence, right?

Yes. You should hand wash it. And this is what you should use. 

[00:07:04] Miranda Black: Right. 

[00:07:04] Jacqueline Sava: and so we started out with Soak as a secondary product to the knits that we were producing. 

[00:07:08] Miranda Black: But how did you even produce a laundry detergent? 

[00:07:12] Jacqueline Sava: I had a friend and I did a lot of like product development consulting as well.

[00:07:15] Miranda Black: And she worked for a liquid manufacturer. and she would always show up with samples. She would bring me like bubble bath or a lab sample or hand cream or something where the label was a little off, or it was like a pre-production sample or something, basically cleaning out her office, Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:07:29] Jacqueline Sava: So she'd bring me treats. And then over lunch, one day I said to her, Hey, I wonder if we could start from a skincare background, but make a wool wash. So gentle on your skin, gentle on the environment, easy on your hands. but designed to clean knits because,wool comes from a sheep, so like a wet hat is essentially a wet sheep.

 And there are a lot of similarities between a shampoo and like a wool wash in terms of what you're actually trying to clean. Or there, there can be, if you formulate it that way, and also a more gentle, higher quality ingredients structure.

[00:07:57] Jacqueline Sava: If you work within health, Canada, skincare regulations to make soap. So it's more complicated for us because when we look at labeling and regulatory and all those things, we make a clothing cleaner, but we use skincare ingredients. but that way it's like really gentle on your hands and it smells really pretty.

So we use like skin grade quality fragrances. So they're higher quality fragrances. They're hypoallergenic by design because they're meant to be in shampoos or body washes or whatever. So that's why we call it like skincare for your clothing, because. We want it to be, something you keep on the counter and you use on a regular basis, not hidden away if you go look for your old delicate wash detergent, like a bottle of zero or something like that, it's going to be like in the very bottom back of your laundry room, basement closet.

And it's all dusty and cakey and gross. You should throw it out. Get yourself a bottle of Soak. You love the way it smells. You love the way it feels and you use it more often. And that's what we're trying to do. Right? take out those sweaters, use them more often, keep them clean because you don't realize how unfresh your garments are until you refresh them.

just like you said, you didn't realize how much extra dirt was still sitting on that shirt until you soaked it. And then you're like, oh 

[00:08:57] Miranda Black: Shocked. 

[00:08:58] Jacqueline Sava: yeah, there it is. Right. 

[00:08:59] Miranda Black: And then actually I got my employee did it as well cause we thought it was maybe just maybe it's Miranda. Maybe you're just dirty. 

[00:09:05] Jacqueline Sava: just have lots of invisible dirt. 

[00:09:06] Miranda Black: Yeah.

But she did it. And she was like, oh my God, I got so much slime out of my pit. it just turns into this gooky slime and you just rinse it away and it felt so good.

It 

[00:09:16] Jacqueline Sava: Yeah, it just feels so soft. Yeah. And the same thing is with knitwear, especially, Like we don't realize how heavy our sweaters are with invisible dirt until we wash them the same thing with a great scarf. If you've not washed your scarves recently, whether it's like a wool one, a knit one, one, a cotton one, pashmina is definitely hand wash, don't put them in the machine! Yeah, so that's how it started. And then we were starting to wholesale it alongside our knits. And then, there were a lot of challenges with knitwear production in terms of we were really early on the, what dyes are you using?

Where is it actually made? Trying to dig in to the, that "Who Made My Clothes" concept before it was trending. and so we decided to stop doing our knitwear because we just couldn't get the answers we wanted and couldn't make sure that it was 

[00:09:50] Miranda Black: Were you producing them overseas? 

[00:09:52] Jacqueline Sava: We're producing them locally. And then we started producing them overseas, but the same way. So we had hand knitters working on them. We had, several like machine knitters here, locally doing it and couldn't keep up. but then we decided to just focus on Soak because, there was just such a need for it, and also it's less seasonal and as you would know, having a retail store, 

it doesn't like, that doesn't like expire.

It's not you know we don't often have a holiday fragrance or something like that. So we try to be more of a, perennial kind of product.

[00:10:16] Miranda Black: Yeah right. Yeah.

So can I ask you a little bit about what it means to have a biodegradable soap and what biodegradable, because just looking into it, plastic is actually biodegradable. I'm using quotes because in 2000 years it will biodegrade. 

yeah. there's so many different like... eco terms are so hard and they're so challenging even in different countries and different regions, Different provinces and stuff as well. So we started using post-consumer resin bottles in 2012. when 

what does that mean? 

[00:10:46] Jacqueline Sava: So that means that the, yeah, so that means instead of using Virgin plastic, you're using plastic that's already being a product in the world and then it was recycled and cleaned and remade into little pellets so that it can be made into something again. So our bottles, like you can't tell probably over a camera, but they're like, you'll see little inconsistencies in them.

They're not crystal clear, they're slightly yellowish and you might see like little pits or little spots or something in them that one might assume are imperfections. But really what they are is representation of the post-consumer plastic. 

[00:11:17] Miranda Black: That's kinda cool. 

[00:11:18] Jacqueline Sava: yeah. and we did that yeah, like before it was, before it was the thing we did that

because we wanted to, right? 

[00:11:23] Miranda Black: And how did you, it is more expensive? 

[00:11:24] Jacqueline Sava: Totally more expensive. Yeah.

[00:11:26] Miranda Black: So post-consumer plastic is more expensive. It's more expensive than Virgin plastic. 

yeah, because from a volume perspective, right? there's not as many people making it because it has these imperfections you have to in manufacturing, be able to deal with the imperfections, which slows everything down. and yeah, it's just not readily available. Like we're not masters in Canada of recycling and processing our recycling goods.

[00:11:46] Jacqueline Sava: So

[00:11:47] Miranda Black: So do you buy that,here in Canada or 

[00:11:49] Jacqueline Sava: it's local. Yeah. Our bottles are made local. Our labels are made local. The fill is made local. It's all local. Yeah. 

[00:11:54] Miranda Black: Oh, wow. 

yeah, that was really important to us. So the plastics here and they're made, the bottles are made locally. And we print our labels with, recyclable vegetable dyes as well because you have to make sure that your label substrate is the same substrate as your bottle, because otherwise you can have a recyclable bottle without a recyclable label, and then what's the point, right? Black caps in Ontario are not recyclable. 

[00:12:13] Miranda Black: Yeah, I take off the black cap and I just, I put the black cap in the garbage 

[00:12:17] Jacqueline Sava: yeah, so they're not recyclable in Ontario. They are in some other places. Biodegradable formula. this is my favorite,

I love like deep diving into these weird topics. Soin Canada, things are either readily biodegradable or not readily biodegradable. And it has to do with a percentage of biodegradability and. it either will decompose or it won't. And so what has been interesting for us over the years is when we started shipping to Japan, they have crazy other, crazy, like in a good way or in a different way, but other regulations and they needed the percentage biodegradability by ingredient. Except when you produce something, the raw ingredient suppliers are only required to supply you the information for the jurisdiction that you're in.

So we had to hire an external chemist to use all their brownie points to a deep dive with each different manufacturer to get the percentages of biodegradability to actually do this math. 

[00:13:07] Miranda Black: For each ingredient that goes into your 

[00:13:09] Jacqueline Sava: Yeah. The other thing about Soak is it is clear liquid dyes are not biodegradable. So when you look at our bottles and they look, when they look like this one looks orange and this one looks like our Lacy Tan color it's because we use special translucent labels to get it, to look like that glowing color.

[00:13:26] Miranda Black: So They're all actually the same. 

[00:13:28] Jacqueline Sava: They're all the same. Yeah.

all like, they're all mostly clear and it's like slightly yellow. It's a

[00:13:31] Miranda Black: that's a great illusion that you create 

[00:13:35] Jacqueline Sava: because we wanted to have really pretty shelf appeal, but if it has a fragrance in it, it's not biodegradable. 

[00:13:39] Miranda Black: if you mean, if it has a dye in 

a dye, sorry, a dye. 

[00:13:41] Jacqueline Sava: Yeah. The dye, Yeah. A dye is not biodegradable.

we're constantly making tweaks in our formula.

So there's lots of thingsthat have to do with manufacturing a product that you need to keep in mind. It's the equivalent of clothing of you don't want the sweater to shrink fall apart, lose its shape, look crappy after the first time you wash it.

there's nothing really worse than buying something, wearing it a few times, washing it and it literally never being the same. and that's the same thing for these kind of cleaners and products like that.

 And then we also get asked a lot about biodegradability compared to like organic ingredients. So we formulated a, like a certifiably organic bottle of soap, except then it would have to retail for $45 because of the cost of the ingredients, the availability, and then nobody's going to buy it. Like no consumer has

[00:14:22] Jacqueline Sava: $45 for a small bottle of detergent in their budget, 

So there's always a balance between finding the right ingredients and making sure that the market can actually bear it. You can have a $2,000 sweater. You're just not going to sell a lot of them. You have to find the person who's going to have a budget for a $2,000 sweater.

[00:14:38] Jacqueline Sava: And the other thing we've learned is that if somebody has a $2,000 sweater, they're not likely doing their own laundry. We learned that it was really funny cause when we startedSoak we started targeting lingerie stores in different cities and different countries. And then we'd get to what for us was like a pinnacle, a lingerie shop where like we have to have Soak there.

And then the shop owner would be like, I love Soak. My staff loves Soak. We all use it, but our clientele doesn't do their own laundry. So if we can get them to put like Soak in their laundry room and their housekeeper or their like support staff or whatever, who does their laundry cool. But if they're not the ones doing it,

[00:15:08] Miranda Black: Yeah. It doesn't matter. They don't 

[00:15:09] Jacqueline Sava: it doesn't matter.

[00:15:10] Miranda Black: it doesn't register on 

[00:15:11] Jacqueline Sava: Right. Detergents like not on their task list. Lingerie shopping is. so we were like, oh, that's so fascinating. 

[00:15:16] Miranda Black: Wow. yeah, 

[00:15:17] Jacqueline Sava: Not everyone. Not as a blanket statement. Like not as a point of judgment, just as a point of information. That was really interesting. so yeah, Soak is not organic, and that's important for us to talk about because we get editorial pieces or somebody will put us in like a product review of all these organic products.

I'm like, 

Organic is not necessarily better. Like in, especially when you have fragrances, people have more reactions to essential oils than they do to synthetic fragrances that are designed to be hypoallergenic. So most people, most people don't have any reactions to soak fragrance

when they tell us that they are sensitive to fragrances. So we work really hard to find the right level of fragrance when you open a bottle and you're smelling it. When you pour it into your basin, when it's washing, when it's drying, we go through that process of evaluating, like how much fragrance is the right amount for all these sensory experiences and using hypoallergenic skin grade quality fragrances is a more expensive fragrance, right?

[00:16:09] Miranda Black: Because to have a higher quality fragrance from a fragrance house is more expensive, but that's really important for us because then also you can enjoy the fragrance and not have a reaction that you might to like an essential oil that is mixed into a detergent. And your fragrances, they are re that's probably the thing that sold me at the beginning, because it was so... like the pineapple, the lace. how do you go? How do 

[00:16:34] Jacqueline Sava: How do get there? 

[00:16:35] Miranda Black: Yeah. How do you get there and how did it, how does it smell? So there's something so fresh about your fragrances. It blows my mind.

How do you do it? 

 we have a fragrance standard. So we have five or six criteria that a fragrance has to meet, to be a Soak worthy fragrance. So in the same way that you might have a store or you might have a restaurant, like here's an easy example.

[00:16:55] Jacqueline Sava: If I'm a restaurant, I might say I'm farm to table. I'm going to source as much as I can within a hundred mile radius. we're going to use in season ingredients, et cetera, et cetera. So you can set that kind of profile and you say that's the standard by which I'm going to build my menu. So for us, we have, standards like that for our fragrances.

fresh, crisp, light, not reminiscent of a 

[00:17:15] 

[00:17:15] Jacqueline Sava: specific time or era. So we don't want one of our sense to automatically bring you somewhere else. Clean I know  was one of them, unexpected. we have all these words that we use to describe fragrances and that allows us to kind of from a baseline, figure out if something is really a Soak Worthy scent.

and then  we're always evaluating and testing new fragrances, there might be one on the horizon that I'm not allowed to talk about yet.

[00:17:36] Miranda Black: I'm excited for a new fragrance. so do you go around smelling like a Sommellier? 

I smell 

[00:17:41] Jacqueline Sava: things all the time. I'm always smelling something when I'm traveling, when I'm working, when I'm moving, I'm always smelling things. I generally curate the fragrances, and I'm always picking up things, whether it's words in a magazine, whether it's trends, like we do get trend reports from the fragrance houses as well.

which sometimes inspire things sometimes not. And then when we get to know our suppliers at the fragrance house, they also just send us things So,we say, we want this and this, and then they start formulating and then we test them out as a scent.

[00:18:07] Jacqueline Sava: Then we start testing them in the product. if we like them, we figure out the level and then they have to go into stability. to make sure that they aren't going to react with the substrate of Soak or flatter ironing spray, or our hand cream or whatever. 

So it takes a really long time to bring a new fragrance.

 but ultimately it's your nose. That's in charge of the, 

Yeah.

[00:18:27] Miranda Black: oh, that you're, you have an a very important nose. 

I think also yeah, we just, we're, I'm always traveling. I'm always looking at things while I'm not traveling right now, but I was always traveling, but,just looking at things and paying attention to things. and then also how it fits in the mix with the other scents, in terms of what people like, we always want to have something on the floral side, something really light, something on the citrus family, something, more,neutral gender neutral. trying not to be too girly. 

[00:18:49] Miranda Black: Yeah, that was tough in my store because it was a men's store. And I wanted all the manly, the manly but you 

[00:18:56] Jacqueline Sava: It's interesting. Cause like manly sense. 

[00:18:58] Miranda Black: they don't really, they like all sorts of things. I found 

[00:19:00] Jacqueline Sava: Manly, yeah. Manly scents, menmen don't necessarily want manly scents. We've learned that the hard way. and, and also a lot of really beautiful scents don't feel right when you're cleaning something. we've tested a lot of really beautiful, manly scents

like that might be in a candle or they might be in a skin cream, but then all of a sudden when you're washing, are you doing, like a lot of the earthier, smokier, tobacco, we trends, like all those things are really beautiful until you put them in water and start washing, and then you're like, 

[00:19:24] Miranda Black: We're like, oh, this smells like a campfire. 

[00:19:26] Jacqueline Sava: like all of a sudden I'm washing up my camper clothes. Exactly. yeah, that on my cashmere socks. So yeah, there's really interesting things that happen. So it's not just about the fragrance, it's about how the fragrance interacts with the laundry experience.

What a road that you've been on in your business journey. Did you want to have a company? 

 I was always into business and entrepreneurship without knowing it. in high school, I was in an enrichment program and you had to, do a project that lasted the whole semester, like six months. And there was genuinely nothing that I was interested in researching for that long. and , I was a very crafty kid And when you're a kid and you make things and you give them, people are like, oh, you should sell those.

And so for that project,, I explored that topic of like how to start a small business. And I actually like registered a sole prop,

wrote my first business plan at 16. So it's super adorable. It's a super durable document that I still have. it has Like "I don't have any employees, so I have no HR considerations", like next paragraph.

so yeah, that was like my first business. but it wasn't like, that awesome teenager on, on Tik TOK who now has a huge scrunchie business.

[00:20:26] Jacqueline Sava: Cause she was making spreadsheets. It wasn't like that or anything. Before the internet! So 

 It was like 

[00:20:30] Miranda Black: couldn't be worldwide back 

[00:20:32] Jacqueline Sava: Pre cell phone, literally pre-cellphone. So then when I was out of university, I was designing hats, knit hats, sewn, cut and sewn hats, 

 And I did like basement craft shows all the way up to One of a Kind. I did One of a Kind for like three or four years and made a ton of money in 10 days. With my knits, hats, scarves, mittens, legwarmers

[00:20:49] Miranda Black: so you were supporting yourself on your business. 

I was hats are weird in Canada because we really only have a winter hat season. And then there's like very few millinars who make beautiful summer hats, but people only wear them on special occasions or wear baseball hats. So I was doing more product development consulting. which is where I met, the manufacturer of my soap. and then 2005 or six was our first show with soak. And Soak was supposed to be an accessory, right? By that point, my knits had grown, I was doing it full time. I had a proper sales agency that was distributing them to stores. It was scaling up and then Soak was an add on product.

[00:21:20] Jacqueline Sava: So it was like you buy the knit collection and then you buy this wash to go with it. For me, the challenge was I was designing pieces that had.

10 or 12 shades of blue or 10 or 12 shades of green. They were really complex to mass produce, but they were meant to be more timeless because your accessories, in my personal opinion should be more timeless. like your accessories should last longer and your clothes should last longer. I'm not really a fan of fast fashion. Things should last over time because you're developing your style.

[00:21:42] Jacqueline Sava: So then all of a sudden I had this distributor that was like, what's next season? What's the next color way? And I was like, this colorway is supposed to last cause it's got like 14 shades of blue. So it's going to match this years blue coat and it's going to match next years blue coat.

So the knits weren't really aligned with how at the time, in the late nineties, the wholesale model for accessories was. It was very much like what's next season? What's next color? And I was like, I'm not doing this. I'm not, I don't want dead inventory. if anyone's been in retail, they know if it doesn't snow enough before Christmas, you don't get two turns, 

of your winter style.

I did One of a Kind, And I had a 10 by 20 booth full of knit accessories. If it had not snowed, I was screwed. so when we started with Soak, I was like, oh wait, this product's not seasonal.

[00:22:22] Jacqueline Sava: I'm in! 

[00:22:22] Miranda Black: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:22:23] Jacqueline Sava: that seasonality and that need to follow trend and the need to follow like a new collection and have dead stock was just not my jam. Like I just 

[00:22:30] Miranda Black: Yeah. It's one of the reasons why I wanted, I closed my store, it's like, what well you have to buy more and more each season? And I was like, if they don't need it, why am I pushing it on people?

 it's really a, it's a bottomless pit of this 

[00:22:43] Jacqueline Sava: . For sure. Yeah. 

[00:22:45] Miranda Black: monster that 

it's that's really what, I mean, soak is about helping you take care of better things so that you can have them longer and let them last longer. And washing, it's great on vintage sweaters, on heirloom pieces. I have sweaters that my grandmother knit that I can wear, is there an uptick in your business due to people wanting to take care of their stuff longer? 

certainly more awareness in terms of people wanting things to last longer. and people go through phases, like there's the " I'm afraid to buy something because I don't know how to take care of it".

[00:23:13] Jacqueline Sava: So that's one hurdle to get people, to actually invest in pieces that are going to last longer or buy the thing that they liked that might be out of their budget. But knowing that they don't have to replace it. and then there's the "I have, or I've inherited, or I've been given these things and I don't know how to take care of them".

and then there's people who have just like a core group of clothing and they're taking care of it and they're really making it last. So I think, the pandemic's been really weird because with people at home, I know for myself personally, I have so much great clothes that I haven't worn a lot in two years because you're just like, I need comfort, but then you put on something that is maybe more stylish, but that is super comfortable.

or people have a cashmere sweater and they're just like wearing it to death. one of my favorite sweaters, like all the cuffs are all wearing out. And I was like, my goodness. I put 10 years on this sweater, 

 plants. Cause I'm,I'm wearing it three times a week, and then I think there's a nice resurgence in vintage. So there's a lot of cardigans made out of like vintage blankets and things like that. There's a lot of resurgence of old textiles into new garments, which is really lovely and a perfect fit for Soak.

and I think there is a sophistication level in retail as well, in terms of people having, a higher dedication to quality pieces. we've done a few interviews that are specifically focused on like how to take care of fast fashion. the thing that's really nice about Soak is it's designed for every budget.

it's not the cheapest detergent on the shelf, but it's really about your relationship to your clothing. So it doesn't matter whether you have a $200 bra or a $25 bra, depending on where your budget is, but it's going to feel better and last longer, if you take care of it properly.

[00:24:39] Jacqueline Sava: So for us, it's really important to help at whatever stage of wardrobe building you are that you're taking care of the pieces you have, and that's really what's most important.

[00:24:47] Miranda Black: Yeah. Even if it's quote unquote cheap, you still want it to last longer. the number one way we can reduce the amount of clothing that's being put into landfill is just to get two or three more uses out of it. If everyone could just use their clothing a little bit longer.

So Soak would help do that because why does it help the clothing last longer? 

So you're not like necessarily making your clothes last longer. You're doing less damage to them. So when you hand wash a bra versus putting it in the machine and stretching it, you're putting less tension on the elastic.

[00:25:21] Jacqueline Sava: Like I can tell in a heartbeat, if a bra has been in a washing machine, 

if it's not in like one of our eco wash bags or something like that, because it gets stretched. It gets caught, it gets pulled and the elastic gets all twisty. 

[00:25:31] Jacqueline Sava: elastic has a certain shelf life whether it's an elastic band in your kitchen or the elastic in your bra or the elastic in your pants, everything has a life. So what we're trying to do is the more you wash a really nice cashmere sweater like that, the happier it is because you're taking those oils and that invisible dirt off the fibers.

 like my sports bra probably would be so much happier if I had taken in the shower with me this morning and just rinsed it rather than letting all the sweat and the ambient dirt just hang out there all day. So, this is news to me, actually, I'm in the camp of, I wore my green earth day sweater today. I'm going to take it off and fold it nicely and put it in a little Ziploc bag so the moths don't get it, but I wouldn't wash it because I have a t-shirt underneath it. But what you're saying is yeah. So you're not going to wash your sweater every time you wear it, for sure. But at the end of the season, or like once a month, if you're wearing it once a week, you want to wash it because you have ambient dirt on it. So if you're on public transit, if you're traveling, if you're like me and I have little kids there's just dirt in life, not everything needs to be washed everywhere. Most things don't need to be washed everywhere. that's really interesting with kids stuff, because because there's so much laundry and I was like, because they're dirty little humans, I have to wash it. 

Right. and bras in the summer needs to get washed more than bras in the winter because in the summer we're sweating during the day in the winter, we might not sweat at all, but at the end of the day, so my favorite example, swimwear, right?

People want Soak to make their swimwear last longer. Here's the thing. If you put on a bathing suit, the first thing that happens is you're putting all the fibers under tension because it's stretched over your body. The second thing, assuming you're actually going to go in water, right? Assuming you're swimming, right?

lot of, A lot of bathing suits are not meant for swimming. If you're swimming lengths, you're also adding sweat, right?

Because you're perspiring, even if you're in the water. Then when you jump out of the pool, you sit down on a stucco surface, like a non-slip surface and you're rubbing the fibers. Or if you're at the beach, you're sitting in sand. Even if you're on a towel, you're still like rubbing the fibers,

 you're getting the sunscreen on it a little bit. The sun's on it, UV lights on it, and then when you take it off, yes, you want to soak it right away to get all that stuff off of it. But you're never going to restore the fibers because they've been in that stressful tense environment for like however long you did it.

[00:27:32] Jacqueline Sava: So I'm not going to make my sports bra last forever. But I'm going to make it maintain its elasticity and maintain its functional properties longer if I wash it after every wear. And let's be straight, I'm like in a phase of where I'm working out like four mornings a week. And for sure, I'm absolutely not washing my bra every day, but I have two or three and I keep them in rotation. So even if I'm not washing them till three or four days later, I'm not wearing the same one every day. The same thing is true for shoes. You have to, you're supposed to like, not wear the same shoes every day so they have time to dry and air out from all the sweat. 

[00:28:02] Miranda Black: Yeah.yeah. 

 When you soak it, everything's oh, and it goes back to the way it was and then it's ready to go again. So the soaking process really helps just maintain all the good original properties for as long as you can. So 

[00:28:14] Miranda Black: It's like us us doing a cleanse or going to the spa get the steam into our souls and our bodies and open everything up and your pores feel better. 

[00:28:24] Jacqueline Sava: It's a perfect example, right? Because it's not, you're not reversing your aging, You're still a day older than you were yesterday. You're just trying to maintain things for longer. And so when detergent companies are like oh, it restores the fibers.

It's it doesn't restore the fibers. it just takes all the yuck off to try to maintain it longer so that you can have it be its best for longest, which is exactly what you're saying. You would get a facial or you steam, or you use a certain like 

[00:28:47] Miranda Black: Yeah. I like you don't fall asleep with your makeup all over your face. 

[00:28:50] Jacqueline Sava: sure.And sometimes you do, right? Yeah. Sometimes you do that's life. Sometimes you let, you know for me, I know if I put a bra in the washing machine, either I'm just so stressed out or exhausted from life or that bra is already stretching and not going back where it wants to be.

It's not my favorite one anymore. It's not fitting really properly. My body's changed and I'm like ready for a new one for me, that's like the end of the road. 

but my sports 

[00:29:12] Miranda Black: ha you don't hand wash all your children's clothing. 

[00:29:15] Jacqueline Sava: and wash all my bras. I had watch anything that has lace, 

[00:29:19] Miranda Black: Oh, I hand washed, I don't know if you saw, I hand washed my sport coat 

[00:29:23] Jacqueline Sava: nice.

[00:29:24] Miranda Black: and it came out perfectly, so I no longer have to dry clean my sport coats. Is this like a reality in my life now? 

[00:29:32] Jacqueline Sava: But yeah, things that have sizing in them, like structure, like suit jackets and neck ties and things like that, they're never supposed to be wet. Those things like are 

[00:29:40] Miranda Black: but dry cleaning is wet, 

some dry cleaning is dry and some dry cleaning is wet.

[00:29:45] Miranda Black: Okay. a suit that has sizing and stuff and stabilizer in it will not, you don't want it to get wet. Once it gets wet it never goes back to the way it is.

Oh. but my jacket worked out perfectly yesterday, 

[00:29:55] Jacqueline Sava: Yeah. There's so many things that can, depending on how they're constructed, be hand washed really well, or a machine washed really well. So I use our eco wash bags. our wash bags are great in the machine.

I put socks in there. Cashmere socks. all my cashmere sweaters on 

[00:30:08] Miranda Black: You put in the machine?

[00:30:10] Jacqueline Sava: All Always.

this is going to change my 

[00:30:12] Jacqueline Sava: On cold. It has to be cold and you have to have a delicate cycle, not a top loader because you don't want the agitator in it. 

it needs to be like a front loader or one of those new fancy ones where you can take the agitator out,

[00:30:22] Miranda Black: So you're putting your cashmere into the washing machine in the wash bag and it on the delicate 

[00:30:29] Jacqueline Sava: and 

[00:30:29] Miranda Black: in cold. 

Oh,that's even easier than hand wash. 

[00:30:33] Jacqueline Sava: For sure. Yeah. I don't have time. I don't have time. And also I don't have an easy place to dry things. what's nice about the machine too, is the spin cycle to get the extra water.

But yeah, cashmere sweaters, like mid season coats, like little puffer jackets that the kids have, MEC, snowsuits go in the washing machine with Soak. 

[00:30:48] Jacqueline Sava: They don't need an abrasive detergent, like a tide with whiteners and brighteners and enzymes and stuff. They need agitation and cold water because that will be enough with the soap to take the dirt off the outside. And it will be enough to wash the sweat out of the inside. That's all they need.

[00:31:01] Miranda Black: So you're saying It works better than the huge brands it's

[00:31:06] Jacqueline Sava: It works differently, right? Because their snowsuits are like not white t-shirts that are getting gray that I need to keep white. Also, I'm just not a fan of trying to keep white things white. I just don't have, I don't have that much time in my life, or love for white things. But, their snow suits, they need to keep their waterproofness and all those properties.

But they need to be machine washed because there's no chance in hell that I'm going to hand wash these two like giant giant snowsuits.yeah. 

[00:31:29] Jacqueline Sava: And some days they come home, entirely covered in mud or a kid pees in them. It's a long walk home. all I need to do is make sure I have enough of a gentle soap that it's going to go in the water, go through it all and pull everything out of it. and I want to do the least amount of damage to the material as possible, because that's what we mean when we say prolong the life of a garment. I'm not restoring it, I'm trying to do the least amount of damage possible while getting it clean.

[00:31:51] Miranda Black: Yeah. Yeah. how much Soak are you putting into the washing machine for a load? Just for people to... 

[00:31:59] Jacqueline Sava: oh, the greatest question in the history of the universe. So you have to find the manual for your machine, either online or wherever and follow those instructions short of that, because that's usually the most like ambiguous information you can find in the 

[00:32:10] Miranda Black: Yeah, that sounds like people are going to be like, Nope, 

going to 

[00:32:13] Jacqueline Sava: a couple of capsules, like a swirl or a cup of capsules.

So you use it as you would, your regular detergent, but less is always more with detergent. And the other thing about machine washing things is that we don't see what happens in our machine. We don't sit there and watch, we don't open it in the middle and take out the water and look. So people are really afraid of what happens with hand-washing because they're so closely watching what happens in the water, because most people have white sinks or are using white basins and

most people are really like looking at what happens. Did the dye come out?So we see over- dye and excess dirt come out in hand-washing, but we don't see it in the machine. So we really have no idea that you are getting over-dye.

[00:32:48] Jacqueline Sava: You are getting really dirty water. All those things happen in the machine, but in hand-washing it like freaks us out because we're just not used to seeing it.

[00:32:55] Miranda Black: Oh, you think people get, they look at the dirt or the dye coming out and they're like, oh, my thing is 

[00:33:00] Jacqueline Sava: My thing is getting ruined or what's happening, or this is so weird. And you're like, no, this happens in the wash every week. You just don't see it. 

[00:33:06] Miranda Black: Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. 

[00:33:07] Jacqueline Sava: Because we don't stand in the laundry room and watch it go around and we don't open it up and be like, oh, this water's really dirty. But then when we hand wash, we have to pour the water out and put more in.

And if you hand wash a sweater for the first time that you never hand washed and the water is really disgusting, flush it out and wash it again, wash it over and over until the water runs clear. Like it means you've just got lots of dirt that you couldn't see before on those fibers and just rinse it out.

Like just cause we say it's no rinse. What we mean is that it's not so sudsie that you're going to have a big mountain of bubbles. It's not a bubble bath. And it also means that you're not going to have any slimy, weird feeling on your hands from the soap that you're then gonna have to wash your hands again after.

So what it means is if you soak something and the water immediately goes disgustingly dirty and you're like, ug, then just rinse it out and start again. Like just do that a few times until something runs clean. And then as you maintain it, after that, it won't get so dirty.

And for sweaters, can we just talk about what you do with your sweaters? Because people are again, they're like, once I get it out, what I, what do I do with it? Do I hang 

[00:34:00] Miranda Black: it 

[00:34:00] Jacqueline Sava: take your towel. Yeah. Roll in a towel, lay it, flat, pay particular attention. If it has any embellishment like buttons, clips, clasps, bead work, or anything like that. If it doesn't for me, I take a towel, I lay it on the floor. I like put my sweater on flat, reasonably, shape it out, roll it up. And I actually walk on it.

I stand on it because that's the way to get like the most amount of pressure. 

[00:34:20] Miranda Black: roll you? Roll it. 

[00:34:21] Jacqueline Sava: I roll it in a towel and then I dr drop it on the floor and I like 

step on it. 

[00:34:26] Miranda Black: that. 

[00:34:26] Jacqueline Sava: And that presses basically transfers the water from the sweater into the towel. Cause the towel is more absorbent than the water. Don't squeeze!

You don't need to put that extra pressure on a garment. and also water is very heavy. So don't ever pick up something by the edges because water is heavy and it will stretch it. So you always want to hold something like from the bottom, when you lift it up out of the water, if you have something really big that you're, hand-washing like a vintage blanket or an Afghan or something that you just really don't want to put in the machine, you use your, if you have a plastic laundry basket, use that underneath it to lift it out of the water, because water is very heavy.

You don't want the water to pull down on the fibers and then you want to lay it flat to dry. So for me, I have one of those, train rail style towel racks, where it's got like the four bars across the top. So I put it like across and over and down the four bars. 

you don't want to dry a sweater on a hanger cause you don't want to get those little like 

[00:35:14] Jacqueline Sava: shoulder spots. Yeah. and like halfway through the day or at night, just flip it over. So you just want to make sure that both the weight of the sweater or the weight of the garment is not pulling 

There's 

[00:35:22] Miranda Black: almost like three different stages of getting the water out to not damage it. It's that initial putting it on the towel, rolling it up. The towel gets soaked 

[00:35:31] Jacqueline Sava: Yup, towel's soaked for sure. 

[00:35:32] Miranda Black: And then I put it immediately onto a second dry towel and I just lay it over one of my vents in 

[00:35:39] Jacqueline Sava: Yep. Yeah. If you have a window open or an air vent or a fan or anything like that, to let the ambiant air, 

[00:35:44] Miranda Black: yeah, But then it does need to be flipped like an 

[00:35:47] Jacqueline Sava: yeah. yeah. It'll just start to dry that way. is there anything that, I missed about Soak Wash in terms of clothing care or sustainability, anything that I missed that you'd like to talk about? 

Well,we're a local, we're as locally made as we can we're a real family team environment,family first and there are no detergent emergencies. and I think that's really important for people to understand. Like we, we, provide our retailers with all the tools they need.

And so sometimes people think we're like this really big corporate company because we do things really professionally, but we are, a small local business. And so when you're supporting us, you're really supporting families. And when you're buying it in the store, that's one thing I love about. cause it's not just about us.

It's about thousand plus retailers that we have when you buy a bottle of Soak, you're supporting all these different businesses. And so that for me is really important and we work really carefully with the vendors that we use as well, to make sure that they have really sound, sound businesses and friendly businesses and nice people to be working with.

Cause that's really important, that we all love what we do. And I'm really passionate about Soak and really at the end of the day, it's, the detergent is just like the methodology by which you get into your favorite clothing and you wear your favorite things and you feel good about your day because you feel better when you have a great fitting bra on.

If you wear those cashmere socks that somebody gave you that you never wear, just wear them, right? even if it's like a pair of white leather sneakers, you can use Soak like a little washcloth and clean them up and get those little stains off. just take care of the things that you love, and make sure that you're feeling your best in your clothes.

Because we live in our clothes. People sometimes think of clothes so passively. actually incredibly hard work from a design standpoint, to make fabric fit on the human body in a way that's comfortable and functional that you can still, I can still lift up my kids and I can go to work and I can run around and do errands.

It's actually quite complex to make clothing great. So enjoy it and appreciate that, and take care of it because it's an important part of your life. there are people who just throw everything in the washing machine and they're like ah, clothes are whatever. But when you find a garment that makes you feel special or that you love, you feel like a different person.

And so I, we really want to encourage people to like harness that, that super power, that good clothing has. We all go through different phases in life, for sure. but if you have things that you love, hold on to them and take care of them, store them well, 

And don't put stuff away, dirty with body oils on it because that's what the moths are going after. It's so much easier to wash stuff before you put it away than it is to, to refresh it when you take it out. even though it was beautiful out this weekend, do some laundry.

[00:37:53] Miranda Black: Okay. thank you so much for your time. I really 

appreciate it. I love So ak it was one of the products from my store that I loved selling and I love, I love buying now. 

[00:38:05] Jacqueline Sava: We love that. that's my parting words would be like, tell someone else that you know, and love about Soak who doesn't know about it. That's the number one way that we can grow our business is for people to share their love for Soak with someone else who, who,who hasn't found it yet.

[00:38:17] Miranda Black: And you're in a thousand stores worldwide. 

What a huge Canadian business story to Toronto business story. 

[00:38:23] Jacqueline Sava: Yeah, It's good. 

[00:38:25] Miranda Black: Thank you so much, Jacqueline. I 

[00:38:26] Jacqueline Sava: my pleasure. Have a great day, 

everyone. 

[00:38:28] Miranda Black: too. Bye. 

Is it weird if you drool a bit over laundry?

I just wanted to let you know that none of the brands or the entrepreneurs I interview are

product placements or endorsements. Zero money exchanges hands. What I'm trying to do here is build a community of sustainable brands that you, the listener, can rely on without wondering if someone slipped me a C note under the table. It's the only way I know to keep the podcast honest and prevent greenwashing. 

Anyway i'm taking a couple of weeks off and i can't wait to be back at it discovering new Canadian entrepreneurs and inspiring sustainable businesses from around the world. i hope you enjoy the rest of your summer. Drink in that sunshine! Checkout some vintage or some products made right here in canada! It is Amazing how many there are once you start looking. I will see you in a few weeks