Newborn babies have a naturally sweet smell. However, some of the other smells they make are just plain stinky. And as new-mom Dana Rubinstein discovered while washing bottles in a sleepless stupor one late night, cleaning detergents may not be doing much to help.
The next day she acted on her “a-ha” moment by calling close friend Tamar Rosenthal and saying there’s got to be a market for eco-friendly baby cleaning products. Rosenthal, now a mom of three, was right on board with the idea: Especially since her oldest daughter is allergic to many food and synthetic cleaning product ingredients.
The duo started frequenting parenting related blogs and groups to research which kinds of products people used to clean toys and baby bottles. They also reached out to pediatricians for advice on how doctors might formulate cleaning products for babies.
Rubinstein, who worked as an attorney in a large firm in Manhattan, had no experience in chemistry and so looked to her network of friends, family and business colleagues, which eventually wended its way to people who are formulators and chemists with backgrounds in green chemistry.
The team of chemists that eventually made up Dapple, which incidentally was named from lyrics to a Simon and Garfunkel tune, was headed by a man who had worked at Arm and Hammer. “I liked that he was used to working with baking soda because that’s the way our grandmothers’ clean. It’s a nice, safe ingredient,” said Rubinstein.
Logo from Dapple.