900.care sells waterless personal care products that let you add tap water at home

Here’s the hard truth behind personal care products: What you’re mostly buying is water and plastic. By far the main ingredient in a bottle of shampoo or body wash is water. It is blended with a variety of active ingredients. Since it is a “pre-mixed” product, companies spend a lot of money on plastic bottles to transport these products to your bathroom.

French startup 900.care wants to try something new. Rather than buying a new bottle of body wash every time you need it, the startup is focusing on active ingredients.

With your first order, you will receive an empty, reusable plastic bottle with a pump. You put a small piece of compacted powder into a bottle, add some water and wait a few hours. Then it’s ready to use. Next time you need more body wash or shampoo, all you need is a new wand (and some tap water).

“For example, you keep all the benefits of using body wash. Our body wash lathers, has the same texture, smells great, and more. But you’re not buying any plastic and you’re not carrying any water,” says Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer Officer Aymeric Grange told me.

A few months ago, 900.care raised €21 million in funding ($23 million at today’s exchange rates) as its product worked well in its home country. Lombard Odier Investment Managers led the round, with existing investors White Star Capital, Swen Blue Ocean and Founders Future also participating.

900.care follows a direct-to-consumer strategy as customers can only purchase products on its website. Since you’re always in need of new personal care products, the company also decided to sell its products exclusively on a subscription basis.

In 2023 alone, 900.care generated €10 million ($10.8 million) in revenue. The startup has 90,000 customers with 235,000 active subscriptions – each customer can have multiple subscriptions.

In addition to shampoo and body wash, 900.care also sells foaming hand soap, dish soap, laundry and dishwasher tablets, and a few other products. The company estimates it has reduced waste equivalent to 3.5 million plastic bottles.

small print

900.care’s products also represent a good business opportunity. Every few weeks, customers receive an envelope containing new hygiene and household product bars. Because these compacted powder sticks are so small, they fit into a regular envelope and can be sent as regular mail. 900.care saves on shipping costs.

Likewise, factories and production lines are also very small because they don’t require huge basins to mix water with active ingredients. They just need to mix different powders and compact the mixture to turn it into small sticks.

“For the compaction and industrialization stages, the biggest challenge was that no one knew how to do it. Initially, we started working with people who were in the cosmetics industry,” Grange said. “But we quickly realized that this wasn’t going to work. They couldn’t keep up and the factory wasn’t designed for it. So we opened a factory in Saint-Etienne in the second quarter of 2023 specifically to produce compacted powders .”

The new facility will be run exclusively for 900.care but will still be operated by partners. But the fact that everything is designed specifically for 900.care has greatly improved the company’s profit margins.

The startup expects to hit €100 million in revenue within three years and expand to other European countries beyond France, Belgium and Switzerland. But the company still expects to turn a profit this year.