The Daily Routine shows that a luxurious, sustainable lifestyle can also be affordable and convenient.
Meet Natalie and Ruby, best friends turned co-founders of The Daily Routine, a startup providing eco-friendly daily essentials for luxurious living — on repeat.
We caught up with Natalie for a quick chat to learn more about The Daily Routine’s approach to sustainable living, and the challenges they’ve overcome as a bootstrapped business. Check out what she had to say below:
What problem is The Daily Routine trying to solve?
Every day the media floods us with fear about the harsh realities of climate change and the harm we are doing to our planet. We all know that we consume a ridiculous amount of plastic waste and collectively increase our carbon footprint. The scope is so large that it is often overwhelming to think how we can even begin to adopt sustainable habits. Not only is the thought of becoming an 'eco-warrior' too unrealistic but it is often expensive and there is a huge sacrifice to quality and aesthetics of products. That's where The Daily Routine comes in. Beginning with hand wash, we create affordable, eco friendly and luxurious personal care products that ultimately aim to minimise the usage of single use plastics in our homes. I think it's such an overlooked and overused space that we take for granted but when it's addressed it can have a huge impact! As a brand, we also want to take the responsibility of educating our community and prove that leading sustainable lifestyles isn’t as intimidating as it seems.
What’s something you wish you knew more about at the start of your journey?
This may sound cliche, but my biggest learning has been that it is okay to make mistakes and embrace the mess of the process. If I would've known that earlier, I wouldn't have been so hard on myself at the beginning when I did make mistakes, and I would have moved on much faster. I’ve learned that now and I’m much more receptive to failure than I was a year ago. I now see failure as a teacher and a catalyst for growth, and I finally understand what Seth Godin meant by, “If I fail more than you, I win.”
What has been the biggest challenge for you in setting up The Daily Routine? And how did you manage to overcome it?
Being a bootstrapped business means that from the beginning, cash flow management has always been our biggest setback. We had to find ways to balance the ability to afford to manufacture great quality products as well as setting up the administrative part of the business at the same time. You can’t rush into building the foundational aspects of a sustainable company — it takes smart planning and budgeting to ensure we don’t encounter more costly challenges during the early years of our business. We overcame it by trusting that our concept had its own unique space in the market and also educating ourselves on how to become better entrepreneurs. We are now exploring capital raising so that we are able to grow the brand into what we want it to be. A lifestyle revolution for a cleaner, greener planet!
Now on to some quick fire questions — hope you’re ready!
Having your friend as your co-founder means: Celebrating each triumph and challenge at the end of the day; being co-founders means more quality time with each other.
The best thing about your brand is: We coin ourselves the affordable and sustainable Aesop. It doesn't get much better than that, does it?
The next big milestone for TDR would be: Finding a team of passionate and incredible talent; the people you build your brand with are equally important when it comes to watching it succeed.
You can check out The Daily Routine here.
