We were lucky to catch up with Luke Wilson recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Luke thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Almost all entrepreneurs have had to decide whether to start now or later? There are always pros and cons for waiting and so we’d love to hear what you think about your decision in retrospect. If you could go back in time, would you have started your business sooner, later or at the exact time you started?

I think most entrepreneurs would say that they wish they had started their business sooner, and because my business is brand new, I think I would have to agree completely. At the same time, I did try to start a business more than 10 years ago, and while at the time I was fresh out of my MBA program and was at the top of my class, I had no real idea how to start and grow a business from idea to scale. Fast forward about 13 years later and I caught the entrepreneurial itch again and I’m taking the leap once more. This time I believe I am much more prepared. I went through an intense training program at one of the largest retailers in the world and was fortunate to have an accelerated career trajectory. For the last few years, I’ve also been at the executive level at an iconic brand. I’ve learned from several mentors and leaders across multiple disciplines these last several years. I have even done some consulting, where I feel like I’ve learned more from those entrepreneurs than the value they got from my consulting. So, I do believe that now is the “right” time for me in my career to dive in and start a brand. At this point in my career, I think I’ve learned enough of the fundamentals to build and grow a brand, and was frankly tired of working 60+ hour weeks for the past decade or more only to grow or manage other brands.

But honestly, after all of this said I do wish I started this endeavor a couple of years ago, even as a side project, as I’m learning that it takes time to build (especially while bootstrapping it). For the sake of my stress level (and my wife’s!) I think starting it a couple years back would put us in a more comfortable position today. So, check back in next year!

Luke, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The inception of Canary started around July of 2022 as I was exploring a career and personal change. After working for brands both very large and very small, and the gamut in between, I knew I wanted to follow my passion for sustainability and build a brand that actually focused on trying to make the world a better place, rather than just produce one more sellable item. My mother possessed the entrepreneurial bent too and owned a health food store when I was a kid. And after working for more than a decade in apparel and accessories product categories, I was gravitating to the wellness and consumer packaged goods categories as well. I connected with my childhood friend and mentor, Scott, who had been in this space for the past 20+ years to see what was in his portfolio of products and production capabilities. Scott immediately understood where I was coming from in my new career search, as it was something he experienced about a decade before when he took the leap and started his own business. So we partnered up and I put together an assortment of products with the focus to reduce the use of plastic from the bathroom and eventually from all around the household as well. As a parent I want to leave the world a better place for my kids, and all of the plastic waste we produce and throw away every day sickens me. I decided that it is no longer acceptable to stand by & watch the trash build up around the earth and pile up into the future of our children. Our oceans are full of islands of plastic trash & less than 5% of plastic is actually recycled! With our mission of “Provoke the Purge of Plastic” and statement; “Canary was born out of a desire to make the purge of plastics fun, accessible & unexpected with conscious personal & home care products that kick ass,” we are building a brand with these tenets in mind. 1) We are focused on making the best products possible in these categories. We will iterate and constantly strive to improve. The consumer must love the product in order to adopt it and become a fan. 2) In everything we do, we will aim to eliminate, or at least substantially mitigate the use of plastic, and especially single use plastics. 3) We will be more accessible (i.e. more affordable) than other brands because real change and a reversal of climate change isn’t going to be possible if only the rich can afford to make a change. And finally, 4) We want to have fun doing this…provocative even. Most brands in this space are pretty boring, so we are leveraging our punk rock upbringing to provoke positive change.

Canary launched its website in late January of 2023 and we’ve been growing ever since. Most of our customers are coming back and reordering, and many are leaving some very inspiring reviews. It feels amazing to be able to create something that is ideally improving the impact of humans on this planet, and that also helps to improve lives, even if it is just the little things like brushing teeth or enabling confident smiles.

Can you tell us the story of how you met your business partner and we’d really appreciate it if you could talk to us about how you two figured out the manufacturing process together.

I actually met my partner, Scott, when I was a young kid, around the age of 11, and he was probably 16. We grew up in a pretty small town in Texas. My older brother and I started skateboarding and in our rural town there were probably less than 10 of us skateboarders. Scott was older and was starting to pave the way in this sport in our town, and also had a car to get us around. From skateboarding we fell in love with snowboarding, and gravitated to the punk rock music scene as well. Over the years we stayed connected. Scott moved to Utah, also earned his MBA and eventually started his own company focused on wellness products and consumer packaged goods. We really reconnected more during Covid to share stories of supply chain woes and business challenges. He was the first person I thought of when I realized I really wanted to build my own brand and business. I can never thank him enough for this support and encouragement throughout the years, and for building this brand together.

We do manufacture our core products, but not all of our products. Scott has a warehouse and facility with equipment such as packaging and fulfillment lines and a tablet press where we make our toothpaste tablets. And we are currently in R&D with other products. We also both have various contacts of manufacturers of all types of products when needed. We both love to learn and to tinker and “figure out” how to make improvements to our products as well as other options in the market. Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to have so much incredible experience about how to bring a product to market, scale it, evolve it and iterate. I think the biggest learnings at Canary, and throughout my career, have been to listen to the customer, follow the data and always be nimble. Even this past year with Canary, it has been so fun to develop, test, get customer input, fail and learn.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

As of September this so-far-year-long journey and side hustle is becoming my full-time career! In the beginning, I kept it quiet from my full-time employer, but just after we launched our website in late January I knew that I had to tell them. At that time I wanted to tell everyone about my new adventure so I needed to be more transparent and public. Fortunately I was in a great position at an amazing company and they understood my passion and goals. There was no conflict of interest with our product lines or market. They have graciously allowed me to keep my full-time job while I’ve been slowly growing Canary. I would dedicate all of my evenings (sometimes very late into the night) and my weekends working on building the brand, responding to customers, and setting up sales and marketing funnels. It has gotten to the point where the sales and growth rates indicate that it is on a stable growth trajectory, and that it needs more of my attention and time in order to take this growth to the next plateau of our sales targets. During this time I’ve been saving more as well, just in case we run into challenges in the future, which I’m sure we will. We are also looking for investors currently, which tends to take a lot of time and dedication, so I needed to free myself of other commitments to fully take the leap. Wish me luck!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.canarycleanco.com/
• Instagram: @canarycleanco
• Facebook: @canarycleanco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukedjwilson/
• Youtube: @canarycleanco

Image Credits
Josh Kimball Photography – https://www.joshkimball.com/