Sustainable Packaging

Twist Mist! chemical free aerosol / Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky and Brad Barron

• Cory Connors • Season 3 • Episode 233

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The Amazing Twist Mist! https://theapscompany.com/

Mr. Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky and Mr. Brad Barron explain how the Twist Mist works and why it has a 90% lower carbon footprint! 


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Cory Connors:

Welcome to Sustainable Packaging with Cory Connors. Today's guests are from the Alternative Packaging Solutions Company, and I'm gonna have them introduce themselves. Brad, if you go first,

Brad Barron:

Sure. Hey Corey. I'm Brad Barron. I'm the Chief Innovation Officer at Alternative Packaging Solutions.

Cory Connors:

Great to meet you, Brad.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Good to meet her? Yes. Hi Corey. Hi, my name is Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky , chief Marketing Officer of a p

Cory Connors:

s. wonderful. And Dennis, let's start with your background. it doesn't sound like you have an American accent.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

No, I'm not. So originally I'm from Ukraine. I start my business career in Ukraine as an entrepreneur. Wonderful. Then came to the US uh, worked for Proctor and Gamble for many years, uh, on such iconic brands as Tide and Ariel. Wow. And then, uh, spent, uh, several years working with, uh, Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah. Who you might know. And, uh, Really? Yes. And uh, for the last, three years, Brad and I, we've been running aps.

Cory Connors:

Wonderful. Gary Vaynerchuk is the reason I have a podcast. Seriously. Really? Yeah. Many,

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

many people exactly. Were inspired by him and many people went into business because of him. Incredible.

Cory Connors:

I, uh, if you, if you see him again, please send him that message from me. Thank you. Yeah. He changed my life in a, in a big way, uh, started making tos and then this, all of a sudden, here we are today. Exactly. Uh, it's, it's a circular economy. Yeah. Wonderful. Well, Brad, how about your background?

Brad Barron:

Yeah, so, uh, I spent, uh, my specialty's always been packaging development and I spent most of my career at Procter and Gamble. I was there for 25 years. I was leading packaging for Tide, Verre, other brands like that. Right? Different assignments all around the world. I. Um, and when I retired from P N G, I was leading sustainability for the corporation for packaging. Okay. so the last thing I did, which I was proud of before I retired was set the 2020 to 2030 sustainability goals. Okay. And get those across the finish line. And when I retired I wanted to continue in that vein. So I joined aps, because of the potential we have here, and I'm pretty excited

Cory Connors:

about it. Well, congratulations. First of all. Thank you on your award. This is, thank you. so we're here to announce, uh, For the very first time that you are one of four winners for the US Plastics Pact, uh, sustainable Packaging Innovation Awards. And we're not even supposed to be talking about this yet, but, uh, it'll, it'll technically be announced tomorrow. Yep. Uh, but we're recording this in advance, so let's talk about that experience a little bit. Can, first of all, let's talk about this product, right? And then we'll talk about how you entered it in a. What it feels like to win stuff like that. Yeah. So you wanna explain how it works? This is, uh, for, and explain it like they're not watching of course. Because, uh, a lot of things, a lot of podcasts are just

Brad Barron:

listeners. Right. You know? Right, exactly. Yeah. So our product, what we've developed is a way for consumer to have an aerosol type experience. Yeah. Without any propellant, pressurization or anything in all. No chemicals, no chemicals at all. Just amazing. Just the pure product. what we have, it's a purely mechanical system. Hmm. Uh, and the magic is all in the spray head. Okay. So the way it works, the consumer just takes the pack, they twist the top, like they're screwing it on. And now you can spray Oh, and you can spray upside down. Wow. And bursts. For a long time.

Cory Connors:

Incredible. So it's a, it's a, looks like a normal plastic bottle. Mm-hmm. Uh, identity polyethylene or, or p e t, or,

Brad Barron:

well, so the magic's in the spray head, right? So the bottle itself is fully recyclable. Could be beach plastic, could be glass, could be p e t, could be H C P E. Incredible. Really, whatever the brands want. So, um, wow. Well, thank you. Yeah. We think, talk about potential, right? Yeah. We think it, we think it's pretty exciting for the brands. Yeah, I do

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

too. And this is incredible. But the reaction that you had, Corey, just now this is exactly what we've been hearing, in the, uh, by meeting people here. Yeah. The same. Wow. Every time you show it, it's,

Cory Connors:

chemical free, it's, reusable. It's all the things that we want.

Brad Barron:

Right. And the reason, That, uh, we are nominated for this award, and one of the big reasons why we got this award is it's ultra sustainable. Mm-hmm. 90% less CO2 footprint Wow. Versus traditional aerosols. And that's via some external universities. Uh, leads university had, uh, verified that with us. Wow. And it opens the door to refill. Yeah. Because one of the problems with aerosols is that they're pressurized. Right. So by default they have to be tightly sealed up so that they're safe, which is a good thing. Yeah, because we never pressurize. You can have refills with all the benefits, both sustainability and value for the consumer.

Cory Connors:

Well, I spent all morning at a reusable packaging. talk for three hours. They were talking about all the different ways we can use reusables. And, this'll fit right in with the mantras and the concepts. Uh, do you have a first product in mind for this, or is that something we can speak to yet? Yeah.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

So, uh, what we're doing, we're working right now with leaders, uh, top CPG companies across variety of, uh, categories. Mm-hmm. And this product is fantastic for, uh, disinfecting category, for surface care, for hair treatment. Uh, The ants, you name it. Right? So, and that's why, the way we are looking at this technology is not, it's not just yet another aerosol. Uh, it's the, technologies that will change aerosol category for good, meaning for, uh, Good from, in terms of sustainability, in terms of consumer experience, but also hopefully forever because we will not need to deal any longer with pressurized scuba tanks right on shelf and, with, uh, filled with, sometimes, harmful be zine. Mm-hmm. Uh, that, that, uh, powers many of those errors also. That's what we're

Cory Connors:

trying to do. I, I keep thinking about the, the 1980s and the, the hairspray, uh, and the ozone and Yeah. All these things. And this solves that issue.

Brad Barron:

And Well, and, and you know, the interesting thing about aerosols is they've been around for a long time. Um, there hasn't been a lot of step change innovation. Mm-hmm. There's been a lot of incremental innovation that's made them slightly better. this is, to me, it's an example of lateral thinking where you say, having that experience doesn't need to be side stepped right. and importantly, the way we've designed this, we developed this with a manufacturing partner. Lin Doll. The Lin Doll group. Oh yeah. Who's a major aerosol. Supplier. Yes. and we developed it with them because we're intending this to be sold and used worldwide in hundreds of millions and billions of units. Yeah. This is not some specialty thing just for, you know, sell a hundred a year in boutique shops. Right, right. Um, we think this is gonna take over a lot of the market.

Cory Connors:

Well, I got to meet some of them in Paris. Okay. In Paris Packaging week. Mm-hmm. And I highly recommend if you're not thinking about it, go in January. I was a

Brad Barron:

speaker there. Oh, you were cool. I was a speaker there talking about Twist Vista. We were at the Lin Dabu with, uh, with their CEO and the rest of the company. Incredible. Incredible.

Cory Connors:

I did, uh, these podcasts live at. Packaging week. So you, did you, uh, enter the awards there or anything like

Brad Barron:

that? We entered the awards there. Okay. We weren't selected there. Oh. Uh,

Cory Connors:

yeah. Well, let's focus yourself, let's focus on this one. We won the US plastics. P and uh, congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, that's so cool. It's such a small

Brad Barron:

world. Yeah. Yeah. It is. It was a big show. Not surprised we didn't run into each other.

Cory Connors:

yeah. And I was hidden away in a little booth, uh, doing this. exactly. We meant to meet here.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Yes, yes. So I agree. We, and we met, meant to meet Lindell partners because they did a fantastic job. Yeah. Uh, partnering with us and, frankly, like designing, helping us bring this technology to life. And Brad did incredible job working with, uh, with that team, making sure that, this product is ready for launch. Wow. So, and uh, maybe Brett, if you can talk about the, the way we bring this technology to this stage, we bring this technology to, that will be fantastic.

Brad Barron:

And, and this is kind of the mission of our company. We we're not a manufacturer. Mm-hmm. We exist to de-risk technologies for brands like that. Mm-hmm. So when Denniss and I were at p and g, we were deciding major launches, you know, for Tide, for other brands. We'd see new technologies. And Dennis on the commercial side, myself, on the technical would say, will it really work? Yeah. Will it be affordable? That's will consumers like it? And some of those exciting ideas I didn't invest resources in. Yeah. Because I. You have to make choices right at the end of the day. Right. So what we've done is systematically with the same rigor as I used to do when I do a, uh, a launch for Tide mm-hmm. To iron out all of those questions. Mm-hmm. Dennis has been working on the commercial side, on the consumer side, you know, will people understand it? Will they, will it be affordable for the brand's business model? Can it help grow their margins to create suction? Yeah. Um, and so at the end of the day, we believe what we have here is a system that one. Incredibly sustainable. Yes. But importantly, we'll delight the consumer about their basic product. Yeah. And also the brand's ability to express itself. So really everybody wins.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

Amazing. And I, and I think both of us, we've been trained in the p and g approach to marketing and uh, we always place consumer in the center of this universe, right? So every, when we started with this technology, We asked ourselves, will consumer see the change? Will we improve life of, of the consumer? Mm-hmm. And, with this technology, uh, the answer is absolutely yes. Yeah. So we looked at the all core benefits for the categories that we are dealing with. Uh, And in each one of them, we can significantly improve, the end benefit that consumer gets from that specific category. Everything else is a fantastic add-on sustainability, cost design, uh, but consumer is in the center of this universe. Yeah.

Cory Connors:

It looks like it, it looks it. It's a very intuitive design. Uh, there's a giant arrow that shows which way it goes on and how to, to do it. Um, have you tested this with, uh, uh, people with maybe disabilities or, uh, they call it otherly abled. Um, is it easier to use than the traditional

Brad Barron:

aerosols? So, um, you have to give traditional aerosols credit where they're due. Yeah. You just push the button and they spray. Right. Okay. Yeah. And for this one, there is a twisting motion. Mm-hmm. We have tested with a wide range of people from elderly Yeah. To young, um, to, uh, you know, male, female, different ethnicities. and we've seen universal universally, people don't have a hard time adopting the new habit. Good. However, We also do have to recognize that it is a new habit. Sure. Right. And there are some differences there, that people will have to adopt. Um, but from the consumer work that we've done for the vast majority of consumers mm-hmm. They try it, they get it, no problem at all. Okay. It's a,

Cory Connors:

it's an education issue. Mm-hmm. Yes. And it's a adoption issue. And once they adopt it, once they figure it out, they won't want to go back. Mm-hmm. And that's kind of seems to be the mantra of this show. Yeah. Is this is different. We're asking people to be, to do different things, to, to try something new, to, bring their. Water bottle to bring a, a mug to the coffee shop instead of that single use cup. And this is the same, it's, uh, reuse

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

and that, that, that's why Absolutely. You're absolutely right. Qu And that's why when Brad and I, we work on this technology and, we went through several iterations, design iterations, and we are thinking from, uh, user experience, will it be easy to twist? Will it be, intuitive? From marketing communication standpoint, will, when people see this product, uh, and take it on in their hands, will they easily understand how to twist it? Because indeed it's a, it had to change and we've done, a lot of work and right now we have, very high confidence that it's, uh, exceptionally intuitive and we'll, we'll looking forward to see it on the market.

Brad Barron:

I, I think one of the reasons that, one of the reasons I believe this habit change will be successful is when I do consumer research. I hear consumers unprompted telling me why they like it better. Hmm mm-hmm. So they've said back to me, oh, this is refillable. I can get a better value. Yeah. You know, I can, I can get, I can save, save some dollars here. Right. They've said, oh, It doesn't just go off the touch of a button, you have to twist it first. Mm-hmm. My kid's not gonna run around the house spraying the walls with sunscreen or something. Something like that. Yeah. So it, it does seem to be kitchen logic. Mm-hmm. You know, and that's something that we always strive for, not something that I. There's some complicated scientific explanation for why it's better. Yeah. It's something, you look at it and you say, oh, okay, I get it. Yeah. I understand why, why this is good for me. Yeah.

Cory Connors:

the, the future of sustainable packaging is very bright. Mm-hmm. And I think things like this are what are so exciting because you don't, what I'm looking at for those listening are two versions. One with. The aerosol lid and one without, and I, what I see is you buy that once and then you buy that in perpetuity. Right? Exactly. Yep. Uh, or you got

Brad Barron:

exactly right or whatever. Or you buy a three-pack at, at the club store or something like this. Yeah,

Cory Connors:

absolutely. What a, what? A huge cost savings. What a huge uh, Just improvement on the sustainability. You're not having to ship the, the aerosol lid every time. Uh, well done. Yeah. Thank you. Exciting

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

and, and another, uh, absolutely incredible benefit from commercial standpoint. Yeah. My, my marketing self is right, really delayed. Uh, to see that is that this is first time ever brands will be able to customize their aero results. Because traditionally it's a, as bread live likes to say, it's a pressurized scuba tank, right? That you cannot do anything from design standpoint with, and this is the first time when we have a five, uh, point customization system, okay? So, uh, as a brand, because there is no pressure in the bottle. You can, as we discuss, you can make this bottle look like anything. It can be square, it can be around, it can have wings, anything. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, you can customize the ring. You can customize the shroud, the button, and the insert. So you can, uh, you can modify all of those five elements and create absolutely unique, uh, first moment of truth as we love calling it ink. I like that. Yeah. And, uh, uh, make sure that it's a distinct, uh, product on shelf that, uh, brings the language of the brand to life.

Cory Connors:

Fascinating. And like you mentioned, it doesn't have to be a plastic bottle. It can be glass, it can be aluminum. Exactly. Incredible. Yeah.

Brad Barron:

It, it really opens up degrees of freedom to design the right offering. Mm-hmm. Um, and we're pretty, we're pretty, pretty proud of it. So you should, should be the, the last enabler that I will fall out. That's important. We talked about, you know, the product performance and sustainability and brand expression. Uh, The last one is we've done a lot of cost modeling. Mm-hmm. It's the same cost us today's systems. Oh, wow. Because you're spending a little more on the packaging. Mm-hmm. But you're not buying propellant, you're not shipping around pressurized containers, you're not dealing with that manufacturing. So for brands, it's really about taking that first step forward. Right. You know, not having to solve a, a cost challenge or a consumer pros, I mean, yeah, this is not something that you charge 50% more and only sell it to green consumers. This is something that you're gonna see everywhere.

Cory Connors:

What an excellent point. Uh, to be cost neutral is credible and potentially even a cost savings. Well,

Brad Barron:

and when you introduce the refills, it's a savings. Yeah. The cost neutral is when people start, it's just gonna be this one unit. Fascinating. Right. So, And that's kind of the core that Dennis and I have worked on here is I've been knowing sustainability a long time. Okay. And, and, People won't pay extra for sustainability. Right. They won't do. So we heard in one of this morning sessions, people don't want to do something inconvenient. Mm-hmm hmm. It has to be a win for everybody. Yep. Okay. And that's why here, you know, we looked at the stakeholders, it's the consumer, the planets. Right. Supply chain marketing. Yep. And try to make it a win for all those different parties. And it is.

Cory Connors:

Very exciting. Uh, I'm fascinated to learn what products will be out first. Do we have a, is there a leader out there that you can announce, somebody that's taken the leap?

Brad Barron:

There are, there are leaders out there. Okay. But we can't announce them. We can't announce

Cory Connors:

they, yes. Stay

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

tuned. Right. Yeah. Companies that you could definitely know and many people around the globe know. Yes. Um, but we cannot of course announce. Sure, sure. Another interesting element is that, I mean, as we've seen during covid, when e-commerce, skyrocketed mm-hmm. This is the first aerosol that, uh, is not hazmat. Oh, because, because it's not pressurized, you can ship it as a regular, regular bottle with, uh, with liquid. Yeah.

Brad Barron:

Until the consumer twists it, it, it's a bottle.

Cory Connors:

It's a bottle. And it won't, won't, it will not

Brad Barron:

propel. Yeah. Well, we, we designed it so that the top is protected by the shroud. So, um, so it can't accidentally be actuated and on top of that, I don't know. Yeah. So if, if you haven't twisted it, you push the button, nothing happens. It's just you've solved that problem when it comes, when

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

it comes to the factory. And, and I have to give massive credit to Brad and he, his in insane ex uh, technical experience because, this, this product ness looked very differently two years ago. I bet. And, because, Brad always thinks reverse engineers from the mm-hmm. Hey, can we even produce it? Because again, He launched many products. Uh, we made the significant modifications to this design to make sure that, it's, very easy to assemble this product on the automated line. Mm-hmm. And, addition of this little ring all of a sudden make made it possible to screw, this twist mis unit on top of the bottle easily right. And safely. So, that's back to the de-risking model. Yeah. Yeah. next, every time we meet with technical or commercial partners and they start shooting all of those questions, did you think about this? Yeah. I

Brad Barron:

mean, at the end of the day, Dennis and I. Have had a lot of successes in our career. We've also made a lot of mistakes. Yep. And we've rolled all that experience in, into this. Um, that's how

Cory Connors:

you learn, right?

Brad Barron:

You learn exactly. You, you don't learn by, you don't learn by doing everything perfect. And, but this one, everything we know is rolled into this design.

Cory Connors:

Yep. Well, this is really exciting. I, I'd like to take a little bit of a detour and Yeah. And, and get your thoughts on your first day at Circularity 23. Yeah. how, how was it? You

Brad Barron:

know, I found it really interesting. I was in the session this morning, we were talking about, um, the shift to reusable, reusable cups Yeah. And so forth. I don't know if you were in in that session. Session Yeah. The Our Cup and what I found interesting there was people's tangible experience about how trying to drive recycling mm-hmm. To where it needs to be. It turned out to be harder than driving reuse. Yeah. You know, the comments about concert venues and, and and so forth, because I was very surprised by that recycling's hard, you know? Yeah. And we all know there's a difference between recycled recyclable and recycled in practice. Mm-hmm. So it actually gave me a lot of hope. Yeah. Um, and, and again, it's kind of the lateral thinking. Mm-hmm. You know, so, so here we said let's do an aerosol without pressure. There. They said, you know what? Let's not worry about recycling. Let's actually use more material. Yeah, let's make it durable, make it better, and let's just use it again and again.

Cory Connors:

So I was very surprised by that. Yeah. But I think you're exactly right. Sometimes you have to take a step back and say, wait, I. We're banging our heads against the wall here. Let's try something different. Yeah. And uh, uh, the, it was the c e o of our cup. I, I don't remember his name. I'm, I'm sorry. Uh, but yeah, he said, uh, concert venues, they don't like to recycle. They just, as they leave, they throw it in the bin. Uh, but if we had a giant yellow box that said cups only, uh, maybe we'd be successful here. And, uh, It's exciting. Mm-hmm.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

It's, it's, it's all about, I mean, convenience. Mm-hmm. Right. And the same way people know that aerosols are dangerous sometimes, and, uh, not sustainable. That the e the ease of using aerosol, that's what people love. Right. And same, same here with recyclability. We all want to do that, but it's might be inconvenient. So I think right now it's all about reuse, refill, recycle. Mm-hmm. And uh uh, that's exactly what we are accomplishing here with Twist Nest as well. Awesome.

Cory Connors:

Well, thank you both. how did we get in touch with you to, to order some of these for our products?

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

So you, you will see them, on the shelf eventually. Yeah. Right. Uh, but uh, please visit twist mist aerosols.com. Twist mist aerosols.com and uh, you'll be able to see this technology Beautiful. Uh, videos. Yeah. How this product works, the benefits, we are welcome you to yeah, to website.

Brad Barron:

And I'd also say for, especially for people that can't see the samples in front of us, right. We're well past the prototype stage. Yeah. So we actually have a pilot supply chain that can make thousands per month. All the scale up learning. We haven't scaled up yet. Mm-hmm. But we have everything that's needed. With the big brands to engage and start placing test markets, start, you know, validating with, with consumers. So you are gonna see this soon. There is gonna be some time for scale up, but, but it's well on its way. Well, that's an

Cory Connors:

important part of the process, right? Yes. And to educate the consumer and to trial it and make sure, and, but sounds like you're making all the right moves. So well done. We're trying to Absolutely. It's exciting. Well, thank you both and, please thank Gary Vaynerchuk. Uh, if you see him again. Absolutely. Corey. I will thank, tell him, I'm his biggest fan and, he's changed my life, so I'm honored to get to meet one of his friends. That's good.

Dennis Ossipov-Grodsky:

It's a small world. Yes. Thank you so much for having us over here. Thank you. This is great. Thanks.

Cory Connors:

Thank you. Uh, US Plastics Pack. Thank you Landsberg Orora for sponsoring this podcast. And if you're listening, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the next episode.

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