B_E_E 

Harvard graduate and former McKinsey employee Brigid Hardy had a bee in her bonnet about wanting to convert the world to environmentally-friendly cleaning products.

However, research told her that despite good intentions, come purchase time, consumers would ultimately go with Unilever, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitts - trusted household names with pocket-friendly prices.

Brigid knew she had to do something really different to succeed.

Her concept was to 'sex-up' cleaners and detergents, to create gorgeous-smelling, sensuous, eco-friendly products that people would enjoy both working with and looking at.

From the outset, Brigid put a lot of emphasis on design and labelling - to the extent that she formed a partnership with designWorks, who named the brand B_E_E (which stands for Beauty Engineered for Ever).

The brief was emphatic that the packaging stand out.

The resulting fun 'talking bottles', with their flirtatious pick-up lines, broke the industry utility blue/green mould and delivered to the extent that they won a 'design Oscar' - the Branded Packaging award at the 2004 UK Design Week Awards in London - over global giants Virgin, Apple and Dulux.

As her eco-friendly natural ingredient products were priced at the premium end of the market, it was vital that the products be better than the competition.

Testing has shown her dishwash, surface cleaner, whitener and delicate laundry liquids are 'hardcore on performance' - beating out the market leaders.

That high performance, combined with eco-ethics and huge shelf appeal, sees B_E_E now stocked at New World, Woolworths and Foodtown outlets nationwide, and on track to achieve Brigid's aim of claiming five percent of the $300 million cleaning and detergents market.

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