ORANGE GLO INTERNATIONAL: CLEANING UP

Sixteen years ago, Max Appel went out to the garage behind his Denver home to see if he could create a cleaning product that worked well, smelled good and was environmentally safe. By mixing pure orange oil with other cleaners and a wood protectant, he was able to produce what he thought was “the perfect cleaner and polish.” He shared his discovery with friends who encouraged him to take a booth at the Denver Garden and Home Show. And the rest, as they say, is history.

One of the more recent – and most lucrative – chapters in the history book of Appel’s company, Orange Glo International, has been direct response television. Starting to promote the product five years ago on home shopping programs was a natural step, says Linda Appel, Max’s daughter and a product consultant for the company.

“You develop a presentation including before and after demonstrations of how well the products work and get customer feedback and testimonials over the phone,” Linda says, noting it’s very grassroots and a lot like being at the home shows where Orange Glo started. “It’s a perfect fit.”

Like many growing direct marketing firms, the company’s focus is on building on its strong core and finding new, creative ways to market around the world. The Internet is of course part of that strategy. At the Orange Glo site (www.orangegloint.com), visitors can find the full range of products, some before and after photos, an order form, and Max Appel himself welcoming people to the site and thanking them for visiting.

Linda claims Orange Glo has become the leading cleaning product offered on home shopping channels in this country and has generated an increasing number of sales internationally. Why? She attributes Orange Glo’s success to word of mouth. “It’s made us,” she says. “It all goes back to being honest and sincere and talking to the housewives of America. Customer service is very important. We’re not just a marketing machine.”

Linda – currently attending business school in New York – says her father had been a “pitch man” for other products, so the idea of going before an audience of consumers was not new to him. In fact, he liked it so much that for the first 10 years of the company’s existence, he and the rest of the family brought Orange Glo to home shows and fairs all around the country.

“Through the demonstrations,” says Linda, “he got feedback from customers and potential customers: what they liked, what they didn’t like, new uses for the product that he had never thought of, and requests for products to fill unmet needs.” And, as an outcome of this basic “one-on-one” marketing model, she says, Orange Glo began to build “an incredibly loyal customer base.”

Linda began to give product demonstrations when she was still a teenager. Over the next few months she’ll be getting back to those roots by testing a new project at home shows in Hong Kong and Frankfurt.

The Orange Glo product line includes OxiClean, an oxygen-based alkaline cleaner designed to attack organic dirt such as mildew, blood, mold, wine, baby formula and pet messes; Orange Glo Wood Floor Polish and Cleaner; Orange Clean super concentrate; and Orange Clean Multi-Purpose Floor Cleaner.

More recent introductions include Orange Clean Foam for use on greasy dirt; New Life For Wood, a penetrating oil finish; Power Paste for tough jobs; Orange Glo’s Bar of Oranges (bars of soap); Orange Grove Air Freshener; Orange For Hands, a heavy-duty liquid soap; Orange Eliminator, a spot remover; and a variety of cleaning tools – such as a squeegee cloth, a terrycloth mop and a magnetized broom – have been added to the Orange Glo family.

Today, Orange Glo has 15 distributors across the country to get its product to retailers, the smallest component of the company’s business. A staff of 40 handles phone and mail orders.

Max Appel now works full-time in the company along with son Joel who is responsible for direct sales and marketing efforts. They recently were joined by David, another son, who left Andersen Consulting to head up operations and oversee the burgeoning international market. Max says Orange Glo “has been a sustainable business for a very long time” and will remain in the family – run “by a bunch of Appels” – for the foreseeable future. “We’re very fortunate,” he says, “to have diverse and complementary skills.”