Eliana is a woman who does it all. When she’s not looking after her three children, she’s focusing on the business she self-started during the pandemic. De Novo® is a revolution in the lint-rolling world. The main thing that sets them apart is that their lint brushes are self-cleaning, meaning gone are the days of having to hide them in a drawer and go to the hardware store for a replacement. This also makes them a great sustainable alternative.
Others have taken note too. De Novo® lint brushes have been featured on Univision, are part of FabFitFun’s marketplace, and can be found in small boutique stores all around the United States. A great success for a company that started in the midst of a pandemic.
But how did it get here? We sat down with Eliana, founder and CEO, to talk about her products and how, through the ecommerce platform Shopify, she was able to build a brand from the ground up, and how you can too.
- Industry: Ecommerce
- Company Founded: 2021
- Business To Date Profits: $140,000
- Website Built With: Shopify
- Education: International Media and Communication BA, Social Science MSc
- Article Highlight: You must love your product to succeed.
Eliana’s Background
“My name is Eliana Bergman, and I sell self-cleaning lint brushes through an ecommerce platform. My company is called De Novo®. I initially started my business in February 2021, right in the middle of the pandemic. I started it from home and built the website and brand mostly in the waiting room of the Child Development Center where my son would go for various therapies.
I mostly do B2B, meaning most of my sales come directly from other retailers, but I do generate organic sales on the website as well. Over time, we have brought in around $140,000. Initially, it was very little sales, but lately, it’s around 2,000 [products sold] on a monthly basis. This year has been very good, but it still fluctuates depending on the month.”
What Is The De Novo® Lint Brush?
“De Novo®’s mission is to provide consumers with the option to generate less waste in the world by selling reusable, self-cleaning, and fashionable lint brushes. Instead of the discardable sticky sheets and constantly producing more trash, it’s just one product that will last you many years, and you don’t have to constantly produce trash or purchase refills.”
In my household, I mostly use it for pet hair. Our medium-sized schnauzer, Maya, sheds a lot twice a year, so these brushes certainly get put to the test. But you don’t have to have a pet to find these brushes useful. My mom, who has no pets, uses them after the dryer to remove the lint off her clothing. We also have a fair share of clients in northern states and Canada, who find our products helpful in the colder months when they wear sweaters and scarves, which leave lint on finer textiles.
Where Did The Idea Come From?
“Since delivering my second child, I had been experiencing a whole lot of hair loss. Aside from our dog Maya, we also had a cat who sheds a whole lot. So we had all this hair from everyone everywhere. As a stay-at-home mom, I spent all day at home and needed to find a solution to this problem.”
It was also appealing to have a job that I could do remotely so that I wouldn’t need to be pulled away from my family. You might think that having three kids and pets is enough, but I’m just one of those people that can’t really sit still and do nothing, so I decided to go for it and give entrepreneurship a try.
