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Transcription of Maine Suds #274

Speaker 1: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle, and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Fred Forsley: I’m sad about the Village going, because that was one of my favorite spots, but I’m excited about the changes. I mean, we need more housing in Portland.
Cyndi Prince: I think people were trying to encourage me to market in that negative form where these things are bad, so do this. It never made sense to me, and it wasn’t going to work with the way that I wanted to run or grow a business.
Lisa Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 274, Maine Suds, airing for the first time on Sunday, December 18, 2016. Maine is home to myriad successful businesses. Today we speak with two entrepreneurs who are creating high quality products and contributing to community wellbeing. Fred Forsley is the founder and president of Shipyard Brewing Company, an organization that supports many local road races. Cyndi Prince is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells reusable energy-saving wool dryer balls. Thank you for joining us.
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Lisa Belisle: Earlier this year, it was my pleasure to run in a couple of nice road races, which happened to be sponsored by Shipyard Brewing Company, and today I have with me Fred Forsley, who is the founder and president of Shipyard Brewing Company, the largest brewery in Maine and a national leader in the craft brew industry. He also owns a number of other food and beverage, hospitality, and real estate companies. You’re just a man about town. I guess we’re lucky to have you here today. You’re so busy.
Fred Forsley: Well, everybody’s busy, right? But it’s fun to be here.
Lisa Belisle: Well, everybody is busy, but I’m not sure everybody has done all of the things that you have done. I mean, the businesses that you own include Capt’n Eli’s Soda, Federal Jack’s Restaurant and Brew Pub, the Regatta event center, Shipyard Brew Pub, The Inn On Peaks Island. I mean, holy smoke!
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m surprised that you have enough time off the phone to actually have a conversation with me here.
Fred Forsley: That ADD paid off.
Lisa Belisle: I guess so.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You were born at Mercy Hospital and went to Cheverus eventually, long after you were born.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, yeah. Dr. Ciampi was the doctor that delivered me, the Ciampi family was a big local family.
Lisa Belisle: Oh, yes.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, so it was Portland Maine, July 9th, 1960.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah.
Fred Forsley: It was a great time to be in Maine, I think, and grow up.
Lisa Belisle: Well, you’re looking pretty good for somebody born in 1960.
Fred Forsley: It’s those road races.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me why it is that, as someone who has these interests in real estate and food and brewing, why road races?
Fred Forsley: Well actually, it was funny. Joanie Benoit Samuelson called 20 years ago and said, “Would you be willing to be involved in a road race?” First she said, “Do you know who I am?” And I said, “Yeah, I know who you are.” At the time, we were just getting started with Shipyard, and she said, “I’ve got this idea, we’re going to do a race. I’ve got Nike excited about it, and we’re looking and wondering if you’d be involved as a beer sponsor and donate beer to the volunteers, because a big part of the race is going to be these volunteers, and we think beer will be an exciting thing. We’re going to have some parties and that.”
Honestly, she got us … I wasn’t a runner in high school and never ran track, never was exciting about running, tried to avoid running just because I was into football and other things, but long story short, she got us excited about it, and then it just kind of grew from there. We’ve been involved coming on the 20th year with the Beach to Beacon. That led the way, and then it just starts from there. It took me about 10 years to actually finally then run the Beach to Beacon, but in the meantime we got excited about a number of other races. It’s a great way, because you’ve got active people excited and everybody wants to have a beer at the end of the race.
My daughter married a guy from upstate New York, and there was a race up there called the Boilermaker, which they finished at the F.X. Matt Brewery, and they gave out beer at the end of the race. Mistakenly I joked with her if she was running, I’d run it, and she was, and I didn’t know it. That’s in July as well, so I ran that one. It’s a 15k, which was the longest race I’d ever run at the time, and we got done and had that beer, and it was like, “Okay, we’re going to do this.” Bruce Forsley, my cousin and I, it just turned out that the Trails to Ale had been down to three or 400 runners and helped the Portland trails. Long story short, we got involved in that and together we’ve all built it up to close to 2,000 this year, so it was fun to be involved in that. They renamed it with the tagline “Trails to Ale,” so it’s been fun, and I think people enjoy it.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, and it’s a great race. There was so much … The volunteers all were very positive, and it was very well-organized. It just had a really nice vibe about it.
Fred Forsley: Right.
Lisa Belisle: I think that that …
Fred Forsley: The trail was in great shape this year, too.
Lisa Belisle: That’s true.
Fred Forsley: Two years ago we ran, and it was a lot of mud puddles, and people were upset because it rained last year. This year, it didn’t. It rained, but there was not a drop of… I think I saw one puddle in the whole thing, which really is a tribute to the city of Portland and the people that take care of the trails.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, it’s interesting because I grew up in Yarmouth, and I lived in Portland briefly, and I did a lot of running around Back Bay, which I’m sure that you have done some running around Back Bay as well. It’s been interesting to see how all of this has evolved, and how it’s really become… It was already kind of a running city from that many years ago, but it’s really becoming an actual running city.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I don’t know that I would have projected that, I guess.
Fred Forsley: Right. No, Portland, I think it adds to everything else that’s going on, the food scene and the bands, the music scene. It’s becoming, it’s a great city for people to come and experience now, so somebody comes … We have a lot of visitors, and they’ll come and go, “Where can I run?” When they run the Back Bay and they do the trails, literally from the brewery back around, they’re just blown away by the experience and how open it is. It’s also becoming a great biking city, but the reality is it’s set up from that, and the Portland trails are a big part of that. That’s why having that as an opportunity is a good thing.
Lisa Belisle: When you go out and run, tell me how that feels for you as an individual. You told me that you were really more of a football player, and you have become a runner.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. It’s a real de-stressing for me. If I don’t run for three or four days, I get short tempered, and it’s not a good thing. For me, it just releases all that kind of things that build up, tension that builds up by just business in general and life in general. By running, I think it just … I run for about a half an hour or 45 minutes, and it just is a way for my brain to just go in another place, so it’s kind of fun along those lines because you don’t have that… You get to that part where your brain just starts daydreaming, and you’re sweating. It’s obviously healthy, but at the same time for me, it’s your mind as well because it’s… In Kennebunk, I live down there, and so you can run to the beach or you can run along in front of the Colony Hotel, and you see such beautiful sights, and at the same time, you’re not feeling like you’re exercising. It’s not painful like sometimes exercise can be.
Lisa Belisle: Are you more of an outdoor runner or an indoor runner?
Fred Forsley: Outdoor. I really don’t like treadmills. If that’s all you have and that’s all you can do, and you’re in a situation where you’ve got to run on treadmill, I’ll do it, but it’s not my favorite. No. Not really.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I’m actually glad to hear that, because I’m absolutely not a treadmill runner, and I think you couldn’t get me on a treadmill unless we were in the middle of an enormous concrete jungle that had no streets.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Because I feel exactly the same way you do. Actually, even in an urban setting, I would prefer to run outside because I think it does something different with your brain and the de-stressing thing that you were talking about.
Fred Forsley: Yep, definitely.
Lisa Belisle: What I love about the races that take place here in Portland is that there’s so many different types of scenery that we see, that you have waterfront, you have bay front, you have inner city, and you can go up to the West End and they have the big mansions, and the Eastern Prom.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. If you run in the morning in Portland before the cars get here, before people get here, because it’s really a quiet city from five to 7:30 even, you can run up Congress Street and have an experience that’s just really unique. That’s one of the coolest streets. If you run the whole of Congress Street, there’s such history there, and it’s cool how a lot of it’s being brought back to life and all of that. I find that to be really awesome in the morning. I like to run in the morning too, but I don’t like running at night, just for whatever reason.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I’m with you. I’m a morning running person as well.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Do you run with someone? Do you have a buddy that you run with?
Fred Forsley: I don’t.
Lisa Belisle: Or is it just you?
Fred Forsley: No, I just run by myself so I can talk to myself, scream at myself, that type of thing.
Lisa Belisle: Do you train for the races that you sponsor?
Fred Forsley: I just try to stay in shape. I don’t train, really. I train by running, but it’s not like… I’ve got nobody instructing me. When I went to high school there were a lot of runners there. A friend of mine, Johnny Marr is a big runner, and he probably has the science of training down, but he’s not sharing any secrets with me, if he hears this.
Lisa Belisle: I think it’s fascinating. I just ran the Maine Marathon on Sunday, and I think it’s interesting to watch all the different sorts of people who run.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You have the people who are really, they’ve got all the science behind them. Everything is very specific as to how they train. You’ve got people, they’re just like, “Well, I’ve run a few miles. I’ll just go out and just do it.”
Fred Forsley: Yeah. Well, the Marr family, actually they raised I think close to 160,000 dollars for Alzheimer’s. John Marr Sr. has set up with Josephine, a foundation, I think, involving research for Alzheimer’s, and so they actually took this race, the marathon, and they had people from all over the country come as part of their family, because they have a number of kids and grandkids. It was nice to see, and then my daughter, Jill, ran it with three of her friends this week. We didn’t sponsor anything to do with the marathon, but next year I think we’ll get involved in that some, more than we did. We helped sponsor the Marrs’ family event through my daughter, Jill, running with their group, but that was an amazing event that just happened, the marathon.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah.
Fred Forsley: The Maine Marathon, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: They’ve been doing it 25 years.
Fred Forsley: Right. Now there seems to be … It’s touching more on our lives, people we know and stuff, so we may get involved in that.
Lisa Belisle: That is the other aspect of running these races that I find interesting, that pretty much every race that I’ve been in lately has had some sort of charitable beneficiary.
Fred Forsley: Yep.
Lisa Belisle: Beach to Beacon has always done this.
Fred Forsley: They’ve done a great job with that.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, and the marathon, I think Dream Factory was their beneficiary this year. It’s interesting to run behind people who are running for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. A new race we’re getting involved in is the Thanksgiving day race. We’re going to feature Pumpkinhead as part of our theme of group, and helping them expand more excitement around that. It’s in the morning, 9:00, for Thanksgiving, so that’s going to be another one coming up.
Lisa Belisle: Is that the one that’s usually a USM race?
Fred Forsley: Yep.
Lisa Belisle: Okay.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, so we’re excited about that.
Lisa Belisle: Well, how about this? What if you’re not a beer drinker?
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: What if you’re not a beer drinker and you just …
Fred Forsley: Capt’n Eli’s Soda, or we usually get Dasani water sponsored by Coke or somebody involved like that, so there’s something for everybody. Portland Pie has been a great partner, especially the Trails to Ale, giving out free pizza at the end. Who doesn’t love pizza, right? They even have gluten free pizza, but they’ve been a great partner with the Trails to Ale race. Every year, they’ve done fundraisers promoting the race at their locations and been involved in that. Yeah, if you don’t like beer, we have Ice Pik vodka. We haven’t brought that to the race yet, though. That’s gluten free, I tell you. So, if you don’t like to drink at all alcohol, then Capt’n Eli’s. If you don’t like soda, we have Dasani water. If you don’t drink at all anything, well, pizza. There you go.
Lisa Belisle: There you go. There’s something for everyone there.
Fred Forsley: Yep.
Lisa Belisle: What is it about the race day itself, the spirit of the race, that captures your energy?
Fred Forsley: I actually thought about that this morning, running. You get to run in the middle of the street, right? How often do you get to run in the middle of the street? The Beach to Beacon, when you’re running, you turn that corner and you run by the IGA there, and you see that big flag that the firemen have out at the cape, and you run under that, and you’re in the middle of the street. You flash back to that in the middle of winter when you’re driving out there. It’s just a powerful, powerful thing. Then people playing music when you’re going by, and people cheering. I think it just adds to that whole euphoric feeling. Except in the Beach to Beacon, and if you’re a little hotter, the Shipyard Half Marathon, when you’re really getting hot and you’re seeing people drop, that’s a little discouraging, even when they’re playing music that are going by.
But next year we hope to get more people involved as participants on the sides playing music on the half marathon, because I think music a lot of time can really get you fired up. You’re running in the middle of the street in an area you’d never be able to run. You run down Commercial Street in the takeoff of the half marathon. The Shipyard Half Marathon this year was July 9th, but the thing is, is when you have that many people, 5,000 people, 10,000 people with the Beach to Beacon, you’re seeing hundreds of people that you really … You might run into one or two people you know, but you just realize how big the running world is. It’s fun. At Beach to Beacon, they have world class runners, and then you’ve got people who are running first time.
Lisa Belisle: I also ran the Shipyard Half Marathon, and I also thought that it was fun to run down Commercial Street, and I loved that there was music under the bridge.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Going across to South Portland, it was kind of a weird song that was playing when I went by, but it does. It kind of gets you….
Fred Forsley: We want to have more of that. We want to try to get sponsors or somebody to do five or six of those, because when you have people involved, like the Boilermaker in upstate New York, different towns have themes within their neighborhoods that they’ve done for years, and they get really charged up to be there. It becomes a little party on the sidelines. There were some groups up near Maine Med, too, when we were running by there on that, but it was cool to run through there. Yeah, that’s fun. Go by Ruski’s and you get the guys come out.
Lisa Belisle: Yes, that was also fun.
Fred Forsley: Could stop for a Shipyard there, but that might slow you down a little bit.
Lisa Belisle: It’s also fun to be with people who specifically come to Maine for these events.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I think that’s amazing that people would be running … Even some of the people who do the 50, 50 halfs every state.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. I have a friend from Amsterdam. He signed up two times for the Hansi, he keeps saying he’s going to come. He hasn’t come yet, but eventually he’ll come and run the Shipyard Half marathon, so we’ll see.
Lisa Belisle: What is it about these longer distances that you think is drawing people in? Because I think the Boston Marathon, you actually have to apply, there are cut times, and they filled within two weeks.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: It’s crazy that people want to go out and subject themselves to marathons, half marathons.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, and you hear about these trail runners going 50 miles. We’ve sponsored some teams that have run in the Ragnar races that go through the night, and they’re in a bus with 12 people, but the reality is, I think it’s just that camaraderie. After high school or college, if you played sports or if you’re involved in activities, and then there’s nothing after that as far as groups, I think that’s why. It’s kind of a club you can belong to. “Hey, I’m a runner.” In Florida, in Clearwater, we have the Sea Dog Brew Pub, and the running club has kind of adopted our tasting room. They’ll do a run and finish there. At Federal Jack’s, there’s been a group of runners. Most of them are over 65, and they… I think it’s either a Tuesday or a Wednesday, but once a week they’ll end there and have beers after their run.
I think even though it’s an individual sport, it’s kind of like, “Hey are you doing it? Are you doing it?” Then people will team up, so it is kind of cool. We have a group of people at the brewery that anybody who wants to run any of the races we sponsor, we’ll give them free entry. At times it’s peaked at 10, 12 people, and then it fluctuates, so we try to suck in people. The half marathon was brutal on a few of them last year. The hot one, that was the tough one. We lost one driver. I think he quit after that.
Lisa Belisle: Oh.
Fred Forsley: I’m just kidding. He’s not… Anyways, it is fun though, because you get to get… We’ll go to the Porthole after for lunch, after the half marathon, and then after the party finishes up. It’s like anything you do. Why do people climb mountains, I guess? Which I’m not going to get into that.
Lisa Belisle: That’s a different show. We’ll talk about that later.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, we’ve heard the same thing, and I think because Maine Magazine has also been sponsoring some of these races, so we’ll get bibs that come in as part of the team. Some people, they want to do the 5k color run, and some people will sign up for the half marathon.
Fred Forsley: Right.
Lisa Belisle: It actually becomes aspirational for people.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Someone who maybe last year did a 5k works their way up to a 10k.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Then one of our sales guys Jeff D’Amico, he actually came and watched me do the marathon this weekend.
Fred Forsley: You inspired him.
Lisa Belisle: It’s great.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. Hopefully he’ll do more.
Lisa Belisle: It’s really great, because it all comes around.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You support people in wherever they’re coming from, and then they come back and they support you as well.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. The Reali family that owned the Village Café, they had a tradition of, at Thanksgiving day race, they would have all their friends over to the Village after that race. When that ended, they moved it over to the brewery, so their friends and family will come after that race, and you’ll see all the next generation of runners now coming over, so it’s kind of cool.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I also like that. You mentioned running with your daughter in the Boilermaker.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I ran with my son in the marathon, and he’s 23. It’s actually really nice to be able to go out and be with your kids for some prolonged period of time where you’re not really on your phone, and you’re just moving forward, just having a conversation. It’s a really different and kind of special atmosphere.
Fred Forsley: Definitely, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m interested, you talk about the Village Café, and because I’m from Maine also, I ate there many, many times. How do you feel about all the changes that have happened in your home city?
Fred Forsley: I’m sad about the Village going, because that was one of my favorite spots, but I’m excited about the changes. I mean, we need more housing in Portland, whether it’s high-end condos, or affordable housing, or workforce housing. I’m somebody who loves the fact that we have these new hotels, and I think we’re going to see a lot… People want to visit Portland in the middle of July and August. You can’t get a place to stay. It’s literally, you have people staying out of the city saying, “How can I get to the Peninsula?” Because that’s where people want to be when they’re from away, and they want to experience the city.
Portland was always a working harbor. It was never a place where the beautiful sailboats were 30 years ago, 40 years ago, because in the old days if you grew up here, you remember the sardine factory on the other side that basically smelled. It was a lot of odors on Commercial Street in the ’50s and ’60s, and even into the ’70s, and traffic was going 18 different ways on Commercial Street. I would go pick up food at Carr Brothers for our parents’ veterans’ home. You’d have to be good at wheeling in there and missing all the truck traffic. Today, I think Portland is becoming a livable tourist town, and a business town. You get people that’ll come….
I had a friend come and stay in Portland, and he’d never been into Portland to visit. He’d been to Bar Harbor, been to Kennebunkport, been to Camden, but he grew up in a hotel family, and long story short, he’s like, “I can’t believe I can’t get a hotel room for less than 400 dollars on this weekend.” It was the middle of July. I said, “Come up, build another hotel, because we need more.” I honestly believe that we’re going to see another six, 700 hotel rooms and another couple thousand apartments, and I think it’ll be a vibrant city for everybody. With USM’s extended living program, I think the USM… Glenn Cummings I think is a breath of fresh air, too.
USM, I think, is a great resource for people buying condos here, but I also think you need more housing stock so that affordable apartments are available. It’s funny, people get upset with condos, but the reality is without those, you’re not going to have some of the other places available for affordable housing for everybody. I just think there’s so much potential in Portland to be a great small city. Our airport with the infrastructure build-out that they have there, it’s getting easier and easier to get in and out of Portland. I think if we’re going to have jobs for our young people, we need to maximize what’s going on, and that’s the second home and tourism industry, as well as the education part of the city of Portland, and then the medical part. Without more housing, you’re not going to get it.
Lisa Belisle: How do you balance all of the things that you do? In 2009 the Maine State Chamber of Commerce honored you with a President’s Recognition Award. In 2015 you received Sugarloaf’s Summiteer Award for your continuous commitment to giving back to the cancer community in Maine. Then I’m only reading bits and pieces of the things that you’ve done in Maine and for Maine, but you seem like you really do have a lot of different loves that you’re nurturing.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, we have great people around me, I guess. As a company, we have great people, a great family. You know behind every great man is a great woman kicking him square in the ass? Well, no. Just a joke, just a joke. My wife, Judy, has been a great partner, and she’s a CPA and very focused on detail, which I’m not a detail person. Alan Pugsley, Bruce Forsley, Paul Hendry. We have 50 brewers, so for the beer side, that, and that Jim Bunting on the restaurant side, Fred Hayman. There’s a list that goes on and on. We employ close to 900 people in the state of Maine. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of great people that work for us, and I feel like that’s the big thing that helps drive a lot of this.
If it wasn’t for the young energy in our company, we wouldn’t be trying to do a lot of things. We just hired a young kid, Woody, and Matt Bowden, both in the company. Matt’s been with us five years out of Orono. He was living in Orlando, moved home. He’s training a young man, Woody, who’s just moving to Orlando to sell, but he knows Maine culture. He knows our beers from being here and he’s going to spread the love of Maine in Orlando. We have a number of Mainers working for us in other parts of the country because they understand our culture, our work ethic, and that’s what’s helped spread the love.
Lisa Belisle: Well, what do you see for 2017? What’s coming up in the future?
Fred Forsley: We’re doing a lot in…. People think when you’re in Florida you’re not really helping Maine, but we’re going to be releasing a beer in Florida that’s brewed in Maine, Island Time, and that’s happening in November and December, but we’re doing a brew pub in Treasure Island, which is just outside of St. Pete. That’ll have a Maine connection. That’s happening next year, and then I’m actually involved in a market concept in Traverse City, Michigan, which will have a lot of Maine flair. We’re leveraging our brand, so we’re trying to grow the Maine brand throughout the country. We’ve all of a sudden hit it in the UK with the Maine brand, and we’ve done a collaboration with Marston’s, and we’re selling throughout the United Kingdom in a variety of locations, so that’s exciting for us.
We’re continuing to invest in the brewery in Portland. We’re trying to… A lot of the investments you can’t see, but recently we just reopened the tasting room and spent over 200,000 dollars upgrading everything, and that experience is really cool. Irena, and the team in the store, does a great job. These cruise ships, when people come in off that…. This weekend you couldn’t get in the door because it was just amazing how many people were visiting. The tasting room is something we’re going to keep encouraging, and then just growing the brand in Maine, where next Tuesday we’re having a celebration. October 11th up in Camden, we just opened up a new Sea Dog there. We’ve renovated, so that’s exciting.
We’re looking to continue to keep growing with our key partners. We love the fact that we have a relationship with Sugarloaf, the brew pub up there. We sell and promote through all of that, and Sunday River, at Sea Dogs, we have a great relationship there, so keep expanding upon that. The Ice Pik vodka is distilled in New Hampshire. We’re using New England distilled water, but a great partner that we’re dealing with, so we’re going to expand in New England selling that. We’re going to keep growing with the relationships in the spirits industry. We’re looking at putting… We have a key relationship with Stroudwater Distillery, in which we may distill and produce products with them and help promote their location down there. They’ve done a great job. Jeff down there has done a great job.
We also have a relationship where we’re distilling Pumpkinhead into whiskey with Stuart Littlefield up in Oxford, Maine, which is exciting because Stuart used to have his location on India Street here with Foodworks, he created it. He moved up to Oxford and he has a distillery, and he does a lot of food products, but he’s taking some Pumpkinhead and creating a whiskey out of it, so we’re going to age that. We keep going with those types of things, and we’ll keep running to try to stay in shape.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I look forward to running in the events that you sponsor again.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Fred Forsley who is the founder and president of Shipyard Brewing Company, and obviously is well connected within Maine for many things, including but not limited to the road races that I have run this year, so thank you. I guess I’ll see you out there on the trails. Thanks for coming in.
Fred Forsley: Maybe Thanksgiving morning.
Lisa Belisle: That’s right.
Fred Forsley: Yes, thank you.
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Lisa Belisle: Today in the studio, I have with me Cyndi Prince, who is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells LooHoo wool dryer balls, a reusable energy-saving alternative to dryer sheets. Thanks for coming in today.
Cyndi Prince: Thanks for having me.
Lisa Belisle: What’s interesting, I think, about your story is that you’re doing something that’s very practical for all of us, really, but you’re doing this with a larger idea in mind. Before we talk about that, what is a LooHoo dryer ball?
Cyndi Prince: Well, a LooHoo wool dryer ball is a reusable energy-saving alternative to a dryer sheet. It’s basically just a ball of wool, and you toss several of them into your dryer. What it does is it helps circulate and separate your laundry more efficiently, and so you’re going to get better air flow around the wet lumps of clothes in your dryer, and so you’ll end up reducing your dry time that way. Then also with the action of the balls against your wet laundry, you’re going to see softening as well. It eliminates the need for dryer sheets which add that chemical materials onto your clothes to soften them, and so we’re able to just to have that natural alternative for your dryer.
Lisa Belisle: I think I first read about this type of approach to laundry maybe in a Chinaberry catalog, maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that, and I never decided, “Oh, I should order this.” But I was at, I believe, our local natural food store, and I saw your product on the counter, and I said, “Okay, now’s the time. Now’s the time to experiment with these.” It seemed like such a simple concept, but it really does work.
Cyndi Prince: It does, it does. It is so simple, and I think that’s one of the things that I loved about it at first. Just to be able to take something so basic, but to add it to your laundry in order to just be able to create these same effects that you’re creating with using dryer sheets, but then also the added benefit of being able to reduce your airflow as well, to reduce your dry time, too, is such a bonus.
Lisa Belisle: I always notice when I’m out running, and I’ll run by people’s houses, and I’ll smell dryer sheets, freshening sheets.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: I really think a lot about, if this is so strong that it can be out in the air on the streets so that people walking by can smell it, how good can it really be for our bodies?
Cyndi Prince: It’s really bad. One of the things that I learned was that dryer sheets were considered to be one of the most toxic household cleaning products in your home, and it’s because they do contain a long list of toxic and dangerous chemicals that are linked to respiratory problems, skin irritations, and then just other health problems. Then also because these dryer sheets, the chemicals in them are designed to stay within your clothes and release slowly over a period of time, so you’re always going to be inhaling them, and then they’re always against your skin as well. All these things are just linked to so many different harmful things for your bodies, and of course for the environment and well, and so it is just time to really make that change.
Lisa Belisle: I would assume that if these are releasing some sort of chemicals, then the next time you put your clothes in the washing machine, then these chemicals could get leached into the water that then goes back out into the world.
Cyndi Prince: Absolutely, absolutely. I think it just sticks around in so many different ways, and lingers, and does become a significant problem.
Lisa Belisle: You became interested in this because you had, at the time, an infant son.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Belisle: Your son is now seven and your company is now six.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me how you got to that place.
Cyndi Prince: Well, when I became pregnant, I think as many of new to-be mothers experience, we want to make sure our home is the most safe environment to welcome in this newborn child. Looking around the household and the different chemicals and things that we had in there, the laundry room was one place that I really examined, and it was because we wanted to cloth diaper our son. Reading a lot of information about that, you learn that you can’t use dryer sheets or fabric softeners because they leave that coating on the diapers, leaving them inabsorbent, which is the exact opposite of what you would hope from a cloth diaper. That was one of those eye opening revelations, and also just learning about the toxic chemicals that are within them that would eventually be close to his skin as well, was that turning point to seek out a natural alternative.
Lisa Belisle: You are fortunate in that you have a science background, so when you started looking into this, you actually had a mental framework to work with.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about that.
Cyndi Prince: The scientist in me loved the trial and error phase, even though it took months of trying to figure out how we were going to make our wool dryer ball so it was going to be super durable and high quality, and using domestic products. It was months of tweaking little things, being analytical, trying different phases, and that was that scientist in me that just had a smile on her face the whole time, just trying to come up with the technical parts of creating something like that.
Lisa Belisle: Your training is in geology.
Cyndi Prince: It is.
Lisa Belisle: One wouldn’t necessarily make the leap from studying rocks and earth formations to creating a wool dryer ball product for the laundry. Can you walk me through how you went from geology to this?
Cyndi Prince: I started in geology, and after graduating university, I worked in that field for a while. I think what a lot of people experience is burnout in that field. I traveled, I worked on a ship for four years and traveled the world, but it takes its toll and I wanted more of a grounding kind of experience, and I started to just phase out of that. It was an exciting life, but challenging. What the next phase for me was looking into photography and doing something more creative. That’s when I ended up in Maine, going to the workshops here in Rockport. After that, settling into a fine art background, working in an art gallery, just settling into the community here, I realized that I wanted to create something of my own, start a business of my own. I just felt like the combination of my science background and creative background, even though I studied rocks, it’s still that analytical mind, I think, just melded into this perfect foundation for an entrepreneur.
Lisa Belisle: Why did you study rocks in the first place?
Cyndi Prince: I still find it fascinating. I think it’s one of those sciences that gets overlooked sometimes, but to be out in the middle of the ocean and drilling down into the sea floor hundreds of meters down, and bringing up these things that people have never seen before, but that tell a story of what happened decades ago, it’s phenomenal. It was just a mystery, unraveling mysteries all the time, which was really neat.
Lisa Belisle: Was there a moment when you were a child that you said, “I’m going to go study rocks”?
Cyndi Prince: I’m sure my mother could tell you that I had a rock collection and was fascinated just by these objects, but other than that though, I think it was more of a curiosity. When you’re going through and looking at the course catalogs for universities and trying to decide, there was a spark when I kept reading about geology and the different courses, and studying about all the different aspects of it. It was really fascinating.
Lisa Belisle: I often wonder about the interests that we have as children and how…. Because some of these fields that we go into, maybe it’s geology or maybe it’s another type of science, they have very specific occupational paths that we don’t really realize even if you love rocks and you love studying rocks, you may not be able to find a job that’s going to continue that interest.
Cyndi Prince: Right.
Lisa Belisle: You may have a very different sort of job.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: I guess that’s more of a statement really than a question. It seems like things that we start getting interested in when we’re younger, we’re not always able to continue that passion.
Cyndi Prince: I agree. I think for me, one of the things that never inhibited me was where it was going to be. I think a lot of my friends, people who graduated the course, wanted to stay in that area and so they tried to find something in that area. Maybe it didn’t work out kind of thing, but for me, when I looked for a job it was, “Where in the world could it be?” I think if you have that more of an open perspective, you can find those things that you’re really, really wanting to do.
Lisa Belisle: As we’re talking, I’m interested as to whether the fact that you traveled, and the fact that you were on a ship, and you were out there actually looking at what was happening to the environment, if that contributed to your desire to do something that would actually make a practical impact, a positive impact on the environment.
Cyndi Prince: I definitely think so. I think that that’s always been an underlying course within my life, is just knowing and seeing what the effects on different things that we put in the environment are, on different cultures, different places. It’s really incredible, and knowing that we have this great big responsibility to take care of it and to improve it, and to try to tread as lightly as we can as well, I definitely think that that’s a driving force in the business, and in the vision of what I’m trying to accomplish, what the business is trying to do.
Lisa Belisle: Did you have a strong sense of environmental responsibility when you were younger?
Cyndi Prince: I grew up on a farm, and I think that I just had a greater respect for a lot of things, where our food came from, growing and cooking and canning our own…. Just everything was done right there, in a sense. I think that that’s a good background to it, even though I wouldn’t say that we recycled and composted 40 years ago, but still, I think that seeing that cycle of life on a farm and the contained environment in a sense, in a small rural community, I think it helps with having a strong sense of that bigger picture and being able to be sustainable.
Lisa Belisle: Well, if you think about it, the fact that you chose something that is so practical, it really goes along with that idea that you’re trying to be self-sufficient. You’re trying to do something for yourself, and we all have to do laundry.
Cyndi Prince: Right.
Lisa Belisle: I mean, I assume. I have to do my own laundry. I’m assuming that most people who are listening have to do their own laundry. You are looking at something that’s very… Well, you used the word before. It’s very foundational.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: It’s something that you can do and feel good about, and you’re doing it for yourself.
Cyndi Prince: Right, right. I think that that’s one of those things. I know a lot of people will probably question why they’re making or doing a certain thing in their business, but for me it’s always… It makes so much sense where it is just that practical but also sustainable portion of what people can incorporate in their everyday, and so I think even though it’s such a simple product in a sense, it just has, to me, a bigger presence, a bigger meaning behind it.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been surprised in talking to people about your product, and about you, and the fact that you were coming in to record the radio show, at how many people actually are aware of your product, are using it in their homes. It’s not just people who have a specific environmental mindset. It’s really, there’s a broad variety of people who have started to use the wool balls that you’re putting out there.
Cyndi Prince: Yes. It really is amazing, because people will gravitate towards them for various reasons. Like you said, it could be an environmental drive that, “Yes, I want to make that change in my laundry.” But then a lot of times people will come up to me and just say, “We’ve had such bad skin irritants, eczema, different problems. We can’t use the long list of products with any kind of fragrances or anything like that, but when we found your product, it was something that could help us in our laundry, but knowing full well that we could still not be worried about the effects of all these other things that are in their dryer sheets.” Then with kids and families, it goes together so well with cloth diapers, so I know a lot of … That’s where I connected initially when I got into the market. It was the cloth diapering moms, and the families, and the stores in that respect, and that’s how I got started as well. It’s interesting how and when people gravitate towards them, and learn about them, and understand them, and start to use them.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been awarded, actually, several different things. You are the recipient of an MTI seed grant award, a Spanx by Sara Blakely Leg Up promotion award, and you’ve recently been selected as the Small Business Association’s 2014 Home-Based Business Champion for Maine and New England. From what I understand, just recently your presence in Eileen Fisher stores has expanded dramatically.
Cyndi Prince: It has.
Lisa Belisle: You also got some sort of an entrepreneurial award several years ago from Eileen Fisher. What do you think it is about this very, well, innovative but simple product that is capturing people’s interest?
Cyndi Prince: I think that’s just what it is. I think it’s so simple that, like we said, everybody does laundry or has their laundry done for them, that they can relate to that in so many different ways, and I think that this small thing making this bigger impact, people are realizing it, and acknowledging it, and accepting it as well. When we started out a number of years ago, the learning curve was a little bit tougher, and so this product, I would put it in people’s hands, explain it to them, and they’re looking at me and looking at the product, and they’re like, “I don’t get it. Could you tell me one more time?” Now that I think it’s just more of a global acceptance about these natural alternatives that exist out there, I think that just something like this is just being recognized as that little thing that makes that big impact.
Lisa Belisle: Well, before I got the LooHoo balls, which I’ve now been using successfuly for months now, I was using Seventh Generation unscented dryer products. I use pretty much Seventh Generation across the board, but they’re still dryer sheets. They still have stuff on them. I appreciate that Seventh Generation and other companies are trying to minimize the chemicals that are out there, and some of them have very successfully done this, but it still seems like if you can make that next step, then it’s probably a good idea.
Cyndi Prince: Yes, absolutely, especially for something that’s reusable as well. There are many brands like Seventh Generation that do have better chemicals in them. They might be more easily biodegradable. Some of the other ones are still living in our landfills hundreds of years after we’re gone, so to have this product where you can reuse it, you can reuse it for hundreds and hundreds of loads. That aspect of it too I think is just another benefit, where it’s not this take one out, throw it away kind of product. I think that people are really thinking about that as well.
Lisa Belisle: Because you’re talking about reusing, I think about when I was younger, reading something. I don’t know, it was Ladies’ Home Journal or something. It was “Ten Uses For Your Used Dryer Sheet,” and one was, “Rub it over your cat so that you can pull the leftover fur and he won’t shed all over the floor.” Now as we’re talking, I’m horrified that that was even a possibility.
Cyndi Prince: Poor kitty.
Lisa Belisle: Exactly, but you’re right. We don’t like the fact that this is a one time use thing, these dryer sheets, and yours is something that you can use over and over again.
Cyndi Prince: You can hang onto them for a long time, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m horrified. I don’t even know, how do we even get to the place where we thought that doing some of these things with these chemical covered…
Cyndi Prince: Was okay?
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, how is that, that that happened?
Cyndi Prince: I don’t know.
Lisa Belisle: But that’s a tangent, so I’m interested in… You have this science background. You obviously did the experimentation. You have a fine arts background. You were up in Rockport originally because of your photography.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: Then there’s this very strong business sense that you have, and I’m guessing that over the last six years you’ve done a lot of on the ground stuff. You’ve probably been everything. You’ve been the one who’s demonstrating the product, you’ve been doing the outreach, you’ve been doing the sales, you’ve been doing the books. How have you developed as a businessperson and just as a human being in the last six years?
Cyndi Prince: It’s been an incredible journey. I think that this is… As much as I have traveled and experienced so many different things in my geology career, I think that this job has allowed me to grow in so many different ways. Just being able to balance all those hats that you do have to wear is an incredible task, and I’m very self-disciplined, and I can put my head down and do those things that need to be done. Even though Friday afternoon I don’t want to work on my books, I will because I know that it’ll benefit the whole big picture, but it really has helped me grow. I never knew I liked sales before, but I absolutely love it. It’s just one of those things where I have no problem with rejection, so you know that you are going to get a lot of no’s before you get the yeses, but you have to keep working at it. In order for this to succeed, I know that I have to just do all those different things, and so that’s why I keep at it.
It’s interesting, some other people came up to me and asked, “What were your days like? Is this something that I could do?” Explaining how isolating it can be, where I’m basically working by myself a lot of times even though I’m connecting with people all the time on e-mail or on the phone, but it’s a self-driving discipline, and it’s one that it takes practice to learn. Time management is another thing that I really feel strongly about that I feel like I’ve learned to love as well, because I know that if I just spend all day on marketing, then other things are not going to get done, and so if I divide things up and look at my week as a whole, look at the year in the bigger sense, in the bigger picture, that I’m able to put my head down and do it.
Lisa Belisle: What does your husband do for work?
Cyndi Prince: He is a carpenter, and right now he switched over to being a UPS driver, and he also helps me with the business quite a bit too.
Lisa Belisle: How do you balance this very up-and-coming, and I’m guessing increasingly time-consuming, fun but time-consuming business with co-raising your seven year old son and the things that he does, and just being a couple and living in the world, and that sort of thing?
Cyndi Prince: It’s tough. It’s a tough balance, but it’s one that, again, I think it’s that discipline of time management, where on the weekends I don’t check my e-mail as much, or I don’t get back to people until Monday morning, long after I’ve done a number of other things. But definitely just dedicating and isolating time to be there as the bus pulls up and feed my son a healthy snack as he gets home from school, and connect with him instead of trying to answer a couple more e-mails and just get another order packed and ready to go. I know that we have this one precious little bean that is growing up so fast that we have to spend those hours with, and that time with, in order to just develop a strong family unit. I know that my business requires my time as well, but again, it’s a different hat. It’s funny, sometimes if I do have to go up and do something business related on the weekends or something like that, I have to tell them, explain to them what’s happening, because I need that isolated time. I think just as long as I keep having that separate, that that helps instill a balance, I guess, into family and work life.
Lisa Belisle: Having spoken to many people over the last six years of doing the radio show, because our businesses are about the same age, one of the things that I love is when people can take a cause and instill it with love, and move away from fear. Your product is a way that people can do something and feel good, and it’s not that they’re moving away…. I mean, there’s a realization that there’s bad stuff, and you’re moving away from something that’s kind of on the bad side, but really you’re moving towards something that’s good. How do you do this with your son as you’re trying to raise him to be a socially and environmentally aware child in the world?
Cyndi Prince: Huh. Well, I think that that is such an important thing, and just starting with the business, initially I think people were trying to encourage me to market in that negative form, where these things are bad, so do this. It never made sense to me, and it wasn’t going to work with the way that I wanted to run or grow a business. Thinking about raising a seven year old, I think it’s always about, I think, explaining the whole thing. He’s just a sponge right now, and the conversations, it’s amazing what we get into, but then expressing how important it is to be this positive source, this example, because even though he’s seven, he’s older in this classroom, and he is a leader. For him to be watched by these younger kids, I think that he sees us doing it and being more environmentally aware, and different things that we’re doing on an everyday scale, and realizing why and how it’s important to us, but I think we’re always communicating with him in every way, verbal and nonverbal, of all those things that are important to us. You see it, that he realizes that it’s an important thing, and I think it’ll be important to him as well.
Lisa Belisle: Why are they called LooHoo balls?
Cyndi Prince: Originally when the business started, they were called Wooly Rounds, and I had so many come up to me and say, “Hey, I’ve heard of those wooly balls.” That drove me crazy, because going from Wooly Rounds, which I thought was a nice rounded name, to wooly balls, so I knew that I needed to make a change. It was also going around to trademarking the name. When we looked at it, it was too descriptive. We weren’t going to be able to trademark it, and so it was, I think early on, about two years into the business, maybe about a year and a half, I started to look at different names.
At the time, and they still are, my sisters are kind of on my cheerleading squad of being the encouraging ones and being sounding boards to different ideas, and of course I went to them and asked. I said, “I want something fun. What do you think we should call the business? What do you think I should change the business name to?” Of course, they said Lou Who, which was a nickname growing up. I think anybody named Cindy in the last 50 years was called Cindy Lou Who at one point in their life or another, and of course at Christmas time I get more e-mails and calls about, “Oh, I was just watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and there’s little Cindy Lou Who.”
When my sister suggested it, I said, “Absolutely not. I don’t want this nickname I never really liked associated with the business.” But then after going through and trying out all these other names that just didn’t work, LooHoo was just fun, and I like the connection that it does have with me, childhood me. Yeah, and it just worked. All the “o”s in the name as well, and so it evolved into LooHoo, and that’s what it is today. I felt like it was maybe a brand that we could incorporate more products within as well, as opposed to Wooly Rounds. What else could you put under the umbrella of Wooly Rounds? That’s how LooHoo was formed.
Lisa Belisle: We will put information about LooHoo on our show notes page. I encourage people to actually consider and probably buy a few sets of LooHoo wool dryer balls. I’ve really enjoyed mine, honestly. It’s a funny little pleasure that I get out of this every single time I do laundry.
Cyndi Prince: That’s great.
Lisa Belisle: I appreciate your coming and spending time with me, and talking about your process and the work that you’re doing in your little corner of the world up in Camden. I appreciate also the time that your husband, Scott, has put into the business, and that your son, Graham, has also put into the business indirectly. I’ve been speaking with Cyndi Prince, who is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells LooHoo wool dryer balls. Thanks for coming in.
Cyndi Prince: Thanks for having me.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio show number 274, Maine Suds. Our guests have included Fred Forsley and Cyndi Prince. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter, and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa, and see my running, travel, food, and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Maine Suds show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy, and our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Rebecca Falzano, and Lisa Belisle. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com.
Speaker 1: You are listening to Love Maine Radio, hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle, and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Fred Forsley: I’m sad about the Village going, because that was one of my favorite spots, but I’m excited about the changes. I mean, we need more housing in Portland.
Cyndi Prince: I think people were trying to encourage me to market in that negative form where these things are bad, so do this. It never made sense to me, and it wasn’t going to work with the way that I wanted to run or grow a business.
Lisa Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to Love Maine Radio show number 274, Maine Suds, airing for the first time on Sunday, December 18, 2016. Maine is home to myriad successful businesses. Today we speak with two entrepreneurs who are creating high quality products and contributing to community wellbeing. Fred Forsley is the founder and president of Shipyard Brewing Company, an organization that supports many local road races. Cyndi Prince is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells reusable energy-saving wool dryer balls. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is brought to you by Berlin City Honda, where the car buying experience is all about easy. After all, life is complicated enough, and buying a car shouldn’t be. That’s why the Berlin City Honda team goes the extra mile by pre-discounting all their vehicles and focus their efforts on being open, honest, and all about getting you on the road. In fact, Berlin City recently won the 2015 Women’s Choice Award, a strong testimony to their ability to deliver a different kind of car buying experience. Berlin City Honda of Portland, easy is how buying a car should be. Go to berlincityhondame.com for more information.
Lisa Belisle: Earlier this year, it was my pleasure to run in a couple of nice road races, which happened to be sponsored by Shipyard Brewing Company, and today I have with me Fred Forsley, who is the founder and president of Shipyard Brewing Company, the largest brewery in Maine and a national leader in the craft brew industry. He also owns a number of other food and beverage, hospitality, and real estate companies. You’re just a man about town. I guess we’re lucky to have you here today. You’re so busy.
Fred Forsley: Well, everybody’s busy, right? But it’s fun to be here.
Lisa Belisle: Well, everybody is busy, but I’m not sure everybody has done all of the things that you have done. I mean, the businesses that you own include Capt’n Eli’s Soda, Federal Jack’s Restaurant and Brew Pub, the Regatta event center, Shipyard Brew Pub, The Inn On Peaks Island. I mean, holy smoke!
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m surprised that you have enough time off the phone to actually have a conversation with me here.
Fred Forsley: That ADD paid off.
Lisa Belisle: I guess so.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You were born at Mercy Hospital and went to Cheverus eventually, long after you were born.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, yeah. Dr. Ciampi was the doctor that delivered me, the Ciampi family was a big local family.
Lisa Belisle: Oh, yes.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, so it was Portland Maine, July 9th, 1960.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah.
Fred Forsley: It was a great time to be in Maine, I think, and grow up.
Lisa Belisle: Well, you’re looking pretty good for somebody born in 1960.
Fred Forsley: It’s those road races.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me why it is that, as someone who has these interests in real estate and food and brewing, why road races?
Fred Forsley: Well actually, it was funny. Joanie Benoit Samuelson called 20 years ago and said, “Would you be willing to be involved in a road race?” First she said, “Do you know who I am?” And I said, “Yeah, I know who you are.” At the time, we were just getting started with Shipyard, and she said, “I’ve got this idea, we’re going to do a race. I’ve got Nike excited about it, and we’re looking and wondering if you’d be involved as a beer sponsor and donate beer to the volunteers, because a big part of the race is going to be these volunteers, and we think beer will be an exciting thing. We’re going to have some parties and that.”
Honestly, she got us … I wasn’t a runner in high school and never ran track, never was exciting about running, tried to avoid running just because I was into football and other things, but long story short, she got us excited about it, and then it just kind of grew from there. We’ve been involved coming on the 20th year with the Beach to Beacon. That led the way, and then it just starts from there. It took me about 10 years to actually finally then run the Beach to Beacon, but in the meantime we got excited about a number of other races. It’s a great way, because you’ve got active people excited and everybody wants to have a beer at the end of the race.
My daughter married a guy from upstate New York, and there was a race up there called the Boilermaker, which they finished at the F.X. Matt Brewery, and they gave out beer at the end of the race. Mistakenly I joked with her if she was running, I’d run it, and she was, and I didn’t know it. That’s in July as well, so I ran that one. It’s a 15k, which was the longest race I’d ever run at the time, and we got done and had that beer, and it was like, “Okay, we’re going to do this.” Bruce Forsley, my cousin and I, it just turned out that the Trails to Ale had been down to three or 400 runners and helped the Portland trails. Long story short, we got involved in that and together we’ve all built it up to close to 2,000 this year, so it was fun to be involved in that. They renamed it with the tagline “Trails to Ale,” so it’s been fun, and I think people enjoy it.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, and it’s a great race. There was so much … The volunteers all were very positive, and it was very well-organized. It just had a really nice vibe about it.
Fred Forsley: Right.
Lisa Belisle: I think that that …
Fred Forsley: The trail was in great shape this year, too.
Lisa Belisle: That’s true.
Fred Forsley: Two years ago we ran, and it was a lot of mud puddles, and people were upset because it rained last year. This year, it didn’t. It rained, but there was not a drop of… I think I saw one puddle in the whole thing, which really is a tribute to the city of Portland and the people that take care of the trails.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, it’s interesting because I grew up in Yarmouth, and I lived in Portland briefly, and I did a lot of running around Back Bay, which I’m sure that you have done some running around Back Bay as well. It’s been interesting to see how all of this has evolved, and how it’s really become… It was already kind of a running city from that many years ago, but it’s really becoming an actual running city.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I don’t know that I would have projected that, I guess.
Fred Forsley: Right. No, Portland, I think it adds to everything else that’s going on, the food scene and the bands, the music scene. It’s becoming, it’s a great city for people to come and experience now, so somebody comes … We have a lot of visitors, and they’ll come and go, “Where can I run?” When they run the Back Bay and they do the trails, literally from the brewery back around, they’re just blown away by the experience and how open it is. It’s also becoming a great biking city, but the reality is it’s set up from that, and the Portland trails are a big part of that. That’s why having that as an opportunity is a good thing.
Lisa Belisle: When you go out and run, tell me how that feels for you as an individual. You told me that you were really more of a football player, and you have become a runner.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. It’s a real de-stressing for me. If I don’t run for three or four days, I get short tempered, and it’s not a good thing. For me, it just releases all that kind of things that build up, tension that builds up by just business in general and life in general. By running, I think it just … I run for about a half an hour or 45 minutes, and it just is a way for my brain to just go in another place, so it’s kind of fun along those lines because you don’t have that… You get to that part where your brain just starts daydreaming, and you’re sweating. It’s obviously healthy, but at the same time for me, it’s your mind as well because it’s… In Kennebunk, I live down there, and so you can run to the beach or you can run along in front of the Colony Hotel, and you see such beautiful sights, and at the same time, you’re not feeling like you’re exercising. It’s not painful like sometimes exercise can be.
Lisa Belisle: Are you more of an outdoor runner or an indoor runner?
Fred Forsley: Outdoor. I really don’t like treadmills. If that’s all you have and that’s all you can do, and you’re in a situation where you’ve got to run on treadmill, I’ll do it, but it’s not my favorite. No. Not really.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I’m actually glad to hear that, because I’m absolutely not a treadmill runner, and I think you couldn’t get me on a treadmill unless we were in the middle of an enormous concrete jungle that had no streets.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Because I feel exactly the same way you do. Actually, even in an urban setting, I would prefer to run outside because I think it does something different with your brain and the de-stressing thing that you were talking about.
Fred Forsley: Yep, definitely.
Lisa Belisle: What I love about the races that take place here in Portland is that there’s so many different types of scenery that we see, that you have waterfront, you have bay front, you have inner city, and you can go up to the West End and they have the big mansions, and the Eastern Prom.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. If you run in the morning in Portland before the cars get here, before people get here, because it’s really a quiet city from five to 7:30 even, you can run up Congress Street and have an experience that’s just really unique. That’s one of the coolest streets. If you run the whole of Congress Street, there’s such history there, and it’s cool how a lot of it’s being brought back to life and all of that. I find that to be really awesome in the morning. I like to run in the morning too, but I don’t like running at night, just for whatever reason.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I’m with you. I’m a morning running person as well.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Do you run with someone? Do you have a buddy that you run with?
Fred Forsley: I don’t.
Lisa Belisle: Or is it just you?
Fred Forsley: No, I just run by myself so I can talk to myself, scream at myself, that type of thing.
Lisa Belisle: Do you train for the races that you sponsor?
Fred Forsley: I just try to stay in shape. I don’t train, really. I train by running, but it’s not like… I’ve got nobody instructing me. When I went to high school there were a lot of runners there. A friend of mine, Johnny Marr is a big runner, and he probably has the science of training down, but he’s not sharing any secrets with me, if he hears this.
Lisa Belisle: I think it’s fascinating. I just ran the Maine Marathon on Sunday, and I think it’s interesting to watch all the different sorts of people who run.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You have the people who are really, they’ve got all the science behind them. Everything is very specific as to how they train. You’ve got people, they’re just like, “Well, I’ve run a few miles. I’ll just go out and just do it.”
Fred Forsley: Yeah. Well, the Marr family, actually they raised I think close to 160,000 dollars for Alzheimer’s. John Marr Sr. has set up with Josephine, a foundation, I think, involving research for Alzheimer’s, and so they actually took this race, the marathon, and they had people from all over the country come as part of their family, because they have a number of kids and grandkids. It was nice to see, and then my daughter, Jill, ran it with three of her friends this week. We didn’t sponsor anything to do with the marathon, but next year I think we’ll get involved in that some, more than we did. We helped sponsor the Marrs’ family event through my daughter, Jill, running with their group, but that was an amazing event that just happened, the marathon.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah.
Fred Forsley: The Maine Marathon, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: They’ve been doing it 25 years.
Fred Forsley: Right. Now there seems to be … It’s touching more on our lives, people we know and stuff, so we may get involved in that.
Lisa Belisle: That is the other aspect of running these races that I find interesting, that pretty much every race that I’ve been in lately has had some sort of charitable beneficiary.
Fred Forsley: Yep.
Lisa Belisle: Beach to Beacon has always done this.
Fred Forsley: They’ve done a great job with that.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, and the marathon, I think Dream Factory was their beneficiary this year. It’s interesting to run behind people who are running for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. A new race we’re getting involved in is the Thanksgiving day race. We’re going to feature Pumpkinhead as part of our theme of group, and helping them expand more excitement around that. It’s in the morning, 9:00, for Thanksgiving, so that’s going to be another one coming up.
Lisa Belisle: Is that the one that’s usually a USM race?
Fred Forsley: Yep.
Lisa Belisle: Okay.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, so we’re excited about that.
Lisa Belisle: Well, how about this? What if you’re not a beer drinker?
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: What if you’re not a beer drinker and you just …
Fred Forsley: Capt’n Eli’s Soda, or we usually get Dasani water sponsored by Coke or somebody involved like that, so there’s something for everybody. Portland Pie has been a great partner, especially the Trails to Ale, giving out free pizza at the end. Who doesn’t love pizza, right? They even have gluten free pizza, but they’ve been a great partner with the Trails to Ale race. Every year, they’ve done fundraisers promoting the race at their locations and been involved in that. Yeah, if you don’t like beer, we have Ice Pik vodka. We haven’t brought that to the race yet, though. That’s gluten free, I tell you. So, if you don’t like to drink at all alcohol, then Capt’n Eli’s. If you don’t like soda, we have Dasani water. If you don’t drink at all anything, well, pizza. There you go.
Lisa Belisle: There you go. There’s something for everyone there.
Fred Forsley: Yep.
Lisa Belisle: What is it about the race day itself, the spirit of the race, that captures your energy?
Fred Forsley: I actually thought about that this morning, running. You get to run in the middle of the street, right? How often do you get to run in the middle of the street? The Beach to Beacon, when you’re running, you turn that corner and you run by the IGA there, and you see that big flag that the firemen have out at the cape, and you run under that, and you’re in the middle of the street. You flash back to that in the middle of winter when you’re driving out there. It’s just a powerful, powerful thing. Then people playing music when you’re going by, and people cheering. I think it just adds to that whole euphoric feeling. Except in the Beach to Beacon, and if you’re a little hotter, the Shipyard Half Marathon, when you’re really getting hot and you’re seeing people drop, that’s a little discouraging, even when they’re playing music that are going by.
But next year we hope to get more people involved as participants on the sides playing music on the half marathon, because I think music a lot of time can really get you fired up. You’re running in the middle of the street in an area you’d never be able to run. You run down Commercial Street in the takeoff of the half marathon. The Shipyard Half Marathon this year was July 9th, but the thing is, is when you have that many people, 5,000 people, 10,000 people with the Beach to Beacon, you’re seeing hundreds of people that you really … You might run into one or two people you know, but you just realize how big the running world is. It’s fun. At Beach to Beacon, they have world class runners, and then you’ve got people who are running first time.
Lisa Belisle: I also ran the Shipyard Half Marathon, and I also thought that it was fun to run down Commercial Street, and I loved that there was music under the bridge.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Going across to South Portland, it was kind of a weird song that was playing when I went by, but it does. It kind of gets you….
Fred Forsley: We want to have more of that. We want to try to get sponsors or somebody to do five or six of those, because when you have people involved, like the Boilermaker in upstate New York, different towns have themes within their neighborhoods that they’ve done for years, and they get really charged up to be there. It becomes a little party on the sidelines. There were some groups up near Maine Med, too, when we were running by there on that, but it was cool to run through there. Yeah, that’s fun. Go by Ruski’s and you get the guys come out.
Lisa Belisle: Yes, that was also fun.
Fred Forsley: Could stop for a Shipyard there, but that might slow you down a little bit.
Lisa Belisle: It’s also fun to be with people who specifically come to Maine for these events.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I think that’s amazing that people would be running … Even some of the people who do the 50, 50 halfs every state.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. I have a friend from Amsterdam. He signed up two times for the Hansi, he keeps saying he’s going to come. He hasn’t come yet, but eventually he’ll come and run the Shipyard Half marathon, so we’ll see.
Lisa Belisle: What is it about these longer distances that you think is drawing people in? Because I think the Boston Marathon, you actually have to apply, there are cut times, and they filled within two weeks.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: It’s crazy that people want to go out and subject themselves to marathons, half marathons.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, and you hear about these trail runners going 50 miles. We’ve sponsored some teams that have run in the Ragnar races that go through the night, and they’re in a bus with 12 people, but the reality is, I think it’s just that camaraderie. After high school or college, if you played sports or if you’re involved in activities, and then there’s nothing after that as far as groups, I think that’s why. It’s kind of a club you can belong to. “Hey, I’m a runner.” In Florida, in Clearwater, we have the Sea Dog Brew Pub, and the running club has kind of adopted our tasting room. They’ll do a run and finish there. At Federal Jack’s, there’s been a group of runners. Most of them are over 65, and they… I think it’s either a Tuesday or a Wednesday, but once a week they’ll end there and have beers after their run.
I think even though it’s an individual sport, it’s kind of like, “Hey are you doing it? Are you doing it?” Then people will team up, so it is kind of cool. We have a group of people at the brewery that anybody who wants to run any of the races we sponsor, we’ll give them free entry. At times it’s peaked at 10, 12 people, and then it fluctuates, so we try to suck in people. The half marathon was brutal on a few of them last year. The hot one, that was the tough one. We lost one driver. I think he quit after that.
Lisa Belisle: Oh.
Fred Forsley: I’m just kidding. He’s not… Anyways, it is fun though, because you get to get… We’ll go to the Porthole after for lunch, after the half marathon, and then after the party finishes up. It’s like anything you do. Why do people climb mountains, I guess? Which I’m not going to get into that.
Lisa Belisle: That’s a different show. We’ll talk about that later.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, we’ve heard the same thing, and I think because Maine Magazine has also been sponsoring some of these races, so we’ll get bibs that come in as part of the team. Some people, they want to do the 5k color run, and some people will sign up for the half marathon.
Fred Forsley: Right.
Lisa Belisle: It actually becomes aspirational for people.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Someone who maybe last year did a 5k works their way up to a 10k.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: Then one of our sales guys Jeff D’Amico, he actually came and watched me do the marathon this weekend.
Fred Forsley: You inspired him.
Lisa Belisle: It’s great.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. Hopefully he’ll do more.
Lisa Belisle: It’s really great, because it all comes around.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: You support people in wherever they’re coming from, and then they come back and they support you as well.
Fred Forsley: Yeah. The Reali family that owned the Village Café, they had a tradition of, at Thanksgiving day race, they would have all their friends over to the Village after that race. When that ended, they moved it over to the brewery, so their friends and family will come after that race, and you’ll see all the next generation of runners now coming over, so it’s kind of cool.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, I also like that. You mentioned running with your daughter in the Boilermaker.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I ran with my son in the marathon, and he’s 23. It’s actually really nice to be able to go out and be with your kids for some prolonged period of time where you’re not really on your phone, and you’re just moving forward, just having a conversation. It’s a really different and kind of special atmosphere.
Fred Forsley: Definitely, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m interested, you talk about the Village Café, and because I’m from Maine also, I ate there many, many times. How do you feel about all the changes that have happened in your home city?
Fred Forsley: I’m sad about the Village going, because that was one of my favorite spots, but I’m excited about the changes. I mean, we need more housing in Portland, whether it’s high-end condos, or affordable housing, or workforce housing. I’m somebody who loves the fact that we have these new hotels, and I think we’re going to see a lot… People want to visit Portland in the middle of July and August. You can’t get a place to stay. It’s literally, you have people staying out of the city saying, “How can I get to the Peninsula?” Because that’s where people want to be when they’re from away, and they want to experience the city.
Portland was always a working harbor. It was never a place where the beautiful sailboats were 30 years ago, 40 years ago, because in the old days if you grew up here, you remember the sardine factory on the other side that basically smelled. It was a lot of odors on Commercial Street in the ’50s and ’60s, and even into the ’70s, and traffic was going 18 different ways on Commercial Street. I would go pick up food at Carr Brothers for our parents’ veterans’ home. You’d have to be good at wheeling in there and missing all the truck traffic. Today, I think Portland is becoming a livable tourist town, and a business town. You get people that’ll come….
I had a friend come and stay in Portland, and he’d never been into Portland to visit. He’d been to Bar Harbor, been to Kennebunkport, been to Camden, but he grew up in a hotel family, and long story short, he’s like, “I can’t believe I can’t get a hotel room for less than 400 dollars on this weekend.” It was the middle of July. I said, “Come up, build another hotel, because we need more.” I honestly believe that we’re going to see another six, 700 hotel rooms and another couple thousand apartments, and I think it’ll be a vibrant city for everybody. With USM’s extended living program, I think the USM… Glenn Cummings I think is a breath of fresh air, too.
USM, I think, is a great resource for people buying condos here, but I also think you need more housing stock so that affordable apartments are available. It’s funny, people get upset with condos, but the reality is without those, you’re not going to have some of the other places available for affordable housing for everybody. I just think there’s so much potential in Portland to be a great small city. Our airport with the infrastructure build-out that they have there, it’s getting easier and easier to get in and out of Portland. I think if we’re going to have jobs for our young people, we need to maximize what’s going on, and that’s the second home and tourism industry, as well as the education part of the city of Portland, and then the medical part. Without more housing, you’re not going to get it.
Lisa Belisle: How do you balance all of the things that you do? In 2009 the Maine State Chamber of Commerce honored you with a President’s Recognition Award. In 2015 you received Sugarloaf’s Summiteer Award for your continuous commitment to giving back to the cancer community in Maine. Then I’m only reading bits and pieces of the things that you’ve done in Maine and for Maine, but you seem like you really do have a lot of different loves that you’re nurturing.
Fred Forsley: Yeah, we have great people around me, I guess. As a company, we have great people, a great family. You know behind every great man is a great woman kicking him square in the ass? Well, no. Just a joke, just a joke. My wife, Judy, has been a great partner, and she’s a CPA and very focused on detail, which I’m not a detail person. Alan Pugsley, Bruce Forsley, Paul Hendry. We have 50 brewers, so for the beer side, that, and that Jim Bunting on the restaurant side, Fred Hayman. There’s a list that goes on and on. We employ close to 900 people in the state of Maine. Luckily, we’ve had a lot of great people that work for us, and I feel like that’s the big thing that helps drive a lot of this.
If it wasn’t for the young energy in our company, we wouldn’t be trying to do a lot of things. We just hired a young kid, Woody, and Matt Bowden, both in the company. Matt’s been with us five years out of Orono. He was living in Orlando, moved home. He’s training a young man, Woody, who’s just moving to Orlando to sell, but he knows Maine culture. He knows our beers from being here and he’s going to spread the love of Maine in Orlando. We have a number of Mainers working for us in other parts of the country because they understand our culture, our work ethic, and that’s what’s helped spread the love.
Lisa Belisle: Well, what do you see for 2017? What’s coming up in the future?
Fred Forsley: We’re doing a lot in…. People think when you’re in Florida you’re not really helping Maine, but we’re going to be releasing a beer in Florida that’s brewed in Maine, Island Time, and that’s happening in November and December, but we’re doing a brew pub in Treasure Island, which is just outside of St. Pete. That’ll have a Maine connection. That’s happening next year, and then I’m actually involved in a market concept in Traverse City, Michigan, which will have a lot of Maine flair. We’re leveraging our brand, so we’re trying to grow the Maine brand throughout the country. We’ve all of a sudden hit it in the UK with the Maine brand, and we’ve done a collaboration with Marston’s, and we’re selling throughout the United Kingdom in a variety of locations, so that’s exciting for us.
We’re continuing to invest in the brewery in Portland. We’re trying to… A lot of the investments you can’t see, but recently we just reopened the tasting room and spent over 200,000 dollars upgrading everything, and that experience is really cool. Irena, and the team in the store, does a great job. These cruise ships, when people come in off that…. This weekend you couldn’t get in the door because it was just amazing how many people were visiting. The tasting room is something we’re going to keep encouraging, and then just growing the brand in Maine, where next Tuesday we’re having a celebration. October 11th up in Camden, we just opened up a new Sea Dog there. We’ve renovated, so that’s exciting.
We’re looking to continue to keep growing with our key partners. We love the fact that we have a relationship with Sugarloaf, the brew pub up there. We sell and promote through all of that, and Sunday River, at Sea Dogs, we have a great relationship there, so keep expanding upon that. The Ice Pik vodka is distilled in New Hampshire. We’re using New England distilled water, but a great partner that we’re dealing with, so we’re going to expand in New England selling that. We’re going to keep growing with the relationships in the spirits industry. We’re looking at putting… We have a key relationship with Stroudwater Distillery, in which we may distill and produce products with them and help promote their location down there. They’ve done a great job. Jeff down there has done a great job.
We also have a relationship where we’re distilling Pumpkinhead into whiskey with Stuart Littlefield up in Oxford, Maine, which is exciting because Stuart used to have his location on India Street here with Foodworks, he created it. He moved up to Oxford and he has a distillery, and he does a lot of food products, but he’s taking some Pumpkinhead and creating a whiskey out of it, so we’re going to age that. We keep going with those types of things, and we’ll keep running to try to stay in shape.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I look forward to running in the events that you sponsor again.
Fred Forsley: Yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been speaking with Fred Forsley who is the founder and president of Shipyard Brewing Company, and obviously is well connected within Maine for many things, including but not limited to the road races that I have run this year, so thank you. I guess I’ll see you out there on the trails. Thanks for coming in.
Fred Forsley: Maybe Thanksgiving morning.
Lisa Belisle: That’s right.
Fred Forsley: Yes, thank you.
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Portland Art Gallery is proud to sponsor Love Maine Radio. Portland Art Gallery is Portland’s largest gallery, and is located in the heart of the old port at 154 Middle Street. The gallery focuses on exhibiting work of contemporary Maine artists, and hosts a series of monthly solo shows in its newly expanded space. The current show schedule includes Nancy Simonds, Elizabeth Hoy, and many more. For complete show details, please visit our website, artcollectormaine.com.
Lisa Belisle: Today in the studio, I have with me Cyndi Prince, who is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells LooHoo wool dryer balls, a reusable energy-saving alternative to dryer sheets. Thanks for coming in today.
Cyndi Prince: Thanks for having me.
Lisa Belisle: What’s interesting, I think, about your story is that you’re doing something that’s very practical for all of us, really, but you’re doing this with a larger idea in mind. Before we talk about that, what is a LooHoo dryer ball?
Cyndi Prince: Well, a LooHoo wool dryer ball is a reusable energy-saving alternative to a dryer sheet. It’s basically just a ball of wool, and you toss several of them into your dryer. What it does is it helps circulate and separate your laundry more efficiently, and so you’re going to get better air flow around the wet lumps of clothes in your dryer, and so you’ll end up reducing your dry time that way. Then also with the action of the balls against your wet laundry, you’re going to see softening as well. It eliminates the need for dryer sheets which add that chemical materials onto your clothes to soften them, and so we’re able to just to have that natural alternative for your dryer.
Lisa Belisle: I think I first read about this type of approach to laundry maybe in a Chinaberry catalog, maybe 15 years ago, 20 years ago, something like that, and I never decided, “Oh, I should order this.” But I was at, I believe, our local natural food store, and I saw your product on the counter, and I said, “Okay, now’s the time. Now’s the time to experiment with these.” It seemed like such a simple concept, but it really does work.
Cyndi Prince: It does, it does. It is so simple, and I think that’s one of the things that I loved about it at first. Just to be able to take something so basic, but to add it to your laundry in order to just be able to create these same effects that you’re creating with using dryer sheets, but then also the added benefit of being able to reduce your airflow as well, to reduce your dry time, too, is such a bonus.
Lisa Belisle: I always notice when I’m out running, and I’ll run by people’s houses, and I’ll smell dryer sheets, freshening sheets.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: I really think a lot about, if this is so strong that it can be out in the air on the streets so that people walking by can smell it, how good can it really be for our bodies?
Cyndi Prince: It’s really bad. One of the things that I learned was that dryer sheets were considered to be one of the most toxic household cleaning products in your home, and it’s because they do contain a long list of toxic and dangerous chemicals that are linked to respiratory problems, skin irritations, and then just other health problems. Then also because these dryer sheets, the chemicals in them are designed to stay within your clothes and release slowly over a period of time, so you’re always going to be inhaling them, and then they’re always against your skin as well. All these things are just linked to so many different harmful things for your bodies, and of course for the environment and well, and so it is just time to really make that change.
Lisa Belisle: I would assume that if these are releasing some sort of chemicals, then the next time you put your clothes in the washing machine, then these chemicals could get leached into the water that then goes back out into the world.
Cyndi Prince: Absolutely, absolutely. I think it just sticks around in so many different ways, and lingers, and does become a significant problem.
Lisa Belisle: You became interested in this because you had, at the time, an infant son.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Belisle: Your son is now seven and your company is now six.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me how you got to that place.
Cyndi Prince: Well, when I became pregnant, I think as many of new to-be mothers experience, we want to make sure our home is the most safe environment to welcome in this newborn child. Looking around the household and the different chemicals and things that we had in there, the laundry room was one place that I really examined, and it was because we wanted to cloth diaper our son. Reading a lot of information about that, you learn that you can’t use dryer sheets or fabric softeners because they leave that coating on the diapers, leaving them inabsorbent, which is the exact opposite of what you would hope from a cloth diaper. That was one of those eye opening revelations, and also just learning about the toxic chemicals that are within them that would eventually be close to his skin as well, was that turning point to seek out a natural alternative.
Lisa Belisle: You are fortunate in that you have a science background, so when you started looking into this, you actually had a mental framework to work with.
Cyndi Prince: Yes.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about that.
Cyndi Prince: The scientist in me loved the trial and error phase, even though it took months of trying to figure out how we were going to make our wool dryer ball so it was going to be super durable and high quality, and using domestic products. It was months of tweaking little things, being analytical, trying different phases, and that was that scientist in me that just had a smile on her face the whole time, just trying to come up with the technical parts of creating something like that.
Lisa Belisle: Your training is in geology.
Cyndi Prince: It is.
Lisa Belisle: One wouldn’t necessarily make the leap from studying rocks and earth formations to creating a wool dryer ball product for the laundry. Can you walk me through how you went from geology to this?
Cyndi Prince: I started in geology, and after graduating university, I worked in that field for a while. I think what a lot of people experience is burnout in that field. I traveled, I worked on a ship for four years and traveled the world, but it takes its toll and I wanted more of a grounding kind of experience, and I started to just phase out of that. It was an exciting life, but challenging. What the next phase for me was looking into photography and doing something more creative. That’s when I ended up in Maine, going to the workshops here in Rockport. After that, settling into a fine art background, working in an art gallery, just settling into the community here, I realized that I wanted to create something of my own, start a business of my own. I just felt like the combination of my science background and creative background, even though I studied rocks, it’s still that analytical mind, I think, just melded into this perfect foundation for an entrepreneur.
Lisa Belisle: Why did you study rocks in the first place?
Cyndi Prince: I still find it fascinating. I think it’s one of those sciences that gets overlooked sometimes, but to be out in the middle of the ocean and drilling down into the sea floor hundreds of meters down, and bringing up these things that people have never seen before, but that tell a story of what happened decades ago, it’s phenomenal. It was just a mystery, unraveling mysteries all the time, which was really neat.
Lisa Belisle: Was there a moment when you were a child that you said, “I’m going to go study rocks”?
Cyndi Prince: I’m sure my mother could tell you that I had a rock collection and was fascinated just by these objects, but other than that though, I think it was more of a curiosity. When you’re going through and looking at the course catalogs for universities and trying to decide, there was a spark when I kept reading about geology and the different courses, and studying about all the different aspects of it. It was really fascinating.
Lisa Belisle: I often wonder about the interests that we have as children and how…. Because some of these fields that we go into, maybe it’s geology or maybe it’s another type of science, they have very specific occupational paths that we don’t really realize even if you love rocks and you love studying rocks, you may not be able to find a job that’s going to continue that interest.
Cyndi Prince: Right.
Lisa Belisle: You may have a very different sort of job.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: I guess that’s more of a statement really than a question. It seems like things that we start getting interested in when we’re younger, we’re not always able to continue that passion.
Cyndi Prince: I agree. I think for me, one of the things that never inhibited me was where it was going to be. I think a lot of my friends, people who graduated the course, wanted to stay in that area and so they tried to find something in that area. Maybe it didn’t work out kind of thing, but for me, when I looked for a job it was, “Where in the world could it be?” I think if you have that more of an open perspective, you can find those things that you’re really, really wanting to do.
Lisa Belisle: As we’re talking, I’m interested as to whether the fact that you traveled, and the fact that you were on a ship, and you were out there actually looking at what was happening to the environment, if that contributed to your desire to do something that would actually make a practical impact, a positive impact on the environment.
Cyndi Prince: I definitely think so. I think that that’s always been an underlying course within my life, is just knowing and seeing what the effects on different things that we put in the environment are, on different cultures, different places. It’s really incredible, and knowing that we have this great big responsibility to take care of it and to improve it, and to try to tread as lightly as we can as well, I definitely think that that’s a driving force in the business, and in the vision of what I’m trying to accomplish, what the business is trying to do.
Lisa Belisle: Did you have a strong sense of environmental responsibility when you were younger?
Cyndi Prince: I grew up on a farm, and I think that I just had a greater respect for a lot of things, where our food came from, growing and cooking and canning our own…. Just everything was done right there, in a sense. I think that that’s a good background to it, even though I wouldn’t say that we recycled and composted 40 years ago, but still, I think that seeing that cycle of life on a farm and the contained environment in a sense, in a small rural community, I think it helps with having a strong sense of that bigger picture and being able to be sustainable.
Lisa Belisle: Well, if you think about it, the fact that you chose something that is so practical, it really goes along with that idea that you’re trying to be self-sufficient. You’re trying to do something for yourself, and we all have to do laundry.
Cyndi Prince: Right.
Lisa Belisle: I mean, I assume. I have to do my own laundry. I’m assuming that most people who are listening have to do their own laundry. You are looking at something that’s very… Well, you used the word before. It’s very foundational.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: It’s something that you can do and feel good about, and you’re doing it for yourself.
Cyndi Prince: Right, right. I think that that’s one of those things. I know a lot of people will probably question why they’re making or doing a certain thing in their business, but for me it’s always… It makes so much sense where it is just that practical but also sustainable portion of what people can incorporate in their everyday, and so I think even though it’s such a simple product in a sense, it just has, to me, a bigger presence, a bigger meaning behind it.
Lisa Belisle: I’ve been surprised in talking to people about your product, and about you, and the fact that you were coming in to record the radio show, at how many people actually are aware of your product, are using it in their homes. It’s not just people who have a specific environmental mindset. It’s really, there’s a broad variety of people who have started to use the wool balls that you’re putting out there.
Cyndi Prince: Yes. It really is amazing, because people will gravitate towards them for various reasons. Like you said, it could be an environmental drive that, “Yes, I want to make that change in my laundry.” But then a lot of times people will come up to me and just say, “We’ve had such bad skin irritants, eczema, different problems. We can’t use the long list of products with any kind of fragrances or anything like that, but when we found your product, it was something that could help us in our laundry, but knowing full well that we could still not be worried about the effects of all these other things that are in their dryer sheets.” Then with kids and families, it goes together so well with cloth diapers, so I know a lot of … That’s where I connected initially when I got into the market. It was the cloth diapering moms, and the families, and the stores in that respect, and that’s how I got started as well. It’s interesting how and when people gravitate towards them, and learn about them, and understand them, and start to use them.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been awarded, actually, several different things. You are the recipient of an MTI seed grant award, a Spanx by Sara Blakely Leg Up promotion award, and you’ve recently been selected as the Small Business Association’s 2014 Home-Based Business Champion for Maine and New England. From what I understand, just recently your presence in Eileen Fisher stores has expanded dramatically.
Cyndi Prince: It has.
Lisa Belisle: You also got some sort of an entrepreneurial award several years ago from Eileen Fisher. What do you think it is about this very, well, innovative but simple product that is capturing people’s interest?
Cyndi Prince: I think that’s just what it is. I think it’s so simple that, like we said, everybody does laundry or has their laundry done for them, that they can relate to that in so many different ways, and I think that this small thing making this bigger impact, people are realizing it, and acknowledging it, and accepting it as well. When we started out a number of years ago, the learning curve was a little bit tougher, and so this product, I would put it in people’s hands, explain it to them, and they’re looking at me and looking at the product, and they’re like, “I don’t get it. Could you tell me one more time?” Now that I think it’s just more of a global acceptance about these natural alternatives that exist out there, I think that just something like this is just being recognized as that little thing that makes that big impact.
Lisa Belisle: Well, before I got the LooHoo balls, which I’ve now been using successfuly for months now, I was using Seventh Generation unscented dryer products. I use pretty much Seventh Generation across the board, but they’re still dryer sheets. They still have stuff on them. I appreciate that Seventh Generation and other companies are trying to minimize the chemicals that are out there, and some of them have very successfully done this, but it still seems like if you can make that next step, then it’s probably a good idea.
Cyndi Prince: Yes, absolutely, especially for something that’s reusable as well. There are many brands like Seventh Generation that do have better chemicals in them. They might be more easily biodegradable. Some of the other ones are still living in our landfills hundreds of years after we’re gone, so to have this product where you can reuse it, you can reuse it for hundreds and hundreds of loads. That aspect of it too I think is just another benefit, where it’s not this take one out, throw it away kind of product. I think that people are really thinking about that as well.
Lisa Belisle: Because you’re talking about reusing, I think about when I was younger, reading something. I don’t know, it was Ladies’ Home Journal or something. It was “Ten Uses For Your Used Dryer Sheet,” and one was, “Rub it over your cat so that you can pull the leftover fur and he won’t shed all over the floor.” Now as we’re talking, I’m horrified that that was even a possibility.
Cyndi Prince: Poor kitty.
Lisa Belisle: Exactly, but you’re right. We don’t like the fact that this is a one time use thing, these dryer sheets, and yours is something that you can use over and over again.
Cyndi Prince: You can hang onto them for a long time, yeah.
Lisa Belisle: I’m horrified. I don’t even know, how do we even get to the place where we thought that doing some of these things with these chemical covered…
Cyndi Prince: Was okay?
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, how is that, that that happened?
Cyndi Prince: I don’t know.
Lisa Belisle: But that’s a tangent, so I’m interested in… You have this science background. You obviously did the experimentation. You have a fine arts background. You were up in Rockport originally because of your photography.
Cyndi Prince: Mm-hmm.
Lisa Belisle: Then there’s this very strong business sense that you have, and I’m guessing that over the last six years you’ve done a lot of on the ground stuff. You’ve probably been everything. You’ve been the one who’s demonstrating the product, you’ve been doing the outreach, you’ve been doing the sales, you’ve been doing the books. How have you developed as a businessperson and just as a human being in the last six years?
Cyndi Prince: It’s been an incredible journey. I think that this is… As much as I have traveled and experienced so many different things in my geology career, I think that this job has allowed me to grow in so many different ways. Just being able to balance all those hats that you do have to wear is an incredible task, and I’m very self-disciplined, and I can put my head down and do those things that need to be done. Even though Friday afternoon I don’t want to work on my books, I will because I know that it’ll benefit the whole big picture, but it really has helped me grow. I never knew I liked sales before, but I absolutely love it. It’s just one of those things where I have no problem with rejection, so you know that you are going to get a lot of no’s before you get the yeses, but you have to keep working at it. In order for this to succeed, I know that I have to just do all those different things, and so that’s why I keep at it.
It’s interesting, some other people came up to me and asked, “What were your days like? Is this something that I could do?” Explaining how isolating it can be, where I’m basically working by myself a lot of times even though I’m connecting with people all the time on e-mail or on the phone, but it’s a self-driving discipline, and it’s one that it takes practice to learn. Time management is another thing that I really feel strongly about that I feel like I’ve learned to love as well, because I know that if I just spend all day on marketing, then other things are not going to get done, and so if I divide things up and look at my week as a whole, look at the year in the bigger sense, in the bigger picture, that I’m able to put my head down and do it.
Lisa Belisle: What does your husband do for work?
Cyndi Prince: He is a carpenter, and right now he switched over to being a UPS driver, and he also helps me with the business quite a bit too.
Lisa Belisle: How do you balance this very up-and-coming, and I’m guessing increasingly time-consuming, fun but time-consuming business with co-raising your seven year old son and the things that he does, and just being a couple and living in the world, and that sort of thing?
Cyndi Prince: It’s tough. It’s a tough balance, but it’s one that, again, I think it’s that discipline of time management, where on the weekends I don’t check my e-mail as much, or I don’t get back to people until Monday morning, long after I’ve done a number of other things. But definitely just dedicating and isolating time to be there as the bus pulls up and feed my son a healthy snack as he gets home from school, and connect with him instead of trying to answer a couple more e-mails and just get another order packed and ready to go. I know that we have this one precious little bean that is growing up so fast that we have to spend those hours with, and that time with, in order to just develop a strong family unit. I know that my business requires my time as well, but again, it’s a different hat. It’s funny, sometimes if I do have to go up and do something business related on the weekends or something like that, I have to tell them, explain to them what’s happening, because I need that isolated time. I think just as long as I keep having that separate, that that helps instill a balance, I guess, into family and work life.
Lisa Belisle: Having spoken to many people over the last six years of doing the radio show, because our businesses are about the same age, one of the things that I love is when people can take a cause and instill it with love, and move away from fear. Your product is a way that people can do something and feel good, and it’s not that they’re moving away…. I mean, there’s a realization that there’s bad stuff, and you’re moving away from something that’s kind of on the bad side, but really you’re moving towards something that’s good. How do you do this with your son as you’re trying to raise him to be a socially and environmentally aware child in the world?
Cyndi Prince: Huh. Well, I think that that is such an important thing, and just starting with the business, initially I think people were trying to encourage me to market in that negative form, where these things are bad, so do this. It never made sense to me, and it wasn’t going to work with the way that I wanted to run or grow a business. Thinking about raising a seven year old, I think it’s always about, I think, explaining the whole thing. He’s just a sponge right now, and the conversations, it’s amazing what we get into, but then expressing how important it is to be this positive source, this example, because even though he’s seven, he’s older in this classroom, and he is a leader. For him to be watched by these younger kids, I think that he sees us doing it and being more environmentally aware, and different things that we’re doing on an everyday scale, and realizing why and how it’s important to us, but I think we’re always communicating with him in every way, verbal and nonverbal, of all those things that are important to us. You see it, that he realizes that it’s an important thing, and I think it’ll be important to him as well.
Lisa Belisle: Why are they called LooHoo balls?
Cyndi Prince: Originally when the business started, they were called Wooly Rounds, and I had so many come up to me and say, “Hey, I’ve heard of those wooly balls.” That drove me crazy, because going from Wooly Rounds, which I thought was a nice rounded name, to wooly balls, so I knew that I needed to make a change. It was also going around to trademarking the name. When we looked at it, it was too descriptive. We weren’t going to be able to trademark it, and so it was, I think early on, about two years into the business, maybe about a year and a half, I started to look at different names.
At the time, and they still are, my sisters are kind of on my cheerleading squad of being the encouraging ones and being sounding boards to different ideas, and of course I went to them and asked. I said, “I want something fun. What do you think we should call the business? What do you think I should change the business name to?” Of course, they said Lou Who, which was a nickname growing up. I think anybody named Cindy in the last 50 years was called Cindy Lou Who at one point in their life or another, and of course at Christmas time I get more e-mails and calls about, “Oh, I was just watching The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and there’s little Cindy Lou Who.”
When my sister suggested it, I said, “Absolutely not. I don’t want this nickname I never really liked associated with the business.” But then after going through and trying out all these other names that just didn’t work, LooHoo was just fun, and I like the connection that it does have with me, childhood me. Yeah, and it just worked. All the “o”s in the name as well, and so it evolved into LooHoo, and that’s what it is today. I felt like it was maybe a brand that we could incorporate more products within as well, as opposed to Wooly Rounds. What else could you put under the umbrella of Wooly Rounds? That’s how LooHoo was formed.
Lisa Belisle: We will put information about LooHoo on our show notes page. I encourage people to actually consider and probably buy a few sets of LooHoo wool dryer balls. I’ve really enjoyed mine, honestly. It’s a funny little pleasure that I get out of this every single time I do laundry.
Cyndi Prince: That’s great.
Lisa Belisle: I appreciate your coming and spending time with me, and talking about your process and the work that you’re doing in your little corner of the world up in Camden. I appreciate also the time that your husband, Scott, has put into the business, and that your son, Graham, has also put into the business indirectly. I’ve been speaking with Cyndi Prince, who is the founder of LooHoo, LLC, a Maine-based company that makes and sells LooHoo wool dryer balls. Thanks for coming in.
Cyndi Prince: Thanks for having me.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio show number 274, Maine Suds. Our guests have included Fred Forsley and Cyndi Prince. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter, and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter as Dr. Lisa, and see my running, travel, food, and wellness photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Maine Suds show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy, and our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Rebecca Falzano, and Lisa Belisle. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com.