Jessica Alba's Startup Pulls Bottles of Dish Soap That Were Underfilled
24 March 2017 - 7:44AM
Dow Jones News
By Serena Ng
Target Corp. and other retailers in recent months stopped
selling a popular household cleaner from Jessica Alba's Honest Co.
after learning the product contained less liquid than its label
claimed.
Honest dish soap was sold in bottles stating they contained 26.5
fluid ounces and had been on the market for several years. The
bottles actually contained 24 fluid ounces of cleaner, or roughly
10% less liquid, according to people familiar with the matter.
A spokeswoman for Honest said the company notified retailers and
distributors to remove the products from their shelves as soon as
it became aware of the issue. The company is rolling out new dish
soap in revised packaging with labels stating the bottles contain
24 fluid ounces.
The label was changed "to eliminate a small inconsistency
between physical fill volume and labeled fill volume," the Honest
spokeswoman said. She declined to say how many bottles were
affected or the cost of the change, but said Target and other
retailers have reordered the product. A Target spokeswoman referred
questions to Honest.
Honest sells cleaning, baby and personal care products under its
own brand. The Los Angeles company outsources manufacturing to
dozens of suppliers, and has rapidly expanded sales and its range
of products. The company last week named a new chief executive and
said it generated $300 million in revenue in 2016.
Dish soap was one of Honest's first products when the company
opened for business in 2012. It was originally priced at $5.95 for
a 16-ounce bottle, and Honest dropped the price to $3.95 for the
larger bottles.
Some companies in the consumer products industry have in the
past grappled with what is known as "underfilling" -- when packages
contain less than what their net weight or volume state. In 2015,
the maker of StarKist canned tuna agreed to pay $12 million to
consumers to settle lawsuits that claimed false advertising and
alleged its 5-ounce cans of tuna contained less fish than
regulatory minimums. StarKist denied underfilling its products but
settled the case to avoid the costs of continuing the lawsuit.
Underfilling products is "a real issue" that companies take
seriously, says Dale Giali, a lawyer at Mayer Brown LLP who works
with consumer companies.
The Wall Street Journal reported last fall that Honest is
reformulating its line of cleaning products and planning to roll
out new packaging for its laundry detergent, dish soap and other
products later this year. One goal of the changes is to remove an
ingredient that has created controversy for the company.
Two independent laboratory tests commissioned by the Journal
last year found that samples of Honest laundry detergent contained
significant amounts of sodium lauryl sulfate. Bottles of Honest
laundry detergent and its dish soap claim the products are free of
SLS, the acronym for the cleaning agent.
Honest last year disputed the Journal's lab findings and said it
used an alternative cleaning agent called sodium coco sulfate,
which chemists said contained significant amounts of SLS. The
company's reformulated detergents will no longer contain sodium
coco sulfate.
Several plaintiffs' lawyers last year filed lawsuits against
Honest over its cleaning-products labeling, claiming it misled
consumers who had purchased the products. Honest earlier this year
agreed to settle the lawsuits, according to court filings. The
details of the settlement, including the amount Honest will pay,
aren't yet public.
Write to Serena Ng at serena.ng@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 23, 2017 16:29 ET (20:29 GMT)
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