Microfiber

Our Story

Our company started in 1946 when my grandfather, Landon Haney, moved from Nashville to Los Angeles after returning home from WWII. He began distributing mops, dusting cloths, brooms and brushes to janitor supply and hardware stores. He soon found a niche selling cleaning products to industrial laundries, which rent textiles to businesses and launder them for their customers.

We were introduced to microfiber in the early 2000’s. My dad was a cleaning geek, and I was becoming one too. I’m not sure how to describe how we felt about microfiber from the beginning, but it was a cross between amazement and love. There was nothing quite like demonstrating it to people who had never seen it before. I remember the first time I demoed a microfiber flat mop. It was with a group salespeople from one of our laundry customers. We were in the breakroom at their plant, early in the morning. The floor had already been mopped that morning with a regular cotton mop. I made the bold prediction that a few passes with the microfiber mop would result in a filthy mop pad. They insisted that I was wrong, that the floor was clean. So, I mopped and showed them the filthy pad. They instantly became converts and my dad and I continued proselytizing the benefits of microfiber to anybody who would listen.

I found a niche where customers cared about quality: cleaning companies. Most residential and commercial cleaning companies are small enough that even if the owner isn’t out there doing the work every day, they’re connected to the people that are. So, if they’re providing inferior products to their employees to clean with, they’re going to hear about it. Cleaning business owners also understand that if they can use a product for longer it will be cheaper in the long run, because it won’t have to be replaced as often. Cleaning business owners are to me what independent laundry owner/operators were to my grandfather and my father.

I found a way to operate an e-commerce based business in a way that is true to our roots as a third generation family business. Since the time my dad passed away in 2011, we’ve turned a corner, we’ve figured out who we are as a business again and we’ve grown. When we were small, I remember trying to act like we were big. We’re still small-ish and I’m comfortable in my company’s skin. There are now a dozen people working here, including my sister, Blythe. If my dad and my grandfather were alive to see the business now, I know they’d be proud (and surprised, especially about hiring my sister). They’d be proud not because of the numbers, because honestly, that never seemed important to them, but by how we do business. I’m proud of it too.