How a Square Jar Helped Eric Ryan Build a $1 Billion Vitamin Brand

The Short Answer

You can build $1 billion companies from boring products by changing just one thing.

Pick a huge, dull category like soap or vitamins.

Find the shelf where every brand looks the same.

Spot a new habit that the shelf has missed.

Then borrow one fresh idea from far away.

Eric Ryan did this with Method and Olly.

Olly was reported to sell for $1 billion in 2019.

Here is his simple formula.

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Why Boring Products Hide Big Money

People think you must invent something brand new to win.

Eric Ryan thinks the opposite.

He is the co-founder of Method, the soap brand that sits on many sink counters.

He also helped start Olly vitamins and Welly bandages.

He shared his playbook on the My First Million podcast with hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.

His big claim is that old, dull shelves are easier to win than brand-new ideas.

Shoppers already know what soap is, so you skip the teaching.

That is the first step to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Ryan learned this idea from Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin.

Branson took his skills in entertainment into airlines, a stuffy and serious field.

He did not invent flying.

He just gave a well-known thing a fresh twist.

Ryan built his own model the same way after living in London in the 1990s.

Picture a long grocery aisle with fifty bottles in the same green and white.

Now picture one bottle that looks like a small glass vase.

That tiny change is how people build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Step One: Find the Sea of Sameness

Walk the Aisle Like a Hunter

Ryan says a grocery store is the Super Bowl of commerce.

He walks the aisles of big retailers, drugstores, and grocers like a hunter.

He looks for what he calls a sea of sameness.

That means every brand looks, sounds, and feels alike.

Imagine the old dish soap shelf, full of green labels that look like your grandmother’s cleaner.

Everything blends into one dull blur.

That blur is not a problem.

It is a signal that a smart brand can stand out fast.

Ryan looks for two more clues in a category.

The first clue is that things feel too hard to understand.

Think of vitamin labels that only list names, so you must guess what magnesium does.

The second clue is that brands take themselves far too seriously.

Ryan thinks that hides a little fear.

His fix is to simplify and add a bit of play.

Method felt like soap a kid might pick, Olly made gummy vitamins for adults, and Welly put bright patterns on bandages.

Anyone who wants to build $1 billion companies from boring products should start with this hunt.

Try the Aisle Test This Week

You can try this hunt in one afternoon.

Walk into a store and pick three everyday categories.

Write down which brands you can name in each one.

If you cannot name four, you may have found open space.

Shaan Puri did this in the episode and picked packaged chicken.

He could not name one favorite brand, and that was his clue.

Write down what bugs you about each shelf, like a messy label or a name that sounds like a disease.

Those notes are the seeds of your first idea.

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Step Two: Spot the Culture Shift the Shelf Missed

Next, Ryan looks for a big shift in how people live.

The shift must already be happening somewhere else.

It just has not reached that shelf yet.

In 2002, people had started to treat their homes like a lifestyle.

Yet no one thought of dish soap as part of the home’s look.

You look at your soap more than you use it.

So Method made soap that looked good next to the faucet.

That insight is a core piece of how to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

A second shift was health and sustainability.

Back then, cleaning often meant using harsh chemicals to make a home feel safe.

That idea felt wrong to many families.

Method brought in gentler cleaning with pretty design.

Ryan calls this mix of high design and care for the planet eco-chic.

It joined two ideas that seemed to fight each other.

That tension made people stay loyal to the brand.

Ryan says Method was the first startup to work with Target at that time.

Olly came from the same hunt years later.

Ryan was working on a Target project called Made to Matter.

The goal was to find natural brands that young moms would love.

He could not find one in vitamins, so he walked the aisle himself.

Shoppers stood there stressed, and some even asked him what magnesium was for.

He saw that millennials treat health like a lifestyle.

SoulCycle had turned workouts into something close to a ritual, so he asked what a SoulCycle of vitamins would look like.

That one question shows how to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Step Three: Steal From Faraway Places

Ryan calls himself a bit of a thief.

He does not steal from rivals.

He steals from places far away from his category.

For Method, he borrowed the colors and scents of the beauty aisle.

He also borrowed the vase shapes he saw in the housewares section of department stores.

Picture a dish soap bottle with soft curves, like a flower vase on a table.

His favorite question is, what if this, but for that?

The farther apart the two ideas sit, the stronger the idea can be.

Ryan gets many of his best ideas by traveling.

He walks stores with a coffee in hand and a designer by his side.

Jet lag helps, since nobody emails him and the world looks fuzzy and new.

The first Method bottle came from a camping fuel bottle he spotted in Norway.

In Tokyo, the pillowy texture on the outside of a building became a hand wash bottle.

He also teamed Target with Orla Kiely, known for pricey handbags, to put her patterns on cheap items.

Ryan says that was likely Target’s first designer collaboration at that price.

Stealing smartly is a quiet skill when you build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Ryan says the best ideas sit between familiar and new.

If an idea is too familiar, it looks like everything else.

If it is too new, shoppers feel nervous.

Think of a bottle that feels like soap but looks like art.

Shoppers still know what to do with it.

Yet it feels fresh enough to try.

That sweet spot is easy to say and hard to find.

It takes practice, and each failed try teaches you something.

Step Four: Change Only One Thing

Here is Ryan’s golden rule.

Change one thing about a product and you have a good chance.

Change two or three things and you will likely fail.

In advertising, folks say you can toss a person one egg and they will catch it.

Toss three eggs and they will drop them all.

Ryan says he has failed more by being too new than by being too safe.

His tiny, concentrated laundry detergent from Japan was a good example, since shoppers did not trust a small bottle to clean fifty loads.

Keep this rule close if you want to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Shaan Puri shared a story that fits this rule.

He talked with an AI startup that had raised lots of money.

He kept asking why a user should switch from tool A to tool B.

The team gave many reasons, and none stood out.

They were so busy saying better that they forgot to say different.

Ryan says ego makes founders overcomplicate things to look special.

The best founders take complex ideas and make them simple.

Simple is the quiet engine of how people build $1 billion companies from boring products.

The Olly Story: A Square Jar With a White Cap

Picture the vitamin aisle with round bottles on every shelf.

Ryan saw that and decided his jar would be square.

Everyone else was round, so he went the other way.

He wanted a jar that looks like a product, not a package.

A nice jar left on the counter gets noticed, so you remember to take your vitamins.

The cap had to be big, so he made the white cap the logo.

The idea of a square jar with a white cap came within days.

That image is easy to picture, and that is why it worked.

The words changed too.

Most vitamins list a name like biotin or melatonin.

Olly said beauty and sleep instead.

That is selling the benefit, not the feature.

The name Olly was picked to sound friendly, since rivals sounded either like science or like a farm.

Welly, the bandage brand, got its name from a branding firm after Ryan asked for a word about healthcare.

Olly was later reported to be sold to Unilever for $1 billion in 2019.

It shows how to build $1 billion companies from boring products with a simple jar and clear words.

The Hustle Behind the Idea

Ideas are easy, and Ryan says the hard part is doing the work.

When Method started, he and Adam Lowry were two guys in a flat in San Francisco.

They had no experience making or selling anything.

They pitched local grocery managers at six in the morning.

Picture a tired manager with three minutes to spare and a bottle in his hand.

Ryan says selling is a transfer of emotion.

The manager had to believe in the founders and trust they would keep coming back.

That persistence is the secret that powers those who build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Ryan’s trend trips came with a clever twist.

Each person got a scavenger hunt for ideas during the day.

By five o’clock at a pub, everyone had to bring ideas.

They picked a few and called his team in San Francisco, where it was morning.

That team worked all day on the briefs.

By breakfast the next day, they showed polished ideas to Target.

Many were sold before the plane took off for home.

Speed keeps the wow alive, and you can copy that today with AI tools.

Ryan stood outside stores and pitched managers.

Today your first aisle can be a screen.

You can test an idea by writing about it in public.

Posts on Medium and Flipboard can bring you early readers without paid ads.

Short test posts show which angle gets clicks.

Think of it as your own small trend trip, done in a day.

A clear traffic system keeps you from guessing.

Early proof like this helps anyone who dreams to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

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Putting the Formula to Work: Fiber, Diners, Cheese, and Chicken

On the show, Shaan tested the formula on fiber.

His mom takes fiber every day, and he saw the leading brands as old-fashioned.

He walked past Metamucil and Benefiber and felt like they were grandma products.

Ryan agreed that fiber is the new protein and calls it a good-margin category.

He said to steal the look of a modern juice bar.

He also suggested two very different concepts, one funny and one sleek like a beauty brand.

Then test them with friends, retailers, and what he calls consumer auditions.

Notice how each step stays simple, which is the habit of those who build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Ryan pitched his own idea, a modern American diner.

Think of a bright room in white and yellow with one long winding counter and a busy juice bar.

It would open only for breakfast and lunch, with one shift a day.

He wants to take on Denny’s and IHOP with a SoulCycle feel.

Shaan added a tip from mobile games called time to fun.

In Super Mario Bros., you stomp an enemy and grab a power-up within seconds.

Shaan’s last diner trip took twenty-two minutes before any food hit the table.

A free mini treat at the door would fix that, a trick any founder can use to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Shaan’s cheese idea was a gourmet line in the little wax-covered Babybel style.

Ryan loves how the wax peels away like an orange.

Shaan’s second cheese idea, a stamper tool, got a polite no because it adds too much.

That fits the one-egg rule, since it changes three things at once.

For chicken, Ryan said not to sell the chicken, sell the farm.

Shoppers like to think the bird had a good life.

He also shared a rule of mixing a little narcissism with a little altruism.

Vital Farms eggs show how a pretty farm story can lift a plain shelf.

When the Formula Fails, and How to Name Your Brand

Not every idea works, and Ryan is open about that.

His jewelry store brand, Cast, aimed at women who buy jewelry for themselves.

Stores in the Bay Area felt like a candy shop, with soft music and nice scents.

Nordstrom even put money in.

Yet leases, store builds, and fundraising were costly in a tough market.

After three to four years, it shut down.

His lesson is, if it is hard, it is probably wrong.

Even someone who knows how to build $1 billion companies from boring products picks the wrong space sometimes.

Names matter, and Ryan says he is better at spotting a name than making one.

He starts with a jump-off word.

For Method, the word was technique, because the soap cleaned without force.

His co-founder Adam Lowry said “method” while they were brushing their teeth.

For Olly, he wanted a name that sounded friendly.

His lawyer said Method was too generic, so Ryan asked what the lawyer would do if the name truly mattered.

The lawyer said to go for it.

That shows how a bold try can pay off for those who build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Your 2026 Plan to Try This Formula

You can turn this into a five-step plan this month.

Step one, pick a big, dull category you buy from each week.

Step two, write down the sea of sameness you see on the shelf or screen.

Step three, find one culture shift that the category has not reached.

Step four, steal one idea from a place far away.

Step five, change only one thing and test it in public.

Use an AI helper like Claude to brainstorm names, angles, and short test posts.

That small loop is how any beginner can try to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

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Ryan now works with Greycroft, where a new consumer brands fund backs young founders.

He says he likes being a coach on the sideline.

He loves to help founders keep their energy up when things get hard.

In plain words, the plan stays the same.

Find the dull shelf, spot the shift, steal smartly, change one thing, and work hard.

Lots of small boring wins can add up to big ones.

In 2026, tools are cheaper and faster than ever.

The only thing missing is your first step to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Final Thoughts

The big story starts with a bored shopper in a dull aisle.

Eric Ryan found sameness and saw room for fun.

He read the culture, borrowed ideas from far away, and kept each change small.

He also worked hard on early pitches and took his failures with a straight face.

You do not need a rare talent to try the same steps.

You only need to look at ordinary things in a new way.

If you want a clear start, remember this formula to build $1 billion companies from boring products.

Pick one shelf today and begin to build $1 billion companies from boring products with your first small test.

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