Most people tend to associate Hain Celestial Group with their eponymous Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea and its iconic sleeping bear mascot, but the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has led the company’s innovation team down a new path: hand sanitizer. 

The company has been producing and selling hand sanitizer in Canada under the brand name One Step for many years, but the increased demand for the product in the US inspired the R&D team to figure out how to bring it down to the states, says Jeff George, Senior Vice President of R&D at Hain Celestial.

“We had some experience as a company [producing hand sanitizer], and we had the capability…in Canada. So, when this incredible demand and need surfaced, it was all hands on deck,” he says.

Starting production of the new brand, called Live Clean, in the United States was a matter of leveraging existing resources and relationships. First, the company had to get creative to fast-track plans to upgrade their brand new personal care manufacturing facility in Bell, California.