Today we’d like to introduce you to Belinda Lau.
Hi Belinda, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My story in entrepreneurship started at a very young age. In the late 1970s, my parents moved to Vancouver, Canada (where I was born) from Southeast Asia with just 14 dollars in their pockets and started a life in a new place on sheer hustle. They opened up a small gift shop in the city, and that is where I grew up. Have you ever been to a restaurant or a convenience store and there was a kid behind the counter doing their homework? Well, that was me.
That was my early taste of running a business. When I was a teenager, my dad started a luggage manufacturing business, eventually employing over 400 people. He was a true entrepreneur and I was lucky to learn from him how to run a business at an early age.
But I didn’t know that I wanted to own a business until I was an adult. I went to college at Carnegie Mellon University and studied engineering, and then I went to work for Medtronic, the world’s largest medical device company. I loved the mission but I didn’t like doing technical work and quickly learned I loved marketing and being close to the customer. I accomplished some amazing things at Medtronic, and one of my products was even named Time Magazine’s Invention of the Year in 2015. Also, at Medtronic, I learned how important it is for a company to have a meaningful mission, and I have tried to replicate that mission to everything I do.
I loved working in medical devices, but I felt like something was missing. So after 15 years, I decided to head back to school to get my MBA at UCLA Anderson. This was not easy to do: I was working full-time and had three young kids at home, but I felt like I needed a new perspective.
It was while I was in my MBA program that I was struck by the entrepreneurship bug and never looked back.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road by any standard! I started Elims in April 2019 while working full-time, going to school, and raising three kids. Then the pandemic hit in early 2020 and the world shut down. Many of the suppliers I worked with suddenly stopped talking to us and I had to find another way to keep our product development going. After a lot of searching, I found some suppliers that would even talk to us, but everything took ten times as long!
Another example of a “near-death” moment for our business was when the FDA took hold of my products as I was trying to import them from the UK. We went back and forth with the FDA until they were convinced that our paperwork was in order. I have never been so scared in my whole professional life! If they hadn’t approved them for import, it would have been the end of my business. Luckily, our products were buttoned up and we got through and I vowed never to let that happen again.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Elims is a social impact organization that combines healthcare and sustainability. Our mission is to help people’s health while creating a solution to solve the plastic waste problem in all of healthcare, and we decided to start with oral care. Given our backgrounds, we knew we could make an impact in the oral care space. For example, one billion toothbrushes are thrown away in the US every year causing an extreme effect on our environment. We demonstrate our commitment to sustainability by creating products that are made responsibly and are safe and effective for us and our planet. Using this mission as my guiding star, I set up Elims with my husband, dentist Dr. Casey Lau as head of dental care, Pradnya Parulekar as head of sustainability, and myself as Founder and CEO.
But Elims is not just sustainable! Our products actually work, cleaning your whole mouth and keeping your teeth sparkling white. We combine the best of science and nature by only adding clinically backed and tested ingredients to effective natural ones to make sure the products are as clean as possible.
We believe you don’t need to compromise the planet to take care of your health, and it shows in everything we do and make. And this is just the beginning! We have so much more work to do to build a more sustainable future in oral care.
Any big plans?
The future is bright! We have several new products coming out this year that combine cleantech innovation and the best of oral care. We currently have a novel teeth whitening product, our Magic Teeth Whitening Masks, that work extremely well and uses sustainable packaging, as well as natural toothpaste options that come in renewable sugarcane tubes. We also have some important partnerships in place with Carbonfund.org, a non-profit organization where we invest in reforestation efforts in North and South America, and TerraCycle to recycle all our products on behalf of our customers. We will continue to partner with organizations like these that amplify our mission of putting people and planet first.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: thisiselims.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elims.oralcare/
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/elims.oralcare
