I don’t know how she does it. Jacinthe Brouillard is a serial entrepreneur, single mother of four and has cared for her mentally disabled sister for 14 years. This woman seems endowed with inexhaustible energy and concrete optimism; she has a solution for everything.
“I created a job to balance work and family and to manage my schedule to finally realize that I’m working more hours than before! But I was able to have my kids with me,” says Jacinthe, who has done business with the little ones in the baby carrier.
It all started with a zero-waste shop in Granby, where Jacinthe sold ecological cleaning products in bulk. Then, in 2010, she founded Groupe Saja, a distribution center for these eco-conscious body products to increase their impact. It was crucial for her as one of her children was born with a deformity that may be related to an environmental reason.
change consumption
Jacinthe is still President of Groupe Saja. And that’s when he came up with the idea of inventing a way to reuse containers. So she created a third company, Groupe Llenar, to market the Écoborne, a liquid dispensing machine that can be customized for any brand of product, be it laundry soap, oil motor or shampoo. The customer returns the original container and refills it – an economical and ecological gesture.
“There is a cost associated with the containers we recycle. There you only pay for the money at the Écoborne. When doing the laundry, you save $1.50 per tank of fuel,” explains the entrepreneur.
“I aspire to change the way people and businesses consume. I want to open the blinkers, have an impact on health and the environment,” she says, with ambitions to grow Ecobornes everywhere.
Its technology is patented in Canada and patent pending in the United States. The Ecoborne is an intelligent machine that knows how often the consumer reuses their Bio-Vert or Tide container. The manufacturer has access to the data and can offer its customers personalized promotions. Not to mention it makes him highly visible in a store as he can dress the Ecoborne in his colors.
The project was born just before the pandemic clipped its wings because crowd and the coronavirus were enemies. Jacinthe and her partner had to resort to disinfectant gels to survive.
Believe in it more than anything
“We still mortgaged our houses because we believed in it. But it’s certainly difficult because a start-up makes losses at the beginning of its adventure,” says Jacinthe, who was also backed by Investissement Québec and Desjardins Venture Capital.
However, since it is neither a recycling company nor a deposit company, it does not have access to subsidies. However, reuse is what we should all do before thinking about recycling.
The Écobornes have taken off again in recent months. Provigo, Avril, Dollarama and some Metro stores are partners. And Frank and Tea saw the solution as a vehicle to speed deployment without investing in catering counters. Finally, an Écoborne Bubble Tea machine can easily be placed in a CEGEP!
Jacinthe works hard with her partner to find the way to commercialization, always a challenge with an innovation.
“But I’m a fighter! Often people do not believe enough in their abilities. You have to be aware of what the pitfalls bring us,” she says confidently.
llenar
- Founding year: 2020
- Founder: Hyacinth Mist
- place of the headquarters : Guardian Angel
- activity area : Surroundings
- number of employees: 9
Profile of Jacinthe Brouillard
- Work : president
- Age : 41 years
- Education: Beauce School of Entrepreneurship
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