When senior Lexi Nortman and her business partners finished pitching one80 Soap to a business professional at INCubatoredu’s National Pitch Competition, they were surprised by his question.
“We gave him our old pitch, and then he was about to leave, and then he said, ‘So what are you gonna ask me now?’ and we never thought about that before …” said Nortman. “We never thought to get more information about the people who were interested in us, and as soon as he said that, we completely changed how we went about our future expos.”
INCubator team one80 Soap, consisting of seniors Lila Gallinson, Mimi Peifer, Lexi Nortman, junior Max Rohrabaugh and alumnus Andrew Weingardt (‘25), placed sixth in the National Pitch Competition.
According to INCubator teacher Mindy Ingersoll, one80 is the highest placing INCubator team Glenbrook North has ever had.
The National Pitch Competition is an annual event where the top five teams from the INCubatoredu program pitch their businesses to a panel of investors for a chance to receive funding. Despite not placing top five, the team was invited to present their product the competition on July 10 in Chicago.
INCubatoris a real-world, yearlong class in which students work in teams to start a business and then compete by pitching it to investors, Ingersoll said.
According to Peifer, one80 Soap is an eco-friendly brand that repurposes cooking oil from local businesses at a discounted disposal rate.
“Typically, local businesses or local restaurants pay thousands of dollars a year for oil disposal services, but we take it at a lower rate and we filter the oil, add fragrances and glycerin and ultimately use a process called saponification in order to create our soap,” Peifer said.
In an effort to grow their business beyond the classroom, one80 is collaborating with Primere, another INCubator team from Conant High School.
“[Primere] created a perfume … and they work a lot with scents,” Nortman said. “So during the national showcase, they came up to us, and they were like, ‘Hey, if you ever want to collab, let us know’. So we reached out to them, and they’re helping us out with some scents for a very exciting holiday bundle that we’re putting together for the November, December seasons.”
According to Gallinson, the team reached out to community business owners for help with ideation, and Pete Weiss, owner of Little Louie’s, suggested they focus on oil waste.
“[Little Louie’s doesn’t] have a lot of food waste, but they have a lot of oil waste,” said Gallinson. “So that’s kind of how one80 was born. We realized [we had] to narrow in on that oil waste … and decided to make soap.”
At first, the soap was not forming and one80 did not think they would to be able to make a good product, Rohrabaugh said.
“We were working in [chemistry teacher Maureen McDonaugh’s] class, and we were making the bars, and we had a beaker on a hot plate just explode,” said Rohrabraugh. “The oil was everywhere, and it was so messy.”
According to Ingersoll, INCubator is a tremendous learning journey.
“This group came up against a lot of roadblocks where they could have just given up, but instead, they kept digging to find the right answers and showed how resilient they are,” said Ingersoll. “And so I think that’s true entrepreneurship.”