My guest today is Marlon Pando, President and Owner of White Lotus Home. We’ll be talking about pillows: toxic free materials, different sizes and shapes, and how to choose a pillow that’s just right for you. Marlon worked in his family business until he purchased White Lotus Home, a company that has been making natural and organic bedding in the USA for 34 years. www.whitelotushome.com

 

 

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Pick the Pillow that is Just Right for You

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Marlon Pando

Date of Broadcast: October 08, 2015

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free. It’s Thursday, October 8th 2015. And tonight – not tonight, but today. I said tonight because we’re going to be talking about pillows. And so, of course, my mind just went night instead of day.

But today, we’re going to be talking about pillows. There’s enough to know about pillows that we can talk about this for an hour. Pillows, we’re going to be talking about the materials they’re made from, how to chose the right one for you. I just got a new pillow and I’m going to tell you about my experience with pillows. And so, by the end of the hour, it really makes a difference in your sleep to have the right pillow.

So we’re going to learn all about that today.

My guest is Marlon Pando. He’s the president and owner of White Lotus Home and they make a lot of pillows. Hi Marlon.

MARLON PANDO: Hi, Debra. It’s good talking to you.

DEBRA: Thank you. It’s nice to have you here. I know you’ve been on the show before. You were one of my first guests when I started the show a couple of years ago. But I think some things have changed since then. I see you have a new website. I see that – well, actually, how long have we known each other, like ten years or something like that?

MARLON PANDO: Yes, you hit the nail right on the head. It’s been ten years since I’ve been involved and running White Lotus Home.

Before I started, I had obviously researched about what you do. So yeah, I will say about ten years.

DEBRA: Okay, good. Now, before we go on, there’s a little sound quality problem with you. Let’s get you closer or farther away from your phone so that I can hear you a little better.

MARLON PANDO: Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Is that any better? I’m on the phone.

DEBRA: Okay, that’s a little better. Yeah, yeah. Okay!

MARLON PANDO: Got it!

DEBRA: So just try to stay that distance. It’s just a little fuzzy around the edges. Okay, good.

Tell us how you became involved with White Lotus Home. That wasn’t a company that you founded. You took over the company ten years ago. So, what made you interested in working with natural materials?

MARLON PANDO: I was born in Peru in South America. Being green was just part of life. When I came to this country, I got my MBA, I worked in corporate America and then discovered I had the opportunity to become the general manager of White Lotus Home. I just loved the idea, to put in my green history and my MBA into a company like White Lotus Home.

DEBRA: Yeah, you’ve done a really good job. I really see over the years how you have continued to increase refinement of the materials that you’re using, that you’re getting more and more organic materials and you’re looking at how the products are designed and all these things. I see this continuous improvement as new things become available. I see you’re using things like GOTS certified fabrics. And as things become available, you incorporate them into your products.

And I would say that you’re probably one of the most affordable places to get organic mattresses, pillows, bedding, all these things for your bed. You’re doing a great job of providing a really high quailty product at an affordable price.

MARLON PANDO: Oh, thank you, Debra. I really appreciate that. Yes, White Lotus Home, it’s actually gone through a lot, a lot of good stuff, a lot of positive. Our customers and our clients, they’re asking more and more for more natural and more organic. And even though we have to keep the company going and moving and profitable, it’s been easier to adapt to these new greener organic environment because of the demand.

DEBRA: Yes, yes. So what do you see over the years about the interest? Do you sales exploding? How is it going?

MARLON PANDO: To say it’s exploding is probably too much. But I do see word-of-mouth is spreading. That’s very big. Advertisment, it just doesn’t work really for our clientele. What I’ve noticed is that word-of-mouth is spreading so much that being able to buy products that are closest to us. Right now, in America, the fact that we hand-make right in New Jersey and it doesn’t have to be exported anywhere (or imported), the fibers and bedding that we use, people are loving that idea. They’re embracing it more and more. They’re feeling safer about it.

I feel like White Lotus Home can do what the Whole Foods market has done for organic food.

DEBRA: Oh, that would be wonderful. That would be wonderful. Actually, I’ve been to your store in Highland Park, New Jersey and I’ve seen your products being made. I can tell our listeners, they really are made by hand. There are no factories. There are no – what are they called, where it goes down the line? Do you still have the video on your website where it shows the hand-sewing of the mattress?

MARLON PANDO: Yes! Yeah, definitely.

DEBRA: That’s so beautiful. Listeners, you should go see. You can watch them on this video sewing the mattress by hand and tufting it. It’s like a dance between the maker of the mattress and the materials. It’s so beautiful. This is all done just right there in Highland Park, New Jersey, U.S.A. So there’s no shipping from other places where they might be pesticides sprayed in the shipping containers or things like that.

It’s just clean materials manufactured in America and then back to your door.

And if you’re in Highland Park or if you’re in – where’s your other store?

MARLON PANDO: Yeah, Miami, Florida. We’re also in New York City. Right now, we’re in Brooklyn, New York.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah. So you could go to one of their stores and try out the beds.

Anyway, we’re going to talk about pillows. Do you want to talk about the toxic materials that are in normal pillows, about why people shouldn’t buy them and buy yours instead?

MARLON PANDO: Well, we can touch about it. White Lotus Home, we’re more about, “This is what we have. This is [inaudible 00:07:56] or the next best thing for everyone to sleep on.”

We get a lot of folks that all of a sudden, read the labels under pillows or mattresses they sleep on and there’s a bunch of words in it that we just don’t know what they are. When you look at a White Lotus Home pillow, you’ll see 100% organic cotton, you’ll see kapok, you’ll see wool. You’ll see words like that that we can relate to and look up if we have to and get more information on. We won’t be having any polyesters, down and things like that in your pillows or mattresses [inaudible 00:08:40].

DEBRA: Yeah, I think that if you’re not buying a White Lotus Home pillow or a pillow from another manufacturer of natural pillows, what you’re getting is I think basically a polyurethane foam pillow. I don’t know if they put fire retardants on pillows made from polyurethan foam, but it’s extremely flammable. And if you have a polyurethan foam mattress or it’s in furniture, then it’s required to have fire retardants on it.

And then the other fill that you would get would be polyester (I’m just doing this off the top of my head), which is also a petroleum product.

That would be more of a fluffy stuffing. That’s called hypoallergenic. And then there’s down. That’s basically what you’re going to find in a department store, for example, if you go buy a pillow.

So Marlon, we need to go to break pretty quickly, but why don’t you start off and start telling us about your pillows. Let’s just talk about the materials first.

MARLON PANDO: Sure, sure. At White Lotus Home, you can have pillows that are made from 100% organic cotton, USDA certified organic cotton. That would be the fabrics on the outside and the inside. You could also get 100% organic USDA certified organic buckwheat pillows. We also hand-make old wool pillows and kapok pillows. They also offer just a really nice alternatives to the fibers that you’ve mentioned, polyesters and down and things like that.

DEBRA: Before we go on, we need to go to break. When we come back, we’ll discuss all of these thoroughly. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Marlon Pando. He’s president and owner of White Lotus Home. You can go to his website at WhiteLotusHome.com.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Marlon Pando. He is the president and founder of White Lotus Home. You can go to his website at WhiteLotusHome.com.

Okay, Marlon, tell us more about pillows.

MARLON PANDO: Sure, Debra. Thanks again. Yes, we were talking about pillows. I just wanted to mention, there was one thing you mentioned about pillows that have fire retardants now. There are laws [inaudible 00:14:23] the law to pass a fire retardant clothes. It’s really for the mattresses. But unfortunately, fire retardants had been found in pillows and bedding today and in sheets as well.

So we keep away from all that. For sure, any White Lotus Home pillow, it made 100% free of any chemical or any fire retardant.

What we’ve noticed is that there are a lot of folks coming to us because they are realizing that while they are living green, eating organic, they’re not sleeping [inaudible 00:15:06]. The idea that we sleep about a third of our lives away – we’re supposed to sleep eight hours a day. I know probably you and I don’t do that, Debra, but we try.

DEBRA: I try to sleep eight hours a day.

MARLON PANDO: You do! Same here, same here. I really try. So, the idea of, “What am I breathing eight hours a day on average?” And then when you look at those fibers, “What?! I’m breathing this, that polyester,” all of those stuff.

So that’s what we get. We’re getting people to realize that, “Hey, this is a third of my life. I’m investing in here, what I’m breathing when I’m sleeping.” And as you know more than I, Debra (I’ve read so much great stuff about it on your site), when we’re sleeping, if I’m not mistaken, it’s when our body is looking to re-fulfill, to reenergize.

DEBRA: That’s exactly right. In fact, if you don’t sleep properly, if you don’t sleep enough, if you don’t sleep that full eight hours, then your body’s detoxification system doesn’t detox. And that’s part of why our bodies are so overloaded with toxic chemicals now. It’s because in our society today, people aren’t sleeping and so their bodies aren’t detoxing and they’re exposed to all these toxic chemicals. So having the right pillow is really, really important to detox. It’s a detox tool.

MARLON PANDO: And funny enough, I was talking to a friend about this just the other day. That will be an ideal name [inaudible 00:16:42]. We’re not thinking about that. We’re thinking about, “Oh, is it comfortable? Is it pretty?” Meanwhile, can you imagine giving someone when they’re detoxing more chemicals to breathe? That’s what it comes down to.

Our customers just love the idea. Whenever we do pillow giveaways, which we do once a month, we get so many people interested and volunteer, so they can be picked as the winner that month. Whenever we do fairs and shows and contests, we’re always giving out free organic pillows. And people just love it! They [inaudible 00:17:19] to become the winners.

DEBRA: It makes a big difference. I want to tell our listeners today that I just got one of the White Lotus organic pillows. Well, I shouldn’t even say that. The pillow that I got was the kapok pillow. We’ll talk about the kapok as a material later. But I don’t think I can say kapok because there’s probably no such thing as organic kapok because it doesn’t go through the agriculture. It’s something that’s plucked off of a tree. So I don’t think there’s any pesticides on it because it comes out of a forest. It’s not an agricultural product. You’re not growing it as a crop like cotton.

Anyway, I got White Lotus’ kapok pillows. And I have to say that I honestly had been sleeping better on this pillow the last few nights since I got it. And last night, I slept a whole eight hours. I actually did!

MARLON PANDO: Okay!

DEBRA: And one of the things that I love about this pillow is it has exactly the right amount of fill in it for me. But if it didn’t, it comes with a little zipper on the side. And so you can open the zipper and put in more and take some out so that it’s just right for you. Goldilocks would love this pillow.

And the zipper is one of those invisible zippers. I don’t know if you all know what that’s like, but it’s not like a zipper with a lot of heavy metal teeth on it. It’s a little zipper that you can’t even see it on the side of the pillow. The end of the zipper is just right there. You can pull it down and open the pillow if you wanted to. And when it’s zipped closed, you can’t even tell that it’s there. This is just the most intelligent pillow that I’ve ever seen. I can’t think of a more perfect pillow!

MARLON PANDO: I’m so glad to hear that, Debra. With time, we have learned a lot of things. There’s a few things you’ve mentioned, but one of the things that we discovered when people are buying pillows (and unfortunately, we wish we could, but we’re not [inaudible 00:19:41]) is that when they got it, they like it, but they wish they could adjust them.

From there, you want folks that want to add more, remove more. So we do offer pillows without zippers and we also offer them with zippers. As you said, once you get there, once you go to sleep, you can wake up the next day or in the middle of the night and adjust it and store the beautiful fiber for future use or in a year or two, you can just add if necessary.

DEBRA: And one of the things that happens, I’ve been sleeping on natural pillows for 30 years. My first natural pillow was before there were even natural pillows. What I did was I got a pillow case and I rolled up some towels and I stuffed them in the pillow case because I didn’t want to sleep on that toxic pillow. And there were no pillows to buy then.

Buit since then, I think I’ve slept on every kind of pillow there is. So one of the t hings that I know is that they get a little out of shape. So if I can’t open it, then I’m trying to push the material around to make it comfortable and put it back in shape. And a lot of them, they lose their bounciness and their resilience.

So the fact that I can now open the pillow and put in more material (or take material out if I want to), I don’t have to re-buy a whole new pillow. When the pillow goes flat, I can just put more material in. And that’s a big savings on the price of the pillow.

We need to go to break. But when we come back, we’re going to talk about the different fillings that can go in a pillow. And Marlon will tell you our experiences with those different fillings and how they feel and why you might want to buy each filling or not.

So we’ll be right back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Marlon Pando, owner of White Lotus home. The website is at WhiteLotusHome.com. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Marlon Pando. He is the owner and president of White Lotus Home. That’s at WhiteLotusHome.com. They make mattresses, pillow and bedding out of all kinds of natural organic materials. And also, they have frames for beds and you can turn these mattresses into chairs and round chairs and sofas. You could practically furnish your whole house. Can you do that? Do you have something for every room?

MARLON PANDO: Oh, yes, for sure.

DEBRA: And on the website, when you go to the website, listeners, you’ll see many pictures going by in a slider of making the products, but also, the products in the store, pictures of products in the store. There’s a beautiful one of a sofa with light shining on it. It’s actually a great sofa picture.

So anyway, let’s talk about what I would consider to be the four major fillings for a pillow and why you might want to chose one over the other. Those are buckwheat, cotton, wool and kapok. So let’s talk about those four. I’ve never slept on a buckwheat pillow, so I don’t know very much about that experience or why one would want to do that. What are the benefits of that?

MARLON PANDO: Just quickly, I do want to mention that we can help you make your entire home as clean as possible [inaudible 00:28:21] and things like that. But I know we want to focus on pillows tonight, which is great.

Debra, the question always is, “What is the best pillow?” And it’s not necessarily [inaudible 00:28:38]. That’s what you get from traditional suppliers. We ask questions first. How do you sleep? Do you sleep on your back, side or your stomach? The majority of these people that we see in America, they sleep on their side, the majority.

DEBRA: I sleep on my side.

MARLON PANDO: You do? Same here actually.

DEBRA: My left side.

MARLON PANDO: I sleep on both. But anyway, I noticed that the kapok we’re talking so much about is how you deal for that. Kapok, it’s very nice [inaudible 00:29:21]. It holds the shape for a really long time. We noticed that [inaudible 00:29:26].

When we sleep on our side, our necks doesn’t need support. We’ve got that support as the rest of our body. And the same thing goes. The kapok pillows can come soft, middle and firm [inaudible 00:29:41], which you were describing before. We call those ‘hidden zippers’. You can’t even see them.

DEBRA: Mm-hmmm… no, you can’t.

MARLON PANDO: Yeah. So then you have folks who sleep on their back, which is the secondary, people sleep on their back. Or at least you start in your back and you end up moving around sometimes. But those are the folks that, believe or not, will prefer a little bit firmer, a little bit more supportive than just balancing. So those are the folks that will get the organic cotton.

And then we’ve noticed that those folks, they feel like, “No, not enough. I need a little more for firmness, for support.” Those are the folks that primarily will go with the organic buckwheat pillow.
DEBRA: Okay.
MARLON PANDO: The organic buckwheat pillow [inaudible 00:30:25]. It gives you support. So pretty much, when you put your head down, it’s going to be like [inaudible 00:30:36] as to where the pillow will get a little squishy and bouncy and things like that.

DEBRA: Yeah.

MARLON PANDO: And the wool, it’s more for those of us that are very [inaudible 00:30:50]. Sometimes, people, they’ll [inaudible 00:30:57]. Wool is a fiber that does keep you cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter. Wool is also [inaudible 00:31:06]. It’s a natural fire retardant, which is great. It actually absorbs moisture. So it keeps our head cooler at night. But the wool starts very, very soft and does get a little bit [inaudible 00:31:22] with time.

That’s why we have these options. These four options help just everyone have a better place to sleep, a cleaner and leaner pillows to sleep on.

DEBRA: Yeah, there really is something for everyone. So my experience sleeping on all these different pillows has been – first of all, I never had a buckwheat pillow, so I can’t say anything to that. But when pillows started first being available made out of natural materials, the first ones were cotton pillows. And so I got a cotton pillow.

The thing about cotton, whether it’s in a pillow or in a mattress, is it does compress. It doesn’t have the resiliency that wool has much better resiliency. And so it gets harder and harder.

The first natural mattress I had, it was a cotton futton on the floor. It was so hard. It was just so hard. It was way too uncomfortable for me.

And then, this is on a show about mattresses, so I won’t give my whole history of mattresses. But then I went to wool.

Right now, I sleep on a wool mattress. I had my wool mattress, this particular one, I don’t know, 20 years or something and it’s just as beautiful as it was on its first day. It’s on wood slats. It’s extremely comfortable. But my wool pillows compressed. They flattened down and they get in strange shapes. I can’t open them, so I can’t really get them back into shape that I want them to be. And so, for me, that’s a drawback because every once in a while, I need to buy a wool pillow.

But I’m really happy with this kapok pillow now. I’ve only had it a few nights of course, so I don’t know how it’s going to hold up over time.

But I’ll tell you that the second I put my head on the pillow, I fell asleep. It was pretty amazing! Usually, I rest and then I lie in bed and think and then I have to get a glass of water and all these stuff. And I actually just laid down and I went right to sleep. It was pretty amazing!

MARLON PANDO: Yes, it is amazing. You’ll be surprised how many times we hear that. It’s a new fiber for us.

Now, crazy enough, the kapoks had been around for over a long, long time. Just after the industrial revolution, they started making all these other synthetic fibers and then kapok got replaced. But believe it or not, in the 1920s, people used to go even to Mt. Everest, they used to wear these boots and [inaudible 00:34:15] kapok. There had been warships that used to be full of kapoks, mattresses and beddings.

So they’ve been around. But thank God, now they’re coming back. And also, the fiber, it comes lighter than cotton and [inaudible 00:34:33] that you mentioned, which is great.

DEBRA: So we need to go to break and when we come back, I actually would like to tell a little bit more about kapok because I think most people don’t physically know what it is, so let’s describe that.

So you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Marlon Pando from White Lotus Home. Their website is WhiteLotusHome.com. You should go there and see all his beautiful things. The website looks really great.

They recently got a new website and it has lots of pictures. Just scroll down the home page and you can see that video about how they make the pillows and how they make the mattresses. You see everything. Nothing is behind closed doors here. You can see. You can go to the store and touch it and talk to them and everything. It’s all out in the open. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =
DEBRA: You’re listening to the Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Marlon Pando, president of White Lotus Home. Their website is WhiteLotusHome.com.

So we were talking about kapok before the break. And one of the things that I love about kapok, first of all, kapok is not a fiber that is a crop like cotton. It’s not an animal like wool. It’s a tree. It grows in the forest. It’s actually a very tall, majestic tree. It’s been quite revered throughout the ages. It grows these pods. And inside the pods are these seeds.

And so what the kapok is, the fiber of kapok is, the stuff that goes around the seeds. So when the pod bursts open, what nature wants is for those seeds to fly all over the place and make more baby kapok trees. And so, this is the fluffy stuff, kapok, in the pillows. This is the fluffy stuff that’s usually around the seed.

And so to harvest it, they take the pods after the tree has done what it needs to do to make these pods. And then they take the pods and then they pull this fluff off the seeds and that’s it. I think they wash it or something and that’s it. So it’s just this completely natural material. The trees are left standing and it grows more pods. It’s very sustainable.

Marlon? Hello, can you hear me? Uh-oh…

MARLON PANDO: Ah, yes. No, I totally agree with you, Debra. I have a lot of customers [inaudible 00:40:51]. They call it the ‘vegetarian down’ [inaudible 00:40:57] with wool. So it does all that. And it does grow, like you said, in forests. There’s no need for anything be added or included in it. It’s like cracking open like a banana and using the inside of the banana to make a pillow. That’s how nice and pure it is.

DEBRA: Yeah, it is like that. I really like that idea. I like the idea that the fiber is there in nature to carry off the seed. It floats through the air. I think of that when I’m going to put my head on the pillow. I think, “Well, this fiber in the pillow comes from this wonderful tree and is now supporting me in sleeping.”

And there’s nothing toxic about it. It has no odor, nothing. I know with some things like cotton, some people can’t tolerate cotton because it has little bits of oil and things in it because that’s the nature of the cotton.

MARLON PANDO: Yes, that’s right.

DEBRA: It’s not that it’s toxic or not natural. It’s just that’s the nature of the cotton. So, some people with allergies can’t tolerate that. And this is just nothing like that. Again, I’ll just say I can’t think of a more perfect filling for a pillow.

MARLON PANDO: Right! I completely agree. I totally agree. We do carry, as you know, a number of options. This is one of option that has been totally embraced by all my clients and customers. Some of them do know of kapok from other parts of the world and from these historical things that they’ve done. [Inaudible 00:42:43] they see the pod, they see where it comes from, they say it’s just almost unreal. It’s great that we have them, kapok.

DEBRA: Yeah, I hope that it gets a lot more use. So back to pillows, you have a number of different sizes of pillows. Can you tell us about that?

MARLON PANDO: Sizes? Yes. I mean, we offer every standard pillow there is. So when folks come to shop with us, they don’t have to worry about getting a custom-made pillowcase, et cetera (but we can do that too).

But what happens is there has been different needs, different requirements. We have our travel pillow. We have our standard pillow, which is a 20” x 26” pillow. Then you have the queen pillow. Two of those next to each other are ideal for a queen sized bed. Then we have king sized pillow. It’s the same thing. They’re more for king sized beds.

Then we get into the idea of buckwheat, organic buckwheat. Those pillows tend to be heavier than others because it’s just [inaudible 00:43:49] are smaller. Again, the same idea of having healthy pillows, you also want them to be comfortable. I mean, we couldn’t have a pillow fight with a buckwheat pillow because…

DEBRA: No, it would hurt.

MARLON PANDO: Yes. Yes, yes. So that’s what all the options are for. And then, on top of that, as you know, when people finally find us and people in our industry that does organic (because thank God, we’re not the only one. I’m really proud of that. I love that other people are doing this), some folks have special needs. We’ll do custom sized pillows, mattresses and other beddings because of that. So that’s why we have such a longer, wider selection of sizes.

DEBRA: Yes. So again, you can really get almost anything you want. And one of the things that I found as a consumer advocate over the years – because I’ve been doing this for 30 years. And actually, November 1st, it’s going to be 31 years, my 31 years of books in print (but I started before that).

MARLON PANDO: Oh, wow! That’s great.

DEBRA: The thing is if you’re wanting to find out what’s in a product or you’re wanting to get exactly what you want, you just can’t go down to a big box store and get any or all information on the product or get what you want, your own custom whatever. But with a business like White Lotus Home, they’re right there. You can walk in the store and Marlon is there (in one of the three stores) and he knows what’s going on. They’re happy to serve you. You can find out exactly what the materials are. If you want something custom-made, you can have it custom-made. It’s like they’re there with you.

These kinds of businesses, you can really get produts that are much less toxic and toxic-free because you’re dealing with the people who actually have the idea that they want it to be toxic-free and are makign sure that they have the materials and the processes.

Sometimes, I think people, they look around and they go, “Well, all products, you can’t find out what they are and all products have toxic things in them.” Well, no, that’s not true. There are a lot of businesses like this. I have a lot of them listed on my website on Debra’s List that are small businesses like this where they’re making exceptional products that are exceptionally pure. They want to serve you with things that are healthy for you to use.

I would like all products to come from businesses like this. Really, I walked in the store and I could look at all the materials, I could watch them making a product. How can you have something better than that.

MARLON PANDO: Thank you, Debra. I appreciate all that. And yes, I think [inaudible 00:46:45] is what our customers really love about us. We’re not [inaudible 00:46:51] company. We’re not saying we have it all. But what we have, we will explain to you.

I can tell you right now that all my organic cotton, it’s grown right here in Texas. I can tell you right now that [inaudible 00:47:07] made here and handcrafted right behind one of my showrooms in New Jersey.

We’re also still family-owned. My sister is the vice president of White Lotus Home. She’s Elizabeth Pando. She lives in Miami and she runs the Miami store. My father who’s retired actually helps out in the New Jersey store. You’ll definitely going to be dealing with us directly.

DEBRA: Right, right. And so you know what’s going on. You know. If some employee were to bring toxic cleaning product in the store, you would know it.

MARLON PANDO: Exactly, exactly.

DEBRA: And you’re watching for things like that. And so it’s not like the owner is often some corporate office and people who don’t understand the concept or working behind the counter. Everybody is aligned and you know what you’re doing and you know what your philosophy is and what you want to put across in the world. And this is the result. I’m very happy with what you’re doing.

MARLON PANDO: Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, I’m getting your support, your listeners and our customers. It’s been very helpful. It’s easy in today’s business environment to try and look for cheaper ways to do things. We’ve realized [inaudible 00:48:26] and just being smart, just being smart about our rule. It has been very, very helpful with our growth.

I mean, our number one thing that we have at White Lotus Home is our integrity. It’s been around for 35 years and still we get customers that know us. Before, it was [inaudible 00:48:47] and they don’t come back just because this what they feel is the best for them. So I’m very excited.

DEBRA: I’m very excited too. I’m just sitting here, your website is up on the screen while we’re doing the show. I just saw a picture that had my book on the picture.

MARLON PANDO: Yeah!

DEBRA: The book Toxic-Free is right on your home page.

MARLON PANDO: Yup, yup! I hope that’s okay. I hope that’s okay. We really always, always, always tell folks, “Don’t listen to us. Go to Debra. She has a lot of questions. She has a lot of answers. Go there.” We do get people that have called and they say, “Yeah, I come here because of Debra.”

DEBRA: I’m glad they tell you. I’m glad they tell you.

Alright! So we only have about 15 seconds left. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Again, listeners, you can go to WhiteLotusHome.com and see all of Marlon’s – there’s my book again – WhiteLotusHome.com and see all of Marlon’s pillows and mattresses and see which ones you’d like for you. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well!