Life Challenges Can’t Stop this Entrepreneurial Couple from Their Eco Mission

How Two Entrepreneurs Overcame to Bring the First Eco-Friendly Cloth Towels to Market

Entrepreneurs know they need to take risks and think outside-the-box, and that’s what Gary and Kathy Weltman have proven for 34 years.

In fact, innovation has never been more critical, nor has the need to address climate change and encourage environmentally friendly habits while keeping people healthy.

The key is convincing consumers that they actually can do their part to save the environment — by just taking one simple and inexpensive step — and feeling great about making that difference.

After 20 months of COVID precautions, we’ve learned that we are fully capable of thriving amid unprecedented challenges — and that includes finding better solutions than we could have imagined.

Those lessons just happen to be old hat to the Weltmans, a true-life against-all-odds couple who’ve reused, recycled and stayed mindful of their carbon footprint long before it was in vogue, and overcome hurdles in life that would have defeated a superhero.

“Our motto remains the same,” Kathy says. “Don’t let anything stop you!”

Against All Odds: Keep Moving Forward.

Gary and Kathy have been entrepreneurial most of their lives. For Gary, it began when he moved to Phoenix and found a niche in the industrial textile market. He created his own company and Kathy, having extensive entrée to this market via her father’s company in Los Angeles, fit right in and helped Gary create the largest industrial textile company in Arizona.

Kathy, who is severely hearing disabled — the result of having the measles when she was just 18 months old — is a breast cancer survivor.

Gary survived traumatic brain injury after falling 20 feet through the roof of his industrial warehouse on the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary. He was hospitalized in the intensive care unit for three weeks, then spent four weeks in a rehabilitation hospital, and underwent two years of additional rehab. Kathy was instrumental in helping Gary heal and return to his new normal while also running the company by herself.

Through it all, they found a way to work together, just as they always have.

The Original Cloth “Paper” Towel

The couple’s life and business collaborations would lead them to create the world’s first, and still the highest quality reusable cloth “paper” towel.

Gary’s brainchild is Rakot75 — reusable cloth paper towels that are washable, lint-free and tear-resistant so they can be used and abused over and over.

The cloth towels is made of 100% bamboo, a plant that needs no pesticides and adds softness to other fibers during the processing stage.

It’s a great alternative to traditional paper towels and a much more affordable, long-term option for people concerned about contributing to caring for the environment and reducing the number of paper towels in landfills.

The Environmental & Economic Impact Facts

It takes 17 trees and more than 20,000 gallons of water to make one ton of paper towels. Most paper towels and facial tissues are made from virgin paper. This means no recycled content is used to make a product that is thrown away after just one use.​

In the USA alone, 13 billion pounds (6,500,000 tons) of paper towels are sent to landfills each year. The decay of paper products and landfills in general produce methane gas, which is 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide, therefore a real threat to global warming.​

• The average paper towel generates more CO2 per dry than other methods.
• Paper Towels are one of the biggest causes of blocked drains and cost on average 95% more than hand dryers.
• ​By comparison, bamboo cloth towels are more durable, organic, eco-friendly and sustainable with many more uses.

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Why Bamboo

· Bamboo, a naturally growing plant, regenerates every few months, as opposed to trees that cannot regrow or reharvest.

· The responsibly sourced bamboo has a unique molecular structure that makes Rakot75 towels more absorbent than paper towels.

· The Rakot75 big cloth paper towel replacements offer better cleaning ability than paper towels, saving you repeated trips to the store.

· Rakot75 Zero Waste cloth towels are soft enough for babies’ skin, but strong enough to clean the toughest messes.

· The super easy cloth sheets can be machine-washed and air dried.

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You can’t beat the economics of Rakot75. On Amazon, the company sells the largest rolls at the best prices — 75 big sheets (11-by-16-inches per sheet) costs just $19.95 per roll. By comparison, competitors are selling a lower quality product of just 20 sheet-rolls for more than $10.

Empty Shelves. High Demand.

The cleaning explosion of 2020 due to Covid-19, left store shelves bare when paper towels were in short supply, put higher demand on the Rakot75 reusable cloth paper towels.

In fact, NBC-TV’s “Today” show innovation correspondent Steve Greenberg featured Rakot75 in three television news stories in 2020 as a cleaning alternative that not only lasts but has hundreds of other uses.

Gary can still recall the shocked reaction of a dinner guest — a wine connoisseur — after a Rakot75 cloth proved the perfect strainer to pour a bottle of wine into a new container after the cork broke. The cloth caught the cork residue while leaving the wine’s purity intact.

Kathy credits Rakot75’s success to Facebook, which offered a convenient outlet to engage with customers over trying to read people’s lips or strain to hear on the phone.

It also became the perfect place — before Snap and TikTok — to share videos, like the cork strainer video, that display the versatility of the product.

Now, the couple aims to see Gary’s dream fulfilled: To introduce their luxurious, eco-friendly and affordable product to everyone who values the environment and Rakot75’s high quality and commitment to sustainability.

“Gary is the idea guy, and I execute it into reality,” Kathy said. “Simply put, macro and micro.”

Though they’re a winning team, they decompress in their own ways. For Kathy, that’s a manicure or a massage or a date at the hair salon. For Gary, it’s immersing himself into projects like landscaping and making wood furniture or sculptures, recycling and reusing what he can.

Both believe their resiliency has been earned out of necessity and urge all entrepreneurs to stay focused and see your dream through. “Life will give you doses of reality that provide insight into what really matters and it will challenge you to find out how badly you really want it. You have two choices. We recommend to keep moving forward,” says Kathy.