The LEMI SHINE story, a Founder’s story:

If you have navigated to this page, you are interested in learning the story of Lemi Shine and its origins, including who founded the company and how this brand and product line came into existence.

Lemi Shine was invented by Kendall Harter in Midland, Texas, in 1994.

Kendall Harter grew up in Midland, Texas, and is a former Expert Motocross racer, Marine Corps Veteran, Commercial Pilot, and Serial Inventor and Entrepreneur.

Always interested in creating solutions to existing problems, he set out to solve the “Hard Water” problem in West Texas, where locals would often call the area tap water, “Liquid Rocks.”

The culprits with West Texas water are commonly calcium and magnesium in the form of carbonate, bicarbonates, and sulfates that are dissolved as underground water passes through limestone and gypsum formations, dissolving massive amounts of these elements into household water supplies.

For a better understanding of hard water, Abilene, TX water averages 240 mg/L as CaCO3, equivalent to 14 grains per gallon, and is considered very hard water.
Midland, TX has even harder water, @ 500 ppm / or 29.3 gpg/grains per gallon. Odessa, TX averages 360 ppm / 21 gpg.

The water in West Texas is some of the most mineral-rich water in the country, often leaving your dishes, silverware, and glassware looking as if they had been dipped in whole milk and left to dry. A frequently embarrassing scenario, when serving a house guest with a beverage while visiting, leaving them to wonder: “Do you ever wash your dishes?” As the hard water issue was often not known to persons traveling into West Texas to visit, it frequently would be a topic of discussion for those learning of this “Liquid Rock” issue for the first time.

The water wreaks havoc on many things, including plumbing, valves, water softening systems, and a myriad of items that come into contact with this liquid nemesis.

Always interested in chemistry, Mr. Harter developed Lemi Shine while serving as the corporate pilot for numerous well-known businesses, families, and corporate figures in the oil and gas industry in West Texas. He developed the product while serving as the Chief Pilot for Benchmark Research & Technology, a large chemical commodities company that serves the oil and gas industry. The owner and founder of Benchmark Research & Technology knew Mr. Harter had a keen interest in chemical technology. They would offer that when Mr. Harter wasn’t flying the corporate aircraft for Benchmark’s team, he could assist in the lab with the team of engineers and scientists working to design new chemical formulations for the oilfield. According to Harter, it was a fantastic experience.

Harter would go on to say that Wayne Kinsey, founder of Benchmark Research & Technology, would have a profound impact on his career trajectory, as did Don Evans, CEO of Tom Brown, Inc. in Midland—people he admired and learned a great deal from.

This unique experience served as a catalyst for Mr. Harter to look beyond a professional piloting career and develop his own innovative chemical formulas that address significant everyday problems.

When asked about his flying experience, Harter indicated that: “Generally speaking, most professional pilots would fly for free, but you get paid to wait.”

Mr. Harter founded Envirocon Technologies, Inc. in 1994 in his garage in Midland, TX, with $9,000.00 of $14,000.00 he had saved. He felt he could solve the hard water problems that plagued West Texas, leaving homeowners frustrated with the results of their automatic dishwashers. Dishwashers were left gasping for more horsepower to clean, as the hard water deposits and minerals would, over time, clog the internal components and slowly degrade their performance, effectively rendering them virtually useless after only a few short years of regular use. This led to the need to replace the dishwasher, as it was often less expensive to replace the unit than to disassemble it and replace internal components, hoses, and pumps that had become damaged due to the severe hard water buildup.

His first branded product, Citra Clean, was introduced in 1994. He began distributing the product he had produced in a two-car garage in Central Midland, Texas.

Harter says he would change the name to Lemi Shine by 1996, because Coca Cola was rebranding their long standing RTD beverage “Fresca” to “Citra”, and he was concerned that there might be some conflict at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, so he rebranded his own product to Lemi Shine, in hopes to circumnavigate any potential for a trademark scirmich with the likes of Coca Cola, the Atlanta, GA. based giant.

Harter came up with the name Lemi Shine, as he was looking for a name that still spoke to a fresh Lemon-Lime vibe, while being perhaps so unique, yet memorable, that maybe no one else would have the “Lemi” name. The internet was just getting started in 1994 (the same year Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com, which initially sold only books), so it was not as easy a task to research names and the USPTO as it would later become.

Harter says it was “interesting starting a company at this time, there was a lot of excitement about the future of the internet and what it would mean for business and commerce, and how this new technology would make global business within reach of even the smallest of businesses.” At the time, there was no social media, no TikTok, no Instagram, or Facebook. Harter says the product quickly became a great “Word of Mouth” brand, and that “if you knew about it, you wanted to share the amazing results from using the product, as many customers would indicate: ‘It’s the only thing that works!”.

Harter knew he had solved a significant problem and set out to expand production and distribution, as well as increase awareness beyond West Texas, so the company really started to grow.

Lemi Shine began as a DSD (Direct Store Delivery) product, which was delivered exclusively by Harter in his 1988 Honda CRX Si. Harter says to this day, that it was the most amazing corporate vehicle he’s ever had in any fleet and that while it was a small four cyliner hatchback, it would hold an incredible amount of product for delivery and faithfully served as the company delivery vehicle for the first 3 or 4 years, as the company began to get solid traction throughout West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, Harter’s initial DSD route radius.

Harter had found his true passion in CPG and was “loving every minute of the experience” of learning about this business, retail distribution, supply chains, broker partners, and expanding production, as well as all that fast growth entailed.

It was essential to Harter that the company have a look and feel of “a large company”, as he realized from Day One, that he was going head-to-head with the most prominent players in CPG, including Proctor and Gamble, (Known as “Proctor & God” within the industry, as well as S.C. Johnson, and Reckitt Colman, Benckiser, and within the largest retailers in the U.S., including Kroger, Albertson’s, Walmart, Target.

Harter offered a Money-Back Guarantee on all products he manufactured and provided a toll-free telephone line and website address on each bottle from the brand's inception. He wanted to ensure that customers could get in touch with a real person who cared about their questions and needs, as well as understanding that the internet was emerging, and that a web presence for the brand would be very critical, later turning the company website into a full ecommerce site, one of the first cleaning product manufacturers to offer DTC (Direct to consumer) purchasing of it’s brands.