Ep51 - Using Sustainability Story to Grow Your Brand with Mckenna Haz

Welcome to Episode 51 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!

https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep51

This week we go a little further afield and we cross the waves to the US for our founder interview.  Mckenna Haz is a young Canadian entrepreneur, building a sustainable activewear brand call SEAAV.  Now activewear is an immensely crowded market with giants like Underarmour, 2XL, Lululemon and countless others, not to mention a raft of yoga-specialist brands, which is the space Mckenna started in as recently as 2020.  The fact that in the face of that competition she’s seen significant success already, and indeed been able secure venture funding to scale, suggests she’s doing some things really really well.  

Now, looking from the outside, I had a fair idea that the magic was in the way she’s leveraging her sustainability-oriented brand story.  Some of you may know that we’ve recently completed a huge marketing effectiveness assessment of 500 brands, and ranked them all according to how well we think they’re communicating to the market. 

Despite being a small fish in the very large activewear ocean, Mckenna’s brand SEAAV came in the top 10, which immediately tells us that she’s really doing a great job of slicing up the message so it’s effective in the customer journey. But I was excited to chat with her on the show to hear from the founder herself about how important story is, and how she’s leveraging that story to drive growth in everything from following to sales.

What follows I think is a really unique insight into how this sustainability story thing can be leveraged, not just on the store, but in attracting influencers, investors and building community.