Sustainable Ecommerce

EP67 - The Keys To Success with Wholesale Platforms with Lucy Jeffrey

Welcome to Episode 67!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep67
Last week we heard the first part of our conversation with Lucy Jeffrey from Bare Kind, and we explored how she communicates impact, which included some really important lessons for all impact-entrepreneurs. 
If you haven’t already listened, I recommend you backtrack and listen to that episode first, because it sets us up for today’s show. 
But the reason I asked Lucy to join me was that in just 12-18 months, she has been phenomenally successful in driving growth through wholesale channels, bringing on over 700 stores. 
With profitable growth being trickier than ever for eCommerce brands this year, especially sustainable brands with an inherently higher Cost of Goods, I wanted pick Lucy’s brains and give you access to some of the key insights she’s picked up on how to make that work.
To quickly summarise where we got to in the last episode, Lucy’s brand has been growing very well, with 10X growth in 2021 and then doubling into 2022, but largely due to the increasing cost of acquisition together with increases in retail shipping costs, their growth in 2022 came without increased profit. Bare Kind have a largely giftable product set that is heavily seasonal, 60% of their revenue is tied to Christmas sales, so to smooth that out as well as find a more profitable growth strategy, she’s turned to wholesale, specifically through wholesale marketplaces like Faire. 
In this episode we dive into more details about Lucy’s strategy so that you can replicate her success.
We learn about how to get the most from wholesale platforms, how to price products for success, and much much more.

EP66 - Growing Profit for Purpose with Lucy Jeffrey

Welcome to Episode 66!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep66
Today we’re chatting with a founder who’s every breath is focused on driving profit to enable her brand’s purpose.  Lucy Jeffrey is the inspirational young founder of Barekind, a brand that makes a range of animal themed bamboo socks. With every sale, 10% of profits from go directly to supporting conservation projects protecting the featured animal.
Now, I asked Lucy to join me on the show, not just because she’s growing a really awesome sustainable brand, but because I became aware of the phenomenal success they’ve been having with wholesale, and I wanted to pick her brains about that for strategies you could use in your brands too.  However, I was so fascinated by our discussion that we accidentally carried on for over an hour, so to make the content a little more manageable and fit in your day, I’ve decided to split the recording over 2 episodes.
Today’s episode then focuses on Profit and Impact. There are some really interesting lessons I want to share with you about how Barekind communicate their impact, which are immensely important to understand if your brand is strongly purpose-driven. Towards the end, we touch on how important wholesale has been to building a bigger profit base for the brand, which of course enables more impact. 
Then, in next week’s show, we’ll come back to the second half of our interview where we’ll explore the exact strategies Barekind are using to get into over 700 retail stores. I’ll be ruthlessly quizzing Lucy for tips and tricks for success in wholesaling, and we’ll learn how you can get your hands on even more insights to take your wholesale strategy to the next level.

EP65 – Balancing Growth and Sustainability with Hayden Brass

Welcome to Episode 65 of Sustainable Ecommerce!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep65
If you were to take the time to go all the way back to Episode 1, you’d hear my original definition of Sustainable Ecommerce. 
While my knowledge of this space has certainly exploded thanks to all the amazing guests we’ve had on the show, chatting to today’s guest forced me to look all the way back to those foundation principles and remember that above all else, sustainable ecommerce is about managing balance.
It’s about managing the balance between profit and purpose. It’s about managing the balance between growth and sustainability, between analysis versus action, between building knowledge internally versus hiring external talent, between supporting small, local and uncertified providers vs validated overseas brands, between enthusiastically sharing how your product is better for the planet vs avoiding greenwashing at all costs.
So, my guest today is Hayden Brass, founder and CEO of Zea, a sustainable health & wellness brand with the goal to improve the quality of life and enrich the wellbeing of 10 million people globally by 2030. 
Today’s conversation is a fascinating one because Hayden shares insights into just how pervasive that balance is, across all facets of his brand.
He also candidly shares many of the challenges he’s faced in the struggle to maintain the balance, especially when you’re striving for growth in both business and impact.

EP64 – Getting a Sustainable Brand into Coles with Prue Rocchi

Welcome to Episode 64!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep64
Today we’re chatting with the founder of another brand making very deliberate, conscious decisions to reduce their footprint and help their customers live more sustainable lives.
Prue Rocci is the founder of Rocc Naturals, a dental care brand aiming to make more nutritious toothpaste without the lasting impact on landfill. 
In fact every year, over 1.5billion tubes of toothpaste end up in landfill, and being made in a non-recyclable way, there they stay for over 500 years.  Rocc has combined a complete reformulation of their paste with biodegradable tubes that break down in just 6 years. 
The brand has been on the market for just a couple of years, and quite impressively managed to secure national distribution through Coles in their very first year.  Chatting with founders who think about sustainability just as much as growing their brand is always fascinating, and if getting into the big chains is something on your growth horizon, this episode is definitely one for you!

EP63 - Winning Sustainability Awards as a Strategy for Proof with Sue Campbell

Welcome to Episode 63 of the Sustainable Ecommerce Podcast!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep63
One of the most important and challenging aspects to sustainability marketing is ensuring your story is authentic.  You can and should get science-backed proof in the form of certifications, and I’m working on a mini-series to help you with that later this year.
While those elements are important, they’re not the full story.  To choose your brand, customers want to know that your products are both better functionally AND better for the environment.  Proving sustainability claims with science does just that, without focusing on proving how your product solves the customer’s problem.
So today we’re exploring 2 other forms of proof that check off both of these two problem sets by talking with a founder that I think is doing this particularly well. 
My guest today is Sue Campbell, an Aussie entrepreneur building her solid shampoo brand KIND2 over in the UK.  Being bootstrapped, like many brands cashflow is extremely tight, which means spending 10’s of thousands on Life Cycle Assessments was out of sight, yet Sue knew that customers were never simply going to take her word for how her shampoo was both effective and Kind to the Planet.
And to solve that she’s always placed a strong focus on acquiring the 2 forms of proof we’re talking about today.  The first is social proof, and of course we’re talking about reviews and testimonials.   And the other one is sustainability awards.  Of all the brands we’ve had on the show so far, I think Kind2 probably has the biggest trophy cabinet, which is no small achievement given she really only has a handful of products. 
What I’m excited to share with you though is the strategic approach she takes to getting those awards.

Ep62 - Every Brand Can Make Conscious Choices w/ Bridget Carmady

Welcome to Episode 62!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep62
 
Obviously its inspiring and sexy to chat with the founders of brands that have been built from the outset to solve sustainability problems. Whether that’s actively using up recycled materials and eliminating trash or working on minimizing food waste or turning into something of value, they always make for compelling episodes.
But I never want to lose sight of the fact that every brand has an important part to play in how we collectively build a healthier planet.
So, I think it’s really important to cast a hero spotlight too on the brands who’s core Purpose lies outside sustainability, yet still weave conscious, sustainability-focused approaches into everything they do. And today’s guest is a brilliant example of that.  
Bridget Carmady is the Founder of Clemence Organics, a skincare brand built on the backbone of certified organic ingredients and Bridget’s experience as a Naturopath.  
That’s awesome in itself, but if you isolate the brand Purpose from how Bridget navigates the choices she’s making on everything from suppliers, to primary packaging, to logistics, you’ll see exactly what I mean when I say that any brand can make conscious and sustainable choices.
 

EP61 – Is This The New Hero Among Plant-Based Leather Alternatives?

Welcome to Episode 61!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep61
As brands we can help consumers live more sustainable lives in many different ways. Perhaps central to our value in that regard is what we make our products out of, the materials we choose to use. 
So, I’m always very excited to discover new sustainable materials, especially in the fashion and apparel space.  One particular area I’ve been reading up on is the emerging field of plant-base leather alternatives.  You may have heard of products like Pinatex made from Pineapple leaves, and Cactus Leaf Leather, which has been taking European fashion houses by storm over the past year or two. 
In my humble opinion, neither of these two vegan leather alternatives hold a candle to the Leaf Leather I want to introduce you to today. 
My guest is Sridevi Blair, founder at Karuna Dawn, a new ethical and sustainable brand bringing Fair Trade bags and accessories to the Australian market. 
I don’t want to get too carried away in my personal excitement about her leaf leather products, because doing so would detract from the overall story of her brand and the importance of the ethical choices she’s making across her various suppliers, which we also explore in this episode.
Nevertheless, Karuna Dawn’s leaf leather products are among the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen!

EP60 - Are Sustainable Products Ever Really ”Done”?

Welcome to Episode 60!
https://sustainable-ecom.com/ep60
Frankie Layton is the founder of the Dirt Company, among the earliest of this new breed of brands in the laundry and home cleaning space truly redefining what it means to be sustainable in this category.
As a founder of an early stage brand, it can be so confusing to know the best pathways to grow and evolve, but reflecting back on this conversation with Frankie I’m forced to concede that if I were starting a sustainable brand from scratch, I would approach it just like Frankie did. 
If I was designing and improving new products, I would follow Frankie’s methodology. 
If I was leading a DTC brand really looking for better ways to operate, I would try to live up to Frankie’s commitment and finally if I wanted a shining example of how to ensure my brand’s Purpose was congruent end to end, I can think of few better brands to model out.