Decarbonizing Commerce

Host Keith Anderson is joined by Ankit Patel, Vice President of Sustainable Solutions at ZeroMe, a platform for companies to engage and align their workforce with the company's sustainability goals through personalized awareness and education. Together, they cover interesting topics like the commonalities and distinctions between the rise of e-commerce and now the rise of sustainability, as well as tipping points that will nudge this discipline and this topic to the same level of sort of mainstream interest and adoption that e-commerce has experienced.
Learn more about Ankit Patel:

• Link to ZeroMe’s website
• Link to Ankit’s LinkedIn

Episode resources:

• Metallica’s European Tour Showcases Renewable-Energy Big Rigs—And Their Limits - WSJ 

If you enjoyed this episode then please:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
• Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co
  
  

Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=p8m5x1y8

Keith Anderson is joined by Darko Mandich, founder of MeliBio, a sustainable plant-based honey alternative. Together, they discuss the importance of new sustainable alternatives to industries that impact both the environment and animal welfare, contrasting conventional approaches with the innovative practices of MeliBio regarding the commercial considerations of honey alternatives. Tune in for an enlightening perspective on the commerce, innovation, and considerations regarding honey bees and the industry built around them.
Learn more about Darko Mandich:

• Link to MeliBio’s website
• Link to Darko Mandichh’s LinkedIn

Episode resources:

• Mellody Foods 

If you enjoyed this episode then please:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
  
  

Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co

TRANSCRIPT BELOW: 

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. 

Hello, welcome back to the decarbonizing commerce podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and we've got a sweet episode for you this week. Our guest is Darko Mandic, founder of MeliBio, a sustainable plant-based honey alternative. And we talk a lot about the importance of creating, new sustainable alternatives and industries that, We have a significant impact on the environment and animal welfare.

We do some comparison and contrasting of conventional approaches to honey production versus the practices that MellyBio is using. And we spent a ton of time on some of the consumer and commercial considerations that Darko and his team have faced in areas like taste and unit economics and distribution strategy,

as they develop the product and are building both a national brand in Mellody, which you'll hear more about, and supporting some retailers with private label brands. So, I'm really excited for you to meet Darko, learn more about bees, honey, and MeliBio.

Darko, thanks so much for joining us. Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast.

Darko Mandich: Thanks for having me.

Keith Anderson: Well, I love to start with a bit of the founder's story and a bit about the company that you're leading. Can you tell us a bit about MeliBio and Mellody and how you came to invent and start the business?

Darko Mandich: MeliBio started with a big dream of two people who really care about bees and are really connected to the importance of bees for our planet. So in 2020, after I emmigrated from Europe to the United States, With this idea to update the hunting industry, make it sustainable. I came to San Francisco to join the food tech scene that was booming at that time over here.

And at one of those meetups, I met a scientist. His name is Aaron Schaller. And, he was finishing his PhD at UC Berkeley at that time. And we started talking about bees. He told me that he's a scientist who's looking to join the food tech scene. He loves bees because he's also a gardener. I have my own story with bees.

I used to work for honey companies and companies making bee products using bees. And I've seen everything about that industry. Wanted to bring some changes there. And when Aaron and I met, end of 2019, just felt like it was meant to be.

Keith Anderson: Tell us a bit about what you learned as somebody working in the honey industry, as it's conventionally operated, what are some of the challenges of producing honey and other related products with live bees.

Darko Mandich: Honey is a fascinating product as well as some other bee products too. bees are such intelligent creatures that work in amazing way as community and many communities, and they have this ability to produce. Amazing ingredients that traditionally have been used by food, beverage, beauty, personal care, cosmetics and pharma industry.

So bee products are really everywhere. And I joined this industry in 2012, right after I finished my business school, without having any prior knowledge. I just got a job offer from a company that is a significant company back in Europe that has a division. That works on bee products and that really got me excited.

I joined that industry not knowing anything and, now I'm still in it in a different form. But before launching MeliBio as the world's first company that's giving bees a break by putting science to work instead of honeybees, I can say that, it's, it's an industry that is fascinating in so many ways, it's an industry that's growing because next time you go in supermarket or a pharmacy store, you'll probably identify many products that are formulated with one of the ingredients that bees are known to make.

Especially Honey.

Keith Anderson: Well, I'm the father of a seven year old daughter and you'll be happy to hear Darko, she asks for honey on everything. This morning, she agreed to have oatmeal if I would put honey on the bananas in the oatmeal.

Darko Mandich: I'd love for her to try our product and, see how things go, so. we have to

definitely a taste happen.

Keith Anderson: We'll,

Darko Mandich: let's do that.

Keith Anderson: On a future episode, we'll come back and share the results.

Darko Mandich: yeah, that, that's how we landed some of our customers, but we'll speak about that a little bit later. I think, humans at some point identified a way to domesticate one species of bees. their name is Apis mellifera or European honeybee. And that was figured out a long time ago and in 16th or 17th century, Spanish conquistadors brought first beehives to this part of the world.

They brought them to Yucatan in Mexico. And then since then, the beehives with honey, European honeybees proliferated across this side of the world and are now one of the biggest, biggest species here, but that's just one of the 20 000 bee species that exists. People when people talk about bees, they usually refer to honeybees and people usually get surprised when I tell them you probably don't know much about bees because if you think of bees, you probably think of this one subspecies.

And people get surprised when I tell them the story, there are 20 000 different bee species, 4 000 of native bee species only in North America.

Keith Anderson: That's amazing. so, in the business of using bees to produce honey, I don't think of necessarily the footprint as being immense, at least compared to some of the other animal-based product categories. But I am aware that bees have been under a lot of environmental pressure and I know there's a lot of interdependency of other crops on bees.

So why don't we spend a little time talking about some of the trade-offs between a plant-based versus conventional approach in the category.

Darko Mandich: Absolutely. So our company, MeliBio, commercialized this approach to take the same plants that bees visit in nature and turn them into a product that taste the same, look the same, behave the same, and is very close on the molecular level to real honey. And that's where we launched Mellody, our brand, plant-based honey, as well as some private label deals with retailers, especially in Europe.

And, the reason we're doing that is we really love the bees. And we say that there's no other company in the world that loves bees as much as we do. And because of that, we want to give them a break. And then people ask, but why would you give bees a break? Because they're doing what they're meant for.

So the story here is that we essentially need bees to keep the plant as we know it, because bees are essential pollinators. They contribute to the food system, to the plant diversity. Essentially, our existence as humans on this planet wouldn't be possible without bees. So, why the need to give them a break from the work on the products that we harvest from them?

In the process of Manufacturing bee products, especially honey, on a large scale, the species of bees, as I mentioned, European honeybees, are being artificially bred and added into ecosystems where they don't belong. And that is causing them to do this thing that I like to refer to as pollinator gentrification.

They don't allow other pollinators and other bee species to share this space. And they're essentially very aggressive and invasive. So our thesis is, if we take the work of the honeybees and start turning plants into the honey, the bee ecosystems will get a break from that artificial pressure that humans are creating.

And therefore, The nature will balance things out in ecosystems. Bees will be thriving, all these species, they will be doing their favorite work, which is just, pollination. And we'll take over from the work that is essentially very damaging for our planet. If we continue just relying on these honeybees that will just push, back on all the other pollinators.

Keith Anderson: I like that solution more than another one that I've heard of, which is robotic bees to pollinate, because in that scenario, I don't get the honey.

Darko Mandich: So with the robotic bees, I'm just hoping, I think a lot about that because, there are things that need to be done on the pollination side, especially in California. You have these large almond orchards where a lot of honey bees are being brought because it's very convenient for almond growers, but that's actually not great for California bumblebees that are specifically endangered species, here in California.

For me, the robotic bees feels like if that comes into play and becomes a mainstream, that would mean that we lost other opporunities to make things right.

So if we really end up using robots to pollinate the planet, that would tell me that we failed in so many ways to make nature balance things out. So for us, to have nature do its thing is really making sure that we don't have too much honeybees. As a company, we're not saying, "hey, let's stop, beekeeping entirely or bee pollination.

Let's kind of, destroy the presence of honeybees in North America." We're not saying that. We're just saying that it's too many of them. And it's just requiring a thoughtful approach to producing bee products. So we believe that if we take those same plants and turn them into products that people love, that chefs love, that people can't distinguish on blind tasting, and we do that in a bee-friendly way, we have an opportunity to, just kind of, give a slight nudge to the nature to tell it, "Hey, we're here. You can take over." Every time someone consumes our product and you can see behind my back, you are contributing to removing the work of 20 000 honeybees from ecosystem. You're basically helping bee biodiversity.

Keith Anderson: That's really interesting. One of the things that I find myself doing is sort of sorting product categories on a couple of dimensions. We talked about the category's environmental impact. The flip side of that coin is its susceptibility to more extreme temperatures, more volatile weather. We had a guest on from a company that produces olive oil. And that's a category where droughts and other crop disruptions have really impacted quality and quantity of supply and therefore pricing. Is that a present issue in the animal-based honey industry, or is it more of a future possibility?

And where does plant-based honey fit into that equation?

Darko Mandich: It's a great question. People are reading about their chocolate prices going to the roof because of issues around cocoa supply chain. There are challenges around all kinds of oils, including olive oil and palm oil. I think honey is coming up next, unfortunately, and here's why. THe, honey, manufacturing, is complex because it only happens within a few months in a year.

So in a given geography, within a couple of weeks per year, you have an opportunity to make spring honey in Europe, or you can make, summer honey in Asia. And if weather conditions within those couple of weeks, within a given geography, are not perfect, that heavily influences the yield of the product. So I've seen years working for honey companies where I had to deliver thousands of tons of products.

I'm talking about million dollar plus contracts where within few weeks price doubles. So imagine how does that affect the supply chain, the purchasing departments of various ingredients companies and private label companies. They just don't understand what's happening. They're flying their teams from Western Europe or the United States to Ukraine or the Balkans to see for themselves how come that the ingredient that they used to pay this much doubles in price within a few weeks.

So that is because of weather affecting the crop very much and that particular animal working in that particular geography only within those few weeks when certain flowers are blooming. So, when I think about environmental issues and, animal welfare, which are definitely something that's close to my heart, and the main reasons I'm doing this, there's a set of reasons that require us to update honey industry that are just purely capitalistic.

Efficiency, supply chain predictability, for United States, it's important to say that people mostly don't consume American honey because you don't get to consume it because most of the products on the shelves that you buy are formulated with imported honey. I mean, importing food, it's not a big problem, the world functions in a global trade environment, but I need to say that most honey coming into this country is dependent on different regions in the world in different countries that don't have levels of standard that are required here. And very often some of the shipments go through and some of the product that is not honey ends up on the shelves. And that's usually a product that's cut with rice syrups and things like that. And we make our honey without bees, our plant-based honey.

We only use components that would be components of honey in nature. So, some people ask me, "Oh, in a world of fake honey, what are you guys, what are you guys doing?" And I'm saying, "hey, that's a great question." Fake honey is 10 percent of real honey and 90 percent of rice syrup. We don't use rice syrup in our product because bees wouldn't bring rice into honey.

But there are so many challenges and we believe that Mellody being an American brand, bringing the manufacturing back into the US, guaranteeing our consumers that were regulated here by domestic market that we have to comply with very stricter quality standards than many other markets out there that are trying to, sometimes just dump their products here.

I think there are so many reasons outside of the environment that build a strong case for the existence of companies of ours and our brand Mellody.

Keith Anderson: Well, as you said, you're one of the first vegan honey companies, maybe the only, and you've followed an interesting path so far, with both B2B and B2C routes to market. I'm often looking at the value equation for these disruptive entrants in a category through the following lenses. One is what you can think of as, the merits, I guess, sort of conventional taste, nutritional profile effectiveness, whatever the consideration factors are for the, for a given category. And the second would be sort of climate alignment, both through the sense of is it low impact and is it in steady supply?

And then the third is sort of, unit economics and how those compare. And I know that it's very early so, a lot of the economies of scale that the conventional honey industry enjoys, I'm sure are not here yet. But how do you think about the business case, whether you're pitching distribution for your own brand to a retailer, or whether you're pitching your product as an ingredient or a private label alternative.

Where, what do you find is most resonant in those scenarios today?

Darko Mandich: Taste is the king. And then taste is the king. And again, taste is the king. The first three important things to make a product successful. So we nailed that. And when we were comfortable with the taste of our product, we wanted to land, and we were successful in landing Eleven Madison Park, a three Michelin star restaurant, as our first customer.

After me hearing a podcast where the founder of Eleven Madison Park, Chef Humm shared his story of their restaurant turning plant-based except for one ingredient, which is honey, because they were not comfortable with honey alternatives at that time. That, that was an interesting story. We wanted to convince them that there's a company who succeeded for the first time ever to make an alternative that tastes great, and that is also, by the way, vegan. Vegan honey alternatives existed, actually, before our company. They were usually syrup-based products made of tapioca, stevia, all these ingredients that naturally are absolutely not connected with honey. I'm not saying people shouldn't go for other sweeteners, try products and see what works for you.

But we wanted genuinely to make, as much as we can, real honey made without bees. So once we nailed the taste, we realized that there's a certain level of people that will get excited about a very expensive world's first product. And then that story can live for a certain amount of time. And if we don't expand that into including more customers, that's not going to be a viable case, because we want to build a large company because large company for us means large impact, less honeybees required to make, those volumes of honey.

The price was the next thing that we started working on. I can say that at this point, we match European honeys in Europe and American honey in the US we are on parity with those, and that's amazing because we've done that within three and a half years of R&D, and we raised about 10 million.

In the food tech industry, many companies exist that raise hundreds of millions of dollars. There are a few that raise almost a billion dollars and are still not at a commercial level that, that we are. I think the goal by the end of this year is try to make our solution a little bit cheaper than domestic products made by bees here in the United States.

And then the next target would be to try to compete with countries like Ukraine, Brazil, Vietnam, where a lot of, cheaper honey is being made. With the inflatory pressures and consumers and businesses that I project and the economists say will last through the next couple of years, I think it's responsibility, huge responsibility from companies like ours to continue working on scale and science to get up, to make our prices go down. Because yes, we're vegan, honey, but we also want to include everyone, including the vegans. And we want to make sure that when we talk to food service operators, retailers, businesses, that our approach is the most efficient and that them joining the bee coalition, heroic mission of saving the bees also makes a good impact on their calculation.

And for all of that, to put more dollars back in consumers' wallets.

Keith Anderson: Yeah, I will say, I think you've done a nice job describing the challenge that so many companies, whether they're technologies or consumer products, are trying to cross that chasm from the early adopters and reach a critical mass of mainstream customers or shoppers. And, I think more and more of the industry is prioritizing product superiority and parity.

But I haven't encountered a huge number of examples where pricing and unit economics are competitive, and so it's really exciting that you're, in some ways there and still making that a focus.

Darko Mandich: It's back to the DNA of our team. Because when we were thinking about who should be part of our team, we really thought that one big requirement to join our team would be that you have a previous scale up experience and hopefully with a lot of mistakes. And the reasons I'm saying mistakes is that people learn through mistakes.

And in the past few years, there's been this huge influx of activists going into the food industry, wanting to pitch solutions that make the world a better place. And that's amazing. I think of myself, big part of myself being an activist, wanting to build this world for humans and bees that's better, for myself and the future generation and for people around me.

But there's a big part in the way how I run this team and the members of our team around our previous experience in scaling manufacturing. Working for other companies, I built two manufacturing facilities. I worked with co-packers. I built extensive international supply chains. And that kind of knowledge really helped us get past the activism and coolness.

Because activism and coolness has this initial phase that lasts. And even for companies like Tesla or Apple, at some point, it just kind of faded out and you just start to become this company that talks about efficiency, latency, how fast can you fill out the orders, how can you make the people on the other side of supply chain happy.

And I think if you build teams with that DNA, any, in any industry that requires physical products to be manufactured and moved, it's being required. And I would like to see more of that. And as we also grow as a team, I would love to see more people who have dealt with ingredients or even honey

who would happily join our mission and use that knowledge from before and hopefully many thoughtful mistakes and do things differently to make people happy.

Keith Anderson: Well, the, love the idea of the DNA being so essential and predictive of outcomes. Darko, if people want to learn more about you or your products, where would you direct them?

Darko Mandich: Absolutely. If you are an industry executive looking to learn about more about our technology and possibilities and some of the large enterprise deals that we've done, such as a deal with Aldi in Europe, I advise you go to, MeliBio.com, which is our company website. If you're a consumer that cares to know where you can get our brand Mellody in your favorite restaurant or store or even online in the US, go to Mellodyfoods.com and, learn about our story and get one of our two products that exist in the US market. We have Golden Clover, which is a regular, original, our number one product. But we also have an exciting Spicy Habanero, world's first plant-based hot honey. Hot honey is a growing category, especially in pizzerias.

And if you like some spiciness or you like to add some kick to a burger or salad, I try you suggest, I suggest you try our new product that we just recently launched.

Keith Anderson: That one caught my eye when I was poking around the site. 

Darko Mandich: It's super hot. People love it.

Keith Anderson: Is it? I'm going to have to put it somewhere where my daughter won't, confuse it with the regular though. She's not as big a fan of spice as I am. Well, Darko, what a, fascinating opportunity. Congrats on the progress so far and good luck.

And thanks again for joining me for the show.

Darko Mandich: Thank you for having me and thank you for thinking of the bees. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the Decarbonizing Commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce. Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=qn0q22x8

In this episode of Decarbonizing Commerce, host Keith Anderson welcomes Phil White, co-founder of Grounded, a boutique agency and B Corp focused on embedding sustainability into business models. Phil discusses how Grounded helps both large and emerging brands integrate sustainability into areas like product design, packaging innovation, and retail activation. By connecting purpose to profit, Grounded aims to close the gap between sustainability intentions and commercial actions. Phil shares insights into their innovative approach, including case studies on transforming consumer behaviors towards more sustainable practices and the importance of commercial value in driving retailer support for sustainability initiatives. This episode highlights the critical steps and collaborative efforts required to make sustainability a core business driver.
Learn more about Phil White:

• Link to Grounded World’s website
• Link to Phil’s LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this episode then please:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
• Follow and rate on Spotify
  
  

Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. 

Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce. I'm Keith Anderson. I'm really excited about this week's episode because when I started Decarbonize.co, my core thesis was that many retailers and brands struggle to embed sustainability commercially. That is, adapt their business models and integrate sustainability objectives into the way that they do what they do.

And our guest this week is Phil White, who along with his partner and wife, Heidi, is co founder of Grounded, a boutique agency and B Corp that helps both large, established, and emerging retailers and brands make progress in what I call commercial sustainability. That is, embedding sustainability as a discipline in areas like product design, packaging innovation, retail activation, and much more that you'll hear about from Phil during this week's episode.

But, when I met Phil a few months ago and learned about the work that he and Heidi are doing, I wanted to continue the conversation and be sure that you all could listen in because I think it really represents a lot of what we as an industry are going to have to focus on over the next decade or so.

And I saw firsthand through other industry transitions, like the growth of digital commerce, just how much effort and coordination it takes to, make a shift like this across different functions. So I'm very excited to introduce you to Phil White of Grounded.

Phil, good to see you. Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast. Thanks for having me. Well, I thought to kick us off, maybe you could tell us a bit about the business that you and your partner, Heidi, run, Grounded, and how you came to start that particular venture. 

Phil White: Sure. With pleasure. So, so grounded. So grounded, I guess the way we describe ourselves is a social innovation and brand activation agency. And the reason we chose those two terms was kind of quite specific because, particularly in the world of brand purpose and sustainability, we realize the existential challenge that most companies and brands and actually non profits face, frankly, is the ability to connect the why of purpose to the way of doing business.

Or sometimes we say the way of profit, obviously we can't say that for non profits because it's a bit contradictory, but it's the way that you connect your purpose to

Keith Anderson: Getting things done.

Phil White: getting things done. And the more we kind of got into that, the more we heard that this was the existential challenge faced by most businesses, particularly today, the more we realized that the way to solve that was to kind of figure out what the gap between intention and action actually is, or in other words, purpose and profit.

Same difference, just to kind of level deeper. And therefore, that's why we focus on innovation because innovation is obviously setting the intention in terms of what you want to sell, produce, deliver in order to add value to the consumer and drive some kind of revenue. And then action is actually what you're going to do to unlock that revenue and sell stuff, right?

How are you going to change behavior and get people to buy it? So, that's why we kind of Focus on those two areas. And that's why a lot of the work we do is more upstream innovation focused in terms of coming up with kind of positioning and propositions and go to market strategies and ideas and platforms and sometimes products and packaging and innovation.

And the other part then is often focuses on retail, because obviously that's where the rubber hits the road, right? To figure out how are we going to get people to actually believe that this is worth buying versus their competitors in the category, wherever it might be, and actually figure out where the intention action gap is and how big it is that's preventing people from making a better, more responsible, sustainable choice.

And then when we can close that gap, then sustainability stops being a risk mitigating factor, a cost to the business and starts becoming a driver of consumer demand. Purchase intent, which again is the holy grail. So going back to what Decarbonizing Commerce is all about is how do you commercialize sustainability?

And that's exactly what we do. So that's what we do all day every day is help clients figure out how to commercialize sustainability.

Keith Anderson: And in terms of your background and, Heidi's background, has sustainability always been your focus, or are you coming to the topic from a different perspective?

Phil White: Yeah, no, it's a great question. So before we started Grounded, we worked for a big global advertising network that everyone knows and we actually run the Unilever business here in North America. And we were kind of pretty instrumental in trying to figure out how you can translate Paul Polman's, sustainable living plan into tangible brand building activations and campaigns, basically. And the more we got into doing that, the more we wanted to do it, because we saw the positive impact that we could have, the more engaged the teams that we ran were and wanted to be part of it. And of course, as we did more of that, we got more connected to the UN and the Sustainable Development Goals.

And we began to kind of, see the importance of why this was critical, right? In terms of driving, trying to, activate that plan to save the world. So it's really all of those three things coming together that made us go, okay, well, actually we want to be doing more, of this.

And because we work with a big multinational, agency holding group, and we're working with one of the biggest multinational companies on the planet, amazing credibility and amazing experience, but it's still too slow. We're not seeing the impact that we want to have. We're not operating in an agile and exponential way.

So I think like most kind of slightly jaundiced and tired advertising agency execs, we decided that it was time to kind of separate from the mothership and go off and do our own thing. So Grounded was born in 2018, actually, to be exactly that. A smaller boutique, more agile, more nimble, exponential agency to help you kind of transform purpose into profit and create value by doing good.

So that's kind of how we all started.

Keith Anderson: Well, maybe we can bring it to life with, one or two case studies or examples. I think it would be really interesting to hear, who are the types of folks that are approaching you and what's the problem they're approaching you with? And then what do we do, what do you do to move the needle forward?

Phil White: Yeah. Great question. So we kind of work with four, I guess you could say four main constituents. So we work with big kind of global enterprise level brands. Will that be Ford or the Lycra company or Nestle or Nespresso or whoever it might be. And that tends to be focused on two things. One is kind of helping them better articulate their overall corporate or brand purpose.

And two is, as we talked about at the start, is how do you then connect that to the, your sustainability goals and commitments in order to turn those into drivers of value or purchase intent across whatever your brand portfolio is. So that's kind of, Pillar 1. The other kind of main constituent we work with, and connected to that then of course are the retailers, because often they're CPG orientated brands that need to then be activated at retail.

So that's kind of where the retailers come in. We do have some retail, direct retail clients like Grove, Collaborative, for example. But usually it's through the lens of the brands themselves that we kind of engage with the retailers and, generally that tends to be the case. The other kind of main constituents are non profits.

And they have a similar problem often in that they might have low brand awareness or low brand relevance or saliency that are out there in the market. But they're trying to fund all these programs on the ground and of course they need money. They need people to put their hands in the pockets and support them.

So it's kind of the same deal. It's, it's a parallel world in terms of how do you figure out what your mission and your purpose is? How do you make that engaging and clear for people to want to support it? And then how do you drive the behavior change to people to put their hands in the pockets and support it?

And it's, really the same thing. So, as we got into this and we started working with some larger non profits like the World Food Program and the UN Institutes Hospital and Plan International and the Samaritans and whoever it might be, we, quickly realized that there was a lot of commonality between what we'd learned for the past 30 years in terms of, brand building at a global level and activation and how you can apply some of those principles, package them up in perhaps a more accessible or exponential way for non profits.

So that's kind of what we did, and I guess kind of what lies at the heart of what we do, to bridge that gap, a lot of the work we do is design sprint based, so we often kind of show up and do a lot of workshops and design sprints, and we do it efficiently, we do it at speed, and iteratively, and we facilitate it ourselves because that makes it accessible for the big brands who might be just stuck in a rut or stuck in their existing relationships, or just are struggling to kind of push the needle internally for whatever the myriad reasons there might be around sustainability.

So it gives them a very quick opportunity, a wedge, if you like, to be able to kind of jump on and do something and get that ball rolling. And for nonprofits, from a financial equation point of view, obviously it's more accessible. So we can go in and we can do it fast because we generally know what we're doing and it ain't our first rodeo.

So we can go in there fairly quickly and deliver the value and deliver the clarity that we need. so that tends to be kind of how we work. So I would say, in kind of summary, 

we tend to do three things. We tend to kind of work with brands, retailers, startups, and nonprofits to help them articulate their purpose, pull that down into a brand position and then go to market strategy.

We help them activate their brands, whether through packaging, design, identity, omnichannel experiences, digital, so whatever it is along the path of purchase and based on understanding where that intention action gap is to drive the behavior change and close that intention action gap. And then we help them accelerate their impact and that tends to kind of come down to obviously tracking and measurement because you can't.

Manage what you can't measure, lots of kind of partnerships, either commercial or non profit. We work quite closely with UN Officer Partnerships, actually, and figure out often how to design sprint potential partnerships between for profit and non for profit sectors to, again, to accelerate SDGs.

Going back to what I kind of said based on our experience with Unilever. And then we tend to do kind of publish and write quite a lot of thought leadership and do speaking engagements and run design sprints again, just to start getting that flywheel internally spinning. So people feel that they're able to kind of make progress against whatever initiatives or platforms that are already out there and working.

So they tend to be the kind of three things, but I'd say the core of what all that really comes down to is the retail aspect. Because, the ability to then combine commercial innovation with brand activation or social innovation to brand activation is obviously the bit that is where the biggest gap is in our experience.

So that's why we very much tend to focus and often, design sprint with brands and retailers together to try and come up with platforms that are going to drive that sustainability agenda through to the end consumer or the end shopper and drive the behavior change that everyone's looking for.

Keith Anderson: And when we talk about behavior change, are we talking purely about making a product or brand switching or substitution decision, I'm going to swap a more sustainable option for what I'm currently buying, or is it in some cases even more significant behavioral change, for example, just making it up, switching from single use to refillable and reusable packaging.

Phil White: Both and a lot more. So, a good example might be, so we were recently engaged by a startup that had licensed the, like the, Brita brand actually from Clorox. And they wanted to create a new bottled water and we're like, "Oh no, the world doesn't need another bottled water. That's the very last thing we need."

But when we got into it, we kind of thinking about the Brita system and the Brita equity, we realized, that there was a gap between, using your Brita kind of container at home, which is obviously a more, much more sustainable way of consuming and storing water and the actual kind of reality, the usage gap of people forgetting their swell bottles and forgetting their reusable bottles when they went out or, did whatever.

There was a gap in the market.

Keith Anderson: I think it's Stanley bottles now, Phil.

Phil White: Stanley, there you go. I'm obviously out of touch and this was only two years ago. But what that gap was meaning that what people were doing was doing what everyone does is just default to walk into your nearest retail outlet and buy a plastic water bottle, right?

So that was the gap that we were actually filling. That was the category opportunity, but also the intention action gap that we're quite literally trying to close. So as a result of that, we did a lot of research, competitive landscape assessments and retail audits and focus groups and you name it, all the usual stuff and realized that actually this problem was much bigger than we thought it was.

And there was the real, there was a really behavioral problem there that people were forgetting, wanted to do the right thing and not buy plastic water bottles and all that kind of stuff, but reality, when you're out or you're late for work or you're stuck out as you've been on vacation, you know outside and you're desperate for a drink, you're gonna just do what you do and go and buy a bottle, a plastic water bottle.

'Cause usually that's the only option. So this entire platform is about how do we develop a product that fills that gap, that addresses that need, which switches people out of buying plastic water bottles, but also kind of gets them into a more regular behavior where they can actually fill up their water bottle at home.

They can buy it once, they can drink it on the go, but they can keep it because it can be used for six or seven times. So they can actually use it as a kind of interim, as a fill in for their kind of normal kind of swell or Stanley water bottle. So that was a bit of everything. That was like changing perception, changing attitudes, changing behavior, locking people into a new system or new ritual, as well as identifying the bigger category gap that was driving the, which was driving, kind of negative environmental impact, let's say. So maybe that's a good example of, how, it addressed all of those things simultaneously.

So to your point, yeah, it's rarely one thing, but the, idea of figuring out where the intention action gap along the journey is, once you know where the biggest intention action gap is, where it's occurring, how big it is, then you can focus on, all your energy on addressing that. And then use rest the journey tactically to kind of try and embed or habituate the right behavior, which is often what we end up trying to do.

Keith Anderson: And just sticking with that example, how much of the, effort to close that intent to action gap happened at the, were there ad campaigns that support it? Is it a packaging redesign? What kind of retail activation ends up being pivotal to something like that?

Phil White: Yeah, yes, all of the above, definitely an omni channel, but it started effectively with a new product, a new pack, an entirely new kind of product packaging driven proposition, which then obviously fundamentally needed to be merchandised and displayed at retail in the category and at the moment where people would otherwise default to buying and doing what they usually do.

So, it's still launching and rolling out, frankly. And a lot of it has been driven initially through social, through very kind of targeted, geo targeted social media to just raise the awareness and the relevance and set the occasion. But of course, retail, just in terms of its ability to kind of drive visibility and accessibility is obviously the most important thing, particularly in this category.

Which is, that's what drives the category. It's visibility and accessibility. That's it, basically. So if you're not, if you're not, if you're not visible and you're not available, then you ain't gonna, you ain't gonna win.

Keith Anderson: Makes a ton of sense. And, then, of course, there's the commercial value equation. Do we sell more? Are the margins, comparable or accretive? Is that part of the work also? or are we starting really from the customer and working backwards?

Phil White: Yeah, 

so often what we try and do with the intention action gap is we try and size it. How big is it? And then what for value can you put against not closing it? Right? So, what's the category selling story, right? What's the size of the prize or the money that's being left on the table by not closing the gap?

And that's usually the way in because as we all know, rightly or wrongly, depending on which way you look at it, retailers want to drive category value, right? They want to drive category profit. And you can talk a lot of great stuff around sustainability, but unless it's going to drive the value commercially at a category level that retailers are looking for, it's going to be very hard to convince buyers to support it. It's just the reality of how the machine works, right? 

But if you can frame it as, well, this is how much money you're losing on the table, leaving on the table, if you don't do this, and this is the quantified amount, right? Oh, and by the way, this also ties back to your, your sustainability objectives as a retailer that you've pledged to uphold that you're holding your suppliers to account for to deliver.

We're turning up not only doing that for you, which helps, with your kind of own commitments, but we can deliver higher category profit and value. Why wouldn't you do it? And that's really the essence of what it comes down to, it's connecting those dots.

Keith Anderson: And are you starting to see the retailers be responsive to that kind of framing? I mean, I, look at some retailers who are increasingly vocal about how they're incorporating some of these factors in decisions about assortment and merchandising. They're introducing their own labeling schemes to add credentialing to some of the products that meet their conditions.

Is that something that's still relatively limited across major retail or is it becoming more widespread?

Phil White: I mean, I think, I don't think there's a clinker answer to that. I think it just depends. you have retailers that embody those values into their own label products and portfolios, right? We all know who they are and do very well at it. And there are those that are trying to figure out how to do it.

And there are those that are on the bleeding edge of circularity and changing their infrastructure, right? To, try and deliver it with reverse logistics and reselling and re-commerce and all the other good stuff that needs to be kind of built up around it. So, It just depends. And I think part of it is going back to kind of figuring out then, from a brand owner's point of view is what's our purpose?

What can we realistically deliver, credibly deliver from a sustainability point of view? How is that going to support the sustainability commitments of our retailer, our customers, and therefore what activation platform can we build around it? To kind of move the needle. and I think there's always tends to be, particularly in this space, that tends to be a kind of just a general conception that if you don't knock it out of the park, then it's not worth doing.

And of course that's never the case. Rome was not built in a day. It's the little incremental steps over time that build up that result in the, in, in the impact. So half of the problems often, and again, why we approach this from a design spring point of view is that the barriers to then engagement are as low as we can possibly get them.

We can get as many people together, cross sector people from together from different, areas of the business interacting and interfacing and ideating around it. So the chances of something getting out there and happening are greatly increased. And then it's a case of giving it a run and seeing what happens.

And, usually, I would say, once you get it in and it starts working, then it tends to kind of grow and then sometimes becomes a category platform and then sometimes becomes an ongoing evergreen platform and sometimes even gets to become a complete category invention priority kind of moving forward for a, for a retailer.

So yeah, there's so many different ways in which it can, kind of show up. It, I think it really just depends on kind of where you are on your journey, and trying to figure out that connection point between, you feel like what the brand stands for, where the intention action gap is, and what's going to have the biggest impact socially and environmentally.

Keith Anderson: Yeah, I, I was speaking with a brand this morning who I think is, sort of mid flight on a very similar initiative. They're trying to pivot from single use to refillable, in at least one of their product lines. And like most brands, they're starting, they've been in market for about a year, six months in a limited regional pilot, six months nationally, and the early results are encouraging.

They've now converted about 25 percent of their own brand buyers to the refill. The economics look good for the retailer and them, and they're, to your point, now starting to explore, well, what kind of, shelf design is going to be necessary to really scale this. And so, it's, turning into an opportunity for a particular retailer, along with this brand, to do something, unique and different that, Who knows?

I know at least the brand is hopeful that in 12 or 18 months, it'll migrate from the first retailer to many others.

Phil White: Yeah. And, not for nothing, we all know what, we all know the policies that are coming down the pipe. Right. Particularly EPR and the impact that's going to have on both brands and retailers to, to kind of, clean their act up a little bit, quite frankly.

So with all of these things coming down the pipe, I think we're going to, we're anticipating that we're going to see a lot more of these initiatives and innovations, not because they're nice to do, but because they're a have to do.

Keith Anderson: Sure. Sure.

Phil White: So that's the, that, that's the hope anyway. Yeah.

Keith Anderson: Thinking almost about the other side of the coin, I'm thinking of another major brand who just reassigned one of their veteran executives, 20 year veteran at the company, with experience in a lot of functions, sales, marketing, e-commerce, very little in sustainability, but that person has now been tasked with taking credit, and getting credit with shoppers and retailers for some of the good things they've already done.

Is that a scenario that you've encountered where in fact, they've already done things to clean up their act and now it's as much about finding a way to present that? Both commercially and to consumers?

Phil White: Yeah, for sure. So something that we'll hopefully talk about the conference in Chicago a little bit more around is, a kind of design sprint that we've developed called Retail Activation for Good. And it's quite literally designed to do everything that we just kind of talked about. And even though we kind of launched it about three years ago and it was based on, lots of deep insight with some of the biggest brands and retailers on the planet who were kind enough to contribute their thought leadership and examples to help us build out this framework in these case studies. 

Believe it or not, it was quite tough to get it going. And we were like, we don't understand why, because everyone's asking for it. And it took a while for the penny to drop because a lot of these big companies are still kind of caught up internally with what's our purpose and what's our sustainability goals and commitments and how to report against them and how do we quantify them and how do we kind of position them internally and how do we get funding in and, getting it down to the, what you might call the tactical level of retail is, of course, where everyone knows it needs to be.

But getting there, crossing that bridge and taking that path is a bit of a challenge. So it's taking a while for companies to go through that journey of internal transformation and understanding, and then figure out how to collapse the traditional silos that exist within, larger companies and be more kind of, what's the word?

Intersectional is probably the right word in terms of how do we approach these problems.

 And, how does the CMO and the CSO and the COO and the CRO, the CIO, whoever it might be, all get together to kind of figure out, say that, sustainability doesn't exist in a silo. It touches or should drive everything from innovation to activation.

So that not only demands a different mindset and way of thinking, functionally and, operationally, it demands a different way of working. so it, we tend to find that, even though retail activation for good makes complete sense. To many companies, many are still on that journey of transformation and trying to figure out how to kind of rally the support and change the design and their operational infrastructure to enable them to actually get to the point of doing that.

And there's relatively few actually proportionally that are there and that are able, to do it. 

Keith Anderson: Are there any that you would hold up as, shiny beacons of inspiration for folks listening?

Phil White: Yeah, I mean, there's some that do just do that naturally and intuitively, Grove Collaborative probably being a kind of good one because of just their proposition and their purpose and their positioning. You've got larger organizations that have been doing this actually for, a number of years, whether that be kind of PNGs and Unilevers through to your kind of, your Patagonias and whatever it might be, right?

And, as a certified B Corp ourselves, we tend to kind of see that, a lot of the B Corp brands and businesses tend to kind of, again, have a tendency to kind of do this more intuitively anyway, because it's kind of embedded into their operating and procedure and their governance, right. And how they think and kind of how they behave. So, and what's kind of interesting is what we're seeing is that the smaller, the kind of smaller disruptors that are coming into established categories and shaking things up a bit tend to be also be the more sustainable or purpose driven brands that are able to get that flywheel spinning quicker and have a cohort, a smaller cohort, a very active, often younger, more dynamic consumers behind them are kind of helping to kind of drive that agenda.

So that's an interesting thing that we're seeing, whether that be in beauty or fashion or diapers or whatever it might be, you're getting these smaller players coming in and kind of disrupting the status quo a little bit. And they're the ones actually that we're finding are really kind of leading the pack and, encouraging the larger companies to try and, change their behavior, which tends to result in those larger companies trying to buy them and acquire them.

Which sometimes works, more often than not doesn't, because as soon as you get... if you're bought by a big brother or big sister, then you kind of tend to lose the essence and the drive behind what made you a disruptor in the first place, because you get lost in the, you kind of get lost in the, matrix, so to speak.

So yeah, it's just, it's really, it's just a really interesting time to be intersectionally kind of where we're at, because there are so many forces at play.

Keith Anderson: Yeah. I mean, you've just touched on something that, I pay very close attention to, which is where is the change originating, and, scaling? It, to your point, it very often starts with the emerging brands who have the benefit of being able to design from day one for the next decade or two without a century long legacy and large scale production facilities and established ways of working.

They get to start from scratch and design the product and business that they think will be durable, for the future. But exactly as you say, they often struggle to remain independent. And then the question becomes, what does that integration, look like? Is it assimilation or do they end up setting the pace for the new mothership?

Phil White: Right. And a good parallel to that is, whether you, depending on what side of the fence you're on, if you look at the kind of carbon offset marketplace and how many new disruptors have come in to, providing carbon offset platforms and verifiable projects. But what we're kind of finding is those smaller disruptors are kind of drying up a bit because the investors behind them are losing patience, frankly,

Keith Anderson: Yep.

Phil White: in their ability to kind of convert and get the growth,

get the growth multipliers that they're looking for. So those are tending to go out of business or being acquired by other larger companies who are, who have got the resources and have got the infrastructure to be able to start to scale them. So that's a really interesting kind of dynamic that's going on just in that category.

But I think that probably holds for quite a few, actually, when you kind of look at how it seems to be working. So,

Keith Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. And I look at it, I mean, as, you and I have discussed offline, a lot of the work that I did in the early days of online grocery and e-commerce was helping some of the big retailers and brands initially assess, what's the speed and likelihood that this is going to be a big factor in my own business?

And there was a lot of discussion and debate about, well, sure, for these small companies, it makes sense, but at our scale, it doesn't make sense. But looking back 10 or 15 years later, there's no question for direct to consumer and other emerging brands, it's, 80 percent in some cases of their total sales. But look at the majors, Amazon is a top five customer for basically any major CPG at this point.

And so I'm optimistic that we'll see a similar maturity curve in this sense, where the companies again, that have the luxury of no legacy, they can get everything closer to right on the first swing at bat and, eventually as the infrastructure and the systems and the ways of working and the data and the tool set,

all these things that are in development get refined and more sophisticated and battle tested. I think it's going to continue to borrow the word you used, it's going to grow exponentially.

Phil White: Yeah,

Keith Anderson: that's why you and I are both out here trying to help companies, get ahead of it because, the problem with ignoring things on an exponential trajectory is it always seems small and inconsequential until suddenly it's the only thing anybody can talk about,

Phil White: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That, hockey stick kicks in pretty quick, doesn't it? And you need to be at that election point, yeah, ready and open and willing to know how to do it. Yeah.

Keith Anderson: Well, one thing I'm looking forward to is your sessions at the Summit in Chicago. Aside from that, is there anything on the horizon that you're really excited about or, looking forward to?

Phil White: Lots. In fact, we were talking about it a bit before. I know kind of climate week, there's a lot going on at climate week, New York. And there's a kind of big CSO awards ceremony that's kind of happening during climate week that I'm kind of looking forward to and just kind of seeing some of the impact that some of these kind of global enterprise level CEOs are having on some of the issues that we've talked about, so that's kind of really exciting. We've got a kind of few interesting kind of projects in the pipeline as well, both on a kind of brand level and a non profit level. There's one non profit in particular, which I've really enjoyed working with, which I think has universal application to everybody called ProSocial World, and they've basically managed to combine evolutionary social and political science together to create a framework that enables groups to better cooperate and collaborate together.

So if you can imagine the implication of that across every single sector, whether that be individuals, groups, organizations, networks, states, countries, nations, you name it. It has tremendous power. And one of the, as we all know, the new economic paradigm needs to shift from competitive to pre-competitive and it needs to be based on collaboration versus competition, because otherwise we're all going to run out of resources very quickly. And, the tragedy of the commons is going to kick in pretty quickly as it is already in some, in some markets. So, yeah, so that's the, that's what I'm most excited about because it ladders up to this new economic paradigm and it just challenges the very precepts on which we even think commerce is built. So that's kind of what I'm kind of quite excited about. And with, and we're hoping to run a session at the UN in November around the conscious attention economy, which is kind of linked to that,

which is how do you kind of engage people in a more meaningful way and value, value their attention, not just in terms of clicks and eyeballs or whatever, but value their conscious attention in their ability to tackle some of these big, kind of larger issues, whether it be false narratives or AI and algorithms all the way through to how we currently monetize media.

So lots of interesting stuff coming, going on. 

Keith Anderson: No shortage of things to stay up to speed on.

Well, Phil, I really enjoyed the conversation. I'm sure listeners did also. If folks want to get in touch with you, how can they reach you?

Phil White: Yeah. So, website is grounded.world, or you can just drop me an email at [email protected], kind of simple as that.

Keith Anderson: Wonderful. Well, thanks so much for joining us.

Phil White: Thanks for having me. Great to see you.

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at Decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce.



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In this episode of the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast, host Keith Anderson interviews Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan, founders of Peachies, a London-based premium nappy brand focused on reducing environmental impact. They discuss how Peachies aims to disrupt the traditional nappy market with high-quality, eco-friendly products designed for contemporary parenting. Furthermore, they delve into how Morgan and Rima’s collaboration began at Imperial College and their journey from a business school project to launching a startup. The discussion covers the unique aspects of Peachies' design-centric approach, balancing sustainability with premium product performance, and their future aspirations for expanding the brand.
Learn more about Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan:

• Link to Peachies’ website
• Link to Morgan Mixon’s LinkedIn
• Link to Rima Suppan’s LinkedIn

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. 

Welcome back to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson. And our guests today are Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies, a London based nappy brand that is aiming to disrupt the category with a premium take on diapers with a lower environmental footprint. They were participants in the Amazon European Sustainability Accelerator, among others, in the spring, they raised their first round of capital, and I, was introduced to them by another of our guests, Mark Rushmore of SURI, also based in the UK, who, you know, what I see in common about both of these brands is, you know, they're taking a very design-centric, practical approach to producing products that deliver on consumer expectations, while also being mindful of environmental and other sustainability considerations.

And, as always, we get into some interesting commercial considerations, along with how they've made climate and sustainability considerations Central to the business model. So I'm really excited for you to meet Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies. 

Morgan and Rima, great to see you both. Thanks so much for joining the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast.

Rima Suppan: Thank you so much for having us.

Morgan Mixon: We're excited to be here.

Keith Anderson: well, I think some of our listeners may be familiar with the company and the brand, but I imagine some are not. So maybe we can start just by introducing what is Peachies? What do you make?

Rima Suppan: Well, Peachies is our life project in the meantime. I'll give you the full definition. So Peachies is a premium nappy brand for the contemporary parenting experience. What that means really is that we designed an upgrade to the, so to say, humble nappy. That means that we engineered these nappies for revolutionary softness and longer nights.

Because that is really what parents deserve, and desire, of course. that means that we, of course, you know, we made substitutions for more eco friendly materials, for high quality materials, but also changed the design slightly so, that the fit of the nappy is really perfect for a child's skin, but also the needs that a child has.

We then of course went through rigorous dermatological testing, to make sure that, yeah, we, our babies stay dry and comfortable. And we, yeah, nappy rushes is a thing of the past, so to say.

Keith Anderson: Now my daughter is seven. Why did you wait until after she had outgrown nappies and diapers to start this company?

Rima Suppan: Well, I guess because Morgan and I only met three years ago.

Keith Anderson: Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, we're gonna come back and talk a lot about some of those attributes and benefits that you've basically designed into the product and the brand, but maybe we can take a minute and you can tell us about how you met and how you ended up deciding to start a, nappy or for our American listeners, a diaper brand.

Rima Suppan: I'm happy to go first. So, Morgan and I really met at Imperial College. The nerds that we are. We were randomly selected by the Imperial College leadership to run the Innovation Entrepreneurship Club together. And then quite quickly, both coming from family businesses quite quickly realized that we really love working together and that at some points in our lives, we wanted to be entrepreneurs ourselves.

We had little idea that would happen so quickly. But it happened and we're, super happy where we are today and thank God, we both took the decision to not become, Morgan, I think I wanted to be a product manager at some point. I wanted to go, back to my consulting career or into the tech space.

I was at Google by that, at that time, and had an offer pending, but nappies, diapers just excited us way too much, to not to not go down that route. and so actually before starting that business, there, there was a funny story. it was of course COVID times when we met, we had never really met up in person before starting Peachies.

And at some point we were like, we're only going to run a company together, build a company together if we actually get along in person as well. And so Morgan invited me over to, it was Dalston, right? Yeah, to Dawson, to a park and we had a full bottle of wine, and after that bottle of wine, we knew that was a match, not only company building wise and kind of, yeah, vision wise, but also personality wise, which is incredibly important, that is also a fit.

Keith Anderson: Yeah, and I imagine you were socially distanced at that first meeting.

Morgan Mixon: Yeah, exactly. We, well, we actually had a chance meeting outside the business school, during orientation, and Rima walked up to a friend and I and said, asked about a dress we were wearing. And I remember thinking like, who is this? But now I'm so grateful for her sort of social butterfly nature, and, willingness to just chat to anybody.

And really the idea for Peachies, I mean, it started as a business school project. We are, we fall into that category. We were, very fortunate to be in a university during COVID time, a lot of down time to focus on your academics, but our course, the Imperial College Business School gives you a lot of opportunity to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, and, so just thinking about like, where can we have impact actually, and connecting back to kind of sustainability in its own right, we think about sustainability very holistically.

We think about impacts at a societal level, at also an environmental level. And so we knew when we were coming up with an idea to work on, it would have to be something that got us out of bed in the morning. It wasn't going to be B2B software. That wasn't, that's not us. We actually love consumer products.

We love getting excited about brands. We love trying new things. We love implementing them into our life. We love trying to find shortcuts to make the week easier. And we stumbled across nappies. We thought about, you know, our the people we would want to design for. And that was our friends and family.

And we thought about our working moms and like what did they go through and where could their lives have been a little bit easier when we were growing up. And just so happens we're kind of at that life stage where everybody's kinda starting to reproduce . So we're kind of more in tune to parenting generally.

And we saw this category that's, we think wildly overlooked. It's one of the kind of last necessity or essential goods that hasn't changed much, both from a product perspective, but also from a branding and community perspective, underlying also the very bricks and mortar retail service model.

Whereas increasingly the world is direct to consumer subscriptions actually make sense for something like nappies that you need on a regular basis. And this is against a, you know, a backdrop of, you know, two global players that dominate really 80 percent of the global market, Procter Gamble and Kimberly Clark.

It's old, stale brands that are boring, that are pastel, that do not reflect, in our opinion, what millennials want from the brands that they buy. both in terms of how it looks in the aesthetic, but also how the product performs and, the impact that it has. And so it was sort of a perfect storm.

We saw, we saw all of this kind of coming together and thought, "we should think about this" and Imperial being Imperial, we had opportunities to enter competitions and accelerator programs and basically by the time it was time to graduate, we looked at each other and said, "Honestly, nothing else we're doing excites us more than, diapers."

And that was a shocking for us, like, as you can imagine, you know, Rima had a very cushy job at Google. She was ecstatic about it. And I said, "surely you'd rather be a broke founder with me and pursue this." And she took the plunge as well. And we came out of school and said, "there's no time like the present.

Why wait to start our entrepreneurial journey in five years or 10 years? Let's do it now." And we, yeah, took it forward, set up some email addresses, did some Google searching and the rest is history. Now we're a year into our journey in the markets. And, yeah, we're loving every single day, I have to say.

Keith Anderson: So you launched a year ago and are you, what geographies are you available in?

Rima Suppan: We're currently available in the UK only, but the future is bright.

Keith Anderson: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's an interesting market, I find, in many ways, both on the retail side and on the innovation side. Yeah. you know, in our weekly newsletter, we include funding announcements from, you know, retailers, brands, solution providers, and, you know, a pretty high concentration of innovation in this little ecosystem that I'm studying in the UK.

So, it's a, good place to start.

Rima Suppan: I think particularly from a branding perspective and from a, as you mentioned, direct to consumer product perspective, London, particularly, is a very exciting place. There's a lot happening. And as Morgan mentioned, nappies is one of the, these overlooked or one of the last overlooked consumer product categories.

And what we mean by that is we've seen things happening, happen in the, toilet paper space, for example, or in the razor space, where companies have just completely disrupted first, how, products are designed, how sustainable they are, but also the way how they're serviced and the channels that you can access them through.

And so for us, London, as of course, it's. It's easier to found the business there than in many other places as well. So that was also a reason, of course, our geographical location was a reason for that. But also because it's, you know, it's an exciting space. You have a lot of accelerator programs there, a lot of, great universities.

That was of course how we met. But yeah, the ecosystem is a great one nowadays with, you know, growing after completing our funding round. also that was, helpful to being, yeah, in the British market, but also now hiring talent for the first time or growing our team, substantially.

It is just exciting, to have access to such incredible talent.

Keith Anderson: Makes sense. So you've touched on two or three of the key themes that we typically cover. you know, one is, a category that is, really mature and large and, right for disruption. And you're sort of disrupting, or aiming to disrupt in two ways from what I'm hearing. One is, with a premium product that is, you know, better aligned with the shopper that is the parent and also has benefits for the consumer, you know, the, infant and, secondly is the environmental or sustainability angle.

So I'd love to get into the interplay between those two, how big of a role in the product design and the packaging and the logistics and the branding, is sustainability? You know, do you lean on that heavily as a differentiator and a reason to buy, or is it much more about a premium, superior product, and, you know, it's sort of a nice to have, Where you can fit it into the business model?

Morgan Mixon: It's a really good question. We think premium unlocks a lot of eco credentials and I'm happy to elaborate on that. To kind of set the scene, the diaper space has been really interesting and I'll use kind of the European context cause that's ours, but you have the big, you know, the big brands, the Pampers of the world.

And then you kind of have the eco brands on the other side of the spectrum. and there's not much in the middle. And what we've seen is the big brands have no incentive to innovate. You know, they dominate. They're doing great. They've been doing great for 50 plus years or whatever. They're, fine.

They, of course, sense customer sentiment is changing, but they also lack an authenticity to be able to portray the changes they make, to be able to make those product shifts or re gear their products compelling to consumers, I think. on the other side, you have what are sort of self professed eco brands.

And we're talking really more on that kind of disposable diaper side of things. we think, 

The cloth diapers will remain a niche for a lot of behavioral reasons because it's a huge fundamental shift in consumer behavior, but those eco brands that we've seen really increasingly pop up in our markets have focused so much on sustainability, they've sacrificed product quality.

And so our philosophy is, despite, if you have all the best intentions to launch an eco products, but it doesn't stack up or stand up with its most basic job, which is to hold in all the things that come out of your child, then where are we? You know, like, if it's falling apart or tearing and you're going through more of them and throwing more away,

are we really doing, are we really having a positive impact on the planet? So where we saw this opportunity was premium design. It was to elevate the product quality in a category that's been long commoditized. You know, in the UK, supermarkets, produce nappies at the White Label and even sell them as a lost leader just to bring people into the store.

And so what we could do or the opportunity that we saw was let's elevate it. Let's bring in higher quality materials. Let's really focus on things like the fit of the products and dial things up and down in terms of the features so that we can provide a product. So on a range of products, that will make a significant impact on a parent's life,

 because actually parents, and Rima will undoubtedly get to this in a bit, as part of the brand, parents are our protagonist.

We design for them, we design for their well being, and we saw that if we dialed up premium, or dialed up the quality of design, we could have nappies that last a little bit longer, you could do fewer changes in a day. You could therefore do less laundry because you're not dealing with this kind of blowouts and stuff like that.

We can make sure your child's skin is dry and protected and things like nappy rash aren't a problem. And all of those things have the added benefits of reducing impact on the planet. So we're very practical about our design. We call it no bullshit design, which means we will make advances in terms of integrating sustainable materials into our product as long as it doesn't sacrifice premium product quality.

That's the most important thing to us. So, we, first and foremost, make sure that nappy works, and works to a level that we deem is exceptional, and then we think about how we can continuously improve on environment. But, the thing that is, I think, most important to kind of draw an analogy is, We think our nappies can be like preventative medicine in the sense that if you diet and exercise and take care of yourself, you end up going to the doctor less.

And of course, going to A&E, hopefully never. Same with nappies. If you can use a more superior product and it's no surprise that it does come at a higher price tag, but that value that you unlock is actually ultimately sending less to landfill because you're not using as many. And you've got that assurance that the product is, safe and

and, well, yeah, high quality, you're going to get to the night, for example, and that's really where we've tried to do something different in this space is actually premium can be something that really unlocks a lot of value for parents, and it's not just a race to the bottom, on price or, therefore product quality.

Rima Suppan: I can add a few thoughts here. What Morgan mentioned, particularly on, on how sustainability plays a role in a consumer's decision making process. What we found out is sustainability for us sits very much at our core. So, yes, we've talked about the product a lot now, you know, highest quality materials.

We, of course, continue to seek to reduce the environmental impact of our product and ensure better future for our children, in short, but for us, it is really elevating at one level higher up. It's also, as you mentioned, you know, the packaging that we use, the logistics provider that we use, the warehousing that we use, warehouse provider that we use, but even small things as a company, like,

the office space we have, the internet provider we choose. Those are all important decisions and they all contribute to the same thing. And so for us, it's yes, it's a product, but hopefully at some point in the future, sustainability will be so normal that sustainability itself is not a, not something that makes a customer, yeah, purchase a product.

And so even for us, what we've quickly realized in the market is sustainability is the thing that keeps, if the product works, that's what keeps people, coming back to you. Which of course, with a product that is, that runs on a subscription is very important from a business model perspective.

But even beyond that. you, what we found is, for example, longer nights of sleep are so essential in that period of your life that you would basically do anything to, yeah, to get an hour or two more of sleep, more, yeah, two more hours of sleep per night. And so we've actually, from reading many hundreds of reviews that we've in the meantime gotten from consumers, that is, for example, their, conversion reason number one is to get an hour more of shut-eye.

Morgan Mixon: And I can vouch for that. I've got a nine month old at home and, sleep is a premium. Talk about premium. That's what you want. I mean, you want to do better for the planet. But it's a secondary consideration for a lot of people. You're really, particularly with small children at home, and maybe I'm just projecting my own experience, but it's so day to survival, that you're looking always for hacks to how you can do it better or more efficiently.

I think we all agree people just want what's best for their kids, and we're hoping that we can help provide them with a solution that takes the pain away of also having to think about some of your sustainable impacts, but you can kind of focus on what you really want to focus on most, which is raising healthy, happy, healthy children, and we try to smooth that out for them a little bit with, that premium products.

Keith Anderson: You know, you mentioned a couple of things that I want to circle back to 1 is some of the other categories that have been disrupted. You know, razors are one that I think of, and I've seen it disrupted in two directions. There's sort of the, opening price point or discount disruption that companies like Dollar Shave Club made famous, I don't know, 10 years ago.

But I also now increasingly see at the premium end, a, renaissance of double edged safety razors and, you know, a return to simpler designs with, you know, no plastic, and maybe the handle is at a premium versus what you're getting at the drugstore, but the cartridges are much, much cheaper and, the reason I mentioned that example is, the lifetime value to a customer over 5 or 10 years, you know, even though the upfront cost is more expensive, ultimately, they save a lot of money and some of those brands are actually marketing that way, you know, they're saying, you may flinch when you see the first price, but if you think about how many of those 4 cartridges you're buying every two weeks at the drugstore, it's not going to take too long for you to break even.

So, is that at all part of the equation in this category? Do you see it becoming part of the equation? I think of things like subscription and how you can sometimes offer a consumer, some savings for locking in, you know, how are you finding managing the value equation with consumers is working?

Morgan Mixon: You know, we are a startup. We are doing. Something new in our category, in our geography, right? So we have to educate customers about what that value is of premium. that's where the challenge of marketing comes in.

That's, and that's, you know, education is, a big part of that. But what we find is once that value has been demonstrated, once that product is in somebody's hand and, indeed with Peachies, the second you hold it, you can tell it's a different type of product. Just from that first interaction with the products, we see it resonates, you know, the, those intangible benefits or kind of priceless benefits rather of, you know, the two hours more of sleep perhaps, is something that is worth the money.

And I think where we ever get pushed back on price, you know, you look at things like we all make decisions all day long, right? About what we're going to buy or spend our time on or whatever. And I don't think it's any different in our category. You know, if you want to. If you can see the value in what you're investing in and indeed get a higher return on investment than it's something that we find people stick to and something with diapers.

That's really brilliant is a perfect kind of model. If it's not broke, don't fix it kind of thing. So once people are in the door and loving the products, you're, with them through potty training and that's, something we've seen. and so we do have our, we do have our challenge of educating customers about what premium means, what the materials mean, you know, we have no dyes or fragrances.

We have an all white design. We don't have little cute animals on them. We try to limit, of course, there's no harmful chemicals. We look at our CO2 impact, those kind of things. But at the end of the day, it's how does that customer feel when it's in their hand or after they've used that first pack?

And, if you've got a product that can, stand up then that value is, demonstratable. And therefore, the price point also follows with that. So, the, momentum is there because that's starting to now emanate. We're starting to really get, you know, the kind of flywheel effect of like people sending me photos at a one year old's birthday party with our like little tote bag in the corner, hanging off somebody's stroller.

And, you know, that shows us that it's starting to really resonate. Those messages that we're putting across are not only good for advertising and bringing people to the door, but are actually backed up by, by the experience that they're having.

Keith Anderson: You mentioned, emissions and just looking at the website, you know, one of the claims is 40 percent lower emissions than conventional nappies. Maybe we can walk through, where those savings come from and, you may or may not have it at your fingertips, but anything we can cover about, emissions and the overall footprint of the category overall.

You know, why from a climate or sustainability footprint, perspective, it's a category that sort of needs some innovation.

Rima Suppan: It's a really interesting aspect of our category. The nappy category itself is quite, yeah, it's, 

there's a lot of greenwashing in the industry, let's put it that way. I think there's a lot of industry where that, industries where that's happening, but for ours, I think it's especially interesting because we're dealing with children, we're dealing with, I mean, a parent or a child goes through about 5,000 to 7,000 nappies until they're potty trained. So we're talking about a lot of product, and, a lot that is being sent to landfills, for example, and a lot that is sitting around for many, years.

And so for us, one of the, most important aspects when, launching Peachies was, transparency. And so it. Against kind of what's happening in the industry, we always said, "let's provide our parents or our customers with as much information about our product and about our company and the people behind that it, that, we're not a big conglomerate, but two female founders that have a, big dream that they want to make reality, provide them with all this information and then let them take the decision themselves for what they think is best for them and for their children."

And so one of the things that we did quite early on in connection with the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator, was that we partnered with the European Union's Climate Innovation Organization called ClimateKick, and we wanted to verify our, yeah, CO2 footprint. And so, They verified that we save the equivalent of 93 tons of CO2 for every 1, 000 babies that use us, because that's quite hard to imagine.

That's the equivalent of the weight of 17 elephants.

Morgan Mixon: Just to add to that, you know, I think Rima and I on that transparency point is like, we know we're not perfect. we don't aim to convey that to parents. What we want to do is just empower them in their decision making. So, you know, we show our ingredients lists. We are very clear about what's not in our diapers.

We're very transparent that we still have some plastic in there. You know, most brands do. And they'll kind of ignore that, like, it's in things like adhesives or, or elastics, things like that. But, you know, we made a conscious decision, for example, to include it in our, include a waistband on our product because it has such a substantial impact on the product fits and how efficient it is in doing its job.

And so what we try to do is, you know, of course, benchmark ourselves and make smart decisions on materials. And, you know, things like our super absorbent polymer that's in our absorbent pad, you know, we use a more efficient material. So we use 20 percent less than other brands without sacrificing the product's performance, the fluff pulp that's also with that SAP is, from a hundred percent sustainably managed forests.

But we still use a waistband, and we still, are, want to make sure that, you know, parents know that, and so that we can empower them to make those good decisions, but for us, it's like, if you're in our products, we want you to know why you're there, and if it's working for you, great, and know that if you trust in us, and spend your time with us, we're always looking to innovate, and reinvest in our product design, and fuel R&D, and push our category to new heights, but always maintaining that, that design philosophy of, bring a brilliant product to market first and make sure it works and does its job.

And the rest we'll continue to figure out.

Rima Suppan: One important aspect that we haven't even mentioned yet is that of course, sustainability has more angles to it than the ecological side. it is also, there's an economic side, which of course, as a Yeah, for profit business, you need to keep in mind, but then there's also the social side, and that is something that is, sits very close to our hearts, and we're, actually supporting Save the Children, or have supported them since, since the very beginning, because we think they're a brilliant organization, and support with that family's in need.

because we've also learned very early on that, the first a thousand days are really what define a child's development, and, the quality of the nutrition, the sleep, that the, yeah, the environment they're in can can really have a huge impact on their, IQ and on their, yeah, on their life as an adult.

So for us, it's, we view, as we mentioned, sustainability very holistically. And so the social aspect is also part of that.

Keith Anderson: Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode. Well, it sounds like an exciting time at Peachies and I wish you luck. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us.

Morgan Mixon: It's been great. Thank you so much, Keith.

Rima Suppan: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce.

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Host Keith Anderson is joined by Jaxie Friedman, Sustainability Manager for Atomo Coffee.Together, they discuss the innovative approach Atomo takes towards creating sustainable coffee. Jaxie delves into the environmental challenges facing the coffee industry, including emissions and deforestation, and how Atomo's upcycled ingredients contribute to reducing their carbon footprint. The conversation also explores the complexities of measuring and managing these impacts, emphasizing the importance of maintaining product quality while making sustainable choices.
Learn more about Jaxie Friedman:

• Link to Atomo Coffee’s website
• Link to Jaxie Friedman’s LinkedIn

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.

I'm Keith Anderson. This is the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. And my guest today is Jaxie Friedman, Sustainability Manager for Atomo Coffee, which is a producer of both beanless and hybrid, some bean, some no bean, coffee. Which is, you know, one of the most interesting categories that I think is exposed to climate as a business impact, and their approach to it is really worth being aware of and studying.

And so I'll tell you a bit about why, and then we'll meet Jaxie. You know, firstly, coffee is one of these categories that is not among the highest emission categories you'll find in the supermarket, but it is you know, not at the low end. And so on the mitigation side of things, that is, you know, what can we do, what do we need to do to lower the emissions profile at a category level? Coffee and, cocoa are categories that are pretty interesting to look at.

On the flip side though, as you've heard in other conversations in, you know, the case of olive oil is one example, it's one of the categories that is exposed to some of the disruption and risk of more extreme weather and higher temperatures. And so, you know, starting with targeting coffee as a category to go innovate in and innovating through a lens of both you know, producing a product that people want to drink, and choose to drink that also has a lower environmental footprint and is less exposed to the disruption of more extreme weather is a pretty interesting case study.

And Jaxie has played a big role in a lot of the decisions that the company has made from a sustainability perspective. She's got a really deep understanding of everything that I've sort of set up here, and, I really enjoyed meeting and speaking with her, and I think you will too. So, let's meet Jaxi Friedman of Atomo Coffee.

Jaxie, great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us for the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast.

Jaxie Friedman: So great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Keith Anderson: So I think for those that maybe are less familiar with Atomo, maybe we could start with just, in your words, what is Atomo and what do you do?

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah. so, Atomo is all about redefining the coffee landscape with beanless coffee. We make a coffee that's crafted out of high quality superfoods and upcycled ingredients to make coffee, something that tastes just like coffee, but without any green coffee beans. That's why we call ourself beanless coffee.

And a little bit more about me and what I do at Atomo. So I'm our sustainability manager here. So a big part of why Atomo exists is that coffee supply chains are threatened by climate change and coffee has a massive environmental footprint. It's one of the kind of plant-based commodities that is most directly tied to deforestation and other major things that are, you know, influencing, changing climate and all of the negative effects that come with that.

So, sustainability is kind of really core to why Atomo exists. And so, as a sustainability manager here, I help us to kind of quantify our impact and think about, how we can incorporate sustainability into different components of our business. We just recently released, our environmental footprint of our espresso grounds, and when you compare beanless coffee to conventional coffee, our espresso grounds uses 70 percent less farmland, which means, more forest and grasslands that are able to be preserved, and that we cause 83 percent fewer carbon emissions. Yeah, so I'm really excited that we've been able to kind of put some proof out there that our beanless coffee, Does some good stuff for the planet.

Keith Anderson: Well, I mean, those are some just incredible data points. Maybe we can talk for a minute about how you arrive at those kinds of, estimates. You know, I know that, there's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of variables and there are some standards, but not everything is standardized. So how do you arrive at those kinds of estimates?

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, that's a great question. So, we did the calculations in partnership with a company called HowGood. They are a, they provide a data platform that allows folks to calculate their, environmental impact in a variety of different areas, and we've really focused on kind of the carbon component of it, and how good works with a lot of the globally established methodologies that allow you to kind of analyze the footprint of a product from the raw materials through to end of life.

So, it's called a product environmental footprint, but it's similar to what you'd think of as a life cycle analysis in that it's analyzing the footprint of various different components of the product's life cycle.

Keith Anderson: We know HowGood, they're going to be providing climate labels for the meals at our summit in September. 

Jaxie Friedman: And Ah, I love that! Yeah, they're doing some incredible work, and they've been a great partner for us.

Keith Anderson: how deep in the weeds do you personally get in understanding what drives emissions up or down, and to what extent does that then influence decisions that the company makes about future formulations and sourcing decisions, you know, any of those sort of commercial considerations?

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, so for the first part of your question, how deep in the weeds, I go pretty deep in the weeds, partially because as I mentioned, we're not using green coffee beans. We use a variety of other plant-based ingredients to create something that tastes exactly identical to coffee, but it means we have a more diverse supply chain.

We use some ingredients that are readily available and others that are a little bit more niche and have less established supply chains. For ingredients that are, less commonly studied, you may need to incorporate in some proxies, understanding the footprint of one commodity and using that as a reference point for another because it hasn't been studied.

So I've had to go pretty deep into the weeds to make sure that, you know, we're using appropriate proxies in terms of understanding the impact of our ingredients. And also when we're thinking about, it's not just at the ingredient level, but also from a, region and kind of looking at the specifics and the comparison of, you know, if we were to source something from India versus Kenya versus wherever, the impacts of those growing practices are going to be really different.

And so, we've been excited to be able to use the Lattice platform that HowGood offers, to be able to take that kind of next step to thinking about how it influences our product development. So, because this was our first official product environmental footprint we launched with HowGood, we've really been able to now use the learnings coming off of that to start to implement some practices so we can think about how it influences product development down the line.

You kind of need to know your baseline to be able to make improvements for the future. And we've been using it to inform, when we're thinking about if we want to source a new ingredient from a different location, should, are there lower impact places that make sense to get certain things? We've also been using it as a reference point for when we're considering new ingredients within our formula, not necessarily in terms of saying like "it must hit this threshold to be in the formula," but thinking about, "okay, which are ingredients that are hot spots in our formula and what could be some alternatives?" and thinking about, kind of the bigger picture of with, sort of, some kind of guardrails of what the footprints could be.

It allows us to kind of make more strategic decisions about, you know, where we're able to improve our footprint and what are the levers that we can pull.

Keith Anderson: Well,

Jaxie Friedman: Happy to get into deeper questions parts of that, if you'd like.

Keith Anderson: I would love to, and you know, maybe we can weave into the discussion something that you also said, which was that from a taste and flavor perspective, it's functionally indistinguishable from conventional bean coffee, beaned coffee. I don't know how I would describe it, but, you know, that's something that I think is really important and something that we hear a lot of brand manufacturers discussing more and more, which is we're trying to balance these trade offs in essentially four areas, from what I can see. one is sort of quality, whether that's defined as taste, nutrition, you name it. Another is emissions profile. Another is how reliably can we get it, and the final is what's it cost.

So, you know, when you said it, it tastes the same, it immediately had me think about what's that dynamic look like inside the company when you're getting this new data and then meeting with the product development or innovation team and thinking about, okay, well, this might lower the footprint, but then we've got to consider the cost, and we've got to consider the taste, and we've, you know,

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah. so I'll just say outright from, like, kind of the broader CPG perspective and most of the sustainable food and beverage companies, like the even the sustainability people who are kind of owning the footprint part of things, I feel like most folks are aligned that ultimately the taste is the most important thing, right?

If, you know, even if a product is better for the planet, but it's not quite as good, it's just really hard for get to get folks to buy it and to get bought into it, right? And so there needs to be these fundamental benefits, whether it's flavor or health benefits that people are seeking out, that I think have to be, of the most importance to, when creating a new product, especially a product that's an alternative to something that people already know and love, right?

People are really passionate about their morning coffee. It's part of their habit, their routine, and they're not going to, at least most folks aren't going to just, you know, swap it out for a cup of tea or you know, some other alternative. And so. I think with that in mind, you know, we always discuss internally that like the flavor has to be right.

And so that I would say is the most important thing. And I think that we've been really successful with, because I think our products tastes really good. But with that in mind, I think, you know, as we're looking at new product development and also as we're looking at scaling, I think all of those things that you just mentioned are important, right?

We have to think about, what is our price gonna be on shelf? How does it affect our footprint, and how does that connect to kind of the sustainability story that is core to our brand? I think all of these things do kind of come into play. it's not necessarily my scope of work that is kind of owning that decision making framework, but I'd say all four of those components do come to the table when we're looking at the launch of a product.

I'd say The kind of root of our ideation is coming from that, like, let's nail down a great tasting product. It needs to taste good, have the right mouthfeel, all of these things. I'd say, like, that is the driver of our innovation. And then because we have a really passionate team that cares about environmental components, we weave it in at any stage of the process that we can so that as we're identifying flavor notes that are really good that we want in our product, we can think about how those individual components can be a little bit better, a slightly lower footprint. 

Keith Anderson: Makes a ton of sense. And you had mentioned you could go even deeper on some of the footprint analysis. You know, you mentioned the location that you're sourcing from as one variable. What, are some of the other factors?

Jaxie Friedman: We're really, I think this is really important among a lot of different kind of natural products. There's certain things that I think are foundational criteria. If you want to be in certain retail spaces, you know, being non-GMO among many kind of natural food products is important. We like to source organic ingredients when we can, but it's not, one of our kind of leading criteria.

I think there's some other components, 

I think the jury is up in terms of, you know, for instance, organic. We kind of were taking a look at our ingredient, one of our ingredients that is organic certified compared to normal ones. And we were like, why doesn't the footprint change that much? And what's interesting is certain things that we would expect to be better from a carbon footprint standpoint aren't always, right?

Because with an organic product, you may have slight decreases in yield, even if there's lower input of carbon fertilizers or whatever it is. So there's some interesting nuance there that I've been exploring as I kind of dig into specific ingredients. For us, I'd say one of the leading drivers around sustainability with our sourcing is upcycling.

So our foundational ingredient is date pits, which we rescue from farmers waste streams in the Coachella Valley in California. And food waste is just a huge problem in our country and it leads to, a much larger footprint because agriculture has tremendous ripples on our ecosystems. It has a huge carbon footprint and we grow a lot of stuff that just ends up in the trash, right?

And it's really unfortunate. And so by being a product that is certified upcycled, with the date bits being that core upcycled ingredient, we also see that being a huge lever in terms of understanding how we are doing good for the planet

 because it is improving, it is reducing the methane emissions that may come from some of those, those pits ending up in landfill, but it's also creating a new commodity out of something that wouldn't have been used in the past.

So you have the avoided emissions, and then you also have this new opportunity. Where if you're using less coffee that has a higher footprint and then you're also rescuing this waste stream to make that same cup of coffee, there's kind of dual benefit there. And I'd say in terms of upcycling, our core ingredient, the date pits is upcycled, but we're also looking to incorporate in as many upcycled ingredients into new formulations as possible.

So I think that's definitely something that is kind of core to our sourcing priorities. And we're continuing to develop our coffee to use more and more of those types of ingredients.

Keith Anderson: Yeah. I see, upcycling as a industry, you know, it's been a trend for a while, but it's actually really interesting to see how it's formalizing with the certification and associations and it's becoming a more prominent feature of a lot of brands and how they're coming to market.

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, the Upcycled Food Association has done some amazing work with kind of rallying folks together around, I think, this kind of overarching, concept. And I think what's been really exciting is to see the ripples coming out of that. So, the Upcycled certification, the number of companies that are getting that certification, which is basically like a proof of that your product has a certain quantity of ways of, diverted waste streams going into that product.

The number of companies getting that certification is growing. I think we also see, you know, there's been ripples in terms of food waste policy. The EPA's food waste hierarchy now has upcycling as one of the kind of better ways in which you can mitigate food waste, which wasn't there before. So it's been really exciting to kind of be in the upcycled world, while this momentum is building.

Keith Anderson: You know, to take a bit of a step back, and I probably should have asked this question earlier in the conversation, but I think you've done a great job unpacking some of the ways that Atomo itself is producing products that are good for the planet. Maybe it would be helpful to listeners to spend a couple minutes just talking about the coffee business itself.

I mean, you mentioned, you know, clearing forests or using farmland are a couple of the, environmental impacts that the conventional approach to producing coffee has, but I think it would be interesting just to highlight why this is a category that was interesting to build a brand and a business like this in.

Jaxie Friedman: Yeah, that's a great question. And I'm happy to dig in deeper there. 

So coffee, I'll say kind of the foundational thing around it is that the coffee market is growing and simultaneously the amount of land that is suitable to grow coffee is shifting and shrinking due to climate change.

So I'd say there's this broader issue, where by 2050, 50 percent of the land currently suitable to grow coffee will be able to grow coffee. And so then there's these ripples of, issues for coffee supply chains where, the growing locations are going to need to change, which often means that farms are going to have to move to higher altitudes, there's going to, in association with those increased altitudes, there also happens to be a lot more forests in those landscapes, which means there's likely to be a lot more deforestation.

And so that's a huge issue, and coffee companies, I think, are starting to pay a little more attention to the fact that, regardless of coffee's footprint, which I can talk about in a second, just thinking about, you know, being able to have a cup of coffee is going to be harder and harder, especially because coffee demand is increasing, right?

So if we have more coffee that needs to be consumed and a shrinking space to grow it, that's a huge issue. 

In terms of the coffee footprint, I think the deforestation is one of the biggest drivers of coffee's footprint. When we did our calculations with HowGood, we also created a benchmark competitor, which was supposed to be representing global Arabica coffee production, which include 13 of the top coffee producing countries as those source regions and their kind of estimated impact. And what we found with this conventional coffee benchmark was that 58 percent of those emissions were coming from some of that, deforestation component. And, that's a huge portion of the coffee life cycle.

Of course, there's other things that are contributing to that other remaining percentage, right? That's fossil fuel usage on farms to be able to grow the green coffee beans. It's the processing to roast the coffee beans. It's the transportation to bring coffee from, you know, different regions where it's grown, like Brazil or, or different parts of Africa over to the places where it's most often consumed, right? In Europe or the United States. So there's so many different components that are contributing to the high carbon footprint, but I'd say the most critical one is deforestation. And it's actually driven a lot of attention.

Coffee is one of seven commodities that recently has, been looped in, the, to a recent study that was basically looking at how these were the main drivers of agricultural deforestation, these 7 commodities. It was coffee as well as a few other products. I don't know all of them off the top of my head, but cocoa, paper pulp products, beef, of course, various different things.

And these commodities are the key drivers around cutting forests in places like the Amazon. And so that's a huge problem. It's also driven a lot of change. There's recent regulation in Europe. It's called the EUDR, which is around deforestation regulation and forcing certain supply chains, such as coffee, to now show traceability, that their coffee is not being sourced from places tied to deforestation.

There's increasing attention to companies that are setting science-based targets, for instance, to also pay attention to, you know, they have to, if you're setting a science-based target in partnership with, or with like the new FLAG, which is like a forest, land, and agricultural, might not have the acronym exactly right, 

You 

Keith Anderson: nailed it.

Jaxie Friedman: Footprint.

Okay.

Keith Anderson: my screen. You got it. You got

Jaxie Friedman: yeah, so the. FLAG footprint is now being, it's starting to be required among, companies that have a heavy agricultural footprint and within that flag requirement is, preventing deforestation. I think it's beginning in 2025. It's like a commitment to have no deforestation in their supply chains.

And this is really hard to execute because coffee. It's mostly grown by lots of smallholder farmers who don't have access to certain technology and ways of tracking these things. So the coffee supply chain is really complicated and, I think climate change is threatening coffee, and simultaneously because of coffee's footprint.

I think it's created additional pressure at the legislative level, which I think is exciting but also going to be a huge challenge for coffee companies to meet to be able to prevent, to, prevent the deforestation that is so tightly connected to coffee supply chains. Those are just a few of the ways that I think coffee influences, supply chains, but

happy to, dig into some other areas too, if you want, but I could go on and on about this.

No, that 

Keith Anderson: was exactly what I was hoping to cover there. 

Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode. 

Keith Anderson: Well, I really appreciate you joining me, Jaxie. It was super interesting. Thanks so much for joining the show.

Jaxie Friedman: You're so welcome. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce.



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In this episode, join host Keith Anderson as he speaks Suzy Monford, founder and CEO of advisory firm Food Sport International. With an extensive career as an executive in the global grocery industry, and having worked at places like H-E-B Central Market, Kroger, and Coles and Woolworth's in Australia, Suzy has been a pioneer at leading grocery and retail technology companies and has a deep interest and commitment to sustainability in the industry.

Tune in for her insight on online grocery, food waste, frozen food, and much more!

Learn more about Suzy Monford:

• Link to Food Sport’s website
• Link to Suzy’s LinkedIn

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.

Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm Keith Anderson. And I'm so excited for this episode of the show. My guest is Suzy Monford, founder and CEO of a consultancy called Food Sport International. But Suzy has a long and storied career as an executive in the global grocery industry. She's worked at places like H-E-B, Central Market, Kroger, some of the Australian majors, Woolworths, Kohl's.

And increasingly, she's played a role in some of the leading grocery and retail technology companies. And in addition to all that, she's got a deep interest and commitment to sustainability in the industry. And I always find it really interesting and important to hear from folks who sit adjacent to sustainability as a specialty.

You know, they are operators and executives in the industry that are partners to and collaborators with the deep experts whose background comes from climate and sustainability. But, you know, the compliment that they bring is. real expertise about the operation of the business. And I think that's why Suzy has such a interesting perspective.

And, you know, we cover all kinds of topics in our discussion, online grocery, frozen food, and much more, so I don't want to keep you any longer from listening to and learning from Suzy Monford, founder and CEO of Food Sport International.

Hi Suzy, welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast. Great to have you join us.

Suzy Monford: Thanks, Keith. I'm glad to be here.

Keith Anderson: And the tables have turned a bit. You and I first met when you had me on your show. And so, for those listening, if you haven't yet checked it out, it's on the Conversations on Retail platform. And it's the People, Planet, and Profit show, correct? Yeah, definitely, definitely check it out. And as I was saying to Suzy, we, we had a great conversation, but it felt like we had more to say than time permitted.

And so I wanted to have her on our show so that we could continue some of the discussion and, our audience could get to know her better. So thank you, Suzy.

Suzy Monford: Thank you, Keith. And I completely agree. I could talk to you all day, which, which, yeah, I know you actually have a job to do, but no, I really, really appreciate this. I enjoyed our conversation very much. I learned a lot, frankly, and gave me a lot, a lot of good things to take away and dive deeper into. So I appreciate it.

Keith Anderson: Well, I'll leave most of describing your background and focus to you, but, you know, part of what I found interesting about your experience and what you're up to is, you know, similar to my background before focusing on sustainability in retail and CPG, I spent a lot of my career in sort of retail technology and, you know, that's, that's where you've spent a lot of your energy.

Can you just tell us a bit about, you know, your career trajectory and how it's led you where you are now?

Suzy Monford: Sure. I'm happy to. And it's, I, I'm kind of inwardly smiling at that question because my career began where I actually am in the same city I'm in now, which is unique for me because I think I've moved 10 times at least for my career. So I'm in Austin, Texas now. I went to UT, so Hookham Horns, majoring in economics.

And, minor in English, so basically not really qualified to do much other than go to graduate school or start working. So, I spent a decade in the restaurant industry with a start up that was based here in Texas. Learned a lot, obviously, a lot about the restaurant business, but probably more, what was more informative to me was a lot about managing teams and leading, designing go-to-market strategies, and honestly doing a lot of product development that was very healthy and clean and simple.

And that's been a through line throughout my career. So about a decade in restaurants, and then I started into grocery. I've often said I felt, feel like one of the luckiest girls in grocery. I began my grocery career with H-E-B Central Market Division. At a time that we only had three central market stores, two in Austin and then one in San Antonio.

Because I was coming from the restaurant business, they were like, "Hey, terrific! Please come and run all of our food service," which was all the in-house chef-prepared foods, the artisanal bakery, the deli department, the cheese department, all the restaurants, all the catering. Basically, 25/30 percent of the revenue of the company, of Central Market. So that's how I got into grocery, coming through this portal from restaurants.

And again, what an opportunity. It was a lot, it was a wonderful start to the career. I absolutely loved it. I quickly fell in love with retailing. Every day was something new and fascinating. I had thought restaurants were complicated until I got into grocery retailing, and realized that the margin of error is so slight.

And you can do fabulous work in the grocery space, but unless you're highly efficient, and sustainable, then you really, there's, there's only a couple of pennies left at the end of that dollar. And that's the only way to keep any of them. So I spent about a decade with H-E-B, most of, about actually half and half, half with Central Market, half with H-E-B.

Then I had an opportunity and I moved to Australia. I became the Head of Innovation for Kohl's Supermarkets, and spent some time in Melbourne, Australia. Loved it. Kind of helped them transform their go-to-market strategy. It's working across fresh, particularly deli and prepared foods and bakery and all these other projects.

Then that sort of took me back to the US after a little bit of time. I started my own consultancy, which is Food Sport, which is what I'm running now as a CEO. Spent some more time, I ended up being back, you know, as a CEO of a, as a restaurateur, and then starting to consult internationally with grocers.

Quickly fast forwarding, that led me back to another opportunity to move to Australia. This time I was recruited by Woolworths, Woolies as we say, Woolies is the competitor to Kohl's. I was pleased to do it, loved my time at Kohl's, equally loved the team at Woolies, so I moved back to Australia, this time to Sydney.

And helped Woolies regain some of the market share that Kohl's has taken from them based on their resurgence. So, I've had two opportunities to do some incredible work and work with outstanding people and companies in Australia. Back here in the States, I've been CEO of a couple of different grocery companies.

One was called Andronico's Community Market out in San Francisco Bay Area. The team and I turned that around and we did such a great job that the owners of the company ended up selling it. So that was a little bit bittersweet, but, you know, good on them. I had an opportunity to join Kroger. I joined as a president at QFC Grocer, Grocery, excuse me, up in Seattle.

We turned that chain around and then I was promoted to Group Vice President of Fresh Food for Kroger and moved to Cincinnati. Whilst I was there, I also was promoted again to Group Vice President of e-commerce at a time that that was quite, still nascent. And actually running a lot of our Ocado business as that was starting to get off the ground.

I then took another opportunity to be CEO again of the largest food co ops in the country. Probably not going to surprise anyone. I mean, I absolutely love Kroger, love them today. Stepped out of that because I have a real mission around triple bottom line business. People, planet, and profit. The co-ops I think are doing fine, but I'm now really running my consultancy because that enables me to work across retail, work across the technology that's transforming retail, making it greener, if I can still use that word, and to work with startups and turnarounds. So that is, that's about the best that I can synopsize it, Keith.

Keith Anderson: Well, it's an incredible, trajectory and I'm glad I let you cover it because, I couldn't have done as nice a job. I didn't realize, actually, about your role at central market, when we used to run store tours in Texas, they were always a highlight of the store tours. And, I haven't been to Australia, but I'll have to make the trip at some point to see some of the work you've done there.

Suzy Monford: You'll love it. You'll love it. I was just remarking, with some folks just last week, catching up, about some of the things that we had done at Kohl's, and one of the things I was most proud of when I first got there was I helped do product development for the very first clean label rotisserie, we say rotisserie chicken, for them it's a chook, it's a rotisserie chook.

And, I was able to work upstream, downstream and go-to-market with the best, cleanest label, most nutritious, sustainable bird that we'd ever sold in Australia. So, just a few, a few of the things that I'm, I'm proud to have been part of.

Keith Anderson: That's great. And, you know, we, we spent a minute before we started recording, talking about some of the points of intersectionality between these different you know, industries, both food service and restaurants and grocery and things like e-commerce and online grocery and other technologies that are digitizing, what, to your point, is a really razor thin margin industry that was arguably among the later to digitize, but is really you know, accelerating and, it, it's already had and continues to have a pretty transformational impact.

Where do you see some of those points of intersection between, you know, the conventional ways of working in and doing the work of grocery retailing and the emerging focus on sustainability?

Suzy Monford: Technology's the key. Technology's the key. I, I, you know. I get up every day and I'm always excited and happy and really eager to see what kind of new adventure is going to happen today. But with regard to the trajectory of retailing over the last few years, as much as I say every day, "oh my gosh, what an exciting time to be in retail and to be in grocery."

Honest to gosh, now I think we are at this apex because we can go from idea to shelf so much faster today and so much more sustainably because we have technology. Now, what do I mean by that? Yeah, everybody's talking about AI, AI. Well, AI has been around. When I'm, so yes, I'm including AI. But I'm talking about a lot of the work that some of my clients and colleagues are doing to digitize stores.

When we come in to a grocery store, for instance, and we replace the standard paper price tag which, by the way, is paper, and it has to be printed, there's always issues, so there's a lot of waste in that. But it's still printed on perforated paper, a human being has to tear them, and go and hang all these price tags, and then change them over again when they, immediately when they change.

We're spending millions of labor hours, literally, every single week to update pricing, we're using, you know, paper, which we don't need to waste. Not to mention the fact that these don't help create a sustainable shopping experience. When you go to a digital price tag, the digitization enables dynamic pricing and promotion.

And they also talk to the AI camera that's on shelf, the computer vision element, that can scan and say, hey, here's what you're out of, here's what you're running low on. And what that does is it synchronizes inventory and supply chain. Now, for everybody whose eyes have already glazed over or tuned out, this is really sexy stuff in retail.

Because if I can bring the right product to the right shelf at the right time of day and make my customer happy. Then I'm eliminating waste. I'm eliminating wasted food, which has a lesser impact, carbon impact on the environment. And I'm not wasting very valuable, purposeful human labor hours that could be properly reinvested, both for that human being and for the business.

So I get really excited about that, and frankly, it's that technology which is transforming retail today. And I'll just, without having a long run on sentence, and also... we are still, as much as the US is starting to speed up, we're still behind, just, just like e-commerce, just like delivery, just like doing click and collect, which I first experienced when I was in Australia in 2014.

The US, North America were slow followers, but just as, as that happened, the Europe is way ahead of us in digitizing stores. Australia is ahead, is also ahead of us in digitizing and they've been the lead, one of the leading markets in e-commerce now for more than a decade. So that's what's the most, that's the fastest growing area in retail today, not just grocery but particularly grocery, but it's the grocery element that I get most excited about because that is where we have the most waste and therefore the most opportunity to improve.

Keith Anderson: I, I think that's a really critical point that you're highlighting, where the profit and the planet intersect. That is, you know, there's actually a company that we had as a guest on the show, David Katt of a company called Wasteless that uses AI to enable some of that dynamic pricing.

And one of the things that he was really, clear about is part of the way that that company is able to fulfill its mission is by delivering. material savings and EBITDA by eliminating some of that waste. And I think that's where in retail broadly, but in grocery in particular, there's so much upside to being more thoughtful and technology-enabled about doing things that just make good economic and business sense, but have all these other benefits that align with the growing priorities that so many of these retailers have

Suzy Monford: Well, sure, and, you know, I took a rather myopic view just then of starting inside the store. But if I were going to open the lens and start at the point of the farm, there are companies that have been using AI. Driscoll's Strawberries, for instance. And I know a lot of this based on the work that I've done with Emily Ma and her team at Google on the Google food team.

She's been leading that team for a decade. But they've been, so Driscoll's is an example of a grower that is using AI, has been using AI sensors and some emerging technology to determine and detect when berries are actually ripe or where they are on the scale of ripeness so that they're harvested at just the right time.

They're harvested knowing here's how much time it's going to take to get from the point of harvest through the DC, the distribution center, and then on to the store shelf. So that it gets to the store shelf, in the case of strawberries, ready to be purchased, ready to be consumed, and still has approximately a week shelf life left to go.

And that is just fascinating, because there's less waste for the farmer, which means their, their income, their revenue stream is up, and there's less waste throughout the supply chain, there's less redundancy going, flowing through the DCs, because any time product comes into a DC, a distribution center, and it's not sellable, then it uses more carbon footprint and more transportation to do what?

To go back somewhere, it doesn't stay in the Dc. But if we can have a continuous virtuous cycle from farm to the consumer's home, then we've eliminated all that waste that's occurring. Then we just have to make sure that we continue to talk to consumers, we're all consumers, and highlighting the fact that most of the food waste, 30 percent is wasted at the point after which it's purchased and in the consumer's

Keith Anderson: at the household.

Suzy Monford: on the household. So I'm, I'm on a mission to help every little part of that, of that train, if you will, starting from the point of the farmer and then on through helping to educate folks so they can change their behavior.

Keith Anderson: Yeah, I, I see, a growing interest in cross-industry cooperation. I think, you know, obviously you mentioned where we are as a country. There have been some interagency initiatives coming out of, I think, the FDA and at least one or two other big federal agencies. The UN is, is trying to coordinate a lot of activity, and I think Walmart and Kellanova announced something a few weeks ago.

I think there's growing awareness in the industry about food waste, and I see more of the retailers and brands, campaigning to educate consumers sort of in the ways that you're describing.

Suzy Monford: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, as a proud ex Kroger executive, I'm proud of what Kroger has been doing. They really got there. Walmart, I think, was first, and I'm not comparing and contrasting, but Kroger stepped forward with their Zero Hunger, Zero Waste Foundation. They've been on a mission now, again, for close to a decade to eliminate hunger and to eliminate waste, because Rodney McMullen, the executive team, the foundation, saw the intersection of both of those things right from the beginning.

And they've invested, I couldn't even venture a guess now how many millions of dollars into Zero Hunger Zero Waste to attack it from both sides. And through, by, through the foundation, through a partnership with Google, retailers, all of us, and they've done a lot of good.

Keith Anderson: You mentioned that you were involved in some of the work with Ocado, and I don't want anybody to project individual cases to the entire grocery or retail industry, because context really matters, but one of the things that I, I know from work that I did on online grocery models, and one of the things that you're increasingly hearing some retailers and some brands talk about are, you know, when they reach a certain scale and when they're operated efficiently, some of the, both economic and environmental advantages to a sort of centrally picked, online grocery model. And there, there are. Parts of the world where that's the dominant, model, 

Suzy Monford: Yep. 

Keith Anderson: it hasn't really taken off in the US, the way that, you know, it has in Europe or parts of Asia. I'm just curious to get your thoughts and, you know, having worked directly on it, where do you see us headed in that area?

Suzy Monford: Yeah, and that's, that's awesome question, and you're, you're smart to phrase it as you, as you did. So yes, this, so Ocado, for folks who maybe aren't as familiar, began as, it's the very, it's the first e-commerce only retailer in the UK, and solely by subscription base. And it start, and it's founded in London, where there's extreme density.

I think, London actually is the most densely populated city in the world, 24/7. Meaning it may not be as large as New York City, but in New York, there are five boroughs and people, even if they come into the city, this is pre-pandemic, they would disperse out to the boroughs and that's where they lived.

If you live in London, you live in London, you work in London, so high density, density, density. And Ocado was built, the go-to-market strategy was based on subscription and maybe Keith and his household would say, "Yep. We're going to order these groceries every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday," whatever it wants to be.

That enabled Ocado to plan well, to purchase well, to inventory, you know, very smoothly to plan and then deliver JIT (just in time). When you can do that, when the retailer can anticipate the customer's needs down to the product, the day, and the time, then they can plan really, really well. And in all that planning, that's where the efficiencies come, and that's where they're able to optimize the profitability. Less waste, JIT, everybody's happy. Lower prices to the customer, and it's just a virtuous cycle. But it requires density. Same thing in Asia. I mean, I feel like I saw the future seven years ago in Shanghai, looking at the Hema stores and their use of e-commerce and rapid delivery scooters out the back of the store.

I mean, it was absolutely amazing to see. Here in the US, you know, we're a bit, we're more spoiled for choice. We're at, and we, we have a combination of high dense urban areas and many, many suburban areas, and then lots of rural wide open spaces. So that's why you see the best retailers. Look at Walmart, largest, the largest retailer, the largest grocer, of course, is Kroger, followed by Albertsons, but the largest retailer who sells food, of course, is Walmart.

Walmart leverages their own stores. They have, where possible, where they want to, where it's advantageous, they built their back rooms to be robotically engineered. You know, conveyors to, to fulfill e-commerce orders out of the back of their physical plant, their store. Other companies like Kroger invested into exclusive partnerships with companies like Ocado and built strategic regional hubs where they could pick orders very, very quickly, very efficiently, and then ship either to stores in their own network,

or in the case of some of the projects I work on, ship groceries in states like Florida, in which they had no stores. So you see a variety of different go-to-market strategies. I think the right answer is yes, meaning you have to, modern grocery, you have to do a little bit of all of that. You need to be a great brick and mortar store, offer a fabulous experience, but you have to offer an e-commerce platform.

Otherwise you can't grow and maintain your market share.

Keith Anderson: Yeah. It's fascinating. Over around the same timeframe that you were working in those areas, I was doing a lot of industry analysis and consulting. And I think we have a friend in common, Tom Furphy, does that name ring a bell?

Suzy Monford: Great friend. Yes. Love Tom.

Keith Anderson: Yeah, so I, I used to be on the circuit with Tom, as the two of us proselytized, "grocery is going to be digitized, everybody," but it, it's always interesting to me to reflect on how close we were with some of our, I might call them scenarios in hindsight, but I think most people interpreted them as predictions.

And I, I think as you just said, it's very clear the reason that the industry is so fixated on the term omnichannel now is it's sort of all of the above and particularly in a market like the US that was already pretty mature when these technologies emerged in contrast to some of the developing markets that could look at the future and could design from day one, you know, smaller stores, different store network and distribution models, last mile, retrofitting an existing asset base is in some ways more challenging, but there's, there's economic upside and there's sustainability upside where you can align what your, business will support with what the technology and customers will allow.

Suzy Monford: Absolutely. And in my view, not only you can, but you must, honestly, I mean, why not? Why not? It's, it's much less, every day that goes by, it's much less expensive to make these types of investments. And every day that goes by, your customer demographic is changing. You know, you, your traditional customers, your oldies are aging out, and it's the Gen Y and the Gen Z and the Millennials that are your customer today and the future, and they're demanding that, but, you know, coming, stepping back from that, because I don't ever tend to preach and be pedantic about it, but, you know, with technology, we, you, you can do well by doing good. And I think that old, what is that old trite saying, it's our attitude that determines our altitude in life or something silly.

But, you know, maybe I'll turn the table and ask you a question, Keith, because you've been in this space, you've been a pioneer. Why do you think the US seems to be such slow followers, generally speaking? Why does it, why, why, why doesn't the US you know, why don't these large chains, why is their imagination, not sometimes the large ones do, but the regionals don't, it doesn't seem to capture their imagination until it's become a well established trend.

Keith Anderson: It's a really good question. My first, my first thought is, the geography, you know, both the geographic and the population diversity. I mean, you can actually point to parts of the country, all over, you know, in almost every state. You'll find examples that are really far on the maturity curve and, you know, in many cases raising the bar, but it is hard at, at the scale of the majors to move quickly enough to sort of point to the innovation, the way you see it when we're all looking globally for examples of, "Hey, here's, here's what's next."

You know, I think secondly, we just have a different regulatory culture than some of the parts of the world that are a little, more inclined to use the stick than the carrot. And, I, I think that creates its own challenges, but, you know, I, I am, I pay very close attention at the moment to where the capital is being invested.

And I do have to credit Europe. There, there is so much technology investment focused on retail and CPG, climate and sustainability technologies, you know, in, in the mainstream, you see headlines about, "are we seeding markets in some of the more macro clean technology categories?" I have the same concern, you know, sometimes, that we're not moving quickly enough in within some of the subcategories, like, industry-focused technologies, because I see so much happening abroad.

That's not to the detriment of what's happening here. You know, there, there is a ton happening in places like Boulder and Silicon Valley, but I was sort of stunned to see how much of it is happening in Europe. I do think though, you, you know, to their credit, Kroger is certainly doing a lot with Zero Waste, Zero Hunger.

Walmart, with Project Gigaton, you know, hit the target, I think six years ahead of schedule. And Amazon, with Climate Pledge Friendly and some of their other programs, you know, they're increasingly making it part of the engagement model for suppliers. And with Amazon in particular, it's pretty visible across the shopper journey.

You see it on search result pages, product detail pages, checkout pages. I, I do think, you know, I, I want to turn the table back to you and ask you a question because I do think it feels to me like an inflection point in the industry, not unlike where you and I were in those early days of online grocery, where it's already happening. In parts of the world, it's a much bigger part of the industry. In this part of the world, it's not yet the focus in most executives' day, but I'm curious if there are parallels that you see or lessons you've learned about, you know, what it was like with responsibility for e-commerce in a big grocer when it was you know, when 90 percent or more of the volume was brick and mortar, and how do you engage the rest of the organization to say, "this is a little bit different way of operating. The economics look a little different, but the writing is on the wall. The momentum is building. With each passing quarter, it's going to be a bigger part of how we remain viable and keep winning."

Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode.

Well, Suzy, this has been really, again, a really exciting and interesting conversation, and I'm sure some of the folks listening would love to learn more about you and the work that you're doing. Where would you direct them?

Suzy Monford: So, reach out, I'm, as I said, I'm running Food Sport, so you can find me on LinkedIn at Food Sport International. You can go, that's really the best way, just find, find me on LinkedIn. Always Happy to meet and connect and be of support.

Keith Anderson: Wonderful. Well, thank you again so much for joining me.

Suzy Monford: Thank you, it's been my pleasure. Cheers. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce.
Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=v8w412rn

In this episode of Decarbonizing Commerce, host Keith Anderson speaks with Minchan Park, director of portfolio selection at Unreasonable Group, a company helping scale growth stage, impact-driven ventures working on some of the world's biggest problems. They discuss the Unreasonable Fellowship program, the new Unreasonable Food collaboration with Mars, how Min and the team identify and prioritize companies for participation, what the experience is like for the entrepreneurs that are part of the program, and what Min is looking forward to next. Tune in to gather insight from Min’s perspective on these topics and more!
Learn more about Minchan Park:

• Link to Unreasonable's website
• Link to Minchan’s LinkedIn

To listen to the full episode join our Plus or Pro memberships at decarbonize.co:

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Episode resources:

• Unreasonable Food 

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. 

Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast. I'm Keith Anderson. And my guest this week is Minchan Park, director of portfolio selection at Unreasonable Group. Min is responsible for Unreasonable's venture selection process, everything from sourcing to diligence, and of course, selection, helping scale growth stage, impact-driven ventures that are working on some of the world's biggest problems.

Before Unreasonable, Min worked at HG Capital, a leading European private equity fund, and previously was a strategy consultant at OC&C Strategy in London. If you listened to episode 19 of the show with Autumn Fox of Mars, you heard us briefly discuss the Unreasonable Food Program that Mars and Unreasonable Group are launching together.

They've just announced the first cohort of Unreasonable Food fellowships, 15 companies that are going to be participating in the program. And Min and I talked about how the program works, how he and the team identify and prioritize some of the companies that participate, what the experience is like for the entrepreneurs that are part of the program and what he's looking forward to next.

So we get into all that and more, and I'm excited for you to meet Min Park of Unreasonable Group. 

Min, thanks for joining the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast. Great to have you with us.

Minchin Park: Hi Keith, thanks for having me on here.

Keith Anderson: We're recording on a Friday, and if I'm not mistaken, you're five or six hours ahead of me, so appreciate you joining me on a Friday afternoon.

Minchin Park: No, this is, this is great. The weather's brilliant in London, for once. It's finally turned a corner, so, you know, happy days. It's a wonderful way to finish off the week.

Keith Anderson: Enjoy it while you can.

Minchin Park: Yeah, it doesn't last very long.

Keith Anderson: No, it often doesn't. Well, I thought maybe a good place to start would be, for those that may not be familiar with Unreasonable Group itself, maybe you can describe what the organization is all about.

Minchin Park: Yeah, happy to do that. I think unreasonable is a pretty unique organization, if I can say that myself. We're not a traditional venture capital firm, which is what a lot of people think we are when, when they come across Unreasonable. We're probably closer to an accelerator, but we still don't use the word accelerator because it's a little bit different still.

I would say at its core, Unreasonable is more of a community. Essentially a community of entrepreneurs, visionaries, capital movers, and corporate partners who all come together essentially to support these entrepreneurs with big visions and are tackling the world's greatest challenges essentially. We, you know, galvanize this community to draw direct and indirect investments into these companies, but we do so much more than just that.

So we provide a lot of the relational support for these founders and to the ventures themselves to help reduce the friction to scale in whichever way possible. And 

capital is one obvious friction to scale, of course, that is front of mind for everyone. But there are other frictions to scale for a lot of these founders like, you know, setting up a strategic sales function as the company grows, or setting in place a really strong company culture, navigating, and helping set new regulation standards, or scaling up manufacturing. So, we, we help with all of those things through the network that we provide and the expertise of the people in our community. I would say we are an invite-only community. So we really, we are trying to find the next generation of solutions here today and tomorrow that are making a real dent in the world in solving the world's most intractable challenges.

And once the entrepreneur has been identified and they're brought into the community, we we do everything we can on a personal level for the founders themselves, or professionally, for the venture to support these entrepreneurs to scale faster and further. This fundamentally goes back to the mission and the ethos where unreasonable essentially believes that entrepreneurship is the fastest way to solve planetary scale problems, using the power of capitalism in the right way. 

And essentially, you know, by doing this, I guess we're also out to show that, doing well in business and doing good in the world, like, don't really have to be at odds with each other.

If you, if you go to Unreasonable's website, it's, you'll see this simple tagline called Repurpose Capitalism. What we're trying to say here is, you know, capitalism doesn't have to be associated with endless resource extraction or competitive advantage or costs to rise to winner takes all markets.

We're trying to show that you know, the future here, can be one of abundant resources, and abundant outputs, and collaborative advantage. Yeah. So I'll, I'll pause there. And that's a bit about unre, what, what Unreasonable does.

Keith Anderson: I think that's really helpful. Just briefly to play back a little bit of what I heard, some similarities to venture capital firms and to accelerators, but in addition to being a hybrid of both of those models, the invitation-only and sort of selective community component is one of the other things that differentiates you.

Obviously, the mission, very focused on, as you say, planetary scale challenges and backing entrepreneurs and ventures in pursuit of making a dent in those problems. You know, I, I think that's a pretty clear summary.

Minchin Park: Yeah. and then I think the primary focus of Unreasonable is always with the entrepreneurs and the amazing work that they're doing. But if I could add a secondary aim here, it's also about de-siloing the market. So, if you, if you zoom out, there are a lot of different players and entrepreneurs on such a small part of the playing field.

There are investors and capital movers. There are also large institutional players out there. Like some of our corporate partners like Mars, Barclays, who have traditionally been associated with you know, large emission footprints. And in the case of Barclays, you know, funding coal, oil and gas industries.

And so they don't particularly have the best rep, like, in the world. But, you know, these companies won't just go away. As much as the average citizens would love them to, they sort of need a way out, to re-strategize so they can become part of the solution, and certainly they have the size and resources to help the entrepreneurs, so, I guess the secondary mission here is, why not offer them a ledge?

Why not instill this collaborative advantage that I was talking about and create a win/win situation for both the corporates as well as the entrepreneurs? And so I think that's also what we're out to do. So we, we essentially design initiatives, like the one with Barclays or the one with Mars.

And we try to connect them to the entrepreneurs that are really solving these big challenges. And essentially help them help one another. And so, you know, we're not just proving to the world that doing well and doing good can be, done together, we're also proving this to our partners and sort of changing them from the inside.

And yeah, with the goal of repurposingcapitalism. So that's, I guess, a secondary, goal that we have here as well.

Keith Anderson: Well, I'm glad you mentioned some of those programs. As you know, we had Autumn Fox of Mars on the show, a few months ago and one of the things I've been looking forward to is hearing more from you about the Unreasonable Food Program that Unreasonable and Mars have launched together and, also about your role in it.

You know, I, I think it would be great for the audience to understand how a program like that operates and what the objectives are. But then it would be great also to understand a bit more about, you know, how do you approach identifying the right profile of founder or early stage company and then what is participating in the program look like?

Minchin Park: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So we have a partnership with Mars, Mars Snacking, it's called Unreasonable Food, it's a joint initiatives between Unreasonable and Mars. It's our newest partnership, I'd say. And the, and the context for Unreasonable Food really arises from this, like, big problem that I'm sure you and your listeners are pretty, pretty well, well versed in.

You know, 25 percent of the world's food greenhouse gas emissions comes from the way that we produce, process, and package food. That's huge. And if you really think about, you know, the way that we've done this hasn't, it hasn't really changed much in the decades or centuries. It's sort of been efficiency improvements, but as it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it's sort of been the same old, same old.

And we're not simply going to reduce the amount of food that's being produced given the growing population. So it's a big challenge, but also a huge opportunity at the same time. And so that's the backdrop under which this initiative came about. And I think Mars is such a uniquely positioned player here, to make some drastic changes in the industry, and so not just within their own supply chain, but across, across the board, for a few different reasons.

Especially Mars Snacking, you know, they operate in a more of an impulse category, you know, with their Snickers bars and chocolate bars and sweets, so they have relatively attractive margins, and more importantly, they can have a long term perspective about things because they're a privately owned company, they're probably one of the largest privately owned companies out there, and what's great as well is that Mars is so serious about sustainability.

It's really refreshing from such a big giant corporation to be so serious about it. And you can see that it really stems right from the top. And I say refreshing because there are so many other CPG players and Mars's peers that have made these dramatic pledges, but really have done, haven't really done much to do anything about it.

But when, when you speak to Mars and when you look at, when you unpeel the layers, they on the other hand have made some drastic pledges. So slashing emissions by 50 percent by 2030, net zero by 2050. So this is a big deal if you think about the size of the operations they have. Like you can literally find Snickers bars like anywhere around the world, like, there you go.

So it's pretty huge. But really when you unpeel these layers, you can see that they've made some internal changes, like they're really serious about it. The leadership team, like, is very serious about it. Our, one of our main champions, I think Amanda Davies at Mars, she's the Chief Procurement and Sustainability Officer.

So there's kind of the joint role there. Which sort of shows the dedication and fundamentally just the numbers, they've reduced emissions close to 10 percent to date, they've taken some initiatives within, and also, you know, they've, they've done the steps they can, but this has also led them to realize that they can't do this all alone, they've, they've realized that, you know, to get to net zero, that 2050 goal, they really require technologies that aren't widely available in the market today, so a new way of producing fertilizer or a new form of packaging that is not based on fossil fuels, so they need all of these, which aren't actuallyLJ widely available in the market today.

So they've come to this realization that they can't do this alone. And their organization is structured in a way where they can have a long term perspective on things. So this, this unique backdrop, and kind of context for Mars and Unreasonable to, to work together, it is now really about, can we get the next generation of solutions that are out there, to work with Mars, to help them meet their sustainability goals?

So that's what we're out to achieve. So there's, I guess, two goals here. One is, you know, can we use the resources within Unreasonable, and Mars to help these entrepreneurs scale their impact dramatically? Like I said, these entrepreneurs need all the help that they can get. And that's, a benefit for the world, really, the faster we can scale these solutions.

And the second goal, by doing that, can we then help Mars reach their sustainability goals? And that's pretty evidently clear that they can. It's, I guess the big question is how and how quickly? So the success of this partnership is really around getting all of the people involved to build incredibly strong relational foundations for doing business, and ultimately get them to develop a commercial relationship with one another.

and this is really interesting. This partnership is really unique, because it, it solves from the, it solves from the venture side of point, point of view, this sort of chicken and egg problem that is, that is so pervasive in the venture space. And so, for example, what I mean by that, this chicken and egg problem, say, say a venture with 20 employees, doesn't, you know, has the technology to potentially develop a product that could be used by a CPG giant, but don't want to devote the resource to developing a customized product without some guarantees that that products will be used. Because, you know, devoting, say, six employees onto a new product is a very, quite a risky way to spend your cash. But the CPG player doesn't want to provide a guarantee without seeing the actual product and seeing how it functions. And so it's, if you think about it, it's very, none of these parties want to move first in order for them to not, you know, take a potential hit to their, to, to, to their P&L, and this is a real problem and it kind of stalls and it's one of these frictionsto scale that I mentioned in the beginning, and, you know, or another example might be, it's the more classic one where, a CPG giant won't agree to an offtake because the price is too high for the product that's there.

But the venture really needs the volumes from the offtake to recognize economies of scale to get the prices down. That's, that's a really obvious one that is, so pervasive, not just in the food industry, but across the board when it comes to making things. And so there's a lot of certain frictions to scale. And why this partnership with Mars is so important is because it creates this strong relational background for Mars and our fellows to give that commitment that yes, Mars really needs this.

They think you have a solution to do so. So can we do this? Can we cooperate and not be waiting for the one person to make the full leap before making a decision? Let's sort of meet halfway. So that's sort of the idea around this partnership because, and one way that you can envision how this can speed up the process to scale for some of these ventures.

So that's a bit about the Unreasonable Food Partnership in general. Sorry Keith, yeah.

Keith Anderson: I was going to say, you know, you just announced, I don't know, 10 days ago or so, from when we were recording, the first cohort of ventures in the program. You know, people can go look up all of those just by searching Unreasonable Food. But, you know, maybe it's worth spending a minute or two sharing some examples of the kinds of ventures that were selected and how they align with what Mars is trying to do. And anything we can share about the kinds of criteria that go into identifying and selecting some of these ventures

Minchin Park: Yeah, yeah. This is the fun part. My favorite. So, yeah, like you said, if, there's 15 companies in the year one cohort, that's available in unreasonablefood.com. You can see all the, all the full list of companies. Some that really jump out for Mars and to me as well. So as for example, Seaforest, this is a company, that is cultivating a type of seaweed, this red seaweed called asparagopsis. And this seaweed, essentially, when fed to cows, has the potential to reduce dairy and taric emissions, by 90%. So essentially stops cows burping. And it says up to 90%, but in some cases goes up to 95. So completely gets rid of this methane problem in cows.

And it's so effective, and it only requires a very small amount in the feed. So 0.2 percent of the cow's feed needs to be this additive, to achieve these reductions. So it's a really game changing, technology and product. It doesn't really require any consumer behavior change, which is the beauty of all of this, and passes a pretty minimal premium through on the retail price.

And Seaforest is an Australian company. They've just recently released the first carbon-free dairy milk, in Australia. That was announced pretty recently. That's a big That's a big move. And the potential for this technology is, is tremendous. And there's so many, cows out there in the world today.

The dairy industry is massive. So really the question is around how do we get this production to scale? And how can say a, a company like Mars link Seaforest up with their dairy suppliers to, to sort of feed, almost inset their dairy emissions? And it's one of the biggest challenges, in agriculture today, but also for Mars, as dairy emissions is one of the largest footprints that Mars has.

So that's a really exciting one. There's others like, MycoTechnology in there. It's a, it's an amazing company that's using mushroom fermentation, so, mycelium to create healthy and sustainable ingredients. They make, you know, mycelium-based proteins, but the one that is really exciting, that is coming out is the sweetener product.

They can make a protein-based sweetener that is 1,500 times sweeter than sugar. That doesn't actually get ingested into the bloodstream, so it doesn't affect the glycemic levels in people, so it doesn't actually cause diabetes, despite having the same effect as, as, as a taste profile as sugar.

So this has huge implications for CPG companies that traditionally rely on sugar. And of course, Mars relies a lot on sugar, so this is a big deal for them as well. I think you'll see other companies in there, like 80 Acres Farms, that is more about developing the future supply chain of food.

So, this is more of a futuristic vertical farming technology that can grow crops year-round, superior yield, high quality, with using, using drastically less land, you know, 95 percent less water, 100 percent runs on renewable energy. So it's one of these futuristic, kind of technologies that are in market today. They supply Kroger for tens of million dollars worth of contracts and goods. And it's really healthy. It's non-GMO, pesticide-, herbicide-free. And so that's also really interesting, just the partnership opportunities that are available. So seeing what types of crops that could be grown using vertical farming is also exciting.

Those are just a few names. There's 12 others. I've just listed off three. But yeah, there, there, it's a phenomenal cohort. But how they have been selected, it's a pretty broad criteria. But there's probably four things I would say that we look for in Unreasonable when we think about bringing an entrepreneur into the fellowship. So, first is impact.

I mean, that's a no brainer, right? It has to be core in the business model. We need to be able to see clear, positive, measurable, social or environmental impact. One that is baked into the core business model such that the more revenues they make, the more profits they make, the better it is for the world.

It's that idea around time doing well and doing good together. So we need to be able to see that as more or less a red line. Without that, we won't proceed. Second, we want to see growth-stage companies. One of the reasons why I said Unreasonable is quite different from, say, other ecosystems and accelerators is one of, there's many, but one of the reasons is because we focus on the growth stage, whereas typically these ecosystems like to focus on the earlier stage.

So helping companies go from zero to one, whereas we're helping companies go from one to 10, 10 to a hundred. So we want to see, that. There are companies that are tackling large addressable market sizes, have de-risked the technology, and those are already in market today making revenues, typically in terms of fundraising around series A to series C, if that is, that's relevant, but it's all sort of different.

I think making revenues is probably the biggest, green flag that we look for. So that stage is important. And of course, the differentiation, and the commercial wow factor. So, we want to see a technology or a service that's differentiated versus the status quo of doing things, and also the competition.

So, sort of two things. If it's a new thing in the market, how much of an improvement is it based on how we've been doing it for decades and centuries. Obviously, that'll be huge, but, you know, if there are competitors out there, like, why are they the special one? Of course, it's always really difficult to pick a winner in the venture space, but, we like to have a view on why we think this horse is worth backing.

So, typically, this really involves around being able to show a customer a commercial benefit in adoption, rather than just a sustainability play, so that the scaling this is a no brainer for customers. So if it's helping you reduce cost or reduce energy or it's cheaper than, then of course people are going to adopt it.

It doesn't have to be a thing where you have to persuade them around the impacts of climate change, which I'm sure everyone understands and can in some cases can get behind, but really these are bottom line driven decisions and so to see that commercial benefit is a huge green flag for us. So essentially what we're here to do is to support and scale what and I guess the finally the CEO.

The founder themselves is incredibly important. We... and by that, I think there's a, there's a few layers here. So founder diversity is also really important when we create like a cohort of entrepreneurs. So, we always try to build a community within Unreasonable that's diverse in experience, background and culture.

And we like to support entrepreneurs that really level the playing field for those who might be historically underrepresented in business. So there's a, there's that element, but also just the quality of the human being. And this is more art than science. I wish I had a scorecard for how to judge a person's quality of the human.

But it's to do with their fundamental character. Like we love supporting people who clearly believe in what they are doing, have a deep appreciation for humankind and nature as a whole, show humility, and, but also drive, and are willing to say and admit that they don't know everything, that they need help sometimes, because that's what we're here to do, to help them. So those, I think, four things are things that we particularly look for in a general sense whenever we consider an entrepreneur for the Unreasonable fellowship. But I think for this partnership with Mars, there's a fifth consideration, which is a very important one, which is the fit to their supply chain.

I think because of the context of this partnership and being able to connect them with Mars and helping them work together, we really want to see, companies that can fit nicely within the supply chain, fit nicely into the type of crops that Mars works with, into the type of geographies that Mars works with, works in.

So, Like Seaforest, for example, the company I mentioned earlier, they have a relationship with one of Mars's largest dairy suppliers. So that was always a huge bonus because it just makes the geography footprint. And sort of the relational aspect, much, much easier. And so those things are, I think, important when it comes to this particular initiative, 

Keith Anderson: Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode.

Well, you've mentioned, a couple websites, the unreasonablegroup.com site, the Unreasonable Food, website. If folks wanted to get in touch with you, where would you send them?

Minchin Park: Yeah, I mean, I, well, either to my LinkedIn, I'm pretty active there because I'm always reaching out to entrepreneurs that I think are really great, pestering them and getting them to speak to me. Or my, my email, [email protected]. I think your, listeners are probably a lot of relevant people who would have a lot of interesting things to say and interesting discussions that we could have. So, you know, on email, always welcome as well.

Keith Anderson: Well Min, have fun next month and good luck and thanks so much for joining me.

Minchin Park: Thank you, Keith. This was really fun. Thanks for having me. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the Decarbonizing Commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce.Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=r8kmq678

Today's guest is Katherine Sizov, co-founder and CEO of Strella, whose hardware-enabled software as a service uses data to predict the shelf life of produce and allows everybody from distribution centers, packers, wholesalers, and retailers to make better decisions about when to ship, when to sell, and where to allocate what produce.

Katherine joins Keith for a great discussion about how she and her co-founder came to start the business, some of the decisions they've made in terms of go-to-market and business model,  the economic and environmental results that their customers are seeing, and how to get those yellow bananas straight from the farm to the shelves of supermarkets! 
Learn more about Katherine Sizov:

• Link to Strella’s website
• Link to Strella’s LinkedIn
• Link to Katherine’s LinkedIn

To listen to the full episode join our Plus or Pro memberships at decarbonize.co:

• https://decarbonize.co/member-benefits/ 👈

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• Agri-Fresh

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.

Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson. Food waste has been a big theme on the show so far, and for good reason. The global food system represents about a third of global emissions, and about half of those emissions are the result of food waste. And while households are the biggest driver of food waste, there's a lot that happens along the supply chain that the industry itself can address.

And today's guest is Katherine Sizov, co founder and CEO of a company called Strella, whose hardware enabled software as a service, uses data to predict the shelf life of produce and allows everybody from distribution centers, packers, wholesalers, and retailers to make better decisions about when to ship, when to sell, and where to allocate what produce.

We had a great discussion about how Katherine and her co founder came to start the business. Some of the decisions they've made in terms of, go to market and business model and the kinds of economic and environmental results that their customers are seeing. So I'm sure you'll find it as interesting as I did, and I'm happy to introduce Katherine Sizov of Strella.

Katherine, welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. Great to have you with us.

Katherine Sizov: Thanks so much for having me.

Keith Anderson: Well, why don't we start with a bit about your background and how you came to focus on food waste and start Strella.

Katherine Sizov: For sure, yeah, so my background is in neuroscience, so I was supposed to go to grad school and get a PhD, but something about sitting at a lab bench for another extended period of time wasn't really calling me, so I started reading whatever I thought was interesting out there, and I read the stat that 40 percent of food is wasted before it's consumed.

That pretty immediately struck me because, first of all, it's a gigantic number and second of all, I quickly came to the realization that I had no idea where my food came from. So I didn't even know where this waste occurred and how it happened. So set out on a very long journey. What became a very long journey of learning about food waste.

And then eventually that led to the formation of the company.

Keith Anderson: So maybe we can take a few minutes and for those that aren't as familiar, just Strella does and how do you do it?

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, so what we do at Strella is we can predict the shelf life of different types of produce, and we use that data as an input into making smarter decisions all across the supply chain. So as you can imagine, perishability is kind of a critical component, in food. However, that data has oftentimes been lacking or very siloed, and so what we do is we create that information.

We started in apples and pears, which can be stored for a whole year before they get to a grocery store. And what we do is we decide which apples need to get shipped to the grocery store first, based on how mature they are. We also work in bananas, where if you've gone to the grocery store, you've probably noticed the bananas are sometimes way too ripe, sometimes way too underripe.

So what we do is we make the color of bananas more consistent on the store shelf, which reduces waste, makes forecasting easier, and lifts sales.

Keith Anderson: So you mentioned the color. Can you describe the technology? Monitoring the, you know, banana peel and that's how you're identifying maturity or is there more to it than that?

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, so we monitor gases that produce, emits, which happens to be a proactive indicator . So for example one of the gases that we monitor is ethylene. So before color change or a starches to sugar change, basically fruit will be producing this and we can get a proactive indicator of a change. And this is great, because you get a window of opportunity to act on this information before the product actually changes in quality.

Keith Anderson: And it sounds like you're doing what you do with a combination of hardware and software. What is the hardware like? You know, is this something that is tiny and is sort of at the individual banana level? Does it cover a bunch? Does it cover a whole storage space? You know, help me visualize what the hardware side of the equation looks like.

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, so our current kind of hardware looks like a brick. And since we work in the supply chain, we work with pretty significant volumes. So we'll work with whole truckloads of bananas or roomfuls of apples, which could be anywhere from one to five million individual apples. So gigantic volumes. And yeah, we basically measure, things that are the level of resolution of the supply chain.

So for example, the smallest unit is a lot, which is fruit that was picked on the same day by the same grower, from the same region of an orchard. And we can follow that lot all the way down the chain as it passes from hand to hand.

Keith Anderson: And when you describe the chain, what are some of the major steps that you're thinking of?

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, so we typically follow whoever owns, produce as it travels. So, right now our major categories are suppliers or packers, so those are folks who consolidate from the grower. So, fruit, for example, is picked off a tree, it's consolidated at the packing house, it's put into boxes and stored and shipped.

So we work with packers and we also work with retailers and wholesalers and food service folks. So those are people that receive the product downstream and do the final mile distribution typically.

Keith Anderson: And I imagine many of our listeners are closer to the retail side of the value chain than the producer side. So to help them think about where this might fit in their business model, is this something that would be deployed, in the back room, is it on the sales floor? How does it come to life for them?

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, so we typically work at the distribution center level, because by the time an item gets to the store, there's really two decisions you can make. You can either mark it down or throw it away. Both options that are not great for retailers, and so what we're trying to do is capture data upstream so that we can make an informed decision to kind of prevent those two outcomes from happening in the first place. So for example, in apples, what we do with retailers is we always send the most ripe apple to the grocery store first from the distribution center. And what this helps is to reduce waste in the retailer's chain because they're always selling the most ripe apple first.

In bananas, kind of similar story, but just focused on creating a bit more consistency, at the store level, so ripening the bananas at the distribution center so that every time they get to the grocery store, they're that perfect yellow color.

Keith Anderson: And you've mentioned three categories of fruit that you're working with. Apples, pears, bananas. What's the sort of potential in terms of applications across perishables for the kind of technology that you've built and are developing?

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, our technology applies to all different kinds of produce. So, you know, all of the things that are expensive and that you don't want to throw away. So avocados are an immediate next target for us, tropical fruits, even flowers, kind of have very similar mechanisms to produce items. And then looking even past that into meat and seafood, and just looking at the perishable supply chain overall.

Keith Anderson: I'd love to spend a little time on the economics, in a couple senses. From the perspective of somebody that is deploying technology like this. Do you have enough accrued experience through pilots and customers to have a point of view on what the economic benefits are in terms of, you know, waste or spoilage prevented and incremental sales from perishables that you can sell instead of donating or landfilling?

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, absolutely. I'd say our ROI is usually at least three to eight times whatever the price is that we charge. So, for example, with packing customers in apple storage, we charge $5, 000 per room per year to monitor apples and make decisions. And we save on average $40, 000 of food waste every single year.

We've saved over 20 million pounds of apples from going to waste, so we're a pretty significant percentage of the U. S. apple and pear market.

Keith Anderson: So it sounds like it's a, sort of a, I, I come from a SaaS background. So my bias is to say, it sounds like it's a SaaS model, but with the hardware component, it's not just software. Is that a reasonable way to think about the, business model on your side?

Katherine Sizov: 100%. Yeah, we call it hardware enabled SaaS. I think the thesis behind the company is that there is not really any data to capture, and so we have to be the ones to generate our own data. But at the end of the day, we are focused on the data, so we're a data company.

Keith Anderson: I can appreciate that. And again, you know, my inclination is to go deeper on the retail side, but if there are other interesting case studies or, or examples that you'd like to share, feel free to expand on them, but who are you finding is, using this and are they using it daily? I mean, my guess based on what you've already said is it's being used by maybe a combination of distribution center operations and produce buyers or produce managers.

Who's using it? How often are they using it? You know, help somebody who is in the kind of roles that this might improve the lives of imagine what it's like to log in and use it.

Katherine Sizov: Yeah, for sure, so warehouse people are the kind of daily users, so when they're making decisions about what to move and how. We help communicate that, but we also interface with the produce team typically, because they care about shrink and they care about sales numbers. So we work with them as well.

Yeah, those are kind of our two major categories that we, that we work with.

Keith Anderson: And you mentioned that you're a data company. Is there demand are you finding to align or integrate your data with other data sets or other systems?

Katherine Sizov: For sure. It's a good question to ask and something we're thinking through now too, We certainly do. So there are ERP systems that we integrate into, warehouse management software that we integrate into. And there's kind of this ecosystem around different chunks of the supply chain and how that information is collected or how that information is currently transmitted.

So we certainly work with a number of different partners all across the chain.

Keith Anderson: Are you finding that there's demand with a certain profile of grocer? Is this something that you're seeing interest from, the majors, as sort of, they've already got food waste or climate initiatives and this plugs neatly into those, or are regional chains and independents finding it's something that might actually fall to the bottom line pretty immediately for them too?

Katherine Sizov: I'll say that we never fall under a food waste or climate initiative. I think a lot of that stuff is very nascent for fortune 500 companies. So when we go into work with a retailer, we are always pitching the weight, the shrink reduction and the sales, top line improvements. So it certainly isn't kind of a climate draw that people have towards us. It's really more of a bottom line impact. In general, I'd say we focus more on the larger retailers because the larger the customer is, the more we, the more optimization we can do. So our sweet spot tends to be folks who are larger and have a lot of volume that they're moving that we can optimize.

Keith Anderson: You, you touched on something that I think we often cover in these conversations, which is the positioning and the framing of the benefit, whether it's predominantly commercial and economic, or, you know, climate and sustainability, and, you were pretty clear, but how did you come to arrive at that, you know, positioning that the pathway into our prospective customers is to focus on the shrink reduction and incremental sales versus, hey, we just saw you issued a climate transition plan, and we want to align with your strategy?

Katherine Sizov: I don't think they're, at the end of the day, companies make decisions based on what's good for the planet or some kind of charity situation. I think companies are out there to make money at the end of the day, and so aligning what they're profitability or incentives to become more efficient are always far stronger pulls for them.

I also think a lot of this climate action stuff is pretty nascent. And so there haven't been a ton of resources really allocated towards those types of goals. There certainly is PR and there's certainly the desire to do something, but at the end of the day, I don't know if there have been true resources put into solving these problems.

Keith Anderson: I would say broadly I agree, although I'm cautiously optimistic about some of the, you know, capital and, and people being allocated that go beyond just the annual PDF that's released or the, PR.

Katherine Sizov: I, agree, especially if you have two decisions that are equal and one can be a positive one and one is neutral, then people will always pick the better option, but I do think it's important to try to align the economic incentives. And I don't think that's that hard to do, right? Food waste is obviously something that sucks all across the supply chain, and so it's not that difficult to show an economic value, alongside the sustainability piece.

But I will say sustainability hardly ever comes up in sales conversations.

Keith Anderson: I'm not surprised to hear you say that. I mean, food waste, for the same reasons that I think you mentioned on the site, and you were drawn to this space, because the scale of the problem is so profound, it's an area that we focus a lot on, and, you know, we've identified and been speaking with solution and technology providers, Working on the problem through, sort of sensors and predictive analytics, sort of like you, dynamic pricing and markdowns, which you've made reference to, protective coatings, surplus, food marketplaces, you name it.

There, there's a growing solution ecosystem focused on this problem. And almost to a T, anybody I speak with says, yeah, you know, the food waste is a big part of why I got into it, but it's not a big part of the sales deck, if that makes sense. And it's like, I get it, you know, as you say, it's hard to sell something without a pretty compelling ROI and economic story.

And, you know, you can listen to one or two other episodes of the show and you'll hear a very similar discussion about. Yeah, you know, when I'm pitching a big European grocer, my pitch is Here's the EBITDA that I can add over a year because I'm going to help you sell perishables that you otherwise would have landfilled.

Katherine Sizov: Exactly. I also think in food, food waste is a little bit of a challenging topic because people point a lot of fingers. So, you know, there'll be articles that come out with, you know, where you have a ton of food waste and this person's to blame and that person's to blame for it or that segment. And I think the reality is that everybody's trying to do the absolute best they can.

A grower isn't trying to, you know, have food waste. They put blood, sweat, and tears into the product. And so when that's happening, it's hurting everybody. And so I think the conclusion to draw from that is that. The supply chain as it currently stands is inefficient, and there needs to be new technologies and systems in place, but that doesn't mean that someone is doing a bad job.

And so I think that's another reason why the whole food waste question is a little bit contentious in this space.

Keith Anderson: Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode.

If folks wanted to learn more about Strella or get in touch with you, where should they go?

Katherine Sizov: Our website, strellabiotech.com, or feel free to reach out at [email protected], or we're on LinkedIn, so feel free to follow our page. Pretty active on there.

Keith Anderson: Well, we'll, we'll link to all those from the show notes and on the site. And Katherine, really appreciate you joining us. Super interesting work that you're doing and best of luck.

Katherine Sizov: Thank you so much.

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce.




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Relive a recent talk from Firstmovr’s JBPx Amazon eCommerce Growth Summit. The session was focused on two Amazon climate and sustainability initiatives for vendors and sellers: the Climate Pledge Friendly badge and Compact by Design. The session covers the programs' commercial benefits, guidance on how to qualify, and more.
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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. 

Welcome to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm Keith Anderson. This week, I've got something a little bit different for you. Instead of interviewing someone, I'll be sharing a recording of a presentation I gave last week as part of a Firstmovr virtual summit on Amazon. Firstmovr are old friends of mine and focused on omni channel education and change management for CPG companies.

My presentation was focused on two Amazon climate and sustainability initiatives, the Climate Pledge Friendly badge and Compact by Design. So, if you're an Amazon seller or vendor and want to understand how participating in these programs can help you drive traffic to your products, increase conversion rates and sales, and improve unit economics,

it's worth a listen, or if you're just curious about some of the commercial and logistical considerations of these two really important Amazon initiatives, I think you'll find this week's episode interesting. We do have some great guests scheduled for the coming weeks. So if you're interested in learning from others, you'll continue meeting some of the innovators in the industry.

But I'm really happy to share this presentation on Winning with Amazon on Climate Pledge Friendly and Compact by Design.

Chris Perry: So as we transition to our second session of the day, I'm very excited to bring Keith Anderson, who again is not a stranger to the stage at all, and has been probably the Wizard of Oz behind many strategies and frameworks from his early days at Planet Retail RNG or RetailNet Group before that, Profitero in many recent years, and then founded an awesome company focused on sustainability, which is, without even just e-commerce being the area of focus, is such an important topic, A, because whether you're a tree hugger or not, is the right thing to do for, for, for the consumer, for the earth knowing Earth Day obviously was yesterday, you know, what, what a, what a appropriate, you know, kickoff you know, event to, to focus in on this, but really excited about his, his organization, Decarbonizing Commerce, as he focuses on an area that maybe few people are really focused on and talking about and, and, and structuring around, but one that impacts all of us, our innovation pipelines, our promotion, our content, our go to market strategies, our partnerships. And so, through the lens of Amazon sustainability initiatives, very excited to have him talk to us about how we can build our businesses and grow.

You know, Grow our, our, a sustainable business financially with sustainability initiatives. So, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm going to pass the baton to you and let you take it away, good sir.

Keith Anderson: I really appreciate the introduction. I'm going to need to bring you as my hype man everywhere I go from now on. 

Chris Perry: I am available for weddings, and bar mitzvahs, and birthdays, and you name it, so. 

Keith Anderson: And I'm very grateful to you, Oscar, and Amanda for inviting me to participate today.

As you say, Earth Day was yesterday, but that's not why we're covering this topic. You know, there, there are commercial benefits to participating in some of the programs that we're going to cover today, where it makes sense. Some of these claims come directly from Amazon. So, you know, take those with whatever skepticism you will.

But Amazon itself says in 2023, products that had the Climate Pledge Friendly badge saw an average 10 percent lift in product page views. And as somebody who had done pretty rigorous analysis in my past lives of the value of badges like Amazon's Choice and Best Seller, I had assumed there was some kind of a commercial upside to some of these emerging credentials that Amazon is displaying across the shopper's journey.

But I didn't really have a way to quantify it. And very helpfully, John Shea and the team at Momentum Commerce just a few weeks ago did their own independent analysis and they found an average 8.4 percent sales lift. Secondly, you know, on the conversion side, and I, I guess sales falls on the conversion side too, but Amazon reports that more than customers have switched more than 60 million times from products that are not badged to products that are badged as Climate Pledge Friendly.

That's as of the end of last year. And then the other program that we're going to spend a few minutes on, the compact by design program. As you'll hear it will make you eligible for Climate Pledge Friendly, but it also, just by its nature, can improve unit economics by lowering costs for things like material, packaging materials, storage, fulfillment.

So, I, I'm very grateful to Chris for the great introduction. My, my history is all in the industry and, and about two thirds of it was in industry analysis and advisory usually focused on emerging capabilities and forces that were changing the business of retailing and CPG. And when I left my last company, I did some research and diligence and saw one of the forces, in addition to things like retail media and AI, that is really high velocity and increasingly transformational to retail and CPG business models is what's happening in climate and sustainability, and I love the phrase sustainable growth in that last session.

I, I know this isn't the way that it was used, but the way we look at it, and I think increasingly the way the industry looks at it is you know, number one, some of the effects of what's happening are happening regardless of how we feel about it. It's not something you can managed fully, it just is.

And so there's as much energy increasingly going into adapting supply chains in the business to be more resilient. But secondly, none of what we do is going to have an impact or be viable long term if it's not economically and commercially viable. And so we really focus on what we call commercial sustainability, which to Chris's point is where some of the you know, climate or sustainability initiatives intersect with conventional roles and the work of portfolio strategy and packaging and branding, sales, marketing, and so on.

And some of the most fruitful innovation and initiatives and ways to engage retailers like Amazon are in that area. You know, contextually, part of the reason that I started doing this and we'll only spend a minute or two on this, but I think it's important for everybody to be aware of what's happening.

There are what are called science based targets that are being set at an accelerating pace by big retailers and grocers and CPGs globally. And the targets alone don't count for much but, you know, there are companies like Mars as one example that are deploying a billion dollars over the next three years to accelerate these plans.

So it's hard to argue that it isn't beginning to impact the industry. And emissions are divided into scopes and scopes one and two cover basically your own emissions, what comes out of your own smokestacks and whatever you source indirectly in terms of energy. But as you can see that whether you're a retailer or a brand represents

a fraction of your total value chain emissions and typically 85 or 90 percent of what a company is emitting happens upstream, which for a retailer like Amazon means they're direct own label suppliers and they're vendors, and to a CPG means ingredients and materials and other service providers. And generally speaking in the industry, there is growing focus on where most of the emissions lie, which is scope three.

And what that means to all of us is, you know, sustainability and climate are not new things. The industry has been working on them for decades. Walmart famously has project Gigaton, which, you know, they, they succeeded through collaborating with their suppliers in reducing or preventing one gigaton of emissions six years ahead of schedule.

So it's not a new thing, but what is a growing focus is this cross industry value chain coordination and collaboration. And what that means is a lot of the investment and activity is shifting from backstage to onstage. And what I mean is, you know, the, the low hanging fruit that the sustainability teams have been working on behind the scenes over the last decade or so was often happening in the production and storage facilities.

Increasingly, it includes that, but is impacting things like M&A strategy. If you're an emerging CPG brand that wants to get acquired by one of the majors, part of that due diligence process is going to be looking at your climate footprint. Some of the retailers are starting to look at climate footprint at both a corporate and product level in their supplier engagement and assortment strategy.

They're asking for new data. So I'm not going to cover all of these, but what's important to take out of it is it's increasingly encroaching on the work that we do in almost any... And it's increasingly influential to commercial outcomes and ways of working with retailers. So I, I think everybody has probably seen just exploring Amazon site and mobile app.

They are nudging shoppers across the path to purchase with options like lower carbon delivery, you know, that is in most cases, not even a choice. It's just a indication Amazon is presenting to shoppers to let you know this item is in a nearby fulfillment center. And so if you buy this one instead of others, it will, it will be lower emission given the shorter distance traveled.

Climate Pledge Friendly, you're going to hear a lot about that, so stay tuned. And then you know, fewer boxes, fewer trips, that sort of correlates with the Amazon Day, which is an opportunity to accept, if you can believe it, lower velocity delivery and consolidate shipments into a single delivery with fewer boxes and fewer trips, which saves on both packaging and material costs and on fuel.

So this is just an indication that this is becoming an increasingly visible part of how Amazon is. Presenting products to the shopper at different stages of the experience. And, you know, there are roughly seven big vendor facing programs that have some climate or sustainability role to them.

The, the two broad based ones that we're going to focus on for the next few minutes are Compact by Design and Climate Pledge Friendly. But, I'm sure all of you are familiar with ships and product packaging, the evolution of ships and own container, frustration free packaging. A few of the programs that may be lesser known, but I wanted to make you aware of them in case they're relevant.

You know, in, in Europe, they have a launch pad accelerator for sustainability focused CPG brands and tech companies. And then, for really small and medium enterprises, especially on the seller side, they launched a climate hub that's basically a version of some of this stuff, just oriented to smaller businesses.

And finally, if you're in categories where it makes sense, things like electronics, but also outdoor goods and clothing and, and a few other categories. They're pre-owned certification and pre-owned resale business is turning into a pretty scalable business in Europe alone, it's, it was more than a billion dollars in '23.

So, if that's relevant, check it out. And, you know, what we did when we were researching and analyzing these different programs was we surveyed, I think it was, 25 Amazon teams, and particularly those that had some experience participating in these programs or had done diligence and decided not to do them, and we looked at them through essentially three lenses, you know, effort as the input and then commercial outcomes and climate or sustainability outcomes as the output.

And that basically led us to the top two here that we're highlighting and going to unpack for you today. Because, you know, I think that's not to say that in a different context, any of these may not be a better choice. So your mileage may vary, but this is how we arrived at a focus on these two.

Now, I'll give you a second or two just to memorize this equation. I'm just kidding. Every time I see it, I sort of think to myself, boy it's actually not as complex as it looks, but this is the compact by design equation. And I'm not going to ask you to study this too carefully here because we're going to unpack it.

But in essence, what Amazon is doing with compact by design, is encouraging and incentivizing you to reduce the weight and volume of your product and to increase what they call unit efficiency, which, you know, is, is something that's standardized in each category to something, as it says here, like, loads for laundry detergents. And the idea is to increase the number of units in a lighter and smaller pack configuration on the site.

So it, it, it, to take a step back, this is a certification that Amazon will grant products in the US and a handful of other eligible markets, including the UK and Canada for products that through that formula that we just displayed, pass their category by category threshold. So they've got unit efficiency thresholds for each category.

That's a moving target that's available on Amazon's site. But, you know, the idea is to be more unit efficient than that threshold for your category. And then once you qualify essentially two things have happened. One, you've almost certainly reduced your packaging and material costs, the weight and so as we say, your unit economics on the cost side are almost guaranteed to improve if you take a product that is ineligible and make minor tweaks to make it eligible, but the second real benefit here is Compact by Design automatically qualifies you for the Climate Pledge Friendly Program.

And so it's sort of a way to feed two birds with one handful. If you are in a category or within your portfolio have products that are high potential here, this is where we would encourage you to start. And so just to unpack briefly what these three levers are. You know, volume is pretty straightforward.

You know, it's, it's dimensional volume. So, you know, height and width and length. And anything you can do to reduce the size of the product and its packaging, and in particular, to increase what's called the product to package ratio. That is, you know, you want the product itself to fit as cleanly within the package as possible.

That's going to help you on that front. Weight, anything you can do in both the product or the package to reduce weight. On the product side, things like concentration or dilutable products in some categories like cleaning and personal care in particular are an increasingly common way to go at this, but you've seen it in beverage categories with hydration and others.

You know, if you're in a product category where it's feasible without sacrifices in effectiveness, taste, other important considerations to especially avoid shipping unnecessary water or air around the country. You're going to have a higher chance of qualifying. Secondly, you know, packaging there, there's all kinds of complexity and I bet most companies have packaging teams that can help you navigate this.

But generally speaking, if a material like glass is the preferred material for packaging in a brick and mortar environment, it may not be in this context because of the weight. There's a great image that I'm going to add to a future version of this deck from a European, I think, gin brand that just updated its packaging from a glass bottle to new aluminum bottles.

And the picture speaks a thousand words because all they posted this morning was a scale that on the one side has the previous glass package and on the other side of the scale are six of the new aluminum packages. So, again, it's a nuanced decision to make, and this is just one lens through which you might look at what the right packaging is.

But if you're trying to qualify for this program, you want to look at lighter weight packaging materials, which may be plastic, aluminum, or paper. And then finally, units per pack. We'll talk about ways to do this, but this is closely correlated with concentration but it can also be about just improving the excuse me, increasing the unit density of a given pack configuration.

So, here are a couple examples you know, I'll share some that Amazon shares, and then a couple that we identified, but, you know, products that are in irregularly shaped packages, which, you know, consequently can't be as tightly packed into the Amazon boxes. And secondly, that our liquid, you know, in addition to all the issues with leakage and potential shrink, they're heavier.

So you know, in a category like personal care, Amazon, and we would highlight BAR as an example of a product form and correlated packaging that are, that are likelier to qualify. And then the second example, I think really illustrates that product to packaging ratio concept. And this is one where particularly as you are growing your Amazon business, and, and by the way, I don't think it's realistic and, and nor is it necessary to go focus on endeavoring to be eligible across your entire portfolio for the programs we're discussing here. I think it's, it's a better approach to identify some high velocity items that do material volume on Amazon and that have some of the preconditions that make it commercially viable to go update it. But one of, one of the considerations that more and more of the brands that we speak with and work with are acknowledging is a lot of the packaging that is necessary for a product to pop at physical retail, as the frustration free packaging concept sort of pioneered, isn't necessarily helpful at the digital shelf.

And so, you know, if, as in this example of the Clorox bleach toilet tablets, You know, the product itself, those two tablets, only occupy roughly half of the packaging for the retail version of the product. And so, if you have a commercially viable pathway to an e-commerce pack that, that uses all of the rich imagery and the digital shelf canvas to you know, pop up at the digital shelf, you can potentially increase the product to package ratio and reduce some of that retail-ready packaging for this context. And, you know, increasingly, there are other ways to sell at the shelf. And so, some companies in certain contexts are trying to solve for both channels at the same time. That's the Compact by Design program.

And as we say, if you qualify for Compact by Design you are automatically gonna receive the Climate Pledge Friendly badge, which, as you saw earlier in the discussion, it's now presented on search result pages as a sustainability feature, but if your product has any of these sustainability features, you'll get a little green leaf next to your product in search results.

And then on the detail page itself, it's displayed as, as you see here. And again, we don't know category by category what the impacts are, but on average, I think it's realistic to say you are likely to see a material increase in traffic and sales if you become eligible for these products or for these designations.

The Compact by Design certification is just one of dozens of certifications that you can use, however, to become eligible for the Climate Pledge Friendly badge. So, if you... here are some of the examples. You know, you'll see it. They've got, I think, 16 discrete pathways to these products, including a sub shop, which I am guessing is not very heavily trafficked, but for shoppers that are so motivated, they can see all of the Climate Pledge Friendly products consolidated in one place, and then, as you can see across search result pages in the faceted search filtering.

And on detail pages, you'll increasingly see the badge and iconography. Denoting products that participate. So as I was saying, compact by design is just one of dozens of certifications that you can use to qualify. The complexity of these is pretty significant. And so part of the reason that compact by design is one that makes sense is it, it naturally aligns your pack configuration with some of Amazon's preferences and some of the nuance of their fulfillment and logistics model.

And so it's not going to be the right choice in all cases, but it's worth considering as a first line of defense. But from there, you know, you can actually click, you'll get the slides after the session. If you click the word here, it'll take you to the page where you can see all of the current certifications that will make you eligible and the complexity here is some of these take eight to 10 weeks for you to qualify.

Some of them take six to 12 months. Some of them carry a considerable fee because somebody wants, somebody needs to come audit your production facilities. And sometimes those audits can be pretty disruptive, you know, actually shutting down the production process for a day or more. So it's important, depending on your category and your starting point and your overall objective to pick the path of least resistance.

These, any of these will qualify you, but they're not all equal. And so, you know, start with the one that Amazon developed for its own business, and then look for options that are a little more efficient. As we say, you know, this certification landscape is crowded and confusing. If, if you're looking for help, we've partnered with the private label suppliers that helped Amazon develop its Amazon Aware own label, which is Amazon's attempt to raise the bar for sustainability in several categories, including health and personal care.

And as, as part of that role that they've played, they've developed a very nuanced understanding of all of the certifications that Amazon accepts and have great guidance for where to focus. And on the compact by design front, unit efficiency can be a little confusing and complicated to calculate, and then identify the underlying drivers.

They've got a calculator that is really straightforward. So you input some of your product's characteristics. It identifies whether you're eligible or not and streamlines an economical path to eligibility. And then finally obviously getting some of these credentials on the site is a big part of getting credit with the shopper.

But it's an increasingly complicated landscape to communicate and, and get credit for what you're doing in these areas and embedding it in product imagery and detail page copy. And so that's an area that we can help with if you are looking for it. So just to close things out, and then maybe we'll have a minute or two for Q& A, you know, if, if you're looking to engage with this, like I say, there's so much upside with Amazon and so many areas to focus, this doesn't need to be your overarching focus, but I would start paying attention and doing something here because this year Amazon is requiring its private label vendors to set targets and start reporting.

I, I expect within three years, maybe sooner, they'll be doing that for all of their major vendors. And this is one of the areas that is easy enough to get started with, with provable enough commercial upside that it makes sense to start here. Skip over the SME Climate Hub if you're not a small and medium enterprise.

Programs like Frustration Free and Chips and Product Packaging we didn't cover because they make sense in a limited number of cases, although ships and product packaging is a huge focus. And in Europe, Amazon is essentially mandating it. Compact by Design. It does bring complexity, particularly if you are considering making changes to product form or have to adapt packaging you know, in ways that are going to require shifts in the status quo, but many of these decisions can be made pretty quickly and easily. That's it for my end. You know, if you want to keep up with the work that we're doing and, and what's happening across the industry with different retailer programs and investment and innovation in the space, visit our website.

We've got a newsletter that hits every Monday, and you'll hear soon, we're hosting a conference in September where we hope to bring together, again, not just the sustainability experts and practitioners, but those of us that have decision rights and budgets and whose work is going to be informed and impacted by a lot of the work that the retailers and others are doing.

So that's it for me. Chris, I don't know if we've got time for questions. 

Amanda Wolff: Keith, thank you so much. This is Amanda. Really, really great session. Love hearing your content as usual, but especially on this topic. And to your point, so close to Earth Day, it might be timely, but it should be a part of our conversation every day.

So, thanks again for this session. I did have a quick question for you, and I'm wondering if you could elaborate with our audience a little bit. We have audience members on this call who may be in earlier level roles in an organization. They may be more advanced and have more influence in an organization, but can you talk to them in particular about how you can influence internally and what you would do if you were in their shoes to help kind of get some of the larger organizations that are out there to move forward in some of these initiatives that, while Amazon might be pushing, they can be difficult to make that kind of change, especially in a big CPG. 

Keith Anderson: Totally. A couple of quick thoughts. One, I think most companies, especially the big CPGs have sustainability teams. And I've, I've seen you know, varying levels of isolation and siloing versus you know, cross functional collaboration and embedding it as a competency across functions.

But, I would say on average, it skews towards silos. And so, if you're trying to influence the organization, one starting point is to go walk the halls and set up coffee with the sustainability practitioners. Because, my observation as I've dug into how companies are organized, many of the companies that have these teams, don't have enough people to focus on activity at this level. They're doing great things. A lot of it relates to you know, more macro initiatives, but because this is increasingly on the minds of consumers, because the retailers are asking for more, if you go connect with them and share some of what the retailer is asking you for, maybe what some of your consumer and marketplace knowledge team has, has surfaced in terms of consumer demand and behavior, you can align what you're trying to do commercially with what the sustainability team is trying to do.

They won't always come to you. In fact, they often won't. Because they're oversubscribed, but if you go to them with a relatively focused ask, they're in a position with your framing of the problem to help you. I think the other, the other thing that I see becoming really important in this area is that focus on commercial viability. That is, identify peers that can help you find the strategies, tactics, capabilities that will help you sell more or waste less and reduce costs as you're reducing emissions, eliminating waste.

And I, I think conventional wisdom sort of suggests in most cases, this stuff is going to be more expensive, cost prohibitive, it won't pay out. And I think in a lot of cases that's true. But there are so many things that you can do that aren't already being done to sell more and waste less, that just finding those and advocating for those would keep most companies teams busy for the next two or three years.

And in the backdrop, the whole industry will be working to change the economics of some of the more capital intensive, more dilutive things that still have to happen, but there's a ton of low hanging fruit. Just eliminating unnecessary packaging, reduce the, reducing the distance things have to travel and otherwise increasing efficiency or aligning with consumer demand.

So, that's how I would approach it. 

Amanda Wolff: Thank you so much, Keith. I really appreciate it. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce.Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=v8w4y3qn

This episode features Tessa Callaghan, co-founder and CEO of Keel Labs, which produces a fiber from seaweed material being used in the fashion and other industries.

In addition to sharing her and her co-founder's journey to starting Keel Labs, Tessa covers what they experienced firsthand as designers in the fashion industry, some of the ways that the material they're producing compares and contrasts both to conventional synthetics and natural fibers, and where she sees the industry headed.

Learn more about Tessa Callaghan:

• Link to Keel’s website
• Link to Tessa’s LinkedIn

To listen to the full episode join our Plus or Pro memberships at decarbonize.co:

• https://decarbonize.co/member-benefits/ 👈

If you enjoyed this episode then please:

• Follow, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts
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Learn more about Decarbonizing Commerce at decarbonize.co

TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability. 

Welcome to another episode of the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and our guest this week is Tessa Callaghan, co-founder and CEO of Keel Labs, which is producing a fabric from seaweed material that's being used in the fashion and other industries. And I continue to be really interested in emerging ingredients and materials,

not only for CPG products, but consumer products, including apparel and, you know, among the most interesting materials, seaweed is really emerging as, an interesting and high potential material for a lot of reasons, which you'll hear more about as you get to know Tessa today, and you may have heard in episode 17 with Julia Marsh of Sway.

So, you'll learn a lot about she and her co-founder's journey to starting Keel Labs, what they experienced firsthand as designers in the fashion industry, some of the environmental impacts of the materials that they had available as options and some of the limitations and shortcomings with those same materials, some of the ways that the material that they're producing compares and contrasts both to synthetics and natural fibers, and where she sees the industry headed over the next few years.

So, I learned a ton from Tessa, and I'm excited for you to meet Tessa Callaghan, co-founder and CEO of Keel Labs. 

Tessa, thanks so much for joining us for the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast.

Tessa Callaghan: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. 

Keith Anderson: Well, for those that may not be familiar, why don't we start with, you telling us what Keel Labs is and what it does and how you and your team came to start it.

Tessa Callaghan: Yeah, of course. So, at Keel Labs, our whole mission is to take ocean derived resources, and use them to solve some of the world's most challenging and pressing crises. Our flagship product is called Kelsun, and this is a fiber that is derived from Seaweeds, and is applicable in textile applications in a wide range from clothes to interiors to basically anywhere that you see fibers used.

And you know, really the core reason of starting this initiative and founding Keel Labs was around the need to address the waste, the pollution, the negative impacts that the fashion industry in particular has on our planet, and that have yet to be solved in its entirety. And so, my background, along with my co-founder's, was in fashion and in textiles and we're working in the industry and really experiencing firsthand the lack of options that we are being provided with and seeing some of the bottlenecks that were, you know, going to be occurring both as, you know, agricultural yields are decreasing and as the demand for natural fibers was increasing. And so it was quite a circuitous route for us, not necessarily, you know, I think, the intention that either of us had when we started in the fashion industry.

But push really came to shove, and we saw that there was a really big opportunity to harness the massive potential that the ocean, and primarily seaweeds, have to help revolutionize these, you know, really resource intensive industries.

Keith Anderson: The ocean is so hot right now, and so I want to come, I want to come back to that. 

Tessa Callaghan: Literally and figuratively.

Keith Anderson: I know. I was very excited to drop that one when I spoke with you. 

Tessa Callaghan: Regardless.

Keith Anderson: But, I'd love to spend a couple minutes, going deeper on sort of the two drivers that I heard you describe there. One of which was the environmental impact of fibers in the textile industry.

You know, many of our listeners come from that side of the industry, but many are also in CPG and grocery. And, I know they all wear clothes, but they're not as close to the business of apparel. And then the second thing I heard that I actually wasn't expecting, but you mentioned was the demand for natural fibers and some of the supply constraints or challenges with diminishing yields, which, you know, we talk about that more and more often as a driver of shifting strategy across retail and consumer products.

So much of the focus is on your first point around minimizing environmental impact, but increasingly what seems to be motivating companies to make changes even sooner is adapting to supply chain challenges and constraints by finding more resilient materials. So maybe starting with the environmental impact, can you share more about what you learned about the environmental impact of what your options were when you got into the industry?

Tessa Callaghan: Yeah, that's a really great question. And I think, you know, really was one of the core catalysts when it came to our analysis and the reason that we ended up really looking to the ocean as a resource. So one of the primary things that we were seeing is that, shouldn't be a surprise, but, you know, various materials and, you know, industries obviously like to highlight, where they're winning and it's very easy to kind of harp on the singular challenges.

So as an example, you know, polyester synthetics primarily deal with the fact that they're petroleum based and there's microplastic shedding. And that's kind of their core focus. And so when we think about, or when people typically talk about natural materials, it sounds like it's the solution in that, "oh great, it avoids all of those things and it's natural" and that's fantastic, but what's really underneath the surface there is there's mass amounts of water usage, there's mass pesticide fertilizers required, arable land degradation in a lot of cases, and a lot of chemical processing post cultivation. And so when we kind of look at the industry on a holistic level, it's not just carbon emissions and microplastics, it's chemicals, it's land, it's water, and so rather than saying we're just going to be able to compare and say, we're not using microplastics, how do we actually solve the underlying challenges of the industry as a whole? 

And I think that that really needs to be not just for us, but on a kind of planetary scale, how we evaluate the benefit and the drawbacks of various innovations.

Keith Anderson: And that explains a lot. What about on the second point, you know, were you finding challenges with, quality, consistency of supply of some of the existing alternatives?

Tessa Callaghan: Yeah. I mean, I think that I guess to their benefit because of, you know, in a lot of cases, hundreds, if not thousands of years of cultivation and industrial know how, less so on the quality side and more so on the understanding that the quantities, are not able to be, or will not be able to continue to be what they once were, or even what they are today.

So there's kind of a combination of factors. One is that due to climate change and soil health and things of that nature, the yields we can see year over year in natural crop cultivations across agricultural systems is in a lot of degrees declining. And on top of that, not only because of certain, you know, policy implementations, and there's a lot of growth there, but also from a consumer demand perspective, and this, you know, knowing shift away from microplastics and fossil fuels.

We know that we don't like those. So there's an increase in demand so the match of what the plan is able to sustain on a land based perspective and what the demand today and, you know, going forward is going to be, are just not equal.

Keith Anderson: Got it. So you did some analysis and it led you to the ocean and specifically seaweed. How did you end up there? And what are some of the benefits?

Tessa Callaghan: So for us, you know, as I was saying, we really started in this analysis perspective. 

I didn't grow up saying, "I'm going to find a way to use seaweed and it's going to be the way," it was really a matter of, you know, necessity. And so when we think about, you know, on one perspective, volume, we know that when we think about textiles and fibers, there's a massive consumption, which is a whole separate problem as a whole.

But that we need to make sure that we have access to robust volumes and volumes that, are readily available and, you know, aren't requiring this like mass scale intervention. And so, seaweed is one of the most abundant and fast growing organisms on the planet and really diverse, and you know, found on nearly every continent.

And so from that perspective, it ticked the box. Additionally, because of its fast growth and a number of other properties, it also has benefits for ocean and thus planetary health, from filtering waste runoff, to sequestering CO2, to, you know, new studies kind of leading to the, you know, deacidification of the ocean itself.

And so there are all these benefits.

 And on top of that, even if we take all of those away, really what we're seeing is this is a crop that requires zero chemical intervention. We don't have to add fertilizers. We don't have to add water. We don't have to add pesticides. And so from that perspective, you're already starting from a clean slate.

And so all of those kind of boxes combined for us to say, what a beautiful source. If we can just start clean, can we not continue to remain that way as much as physically possible? And to that end, already address all of those kinds of holistic components when it comes to overarching impact.

Keith Anderson: This may be a naive question, but I'm comfortable with that. Is this a, sort of naturally harvested, source of material? Or are you, or is the industry effectively farming it? That is, you know, are there artificial installations where we're cultivating it? Are we, managing certain territorial sections of the ocean?

I just don't know enough about how the supply is managed.

Tessa Callaghan: Yeah, this is a really fascinating question. On one hand, all of those are true. And on the other hand, we're seeing a lot of developments in the space. So there are certain unknowns and certain things that are remaining to be, I think worked out on a global scale, but, you know, basically there are a number of different ways of, that seaweeds are currently cultivated or accessed.

Some of that is just naturally. Ideally, you know, those people that are, you know, harvesting are ensuring, you know, we're taking very close consideration of the local ecology. There are strict measures in place. This is really, really critical because it is, you know, a backbone of a lot of these ecosystems.

And there is also known, and a lot of it is, farmed. So whether that's on lines on the coasts or some of these new developments happening in, you know, deep waters, there's a number of different ways of basically growing and cultivating. Some of that's dependent on species. Some of that's dependent on kind of regional parameters.

But it's really a fascinating sector outside of ourselves as a whole, because there is so much promise for seaweed cultivation and harvesting, and so a lot of new kind of technologies and regulatory practices and things like that will really continue to evolve over the coming years.

Keith Anderson: Can you describe the technology or the process that you use to transform the raw material into Kelsun? You know, when I go to your website and look at the material, it doesn't resemble seaweed. So I imagine there's some magic somewhere in the mix.

Tessa Callaghan: There certainly is some magic. Some people refer to that magic as science, but, you know. I like saying magic better, actually. But, but yeah, so basically how it works is that we extract polymers that are abundant in seaweeds. We then take those polymers, create a formulation, and then input that into existing fiber manufacturing systems.

And so, with that extraction, again, you're not using raw seaweed and just, you know, chopping it up whole and making a sushi shirt. It's really about how can we work with these core polymers that are available to us? And also, how do we put this into the existing supply chain systems while removing the toxic chemicals that are typified in those systems?

And so for us, we're able to work on and work with the same know how, the same scales, really the same frameworks that the industry is built off of, but replace that with something again that's fundamentally better than what it previously was.

Keith Anderson: That plug and play characteristic, in many of the conversations I have, seems to be pretty important, just given the power of inertia and the capital intensity of changing production, processes and technology. So I imagine that works in your favor, you know. when you say it's a fundamentally better, approach, you've already identified some of the clear benefits. 

You know, it maintains many of the characteristics of conventional fibers, but it is lacking some of the toxic and problematic chemicals and microplastics. You know, when you're working with the industry to develop applications and use cases, how are they comparing and contrasting it, and, you know, what are the trade offs and decision frameworks that the industry is using to find out where to apply it?

Tessa Callaghan: So this is really not only developed a lot over the last few years, but I think we're again, in all of these conversations, there's just a lot of change happening. On one hand, this is still a very new topic and workflow and interests of the textile sector as a whole. And so I think that there remains for a lot of companies, a level of evaluation and understanding of how to navigate a new material because we've been so historically reliant on, you know, these like primary categories of, you know, natural and synthetic. You know, natural being cotton or linen or more new viscose versus, you know, polyesters and nylons. And so when they're evaluating introducing a new raw material. The initial evaluations that we were seeing were just, "is this the same as this?," And are, "is this the same as polyester? Is this the same as cotton?" And although, relevance and similarities and understanding are key in those categories, when you're introducing something that is fundamentally new, like from a molecular level, it is not the same.

You are going to have differences. Those differences can be beneficial depending on how you look at it. Or negative, depending on how you look at that. And so the way that we really position and view Kelsun is around this kind of new natural category. So again, we see a real uptick in demand for natural materials for a lot of those reasons. 

And currently there really is no fiber or source available that has, you know, the fundamental feel of a naturally sourced fiber. So like outside of a man made cellulosic or, things like that. And so our fiber looks and feels kind of like a combination of, you know, cotton and a linen, but with a really, soft hand feel of more elevated fibers and, you know, has a similar performance to man made cellulosics, even though we're not a cellulosic.

And so I think the industry is kind of trying to wrap its head around "how do we interpret, how do we describe, and how do we validate things when they're intersectional?" I think you also touched on, what are some of the benefits and some of the drawbacks? One of the things that we typically have to, you know, work through and evaluate with potential customers is this idea of, you know, we want something that is compostable or biodegradable or, you know, even biocompatible. 

But we're also used to working with polyesters, so we want it to last forever. And having the conversation of, you know, so it's okay to, to have your preference, but we need to understand that if you want something to go away, it's going to have to go away. And I think that there are interesting conversations to that end that continue to evolve and that, you know, really we've seen a lot of change in over the last couple of years in terms of understanding and the kind of in depth knowledge required to navigate these conversations.

Keith Anderson: Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience. Plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode.

Hey, it's Keith Anderson from decarbonize.co inviting you to join our brand new Slack community for retail, e-commerce, and consumer product professionals that want to keep up with what's new, interesting, and actionable in industry, climate, and sustainability action. and connect with your peers. As I got into this work, one of the things that I found so invigorating is how passionate and willing to help everyone is.

But I haven't found a community composed of people across functions in the industry that are working in or want to work in climate and sustainability. And so we're launching the community to connect. Both sustainability experts and practitioners and people in conventional roles like product design, packaging, supply chain marketing, and merchandising to share their work, ask for help, connect about career opportunities.

Keep up with the latest industry development and we'll be previewing who our upcoming guests on the podcast will be and giving you an opportunity to pose questions to our guests. So I can't wait to meet you and have you meet some of the other members of the community. To join us, you can visit decarbonize.co. You'll see a call to action on the homepage or use the intelligence menu at the top of the page where you'll also see a link to join.

 And, Tessa, if, you know, folks want to get in touch with you or learn more about Keel, where would you send them?

Tessa Callaghan: Always get in touch and definitely reach out. You can absolutely follow us on Instagram, or on LinkedIn for those professionals. But we also have contact on our website, depending on what type of conversation you're looking to have, we'll direct you in the right place, and hopefully have a chat because it's really important for us to be connected with our community, hear people out, make sure that we're reflecting the needs of greater industries in the planet as a whole.

So hoping anyone that wants to get in touch, we're here to have a chat.

Keith Anderson: Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me. This was really interesting and, great to have you on the show.

Tessa Callaghan: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. This was a delight. 

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of decarbonizing commerce.Have a question or feedback about Decarbonizing Commerce. Record an audio message https://s.castplus.fm/decarbonizing-commerce?episode=p8m540x8