MindfulCommerce

Thank you for joining us today for our Expert Training with the Wonderful Anne Thomas from Design Packs. Anne is a longtime supporter of MindfulCommerce so we're delighted to share the floor with a beloved member of our community. Join the MindfulCommerce Community for free here: https://mindfulcommerce.io/join-the-communityVisit Design Packs website here - https://design-packs.comSome of our examples of great design - https://eu.patagonia.com/ and https://www.allbirds.com/Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for joining us today for our Expert Training with the fabulous Jeanne from Spark and Bloom. Jeanne is near and dear to us as a person, but also as a professional. We love to support her because she does more than talk the talk, among other things. She's part of 1% for the planet. And she offsets the carbon footprint of her business, which is Spark and Bloom, a design studio that specialises in helping ethical entrepreneurs, make sure their impact is seen. Through careful strategy and market research Spark and Bloom designs beautiful brand identities, which fit business goals with and resonates with the right people. Jeanne will talks about what branding is and why it's important to make sure we're on the same page and we're talking about the same thing, what specifically is an ethical brand and why you should be one. And finally, Jeanne shares with us a lot of actionable tips and ideas.Join the MindfulCommerce Community for free here: https://mindfulcommerce.io/join-the-communityVisit Spark and Bloom's Expert Directory listing here: https://mindfulcommerce.io/directory/spark-and-bloom/Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Series 4, Ep #3In this episode, we'll be learning about how your ecommerce brand can stand out and profit with mindful marketing. The perfect harmony! Delivered to us by Aleana Bargaoui from Brands Are Alive! Join the MindfulCommerce Community for free here: https://mindfulcommerce.io/join-the-communityVisit Spark and Bloom's Expert Directory listing here: https://mindfulcommerce.io/directory/brands-are-aliveEnjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Series 4: Ep 2 - ShownotesSuper excited to publish the second Expert Training to the MindfulCommerce Podcast! Monica Sharma-Patnekar delivered this fantastic training to the MindfulCommerce Community - if you'd like to see the video, join the community for free and you'll find it in the Expert Training Library. In this session, we learn about ways to build an ecommerce brand that's both conscious and irresistible – the best of all worlds! This episode helps creative & conscious product ecommerce businesses to build a brand that inspires their audience to take ACTION. By nailing your positioning, bringing your customers back & consistently showing up, tracking & testing.Monica talks to us about:The 3 phases of the Scale your Store roadmapWhat an irresistible conscious eCommerce brand is and why it's importantThe 4 building blocks of an irresistible conscious eCommerce brandResourcesFREE resource: discover your customers needs, wants & desires with the 4 types of questions to ask your customer, and build a brand that inspires your audience to action! Where can you find Monica?Find Monica's business profile on the MindfulCommerce Expert Directory here.Instagram: @businesswithmonicaNot yet a member of our community? Join for free here - https://mindfulcommerce.io/join-the-community Want to feature on the podcast? All info on how to do so can be found here -https://mindfulcommerce.io/support-packages Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Series 4: Ep 1 - ShownotesWe are so excited to introduce a BRAND NEW SERIES for the MindfulCommerce Podcast

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find One Circular World:Shipbob - WebsiteWhere to find Casey Armstrong:Casey Armstrong - Email: carmstrong@shipbob.com Links Mentioned in Episode:PachamanoissueShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands and service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm KrissieRich Bunker  0:11  I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community. Krissie Leyland  0:18  The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.Rich Bunker  0:30  You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io, and clicking "community". See you there. Krissie Leyland  0:35  Hello, everyone. Today, we'll be speaking to Casey, who is the CMO of Shipbob. We will be discussing when if ever is the right time to outsource warehousing and fulfillment for your ecommerce brand. So welcome Casey, it's really great to have you on here. I've wanted to for ages because you are one of our very first community supporters. So thank you so much for that. Would you like to just introduce yourself and tell me a bit about shipbob? And why Shipbob exists? Casey Armstrong  1:09  Yes. Well, thank you very much for having me. You know, we're very happy to be part of the MindfulCommerce Community. We take the carbon neutrality and everything very seriously over here at Shipbob, which I know we're gonna dive into. We are a global fulfillment platform. We serve and are partnered with over 5000 brands. We ship millions of items every single month. We actually are up to almost 25 fulfillment centers, including one in the UK, one in Canada, one in Ireland, one in Australia, which we just announced last week, and about 20 in the US. So, I'm very happy to be here.Krissie Leyland  1:51  Wow, that's amazing. That's a lot. I was actually gonna ask you how many fulfillment centers you have but you just answered that question. It's great that you've got one in the UK. So in your opinion, when is the right time for brands to outsource their warehousing and fulfillment to companies such as Shipbob?Casey Armstrong  2:13  There's no hard answer where it's like, "once you're doing 100 orders a month." I think it's when you start seeing that the time it takes you to fulfill,and ship items starts to impact the time that you have to focus on sales, marketing, community development & product development, because that's what's actually going to drive your business. I know a lot of entrepreneurs are kind of hesitant to like hand things over. Unless logistics and operations is your differentiator from your competition... I think it behooves a lot of founders to hand that off sooner than not so they can focus on the right things, logistics, and fulfillments, very time intensive, which is often your most valuable asset. If you're staying up till eight o'clock at night, midnight, 2am, during peak season to pick and pack boxes, it's probably not the best use of your time. Krissie Leyland  3:18  There are brands doing that. Casey Armstrong  3:20  Oh, we hear that all the time. It's honestly the catalyst for [almost all of our customers] to reach out to and start working with us rather quickly. They start seeing the time that they're spending on it. Sometimes, even worse is subconsciously, they're purposely thwarting their own growth: "I want to double my sales. I want to double my business but that means I'm gonna have to ship twice as many items. I don't want to stay up for an extra two hours or four hours every single day to pick and pack boxes." Then if you're gonna start hiring people, why wouldn't you hire more people maybe for marketing or product development, or somebody to help on the entire supply chain versus just packing boxes? So it's something that we hear rather often.Krissie Leyland  4:14  Yeah. I mean, that's definitely not why they would have started their business. The first thing that came to my head then was like thinking of when they reach that specific moment, they might also be thinking about internationalization. So do you help brands with going global, because you have these big fulfillment centers around the world and what does that look like?Casey Armstrong  4:41  We don't handle the freight, per se, but we have partners that can help with that (with duties, taxes and everything like that). We can also ship globally, just from the United States. Something that we do with the majority of our customers, is we do what's called a "time in transit analysis". We'll help you understand what is the best and most effective way to distribute your inventory, whether that be just in the United States or whether that be globally. It's all based off of your historical data on where your customers are purchasing from. We definitely help with that. Then within Shipbob as well, there's our analytics reporting tool which updates in real time. There you can start toggling on and off different fulfillment centers to start seeing what type of cost and time saving you'd actually have by you know, let's say distributing some of your inventory overseas.Krissie Leyland  5:32  I'm also thinking of, if they do see... for example, if they're in the US, but a lot of their customers are in Europe. It might make sense to have a fulfillment center in Europe. It might be about cost, but if you're shipping at a less of a distance, then it's probably better in terms of your emissions and your carbon footprint.Casey Armstrong  6:02  Yes, it's much better for the environment. Then also, sometimes there's marketing arbitrage opportunities overseas, where maybe that type of product, or just in general, some of the customer acquisition costs might be lower. You might say, "Well, I don't have a lot of sales in this region" but maybe that's because you're focusing all of your paid efforts in the United States, but there could be opportunities in the UK, across Europe, or somewhere like Australia. So obviously, once your inventory is there, there's less impact on the environment. It's also faster and more inexpensive. Sometimes you can even test it by marketing in those regions, before you start to distribute inventory. Just to see what type of opportunities are there, both from a demand side, but also the costs. Krissie Leyland  6:51  Definitely. On the subject of cost... it might be a good question to ask: On average, how much are brands spending with Shipbob in terms of just handing over their fulfillment to you?Casey Armstrong  7:09  There isn't a hard dollar number or pound, but what I'll give is a percentage. At Shipbob, we do the receiving, we store your inventory and then we do all of the fulfillment. So, the pick pack, the packaging & the actual shipping label. What we typically see is that it often ranges between about 8-15% of your of your total sales goes towards again, all things included within fulfillment, including the shipping label. Krissie Leyland  7:47  Awesome. That's not that's not too bad. I was expecting more to be honest. Casey Armstrong  7:51  It can go up at times. Again, it depends on how efficient brands are with their inventory: both the amount that they that they order & keep on hand, how quickly they can replenish it, and also how quickly they can sell it. I'd say typically, it's in that range.Krissie Leyland  8:12  Do you help with knowing how much stock to bring in? So for example, you know, if they've run out of something... you mentioned that analytics part. Do you help with brands knowing "Oh, I need to order this much of this product"?Casey Armstrong  8:30  Definitely. Yes, we do. You can start creating notification rules within Shipbob when you're getting low on certain inventory. We're going to continue to invest heavily there to help our customers be smarter through technology. We also have some partners that help with inventory tracking, inventory, planning, order replenishment, and pushing that back up to their manufacturers as well.Krissie Leyland  9:01  That's really good. I can see that saving a lot of time and money as well. You know, knowing where to spend your budget, and what what's selling more than other products, etc. That's cool. Let's get on to the exciting bit. So how did you become carbon neutral?Casey Armstrong  9:22  This was something that we'd been talking about internally for a while. As we thought about it as a company, businesses and businesses like Shipbob need to lead, not just follow. We were actually talking about this with some of our partners a couple weeks ago where consumers are pulling and governments at times will push but the businesses have a responsibility to be ahead of the curve, and do what's right long term. So we need to put our money where our mouth is and lead by example. We can't solely look to, let's say, policymakers or some macro level decisions to force us to do what we actually should be doing. And as we get bigger, there's an additional responsibility for us as well. A couple years ago, we were obviously much smaller. We only had locations in the United States but we've become this global platform. We work with 1000s of brands, soon to be 10s of 1000s of brands, so we need to lead by example. What's important there is that similarly sized companies or smaller companies, and maybe sometimes even larger companies, will hopefully, see what companies like us are doing and then proceed accordingly as well. It's something that we were really excited about and we felt it was our responsibility as somebody who's a global player in the space, and especially such a fast growing space like ecommerce. It was very well received internally, of course, by our colleagues, but by our customers as well. So we wanted to make our entire fulfillment network carbon neutral, and then also allow for an easy option for all of our customers so that the merchants or the sellers to make it so all of their last mile shipments are carbon neutral as well.Krissie Leyland  11:15  That's amazing. That's so good. I was gonna ask about that. So the fact that you're carbon neutral, does that then mean that your customers' shipping is too?Casey Armstrong  11:27  Right so what we did is that we made it so all of our fulfillment centers, and our HQ, and all of our operations are carbon neutral. All of our customers get the benefit off of that. Then through our partnership with Pachama, we allowed for a very easy way for all of our customers to easily activate it so their shipments are fully carbon neutral as well. By Shipbob being carbon neutral that way, at least all of this part of their supply chain, and everything that we can control is carbon neutral. We are looking into ways to help impact things higher up in the supply chain, such as before items hit our docks. But at least for now, you know, we wanted to make sure we took care of everything that's that's in our control.Krissie Leyland  12:20  Wow, that's cool. Do you say that your customers say at checkout, or just before the shopper makes a purchase, does it say "this will be shipped to you in a carbon neutral way" or anything along those lines?Casey Armstrong  12:37  A lot of brands will leverage that. If I recall, the stat correctly, I think it was close to 92% of consumers so that they're more likely to trust a brand that has ethical sustainable practices. A lot of brands truly believe that and some of them are just capitalizing on it. But regardless, it's for the better so that's fine. A lot of brands will, will promote it but some also like to do it behind the scenes as well. So it depends.Krissie Leyland  13:09  Yeah, definitely. I think it's really good to talk about it wherever you can, and like you said, being a global player, it's really important to build awareness & for you to do the right thing to then influence other people too. Then if your customers are doing the same, it just goes round around like a nice little circle of positivity. So one question I did have actually came from the community. So before we organized this, I did a little poll in the Facebook group. One thing that they said about the possibility of outsourcing fulfillment, was that they would be worried that they would lose the personal touch or the customer connection. So for example, they'll do handwritten notes and then carry on the conversation on social media. How can you reassure them that you would be able to keep that when they outsource?Casey Armstrong  14:12  So there's a handful of ways and I totally get that. At the beginning if you do some of the fulfillment yourself, that's probably the smart move. You get to understand the the the mechanics of what actually happens on a very small scale within the fulfillment centers, such as waiting to store your items where you're gonna store your boxes, how are you going to pick and pack it most efficiently? How are you going to actually package it? How are you going to wrap that up? And when are you going to hand it off to the carriers and doing timely manner. So I think that way, again, at some level of scale, you start to understand what what actually goes into it and that will allow you to be more informed when you're having conversations with your future fulfillment provider, versus just maybe outsourcing it on day one, which is which is always an option as well. From the customization standpoint. I totally get that. You need to think through costs and time efficiency though as well. Like you mentioned, like custom handwritten notes. If you're doing it that yourself, you know, how long is that taking you to actually write that and put that in there? At the beginning, it maybe makes sense but once you're really starting to, let's say, sell 1000s of items every single month, that becomes rather laborious. So thinking through where should you best spend your time, maybe it is there? Anyways, back to to answer your specific question... We offer a handful of ways for people to still provide levels of customization. You can have custom boxing and custom polymailers. With some of our partners, like noissue and others, we have green options for those those custom boxes and polymailers. Also, we actually very recently started rolling out gift notes as well. So they won't be handwritten notes but that's something that we're evaluating for later this year, early next year, but we do offer levels of customization.Krissie Leyland  16:09  That's really cool. I was envisioning how you could write the note, and although you can't put the name of the customer, you can still write it and then just have a digital version of it. Like you said, when you're scaling, you can't write a personalized note to 1000s of customers. That totally makes sense. It's good to know that you can still have some kind of personal touch. Oh, I've run out of questions, that's not normal for me but did you have anything that you'd want to share outside of that?Casey Armstrong  16:52  Our mission at Shipbob really, is to democratize fulfillment for brands of all sizes around the world. So whether you're just getting started, or you're doing 10s of millions in revenue every month, you know, we can flex up and down and help support brands. Especially as we start to go more and more global as well, location becomes much less of a barrier. We already work with brands from all over the world. So all I say is, you know, don't hesitate to reach out. Worst case is, you get some of your questions answered in advance so when you are ready to move over to a fulfillment solution, like Shipbob, you're a little bit more informed. So again, I'd say don't hesitate to reach out.Krissie Leyland  17:38  Yeah, it could be in the roadmap for when they do reach that level, they know who to go to... and it will go to Shipbob! I guess the only other question actually would be around the process of becoming carbon neutral. Do you have any insights that you can give? What does it take to become carbon neutral?Casey Armstrong  18:03  A lot of what we did was through credits & through different programs, such as supporting like the Amazon rainforest forest. The reason why we did that is we wanted to be able to take advantage of something that was available immediately, versus something that would take a much longer time. While we know that that option is not perfect, per se, we knew that that'd be the fastest way that we could start being proactive in our ultimate goal of being carbon neutral. A lot of that comes from calculating "Well, what are offsets? What is the energy used across our company?" All of our employees, travel packaging, what's actually happening in the HQ and at the fulfillment centers. And then making sure that with the trial months on some of our partners that we were selecting the right projects and everything to support to make sure that we were putting back in as much as we were taking out as well.Krissie Leyland  19:08  Thank you for that answer. That was really, really great. I think there's gonna be lots more to come in the world of Shipbob and I'm very excited to see what comes next! So thank you. Thank you so much, Casey, that was a really good conversation. I hope that everybody listening got something from that and if you'd like to learn more about Shipbob, please head to mindfulcommerce.io/directory/shipbob and you'll find everything you need to know and links to their website, their social media, and our little MindfulCommerce summary. I hope you enjoyed the episode, and I'll see you next time. Thank you!Rich Bunker  19:51  We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you'll probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  19:58  So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io, click on "Community" and register from there. Rich Bunker  20:04  If you liked this episode, please share, leave a review and remember to subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find One Circular World:One Circular World - WebsiteWhere to find Claire Potter:Claire Potter - Email: claire@clairepotterdesign.com Where to find Recurate:Recurate Where to find Adam Siegel:Adam Siegel - Email: adam@recurate.com Links Mentioned in Episode:University of Sussex - Product DesignGlobal Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI)Surfers Against SewagePatagoniaPatagonia - "Don't Buy This Jacket" AdLoopFairphoneMud JeansRent The RunwayCradle to Cradle - bookEllen MacArthur FoundationLimeLoopPeak DesignLa LigneRe-Ligne - La Ligne's Resale MarketplaceBrass ClothingJackaloTotem Brand CoLululemon Resale LaunchShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands and service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie!Rich Bunker  0:11  I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community. Krissie Leyland  0:18  The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good. Rich Bunker  0:30  You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and clicking "Community". See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:35  Hello, this is the second episode of our series where we upload our special panel events with our ecommerce and sustainability experts. This event is all about the circular economy: why ecommerce brands should get involved and how can they go about it in the easiest and most efficient way possible with our incredible guest speakers Claire from One Circular World and Adam from Recurate. Claire is from One Circular World, which is an educational resource exploring the circular economy – not just for business managers, politicians or policymakers, but for all of us, including those in the ecommerce world. And Adam is from Recurate. Recurate enables a beautifully integrated resale marketplace directly on ecommerce stores. So this means you can very easily integrate a secondhand store directly on your website, which is great for your brand and great for the planet. If you're a regular listener, follow us on social media or have gone through our incredible Sustainability Framework, you'll know that I talk about Recurate a lot, so this was a long time coming. So thank you, Adam and thank you Claire, so so much for taking the time to deliver your knowledge to us. Thank you to those who attended the event live and thank you lovely listeners for being here with us on the podcast. So if you enjoy this event, you'll love being in our community. We are introducing live training events in our community group, so it's a great time to get involved if you want to learn about growing your ecommerce business in the most sustainable and positively impactful way. You can join the community for free by going to mindfulcommerce.io and clicking on "Community". I'll also link to the direct link to join on the show notes. Okay, let's get right into it and let's go over to the event. Enjoy.Claire Potter  2:50  Good afternoon, everybody. Hi! Thank you so much for having me. We're gonna be talking about circular economy, and what can basically people do with it, particularly from a commerce perspective. Firstly, I'm going to give you a quick, quick introduction to me. So like many of us, I wear many different hats. I run a design studio, I identify as a designer, I trained as an interior architect, and I specialized in eco sustainable ways of working that eventually became a circular economy way of thinking. That was founded in 2008. Also I'm a lecturer at the University of Sussex, and I'm the head of the product design course at University of Sussex. Mostly because of my interference, I suppose we've become quite a sort of a hub for circular economy learning with regards to products, and how it can become an integral part of the educational process because our product designers are making all the stuff that we have in the world. So that's another day job. As far as volunteer stuff, I'm actually the working group coordinator for the Global Ghost Gear Initiative, which is a bit of a mouthful, but basically this is end of life fishing nets, stuff that's been abandoned, lost or discarded. And this is a global thing. So we've got members of the GGGI that are really little organizations like me and my design studio, all the way through to governments. So it's really far reaching and an amazing set of people doing incredible stuff globally. On a more load local scale... I'm based usually down in Brighton, in Lincolnshire. I'm actually based down in Brighton & Hove and I'm one of the regional reps for Surfers Against Sewage, which again is a volunteer role and I'm the plastics person. As I say: disclaimer, I don't surf but I can snowboard and I know nothing about poo, but I know a lot about plastic. So that's basically the stuff that I do for Surfers Against Sewage: leading beach cleans, educating people about plastic, in particular marine plastic, and that's been my specialist nerd niche, as I call it for the last year 12 years. Then everything sort of came together with One Circular World, which is the hats that I'm wearing today and I'm going to talk to you a little about that in a second. But how does all of that knit together: it all knits together because of design – because everything we have in the world is designed from our systems to our stuff. The way that we behave has been designed and influenced in multitude of different ways. A lot of that can be influenced in a good way, I think through behavior change, circular economy thinking, and the value of the products and the materials we have in our lives, regardless of whether there's something that is relatively short term or something that lasts for a very, very long time. So basically, I deal with people and I deal with stuff. That is the sort of the top line of everything I do. I know a lot of you have probably joined this and know a lot about the circular economy but just in case you're not too sure about the terminology, this is the kind of way I explain it to most people: It's basically how the natural world works. So if you think about it, you can have a leaf, that leaf will get eaten by Caterpillar, the caterpillar gets eaten by the bird, the birds sadly dies, that bird falls to the floor, it composts, and then it ends up nourishing the earth itself and allowing a tree to grow more leaves, which can then be eaten by more caterpillars. So you can see here that even though I've put this in a line, it's a system that works in a circle, or a loop in a way, because it's a little bit more complex than that. So whatever is at the end will eventually go back to the beginning. But we don't work in that way. We're the only species on the planet that creates any kind of waste, which is quite staggering. So we work in this linear way: we dig things up, we make something, we sell, we buy things and then it gets to the end of its life, regardless of how long that life is. It mostly ends up in landfill, or ends up in incineration. Sometimes it gets recycled, but it works in a linear way. Not all of our systems work in that cyclical way, just like nature does. So if in doubt, when you're thinking about the circular economy, because it can be pretty complicated, we're going to dial into a few bits of that in a second, think about how nature works. Does nature do this? If it doesn't, then it probably isn't part of a circular system. So another way of calling it is "cradle at the beginning to the grave at the end": it's a linear lifeline. Now I have a bit of an issue with the word sustainable but it is genuinely the word that most people associate with green living, eco living & sustainable living. But if we think about that linear model we just looked at, in the truest sense, that isn't a sustainable way of working. Because we have finite resources & we have finite amount of carbon we can put up in the atmosphere. We're really reaching the limits. So to sustain that way of working into the future, it's going to be hard, if not impossible. This is why I tend to try to not use the word sustainable when I'm teaching because I really need to tell the students, "they need to shake up the system a bit and make the system better."So a lot of people go, "Amazing. Well, that's the reduce, reuse, recycle, isn't it? We've been doing that for a long time." Well, not quite, because we've got the linear economy, the cradle to the grave, stuff gets made stuff goes to the bin/ Then we have the recycling economy, which is better, you can see the bin I've drawn is a lot smaller. But it means that things might take a little bit longer, but invariably, they get to not being a greater quality, or they get broken, and variably they just end up in the bin anyway. But the idea with a circular economy is that we don't have a bin at all. Everything goes round in a circle, or loop. It isn't as neat and tidy as this but it goes round and round and round, sometimes in the same form, ie a plastic bottle to a plastic bottle, sometimes in different forms like a fishing net, all the way through to a carpet tile, for example. But it gets transformed in different ways or it's the same thing again, it goes round and around. And it is a lot more complicated than just making stuff. We have what we call a hierarchy of actions and this is a really important thing to think about when you are understanding how to engage in a circular economy either as an individual or as a brand. So we have the reduce, reuse, recycle in this spectrum here and you can see the biggest one we have is reduce. We need to reduce a lot of things that were buying, using and consuming so quickly. We have got recycling there and we got rubbish, which is basically at the very end. But we've got reusing the stuff again, and again, we've got longevity, we've got repairing, which is part of reuse. So if you have something that needs to last a long time, you might need to amend it to be suitable for how your life has changed. It might be that it needs repairing as it goes along and we know that so many of our products are not designed to be repaired. They are produced with snap fittings, which means that you can't really easily get into them, they break as you try to get into them. It might be we can't get parts. So the way that our stuff has been designed has meant that circularity in the sense has become much, much harder. So that's something we're trying to shake up in the educational system. We do have recycling, of course, but recycling is a destructive process, ie the thing needs to be dismantled, taken to pieces, smashed apart, melted before it can be turned back into something, which of course takes energy. Then we have recovery, which is a fancy word for incineration with energy that is taken from the incineration process. Then hopefully, if we've got a biological waste, we might be rotting it, turning it into compost. And at the very, very, very bottom: we have rubbish, which might be landfill. As you can see here, this is the hierarchy of what we want to be doing: rubbish at the very bottom, and actual reduction at the very, very top.But when we really think about circular thinking, you get even fancier little sketches like this one, which is called the butterfly system or the butterfly sketch. You can see here we've got each of those different hierarchies that we've just looked at but we've sort of split them into halves. So we've got us, as the people in the middle & at the bottom. Then at the very top, we've got our linear system. So we're grabbing the stuff out, we're manufacturing our things, we're distributing, selling our things to us, but instead of it going to the grave at the very bottom, the landfill incineration, it gets split into two elements. So technical materials, which is everything synthetic. Metals go into that as well. Everything that's biological is everything that's organic, not in the certified sense, but in the sense that it's been grown. I just want you to take five seconds to look around your room now and look at every single thing in that room. You will not be able to find anything that is an either a technical material, or a biological material. So where I'm sitting at the moment, I'm sitting at a table, and it's got a wood core. So that's very much a biological material, but it has a plasticized top to it. So that's a technical material. So some things might be pure. I've also got a cotton tea towel looking at me. So that's pure cotton. But we might have something that's a mixture of the two just like this table. So you might have something that's purely technical material, synthetic, like a plastic, something that's biological, like this tea towel that's looking at me, or we might have something in the middle. But each of these things can be split. And we could be thinking about how we might be reusing them, how we might be repairing them, how we might re manufacture them, or at the very end recycle them. Hopefully, the recycling goes into some kind of remanufacture stage. So nothing really drops through the bottom. If this is a big sieve, all of our stuff is sitting in the sieve and nothing's falling through the gaps at the bottom. It's a landfill, or incineration. As soon as we start to mix things together, just like this table I'm sitting at, it makes it harder to reprocess. So when we're thinking about circular systems, we really want to try and keep them as pure as possible to either being a biological material, or either being a technical material if we can. This is basically how circularity works. It's a series of systems that interconnect and crossover in a multitude of different ways. I'm happy for you guys to have these slides as well, because these are all my little doodles in here. It makes it much easier to look back in it when you're thinking about this. So if we go back to our hierarchy of actions, I want to look at a few examples of how different brands are doing really great stuff in different stages. I have a few hero brands that I talk about. Some you might agree with, some of you might disagree with. Yeah, really happy to chat about this. One of my favorite brands is Patagonia and they've been going for a long time. I actually had a very interesting conversation with a friend who wondered whether Patagonia were doing the good stuff, because they needed and wants to do the good stuff, or whether they understood that the good stuff would make them money. In some ways, it's kind of a bit of both because business makes money. Circular economy has economy in the second half. It's not done for fun. It's done for business. So this is something we really need to understand: that you can be a business and work in an ethical manner. Really you should be, there's no question about it. But when we look at the refuse and the reduce, which is the first two of our hierarchy of actions, we can see that this is something that Patagonia did quite a few years ago now, which was the ad that they ran in the New York Times, just before the Black Friday events. And it said, "Don't buy this jacket." Now, that isn't the sort of advert you'd usually see around Black Friday, it would be like "buy this thing", "this thing that you own isn't good enough anymore", "this is how you should upgrade it" & "this is what you spend your money on". Patagonia went the other way and went, "We don't want you to buy this jacket, unless you really need it. We don't want you to buy this jacket unless you pledge to actually repair it and keep it going for as long as possible." So it's almost like you were entered into a contract that you were saying, "okay, I take ownership, and I take stewardship of this jacket." It isn't something that is just a throwaway item, because you understood that the brand wants to help you keep it going for longer. Patagonia do this, they have one of the largest repair facilities in the US and they will help you find a second market and Patagonia stuff holds its value really well, because it's good quality. So this is one brand that's working really well in the kind of the refuse and the reduce sections. Yes, they're massive. But this doesn't mean to say that smaller brands can't do similar things as well. When we get to reuse, we can look at systems like Loop. Now Loop again, originated in the US, and it's just come to the UK. And it's functioning through Tesco, which is really interesting. Loop is a deposit return scheme, but it's actually maintained by the Loop manufacturers themselves. So the interesting thing with refill stores, and I'm sure wherever you are, there's probably somewhere you can go and get a refill of beans, pasta etc. But it's not really a branded item, it's a generic item of pasta, rice, etc because quite often we're not really wedded to any particular brand when it comes to these kind of items. Whereas when it comes to some other things like your deodorant, your ice cream, your tomato ketchup, some people will only buy a particular brand. Now, how did you get somebody who was that wedded to a particular brand to engage with the reuse system because it's very much you go to the shop, you buy it, you use it, it ends up in recycling. Loop bridges the gap: you basically do your shopping as you would do, usually you pay slightly more for your items. But those items come packaged in glass, in stainless steel, and in refillable packaging, and then when your next delivery arrives, you can put your empties into a Loop box and they go back for refilling. So you're getting the actual items in a reusable container, which looks pretty awesome. It doesn't have any leaching of chemicals from the plastic into the item as well which some people are concerned about. But it means that you're able to get your Heinz tomato ketchup, or your Haagen dazs ice cream or something that you really are wedded to. So again, this is a massive example. If you run a business that has any kind of item that is used up, is there a way that you can try get that packaging back to be able to refill it for your customer. There's huge amount of benefits for this because you have to buy less packaging, because you're not giving away the packaging with your item. It also means that you're taking responsibility for that packaging as well, which is actually a really great thing in the eyes of the consumer. So there's lots of wins, if you can incorporate any kind of reuse system into whatever business model you have.As we said earlier, repairing is something that we used to be able to do, there were screws that held things together. Now, if you want to try and get into your iPhone, you need special tools to get into your iPhone because Apple doesn't want you to get into it. But there are lots of companies that are challenging this and Fairphone is one of the best examples of repair. So the Fairphone is designed to be taken to pieces and to be upgraded. So it's sort of every 18 months or so when your telephone provider rings you up and say hey, you're entitled to a free upgrade. Nothing's free. By the way, if it's free, it means somebody else is paying along the way. And all they want is for you to carry on paying your monthly subscription. If you own your handset, you're not making them any money anymore. The way that Fairphone works is that they don't really want you to have a new phone. If you want to upgrade your camera. Great, buy the camera module, take it to pieces, plug your new camera module in and then you can send the old one back to them. So it's an upgradable system, not the entire handset like we have with most of the other manufacturers. So if you have anything that's electronic that will get out of date batteries get old, they wear out. Is there a way that you can take it to pieces which makes it actually easier for you to be able to repair it as a manufacturer, as a producer. But it definitely means that other people are empowered to want to keep it going for longer. As we said, circularity means keeping stuff in the loop for as long as possible before it gets towards the bottom of that sieve, and could potentially fall through the bottom. Redirection. eBay is the best example of redirection. We've had booth fairs, charity shops, anything that means that you are giving something a different life in a different way, with a different owner. But what is interesting from retailers is that it hasn't really been tackled much. It has been very much a person to person or business to business kind of model. But IKEA has literally just launched their circular system, which means that they will take back your old IKEA furniture, and they will help redistribute it. So this is second hand IKEA furniture. Yeah, of course it has to be in working order, it can't be falling to pieces. That is one criticism of some IKEA furniture, that it is designed to be put up and kept up. It's not designed to be put up taken to pieces put back up again, etc. But a lot of IKEA stuff is very solidly made, whether you like it or not. So it is actually great to be actually redistributed. A lot of IKEA furniture isn't seasonal, it doesn't come in and out of fashion, so you find the same thing for years and years and years. It has got quite a utilitarian way of being designed, which means that it's great for redirection. If it's in good condition, why not distributed to somebody that needs it? So this has just been launched, I had a bit of a hold because of COVID. But it's just been launched in the UK. It's be interesting to see how it goes. Hopefully really well. Renting is something we don't really think about. We rent, hotels, Airbnb, we rent cars. But we've never really think about renting clothes. This is something very circular. Sometimes it's you rent something for a small amount of time like a tuxedo or a prom dress. But there are actually companies like Mud Jeans, which allow you to lease your piece of clothing and at the end of that lease period, you can send it back to either be leased to somebody else, to be purchased by somebody else or re processed, if it's completely smashed to pieces. As the founder of Mud Jeans likes to say, they don't weather an age their genes, which is what happens in a lot of brand new jeans, they go through multiple processes to make them look weatherbeaten and worn with holes in the knees. He's like, "Lease the jeans from us and you do the wearing out for us. So if it's a brand new jeans, you know, go climb a mountain in them and rip them for us." It's a really interesting model, it makes you understand a little bit more about fast fashion. So even if you're a clothing retailer , it doesn't mean to say that you can't engage in a rental way of working. Mud Jeans is one of the best examples working at the moment how this is going to work.Here's a quick wrap up for you: Consumers do want change. About one in three consumers that were polled just last year, said that they had stopped purchasing certain brands because they either had ethical or sustainability related concerns about them, which is you know, a fair chunk. One in three, that's a fair chunk. And actually it was the lack of simple information that people found is a barrier to making choices and good choices. So again, about a third said that this is the reason they haven't changed their behavior. People want to change but a good chunk of people don't know enough. So if you can be really clear about what you're doing, the benefits, you could capture quite a large and growing amount of people across a lot of sectors.A quick word of warning: don't ever greenwash. Be very truthful about what you're doing, be very truthful about the lengths that you've gone to, but also the steps you still need to take. Don't make anything sound better than it actually is. Through social media you can be called out very quickly if somebody finds some little loophole that you're trying to misdirect people to. This happens a lot with big brands. And so just be truthful, people really do value the truth. So really, when it comes to thinking about anything about making your business models more circular, it is very complicated, for sure. But always be honest about what you're doing and what you want to do. Always be clear about the steps that people need to take to engage with you and to become more circular in their own way of living. Take responsibility, whether that's through rental, through that deposit return, or even allowing customers to send things back to you packaging wise or the product wise as well. And ultimately create value. If you're creating value for the your customer and you're showing that you're creating value for the planet, you are certainly going to keep those customers for as long as possible. This is what Patagonia has always done and you have brand evangelists for Patagonia. So really, always strive to be more circular and always do the very, very best that you can. So here's a lot of details. If you do want to get in touch, you can find us on all the usuals and website, onecircular.world. Drop me an email, say hi on Instagram. I'm on clubhouse as well, as you can find me on there occasionally getting up on stage and yabbering away about anything circular. It's been really lovely to present to you guys. Any questions? I'd be delighted to help hopefully,Ayesha Mutiara  25:40  Wow thank you, Claire. I love hearing you speak. It's no wonder to me that your lecturer. I wish I could have you narrate everything in my life. I would love that and I definitely learned a lot. So yes, before we get into the questions, I see some people joined us since before we started Claire's presentation. So please feel free to share your contacts in the chat. Especially if you didn't sign up through Eventbrite, then please share your contacts so we can keep you in the loop. Other than that, we will open up the floor. Now if anyone has any questions, please make sure to unmute yourself so that Claire can hear any questions that you may have for her. I think this is a sign that you just explained everything so clearly. No one has any questions... Hi Janice!Janice Wong  26:31  Oh, hi Ayesha. Hi, Claire. I'm sorry, my technical difficulty... I unmuted a little later than I wanted but thank you so much for this presentation. Oh, my gosh, you broke down complicated thoughts and information in such a digestible way and I really appreciate it. Claire, I have a question surrounding your thoughts on the current culture of how some customers think that, "Okay, when I'm going for sustainability, everything has to be perfect. Everything has to be sustainable." And I think as a startup ecommerce owner, I don't have the capital to to offer that, even though that's my goal of where I'm heading to. What are your thoughts on how I can explain to my customers that I'm working towards it? I think I am having this self doubt, or I'm feeling guilty of calling myself a person of sustainability, but not kind of being able to offer that, if that makes sense.Claire Potter  27:43  Yeah, that makes a huge amount of sense. And actually, the Eco anxiety we've seen absolutely explode over the last sort of few years of people saying, "These Instagram/Pinterest, perfect, beautiful, sustainable, oh my god, I live such a wonderful life." That's not reality. We all have the times we forget our reusable cup. You know, even though this is literally my life, and what I live and breathe and teach and love. We all have things. It's like we can't be perfect all the time. So that's the main thing is to really communicate is that nobody's perfect but we are all striving. If you are striving to reach a particular goal, so for example, have only 100% home compostable packaging, great. How would you communicate that to your customers? Say this is the end goal, this might be somewhere that we would love to be at the end of our second year or third year. The other thing is to think about what would make the biggest impact for you and for your customers now. Packaging is a great one. If you're sending anything out the thing that people get really aggravated about is packaging. So even though on your scale of things that you think is most important might not be packaging, if you think about it from that customer experience perspective, that might be the thing that is their biggest bugbear, ie what do they do with this bit of packaging once once they receive it in their home? Actually I've got something. My friend got a new job. So I've got a really lovely brand of donuts. I met this guy through clubhouse, and they sell keto doughnuts, which sounds amazing. So basically, they were like guilt free, apparently. But what was lovely about the package is that the instructions and the different bits and pieces information about the doughnuts came on paper that was really small. It wasn't big, it was really small bit of paper, and it was seeded paper and it quite clearly said we need to tell you all this for legal reasons it was about ingredients and stuff, but we know you don't need to keep it. So basically here's some paper that you can compost. You can grow seeds. And it was a lovely little thing because I was like that is amazing. I have to do this, but they're gonna make sure this bit of paper is as good as this bit of paper can be. It was a lovely experience opening that, of course the doughnuts were insane as well, but that little thing was just a really lovely touch because it made me think that they thought beyond just their ingredients in their doughnuts. They thought about everything that was being packaged as well. So think about that your customer experience, whatever that might be, whether it's face to face, whether it's virtual, and be really clear and upfront about what you can do now, as well as the way you love to be in one year, two years, five years, whatever your vision might be. And get people involved in your journey through your social media, on your website & keep people up to date, the good stuff, and the stuff that's not going so well as well. Always Be honest. Janice Wong  30:43  Thank you so so much.Ayesha Mutiara  30:47  Great. That's such a great question as well as an equally great answer. Actually, we have another two questions and maybe we can try to answer these quickly before we move on. They're from Steven, who always has great questions. First of all, he asked, "Will Loop scale?" and two, "Are there efforts in the zero waste retail world to standardize on reusable containers (that you can use at multiple locations)?"Claire Potter  31:20  Both really good questions. So will Loop scale? Hmm. They've scaled very quickly in the US. What I also thought was interesting when they came to UK is, I automatically thought putting the stereotypical "who would be the consumer that would buy into this type of system" well I thought they would have gone with Waitrose & Ocado, that kind of target market. They didn't, they partnered with tesco, so a much wider customer base, which I think was a really great strategic choice. It's introducing a system to a very wide customer base and maybe people that, as I say, aren't the stereotypical will only buy organic kind of consumer. So I have real high hopes that this could be something that scales as long as people are able to swallow that quick & small cost at the beginning, which is the effectively the deposit. So you do pay a little bit more for products in the outset. That is going to be the barrier and quite often with anything that is ethical, sustainable, eco, you know, however you want to label this type of product, it does come with a higher cost, because our upfront costs are more. Our labor is more, and our packaging might cost more. It is a higher cost. So that's the only thing that might be the barrier for a large scale at the moment. But as everything, the bigger it gets quite often the cheaper it can become. With regards to the zero waste retail world, this is a really tricky one as well, because some places will only allow you to wrap things in paper bags, and then weigh them at the counter. Some things that some stores, particularly smaller ones do, particularly in Brighton, is allow you to put your own containers and put their own stickers at the bottom. So effectively it zeros your container and if you're going back to the same stores, again, you can use that. I haven't seen anything as yet. But it would be really helpful because again, this is a barrier for a lot of people wanting to bring their own containers not understanding the system. Iit would be great to have that as a more standardized system. We will wait and see. It's something that definitely should be tackled. Ayesha Mutiara  33:27  Great, fantastic. So with that, Adam, I would like to give you the floor. Now it is your turn to give us your lovely presentation.Adam Siegel  33:35  Well, thank you Ayesha. Actually, do you mind if I ask a question to Claire before I jump in? Claire, if you're still there? It looks like you just jumped off camera. I had a question and I was curious to hear your answer before I jump in, which is specifically with regard to rental. I had been thinking a lot about clothing rental, a couple of years ago and eventually I got turned off of it. I'm actually not certain of the environmental benefits relative to just outright purchasing an item, especially a used item. So I guess I I'd be interested in your, your thinking about the benefits of rental.Claire Potter  34:21  Yeah, I mean, the benefits of rental take a lot of weighing up. When you say about environmental cost, it's getting the item to the person who's recovering the item from the person & it's cleaning the item. Now because of COVID we've seen a lot of people being a lot more hesitant about something that is owned or being used by somebody else and quite rightly so. So that is put a little bit of a pause and a lot of rentals. But what we have seen is more people being interested in in the rental of very high ticket items, stuff that they would like to wear once or twice but don't maybe want to or cannot afford to actually own. So this is like the prom dresses & the event dresses... Yeah, when we have events, remember that, everybody? We actually used to go and see people in real life. So... that's the kind of way of working. I think it's where it will continue to get much, much bigger like Rent the Runway, which is a US example, we've got other ones around the world as well. What has been interesting with Mud Jeans is that even though it's sort of leasing rental, they're much at the lowest scale. It's still expensive as an item, but it's allowing access for people over a period of time to get something that's a higher ticket, maybe a 150 pound pair of beautifully made organic Italian jeans. If you can't spare 150 quid at the outset, then it's spreading the cost effectively but then it is also rental in the sense that you can send it back. So that is a new way of working that is really started to grow, and is continuing to grow. I think I'm with you. Clothing rental is something that we've had forever and it hasn't really changed too much. So it's an interesting one to watch but it's one that one that I weigh up more than maybe some of the others scrape point.Adam Siegel  36:04  Yeah, in my mind, maybe there's two different types of rental and we can switch over. But there's the occasion where, and I think that makes sense: you don't need to buy a ball gown, if you're only ever going to wear it once makes more sense to rent it so that multiple people can enjoy it. But then in the US we'd start we started to see the growth of monthly subscription rentals. Rent the Runway was pioneering it, where you'd get different items every month and to me, it just seemed like the the costs of the transportation associated with it, as well as the packaging, as well as the cleaning and everything else kind of outweighed the environmental benefits. And it also promoted this culture of, you know, continually wearing new items. Claire Potter  36:57  Yeah, it does, it scratches the itch of fast fashion that some people have but ultimately, you're not changing the behavior, it just means that you're getting something on subscription, rather than just buying it and, chucking it off for a month, which is unfortunately, what a lot of people still do. So should we be scratching that itch in a better way? Or should we just put in something and making that itch just disappear?Adam Siegel  37:17  Yeah, great way to put it. Well, very good to meet all of you this morning. I am representing from this side of the pond. So it is still morning for me for another 20 minutes. Very cool to be here because I recognize a lot of your names from the community, the slack community in particular, but haven't had a chance to see some of you yet. So, glad to be here. Claire, that was an awesome presentation and it makes me wonder what the heck I'm doing here. I'm not sure there's anything more to present. But I was trying to furiously change my presentation as I was listening to yours, to see if there's something new that I could add as well. So I'll share my screen and go through the presentation rather quickly. I'd say that I think what you did was lay a really good foundation for how to define circular economy, which of course is the objective of this call. But then all dive a little bit more into the like actionable or practical steps that small and mid sized brands can take to engage or begin to engage in circularity. I really like what you said at the beginning of your presentation, Claire, defining the difference between circularity and sustainability. I'll try to highlight some of those differences through the examples that I share. I also really liked your hero brands at the end. And I have a few other hero brands that I'll share as well, just for examples, maybe on a smaller scale, that might resonate with some of the folks on the line.So first, I'll just start with myself: Who am I and why do I have relevant experience to talk about this subject? You know, I started my journey in sustainability, I think maybe a good bit later than you Claire. But for me, it was 2006 or 2007 maybe at that point where I read the book called Cradle to Cradle. If anyone's familiar with that, it's basically an early Bible for circularity, you know, thinking about how you can keep materials and products in circulation for indefinitely. I was an engineer at that point and it's written from sort of an engineer's point of view so it it really resonated with me. At that point, I was going back to get my MBA, so I spent two years focused on sustainable business and really understanding corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility. In 2010, I was hired into the trade association here in the US, that represents the largest retailers and brands. My role over the course of eight years was to build and then lead their sustainability and ethical production program. So I had a chance to lead industry collaborations on issues like conflict minerals, worker safety and human trafficking, as well as a number of environmental issues like renewable energy generation, waste and recycling toxics, and chemicals and products. Of course, over that time, circularity was becoming a bigger focus. There's plenty of organizations that are working on circularity, but one of the premier ones that seem to come to prevalence over that time was the Ellen MacArthur Foundation so we had the chance to work with them as well as a number of others. Then specifically, with regard to circularity, one of the programs that we spun off was a global case competition, where we would get MBA students from around the world to engage in circularity challenges, and then ultimately bring the winners to Montreal, Canada. So that started about five years ago and is still going today. So let me just get into things. I'll just say, that if you're a business, the trends are clear: engaging in sustainability and circularity are going to be beneficial for you. I think Claire said it well, but consumers are certainly interested in increasingly so, especially with younger consumers. They actively look for the term sustainability or circularity in the products they sell. Again, it's important to be honest and straightforward about it so you can't greenwash. But customers are looking for this, and that's one of the biggest drivers of change in the corporate world. These business models are becoming a lot more prevalent, as well. I tend to think about circularity from the perspective of individual products. I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with a lifecycle analysis or lifecycle assessment and that would generally measure the environmental impacts associated with different stages of a product's life. We're looking at a linear system right here, a product's linear lifecycle, and what we tend to find, now this is over generalized because you have to look really on a product by product basis, but especially with fashion, you'd find that there's two lifecycle stages that provide the biggest impacts: One is the raw materials and you can think about like cotton, for instance, that requires a significant amount of water, fuel and chemical inputs to produce so there's a lot of embedded environmental costs associated with that. Then the second biggest, often tends to be the use of that product. The rationale, again this might be obvious is that you wash your your items a number of times, often in hot water, and it takes a significant amount of energy to to generate that, that heated water. So you know that this provides them a framework for us to think about how we can find the biggest opportunities for reduction. We'll talk about a few of these over the next several minutes but the short of it is, if you can find ways to reduce the raw material inputs, by using recycled material, for instance, as opposed to virgin resources, then that can significantly reduce the impacts at that stage. At the use stage, of course, the individual can wash in cold water wash less frequently, the additional benefit of that is that the product will last longer.If you can find ways to keep items in circulation, rather than rather than needing to dispose of them or recycle them, then that has the potential to significantly reduce the impacts across the board. So let's talk about a few of these. First is materials, you know, I already mentioned this. There's several types of materials, Claire went into it as well. Circular materials would be those that are recycled and recyclable and I think there's probably more that we could add to it as well like, repairable. So if you can if you can find and and design products that use recycled content as much as possible while keeping the quality of the item, and are made in such a way that they can be recycled, then that would ensure that those materials stay within the system. When you're engaging your suppliers, there's really three key questions that you should be asking them because, of course, not all of us have control over our supply chains, but you can still have influence over them. The first is: what's in the product? You know, if you're designing the product, you're likely deciding what's in the product, but there are certain categories of products where you're not that decision maker. And so you need to make sure you know, as well as ensure again, that as much recycled or non virgin content as possible is in it. Second, where does it come from and then third is how it's made. So this is more generally a framework around sustainable production, but it can certainly be applied to circularity. With regard to packaging & the growth of ecommerce, and that's my focus now, there's been a significant increase in packaging as it relates to ecommerce deliveries. So there's the traditional cardboard packaging that's recycled or recyclable and often recycled. That's good. But if you think about Claire's hierarchy, it's not great, that will ultimately go to landfill, and often sooner rather than later. There are new packaging systems that are coming around that are being developed. The one that I have in the middle there is called LimeLoop and it's made out of recycled material. I believe it's a PVC material but that means that it is extremely durable and can be used a number of times. LimeLoop actually rents these out to retailers and brands, who will then use them for their deliveries and returns. Then when they are beginning to scuff or tear, they would then be returned to LimeLoop who will use reuse as much material as possible.Then also thinking about a different level of the hierarchy, there are some new materials that are being developed now made out of natural contents like mushrooms. That's an interesting one and the benefit, of course, to that is that they can rot. I like that hierarchy, they can they can go into compost bins. So shipping is one of the most important legs in the lifecycle of a product. And depending on how you're shipping your product has a drastic influence on the carbon impacts associated with it. Now this is what I would call a linear impact because you know, you can't recycle transportation, you have to deliver it. But as much as possible, you can, you know, reduce the length of shipping and find a mode of shipping that reduces the impact to the greatest degree. Of course, where we're really focused today is circularity. So again, Claire showed that great butterfly diagram, but I'll try to distill this for small and medium sized brands to think about like how can we specifically engage in circularity and taking this linear system and making it more circular? You know, we already talked about resale and reuse and I'll give you a few specific examples of that. That is top of the hierarchy because you can use the product as is without necessarily requiring any recycling operations or handling of the product so there's there's no degradation. Refurbishing: there are some brands now that are doing some really cool things by allowing customers to send in their items to be refurbished. Or, over the course of resale to refurbish products to to increase the resale value of the items. For post consumer recycled content, of course, if an item does eventually end or get to the end of its useful life, then then there are ways to keep the materials in circulation rather than requiring virgin materials. Then there's pre consumer recycling of course and rental which we just discussed. So here are my hero brands, just a few examples to kind of make this concrete. I didn't say it but the work that I do now is very specific. It's with direct to consumer brands, ecommerce brands, and allowing them to enable peer to peer resale directly on their website. We chose resale because it's at the top of the hierarchy. You know, if you have something that's stored under your bed or in your closet or garage, or wherever it might be, then it's not being useful right now. And we want to get that item back into circulation so that somebody else can enjoy that item, rather than having to buy a new item. So one of the brands that we really love that are certainly pioneers in this space is Peak Design. They're based in San Francisco but they sell globally, they have higher end camera accessories like this everyday backpack. It's primarily geared for photography enthusiasts and professional photographers and they just implemented with us this great option to buy used. So if you don't like this item, you can buy it new. It's kind of expensive for a lot of people so there's also USD options available directly on their website as well. This is where it gets you. For all of their items, they have peer to peer listings. So that's one there's 29 listings currently available between $100 - $240. If you were to click into it, you can see all of the different conditions of the items, the colors of the items, and then it would be shipped directly from the first customer to the second customer. We launched with La Ligne recently as well, they have a program that they call Re-Ligne. This is a higher fashion brand based out of New York. The great thing about them, it's beautifully on brand, this is a great visual experience for cost for customers who want to buy pre owned, instead of going to a place like eBay. That frankly is just not a great experience but all of these now are pre loved items. So items that the first customer is looking to sell to second customer.We work with a brand called Brass Clothing. They're based in Boston. This is not our work, this is just their own awesome work for takeback. They offer their customers several times per year the option to buy this bag. It's just a bag, but I think they charge something like 18 USD, they'll send this bag to you, you fill it up with whatever you want and then it ships directly to a clothing recycler. The awesome thing about that is just that it makes it super simple and they actually get tons of interest, you'd be amazed. They get tons of interest. This is a brand that I came across a couple of years ago called Jackalo. They primarily focus on kids clothing, and have this awesome trade up program where you can send your items back to them. They'll clean them, they'll upcycle them and they'll give you a $15 discount on your next purchase. Then, they have a beautifully designed webpage, if you have a chance to go to it where you can see all of the upcycled kids items. Totem Brand Co is also a US clothing brand focused on outdoor fashion. They have implemented the LimeLoop program. But what I think is especially cool is that it's not just that they send it, it's that they create an experience around it and use it as a way to educate the consumer. So anyway, I'll skip the summary since we only have a couple of minutes left and and open it up for questions.Ayesha Mutiara  53:59  Thank you. Thank you, Adam. That was such a great way to kind of go more in depth from the groundwork that Claire laid out for everyone in the first half. So yes, does anyone have any questions for Adam?Steven Clift  54:14  Alright, so I got to come in here. Hey Adam, nice to see you. So my big question is, will efforts like resale circularity... Do you think this is going to be brought to more consumers via new upstart brands versus the big established corporate brands that are already kind of there? Obviously you want both, right? but I sort of feel like there's maybe we need to better understand how will this help upstart brands breakthrough by being more circular?Adam Siegel  54:54  Well, I'll say now I've had a chance to work with the large brands in my last role and now small and mid sized brands. I'll say that the small and midsize brands are always the pioneers, you know that they're the ones that are willing to be more innovative and try things differently. You know, their legal teams are not as big so they they don't have as much to worry about in terms of legal risks and that sort of thing. So, you know, that's almost always the case. But I do believe or I'm already seeing that large brands are engaging in circularity, some of Claire's hero brands like IKEA, and Patagonia, of course, Patagonia isn't pioneering this, but IKEA as well. But then, you know, here in the US or Canada, Lululemon just announced a resale program. They're certainly huge and we're talking with a number of large brands about implementing resale with them as well. So it'll go that way for sure. That said, almost always the case that smaller mid sized are the pioneers.Ayesha Mutiara  56:03  There are a lot of fans of Patagonia here. Peter was just saying his applause for Patagonia in the chat. But yes, definitely, for sure, fans. I hope that of all the hero brands that were mentioned today, basically a spike in their sales, hopefully. We can continue to show them that there is a demand and a desire to support brands who participate in these kind of practices. Krissie Leyland  56:29  Wow, what an incredible, valuable educational, just brilliant event that was. Thank you so much to Claire, and Adam once again. And thank you to everybody who came. Thank you for listening to the podcast. If you enjoyed this, we do have our MindfulCommerce Sustainability Framework, which is available for you to download from our website. It covers six pillars of sustainability and positive impact, specifically for ecommerce businesses. So whether you're an ecommerce brand, an ecommerce service provider, or tech solution, then this is for you, if you want to make a difference in the world with your business. Of course, please do join the free community. We are doing lots of different things all the time is very, very exciting. And you can join by going to our website, mindfulcommerce.io and clicking on "Community". You can download the framework from our website as well. You just go to mindfulcommerce.io/sustainability/framework. I hope to see you in the community and at other events that we run. We are going to be doing 15 minute live trainings inside the Facebook group soon with our experts. And so yeah, just come and join in and let's have fun and make a difference in the world. Have a lovely day!Rich Bunker  58:00  We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  58:07  So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io, click on "Community" and register from there.Rich Bunker  58:13  If you liked this episode, please share, leave a review and remember to subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Packhelp:Packhelp - WebsiteWhere to find Zuzanna Mazurek:Zuzanna Mazurek - Email: zuzanna.mazurek@packhelp.comWhere to find Byrd:Byrd - WebsiteWhere to find Sinem Yazici:Sinem Yazici - Email: sinem.yazici@getbyrd.com Links Mentioned in Episode:PlanetlyIndie Do GoodDHL - Go Green SolutionsDPD - Sustainability at DPDGroupGLS - KlimaProtectBezosLuminia TandemGoodCartsShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands and service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie. Rich Bunker  0:11  And I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community.Krissie Leyland  0:18  The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.Rich Bunker  0:30  You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and clicking 'Community'. See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:37  Hello, and welcome to another episode of The MindfulCommerce Podcast. So today, you'll be hearing a replay of a special panel event that we did in April. This event was all about sustainable packaging and shipping. The reason why we chose this subject is because as always, we polled the MindfulCommerce community. The biggest topic or challenge that they had on their mind at that time, was how to package and ship their products in the most environmentally friendly way. So we thought, "right, we're gonna get some experts to talk about this so that our community members can learn and ask questions." And and that's exactly what we did! So we speak to two experts. First, we speak to Zuzanna from Packhelp, and they provide custom designed packaging solutions for ecommerce brands. Then, we speak to Sinem from Byrd. Byrd is an ecommerce fulfillment company. So that's the perfect blend, we thought! So if you have any questions after listening to this event podcast, please feel free to find Zuzanna and Sinem's contact details in the show notes or join the MindfulCommerce Community to carry on the conversation. We will also be adding a handy guide on this subject to the MindfulCommerce Education Hub. So be sure to check that out for more tips. I'll link it to the show notes, of course. So thank you very much and enjoy!Zuzanna Mazurek  2:21  My name is Zuzanna Mazurek and I'm going to briefly tell you what I do at the Packhelp. So at Packhelp, we have this creator where you can design & personalize your own packaging and that's my responsibility. We also have this feature for eco friendly, eco minded people. You can add any kind of icon or symbol related to sustainability and also you can plant trees with us. So that's pretty cool.Just a few things about my agenda: So I'm going to talk about making your packaging sustainable, about eco properties... so what's really important, and the third point: are inspirations. I'm going to skip this part where I explain why sustainability is such an important topic. I know that since you voted for this topic, then you must know that already. I'm just going to give you very quickly, a short statistic that I read in many different reports: that almost half of the population worldwide pays attention to information about packaging, if it's sustainable or not. They're looking for some information. So that's why I think it's very important to have sustainable packaging, and also to share the message that you have sustainable packaging. So first point: how to make your packaging sustainable. You can follow two different paths. The first path is that you use something that is already on the market, available. Both ways have advantages and disadvantages. But this one, is very convenient in a way that you can check some kind of reviews online on this package. You can actually read the opinions from end customers how they liked the packaging, if it's strong or durable, these kind of things. But also there is another path you can follow: So it's ordering something custom made for you. Well, I think this path is very exciting because you can invent something totally new. But on the other hand, it's riskier, because you have to put effort & invest money. The result, you can't really predict. Also you have to bear in mind that regulations regarding disposal are changing. So that's why I think it's riskier, but also, when you follow the second path and you get something custom made for you, then it's also connected to some kind of publicity. So a lot of different newspapers can write about you & your packaging can go viral. So I think that's, that's pretty cool. So both ways, very attractive. You just have to choose something for you.Then, there are several strategies how to achieve sustainability in packaging. But the very important point is that sustainability is not just one moment. It's the whole supply chain. So you have to think about sourcing, manufacturing, distribution, use an end of life. So the whole life cycle. That's why there is a term we call "life cycle analysis". So you analyze the sustainability in the whole supply chain. It's basically your responsibility, it's up to you how your packaging is going to end up: if it's going to be disposed properly, or if it's going to be recycled and used again. You as a business or business owner, you have to decide about that. This circle you see on my slide shows this kind of circular strategy to packaging. However, you can use different strategies. For example: use fewer materials. That's a bit easier, because circular economy is still something we are working on but still, there is much to be done in this field. But using fewer materials, it could be actually a solution for you. Another strategy is sourcing alternative materials. So, search for something that is not made of petroleum. Another way is finding multiple uses for your packaging, you can also improve practices in the whole supply chain so as I said, delivery & storage. The last point, I think that's something pretty cool: once you follow this sustainable path, you can share your eco friendly approach with your customers.So now going to my second point. I'm going to tell you about free eco properties that I personally think that are important. The first is certified wood. This is a certification that shows that your packaging, if it's made of paper, or cardboard, that the pulp comes from responsibly managed forests and meals. There are actually three types of these certifications. So it could be 100%, meaning that it totally comes from this well managed forest. If it's a mix, then obviously it's a mix. And recycled means that it's recycled, but that it still comes from these well managed forests. So this kind of certification, I think it's really important and it's also worldwide known. So I am pretty sure everyone has seen it somewhere on some of packaging. The certification is just a simple sign that this cardboard or paper comes from well managed forests. So that's important. Also, another one plastic free, as you know, plastic is something that really, first of all, has bad publicity. Second of all, you know, it contributes to marine waste. That's a huge topic and nowadays. You can avoid petroleum based plastics, either by using cardboard, or you can actually go for some plastics that are not based on petroleum, for example those that are made of starch. So here, you will usually see these two terms that something is compostable or biodegradable. And you have to bear in mind that those things are two different things. So a lot of customers they actually think that if they put in their your garbage, something that is compostable, it will compost in their garbage and it's not true. Usually, it has to land in some kind of industrial facility for composting. For volume reduction, that's something that is probably quite easy. It doesn't require a lot of money and it's simple. You just have to use something that is lighter, smaller than your usual packaging. I had this conversation with my friend at work yesterday, actually, that sometimes you just receive a tiny, tiny product, but it's packed in this huge cardboard box. And you think, "Oh, my God, somebody who just shipped me, across the whole country, for example, a box of air!" and that doesn't make sense, because it always takes your money, and also CO2 to ship something is empty. So that's why I think it's something that can be easily made and it will lower definitely our co2 emissions. If I may give you just one hint: it's to do your own research. It's very important to find what is important to you, what are your values, and what kind of properties you want to follow. Also, if you're selling something globally, not only in one country, you have to know that the rules are regional, so the disposal rules are different in every country. For the inspirations, I have two examples. One is kind of an innovation. The second thing are two different packages that were actually our products from Packhelp, and you can see them later. So for the innovation, I have this mycelium. I don't know if you have ever heard of that. That's an innovative material and so there is still much to do about this material. It's not very popular nowadays yet but it's organic. So it doesn't contribute to marine waste. It's a massive reduction of carbon emissions and you don't need a lot of energy to produce it. And the funny thing is that this material is made of mushrooms. In order to produce it, you have to grow mushroom in this special form, it takes five days. So I mean, it depends on the mushroom, definitely, but you need at least five days. It grows in this form, then you have to kill the mushroom, you take the form and it will stay in this form. I think it's a very interesting material. As you can see in the pictures, you can, for example, ship a glass bottle in it, or cosmetics. This material is very durable and strong. I heard that there are companies that are making buildings out of mycelium and also a lot of very fancy furniture. So, a very interesting material and I think it's the future for packaging.I also know that IKEA is working on this mycelium packaging in order to replace the plastic forms that they use.So the green inspirations that I prepared for you, refer to the strategies I discussed before. So first one, you can see that it's cardboard. It's not a very big box, right? We don't know what is inside. But also you can see that on one side, one wall of the packaging, it's written "You just planted 10 trees." So you can actually plant trees in order to reforest what it took. Basically, when you use cardboard, you use trees so you can plant trees in order to pay back. That's one strategy, and also in the other picture, you can see packaging that is very simple. It's paper but it's very light and also quite small, right? So you can see that it's not very innovative but it's not going to cost you a lot of money. Since it's very simple and very light, it's cost effective. In the shipment process, if it's durable, and you can make it durable, then it's going to be very effective. You just send you know the product in a very small pouch, and it goes to your customer. Also, as you can see, they're both good looking. So it's not only about sustainability, but also it keeps a great opening experience for your customers. That will be all from me. As you can see my email, so if you want, you can always email me with questions, or we can go request questions right now.Ayesha Mutiara  15:54  Wow, thank you so much. That was so interesting! I used to make fun of my brother a lot because he didn't like mushrooms and I'm going to tell him this was one more reason that he shouldn't be more of a fan. I would have never thought. It's great that it seems to be durable. It's just five days of growing mushrooms. That's so cool. But everything else was really, really insightful, like the viral packaging like Krissie said. I think we have a few questions. Does anyone else want to ask any questions? The floor would be yours now.Maria  16:31  I am not sure if I can ask a quick question... So Zuzanna, my name is Maria and I'm from Bezos. Just to give a quick overview, at Bezos we partner with ecommerce sellers, and we help them to fulfill and send their orders. So sometimes we also arrange packaging for them. Right now we're also working on a more sustainable delivery through cargo bikes, and I'm looking as well into packaging. As I was looking into packaging, I actually found out that the extraction process of the cardboard is far more emmissions, then of plastic and petroleum. I was shocked, because I was also thinking, "oh, but surely cardboard must be the most unsafe, sustainable!" I was wondering if you could help me understand why, at the end of the day, is cardboard still more sustainable? If the extraction, in terms of tonnes, is almost 10 times higher than the one from from plastic?Zuzanna Mazurek  17:28  Thanks for this question. It's a difficult one. It refers to this "lifecycle analysis" I was talking about. If you think about the whole process, not just one part of it, you can clearly see that there are so many variables to think of. So if you think just about CO2, then probably plastic is better than cardboard. But if you think about the end of the life, then cardboard is something that is organic. So even if your customer, when he stops using this packaging, for example, if this customer doesn't dispose properly, like he just puts it on the streetor anywhere, then this cardboard cardboard is organic, and it will just simply compost, right? If it's plastic, that's the problem, right? Because as we know, we have these huge islands of plastic in the ocean. While it's always a choice that you have to make, like I said do your own research and find what's important to you. Because maybe it's marine life or maybe it's CO2.... You always have to make choices. It's always a trade off, unfortunately. You can't find something that is perfect, not yet.Maria  18:55  Let's hope that the research will lead to better materials, then!Zuzanna Mazurek  19:01  You also asked why it's cardboard that's so popular and not plastic. Well, I think it's mostly because of the fact that cardboard is used mostly for shipping, right? And it's just a better material than plastic because plastic is a strong material, but I think it could break. You know, when when it's shipped then it could break while cardboard is strong, but it's also flexible. So it's just more about properties for shipping. That the purposeMaria  19:44  Thank you. I'll definitely look into the disposal of packaging a bit more. Thank you.Ayesha Mutiara  19:50  Thank you, Maria, for that great question.Zuzanna Mazurek  19:52  Yeah, it's a very important question.Ayesha Mutiara  19:55  It's always like that. The questions that most interest us don't always have a clear cut answer.Zuzanna Mazurek  20:01  There are there are no answers like that, unfortunately, in sustainability.Ayesha Mutiara  20:05  Yes, and you explained the reality pretty well. I think it seems we have another question from Luminia (Tandem): "Would you know any Miss mycelium packaging supplier in Canada or the USA?"Zuzanna Mazurek  20:16  Oh that's a difficult question. So I'm definitely not an expert in suppliers so I can't tell you the names. I've done some research on that and if you just type on Google: "mycelium packaging", you will find few different names of companies who produce it. And you just have to check it because honestly, I have no idea. I'm in Europe so it's also quite difficult for me to name a company.Ayesha Mutiara  20:51  Here's a suggestion that maybe you can give: while she's searching for potential suppliers, would there be specific things you would suggest for them to look out for, like maybe on the website, that would help them decide which of the suppliers are the best fit for them?Zuzanna Mazurek  21:08  Well, I know from my net, from my experience, but for my colleagues experience that what do you have to look for is if they are able to ship it to you. Sometimes, there are like many problems with shipping. So I would look for some company that is in near proximity from you, not far away. That's I think one thing. Other than that, nothing comes to my mind, but definitely how easy it is to ship to you. Yeah, that's all. Some of them, they sell like ready made products and you can also find like Do It Yourself kit. So I think that's quite exciting if you can grow your packaging by yourself.Ayesha Mutiara  21:55  Oh, that's so cool and I think Steven (Clift) just shared a link. So thank you, Steven that's really awesome. We're all very appreciative for you to share your knowledge. Does anyone have any other questions for Zuzanna's Q&A, before we move on to the next portion? Or she did an amazing job and already answered all your questions in our presentation it seems!Zuzanna Mazurek  22:18  You can always send me an email.Ayesha Mutiara  22:22  Great. Well, thank you very much, Zuzanna! I think now, we will move on to Sinem. So please introduce yourself and let us know what you'll be speaking about today.Sinem Yazici  22:31  Hi, thanks a lot. So, I'm happy to be a part of this. Basically, I was mentioned by Packhelp. It was a great time for us as well at Byrd. Just from our side, we are a ecommerce fulfillment shipping company and I'm leading the strategy and partnerships at Byrd. Just a quick background on basically what is outsourced fulfillment & what is ecommerce fulfillment: We basically help ecommerce merchants for their warehousing picking, packing, shipping and returns handling procedures. So as we have discussed or as Zuzanna has touched base on: packaging is an important aspect of how to position the brand as well as shipping because these touch points are the only physical touch points when it comes to ecommerce and when it comes to online shopping. These touch points also have a great impact on the sustainability footprint or CO2 footprint or generally, environmental footprint that you have in your brand. So in order to make it as consistent as possible through the whole supply chain it is important to look into. At Byrd we are basically covering the Europe region at the moment, with worldwide shipping of course, but our operations mainly focus in Europe. We basically cover inventory management and order management for it. I just want to give you a brief information on our sustainability journey and basically what we have lived with sustainability and went through. So as Zuzanna also mentioned, a statistic that 79% of the consumers reported that it's important for them that the brands provide transparency, authenticity, and certifications when they are purchasing the goods. So it is becoming more and more important for buyers, thankfully, and basically from a supply chain perspective, it's good to give that understanding. So there's the warehousing part. So like, there's the production part, which we don't basically look at, but we are looking at the warehousing, picking, packing and shipping part of the thing. So if you think of Byrd or a fulfillment company, there is the company's overall emmissions. The dashboard and server use, and there's the warehouse, and also shipping. So there are three pillars actually in carbon neutrality or sustainability. Those are the areas to improve, if you look into it that way. What we did, basically, was looking into it from our company perspective. So I don't know if you're familiar with Planetly, but they basically provide some options for consultancy for merchants, and also companies to calculate their CO2 emissions. Basically they consultant them to reduce and enable them to offset these emissions. So what we have done with Planetly is that we made sure that we calculated our overall office carbon emissions. In 2020, we basically submitted a offsetting project with them in two different areas, one of them in Netherlands and one of them in Indonesia, to make sure that we are basically offsetting it. I think that's a start. So basically, from the supply chain perspective, like Zuzanna said, there is no perfect solution. So, you start with offsetting projects, you start with reducing the carbon emissions and then move towards carbon neutrality. Also for for your brand from production side and the materials that are used side, it is the same so you you basically start step by step, and it is the same for shipping, as well. Basically, the one pillar we had was the office emissions, the other warehouse emissions, and then the last was the shipping emissions. On the warehouse ones, we tried to compensate it with sort of three plantations for the 2020 period as well for our customers. For the overall project basically, for our offices but this will cover the servers that you're using &  all the external providers like Google Cloud, Amazon cloud that we're using, or whichever cloud based system it is, and how much emission we are actually causing in these terms. There are lots of different calculation points we analyze. Together with Planetly, we had 321 data points for us, and we basically offseted it with two different projects. And this journey depends and differs for every company & every merchant. In terms of what today is for fulfillment and and shipping, offsetting is the best solution and basically that's what we are working on as well for the next years too. I will come to the shipping options. Basically this is what we also provide and I think it's useful for merchants to understand that shipping sustainably is an important aspect at the moment DHL ,DPD & GLS provide Climate Neutral shipping options. With DPD it comes directly with the contract. With DHL gogreen, you pay a surcharge of additional cents per parcel. And with GLS, it comes automatically as well. These are the options that are available in Europe. And there are other options across the world as well to enable and make sure that there are sustainable shipping options. Fulfillment providers also use these sustainable shipping options. With this said, I think this is a stat from Germany, but with the next generation, the millennials say that companies influence their purchase decisions and they would choose environmentally friendly shipping, rather than paying less for it. So it is something thankfully that we are as a society are getting more conscious about and we are providing these options for brands to make sure that the proposition is also eco friendly.I think one other thing I can add is, basically this is just a start to a journey in general. We are working with Packhelp, as well as other partners like Planetly, to make this journey as full as possible. So we are working with Packhelp on a deal that we can offer to our clients: a sustainable package deal that we can offer to to our customers & to our to the merchants, so that it's basically easier for them to opt in for that option. I basically tried to summarize key takeaways for any merchant to start their sustainable shipping journey. So in order to understand the demand, talk and have a conversation with your end user. You need to make sure that you have sustainable shipping options, especially if you have an eco friendly brand. Basically shipping and packaging is the last and only physical touch point that you have with your consumers so that's a very important aspect. Outsourcing fulfillment: if you have sort of like grown out, so we don't recommend outsourcing fulfillment, if you were having less than 100 shipments per month. But outsourcing fulfillment helps automate the processes and increases efficiency and therefore, it is more efficient to outsource and look out for a fulfillment service if you are growing and working on growth. And one other point is that other than choosing the sustainable shipping options, is decentralizing the inventory. This also helps because then there will be again, more energy saved on custom clearances and high shipping costs and for a long haul. For example, if you're a US brand, and are selling also in the EU, let's say 40% of your merchants are in EU, having your warehouse set up in the EU as well will help you with the CO2 emissions and the efficiency as well since you wouldn't have to ship your goods or use air freight for getting your goods across to Europe every time you have a delivery from your end user. That's basically a wrap for the key takeaways. I kept it a bit short but I'm happy to have questions and I will also post my email as well in the chat. Ayesha Mutiara  33:39  Wow, thank you. That was a great presentation. Did I see a question that was asked?Krissie did you have one before the outsourcing fulfillment one that you might want to ask?Krissie Leyland  33:50  Yes, it was actually me! So have you thought about green last mile? As in, partnering with people who do that?Sinem Yazici  33:58  Green last mile meaning the shipping options I provided? Or is there something I'm missing?Krissie Leyland  34:07  I know that Bezos offer a green last mile solution. So perhaps they're the guy on a bike who cycles to do the last mile and delivers to three houses on the same street or something like that to save the vehicle driving to each individual location. I just wondered if you've considered that yourself or if you could maybe partner with someone who's doing it?Sinem Yazici  34:41  We are partnering with different last mile delivery companies ,in that sense. As I said, all the deliveries that we do with DHL, DPD & GLS are carbon neutral. So I think that those are green last mile delivery in that sense itself because it is carbon neutral and that that is the offering. I think there are amazing different options with last mile delivery with using pack stations or basically using bicycles. I know there's a couple of other startups also in Berlin. They'reusing just public transportation, basically to deliver. In terms of that question from you again, Krissie: at what point should you consider outsourcing or fulfillment? That is also related to that, because when you have higher volumes, then it might not be possible to deliver with bicycles and public transportation for such brands. But then you would use more shipping options with go green availability. I think that depends, but for outsourced fulfillment I read 200 shipments per month is useful. For Bezos, I had a chat, Maria, with one of your colleagues, Diego I think, like a month ago. I think it's basically everywhere that that's what we're going for, and that makes me happy to to hear: that everyone is basically looking for the same goal for the sustainability efforts.Krissie Leyland  36:34  Amazing. Thank you.Ayesha Mutiara  36:36  Yes, great. Does anyone else have any questions for Sinem?Krissie Leyland  36:40  Oh, I think it's more of a comment, Steve, feel free to speak up!Steven Clift  36:43  Sure. Well, I can I can turn this into a question. So I've done some research on to recommend to a GoodCarts' member's stores, potential providers in this space in the United States. There's Indie Do Good, which is the one local one here in Twin Cities where I'm at in Minneapolis, St. Paul. But I haven't yet found a sustainably branded sort of nationwide network and there may be issues related to scale. I'm just curious to hear if you have any comments on that, about folks in the US or Canada that are doing some similar things? Future count competitors or collaborators for you?Sinem Yazici  37:20  Actually, we had sort of goal and the aim to expand to us beginning of 2020. With COVID, unfortunately, we had to put our expansion on hold. We have some partners in US at the moment we're working with. The US is a huge country and I think that's why maybe in Europe, it's easier to find a solution. So maybe that's why providers do not or cannot offer these solutions. Our reason for freezing it was basically us not being able to provide the service we wanted to begin with. I can look it up and definitely let you know if there are any interesting companies doing that in the US. Steven Clift  38:17  We have a lot of waste here... so there's lots of opportunity! I also have a related question. This is like a pie in the sky thing butthink about all the local shops say in the of Fairtrade community. Like there's just like one or two stores, probably in each metro area, maybe a few more. I always thought, well, if there was some way that somebody could just know "Oh, that's on the shelf in your town in a small local business!" You know, have a be fulfilled from a local vendor. Is there anything that sort of like tries to connect the catalogs of multiple small shops, that are already there. They're not warehouses, but they might have a niche product available? Does that ring a bell? I've not I've not researched it so it's just been on my mind.Sinem Yazici  39:03  You mean, a channel from local shops and linking that to the ecommerce and enabling that to them? Steven Clift  39:10  Yeah, so basically, any small business that has some inventory. In theory, someone from their region was looking for that product. You know, there had to be obviously, a massive connection, this could be a Shopify thing, maybe down the road, but something where if you realize, "Oh, I can get that scarf... here. I actually don't need to ship it from Madagascar, or wherever it might be." You know, the whoever has it needs to make some of that money. They're not just a warehouse, fulfilling for someone else, they would want a cut. But I just wondered if anyone's ever looked at you know, ways to do that.Sinem Yazici  39:46  That's a great idea!Steven Clift  39:49  Yeah. Uh-oh! Shhh... let's work on it ourselves then! Ayesha Mutiara  39:57  I mean, it's great for the environment of course, when you're not emitting as much CO2. But also, I feel like that'd be very interesting for the customer, because the shipping is probably less, if there's any shipping at all. So yeah, that is lovely. Thank you for bringing that up. I think that gives us a lot to think about. Krissie Leyland  40:16  Shopify do have their shop pay, so you can actually like log on the app. And as a customer, you can find all the local stores in that app. So perhaps still missing something. Maybe it should be at checkout.Ayesha Mutiara  40:33  Maybe the inventory, like knowing for sure, 100% "Oh, they have one available for you" might be a little bit more difficult, but at the very least knowing that it is available, so that you can at least get in contact with that more local or regional provider. And you could at least get in contact with them and ask them, "Is there any availability? Can I purchase it? When are you restocking?" Things like that. So that could be very, very cool.Steven Clift  40:58  Maybe there's a fair trade wholesaler that will figure out that their products is in 60 cities, and maybe can figure out how to get more business, right?Ayesha Mutiara  41:10  Especially in a country as big as the USA, and a country that I feel like has everything too. So it's very likely that's something you're looking for on the other side of the country actually might just be within your state, even so that's cool!Steven Clift  41:24  Very decentralized.Krissie Leyland  41:27  I've been calling him a genius!Sinem Yazici  41:29  I like the idea.Ayesha Mutiara  41:32  You know, I hope that the expansion to the US comes sooner than later. We're sure the American public would love to be working with Byrd sometime soon. Definitely. I also loved how you talked about your project and related to Indonesia, because I'm actually originally Indonesian. So that touched me and made me very, very happy. Sinem Yazici  41:58  Yeah, that was one of the projects we were really interested in. Basically, the Borneo rain forest reforestation was one of the projects that we used. I really got excited about the overall Planetly collaboration that we did as well.Ayesha Mutiara  42:16  Actually, I'm originally Indonesian, but I haven't lived there for the majority of my life. And one of the first times I really started caring about, like sustainable practices, and the environment was actually going on vacation to Indonesia. There were two situations. Once, I went hiking on a mountain but then last minute, my family had to change plans. Apparently, they went to that mountain when they were children and loved it. But nowadays, it's just become so trash ridden with trash that people who hike bring, and then the packaging, the waste is just abandoned on the mountain. So we went ended up going to a different location. Then another time I went to a beach that apparently had so much waste washed up on shore... it was just an immense amount that the locals have even completely given up on picking up all that trash. In their eyes, there's no point because every time they pick something up, there's just more. It's unfortunate that it's gotten to the point where it feels so irreversible, that people have stopped trying. So I love any effort that contributes to helping Indonesia. So that's lovely. Does anyone else have any last questions for Sinem after I've been rambling?Steven Clift  43:32  I do have one Indonesia comment. So I showed earlier a link about gangs in Indonesia that are importing plastics from the United States and dumping them on towns. So that whole "end of life" thing, it's a real deal. Now that China no longer takes all the you know, basically West Coast plastics, the West Coast and the US are shipping them wherever they can, because we don't, they don't have the capacity to actually process the plastics on the coast because it was cheaper to ship it away. In Minnesota, we actually process our own plastic here, and you can buy like furniture made from local plastics. But anyway, it's Indonesia has now become like a real target.Ayesha Mutiara  44:12  So these gangs are being paid to just dump it in Indonesia, basically?Steven Clift  44:16  They're buying it and maybe it's an illegal business right? You know, they might not be your gangs on motorcycles. So think about it in terms of like organized crime where they can buy the plastic and then the way they recycle it is basically they dispose of it illegally in parts of Indonesia. That's what the article suggests. It's from Vice. And it's earlier in the chat. I happened to share it because, you know, it's just a really scary headline for me. I see a lot of bad things, but the idea that organized crime has figured out how to make money on dumping plastic on vulnerable parts of the world is... wow.Zuzanna Mazurek  44:52  Yeah also, if I might add to this topic, sometimes I know that plastic is also incinerated, which means burnt. And in many countries, these facilities, they don't have any standards. Basically, it's air pollution. So a lot of communities, they don't have clean air because of the plastic that is just simply burnt with any filters. It's terrible.Krissie Leyland  45:24  And then we have e waste as well, which is a whole other thing.Zuzanna Mazurek  45:27  Oh, e waste. That's also very interesting topic, I think.Ayesha Mutiara  45:32  A potential other theme for another meetup sometime!Krissie Leyland  45:37  I was gonna say at least, you know, we can get together and talk about these things. Build awareness and figure out some ways to tackle it together. So yeah, thank you everyone, for including your own voice in the conversation. It's been very interesting. And also, thank you as well to our lovely speakers! Brilliant. I love it. I love it all.Ayesha Mutiara  45:59  Yes, thank you again to Zuzanna and Sinem and for everyone who came today. We will send a follow up email to you. Lastly, I will share the link for the next event if you would like to carry on this conversation. And yes, if you haven't yet sign up to our community and you somehow joined onto the this event, there's more like this coming! So maybe that would interest you. But yes, without further ado, thank you everyone! Have a great, great, great evening. We were so delighted to have you all. It was our pleasure.Krissie Leyland  46:31  Thank you.Zuzanna Mazurek  46:32  Thank you.Sinem Yazici  46:34  Thank you!Rich Bunker  46:36  We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you would probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  46:43  So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io click on "Community" and register from there.Rich Bunker  46:49  If you liked this episode, please share, leave a review and remember to subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Scott Goodman:Scott Goodman - Email: scott.goodman@okendo.ioWhere to find Rachel Tyers:Rachel Tyers - Email: rachel.tyers@okendo.ioWhere to find Okendo:Okendo - WebsiteOkendo - MindfulCommerce directory listing Where to find Lucy Roberts:Lucy Roberts - Email: lucy@bravetheskies.comWhere to find Brave the Skies:Brave the Skies - WebsiteWhere to find Reverie the Boutique:Reverie - WebsiteReverie - InstagramLinks Mentioned in Episode:Urth (formerly Gobe)Activated EcoFinisterreWAGWanderer BraceletsFoursixtySpellRixoLSKD (Loose Kid)KlaviyoHerbivoreGorgias - Shopify AppFashion Impact - Shopify AppShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands and service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie. Rich Bunker  0:11  And I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community.Krissie Leyland  0:18  The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.Rich Bunker  0:30  You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and by clicking 'Community'. See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:36  Hello, and welcome to a brand new series of The MindfulCommerce Podcast! So this is going to be slightly different. We are re-uploading or uploading events that we have done in the community. And today, this is an event we did in January-so the beginning of this year: 2021-with Okendo, which is a customer review app for Shopify stores, and Brave the Skies & Reverie The Boutique. So we spoke to Scott, just to get a little intro into what how Okendo came about. And if you would like to hear more information about Reverie The Boutique, Lucy's brand and Brave the Skies, which is a Shopify Plus agency that she is MD for, then you can head to episode number four. There, we talk about the intersection between ecommerce and sustainability. Anyway, let's get to the event then. So this is all about how online stores can create better connections with their customers. We talk about user generated content, influencer marketing, reviews, obviously with Okendo and email marketing as well and how you can combine all of those together to create the perfect strategy to connect with your customers on another level. In particular, we talk about this from a perspective of a small brand with not such a big budget. So hopefully, this will really help you to create your new strategy for the year going forward. Yeah, so we hope you enjoy. If you like it, please subscribe. Join the community so that you can be aware of these events and join them as they are actually happening live and you can ask your own questions! So let's now go and speak to Scott:Scott Goodman  2:43  Hey, guys, so I'm Scott, I'm Okendo's, APAC and EU/UK market lead. I've been tasked to kind of give you some background into Okendo's fruition. What's our story? How did we come about? So Okendo is a Sydney-founded tech startup. The idea or concept that started the journey was actually to do video reviews. Now obviously, we have evolved a lot since that concept. But at that time, text reviews was the standard, there was nothing else. So we saw an avenue to do video reviews. And now you know, we're in 2021 and we do text, we do video, we do photos, we do q&a and we integrate with a wealth of different Shopify partner partners out there, cross loyalty, email, subscription, those types of things.So we now services over 3000 customers for Shopify plus partner. And we have some of the world's biggest brands on our on our platform, so it's a super exciting time. We, strength to strength, growth to growth, milestone to milestone: everything changes every day. But with all these positive changes, we do need to be wary of the effect that we're having on the earth. So we need to support sustainable culture, support sustainable brands and we are definitely seeing a very, very positive trend of this with merchants using Okendo. We have some amazing brands who very much pioneered this and we're very happy to support them.So I've been tasked to kind of speak to two different tips on how sustainable brands can use Okendo and facilitate that review capture. So the first one is actually a fantastic initiative, which a brand called Urth (formerly Gobe) is Australian camera gear manufacturer. What they do is: they run loyalty line. Basically, with every review that they capture, you get loyalty points. And then what they were doing is they would assign X amount of loyalty points equals planting three trees. So for every review that we were getting, my goal was was giving back to the community, giving back to the earth and planting trees. I I think that is absolutely fantastic. You know, it doesn't pigeonhole you to just doing trees. It can be given back to charities, it can be whatever you'd like, but that's a super easy way to give back and a super easy way for all your customers to be involved. I think that's fantastic.The second idea, which I see brands doing, and the one that I want to speak about is quite Activated Eco, another Australian brand. Kudos to them down in Victoria. But basically, their pioneering product is stainless steel pegs. Super simple, but game changing. No longer are they breaking plastic pegs... The sun damage, having to repurchase them every six months. You buy once, you have them for the rest of your life. So what they're doing is they're collecting that content of photos of just clothes hanging up, but it's people's everyday experiences. And they're using that for retargeting ads across social media organic posts. And it's showcasing their five star experience with some personal UGC content. And that's going a long, long way, in showcasing the use case scenario for that product. It's a no brainer, right? But also showcasing real experiences with that product. So it's doing incredibly well for them. We're big supporters of both those brands and we do have many more brands doing different things out there like that. Thanks!Krissie Leyland  6:24  Thank you so much, Scott. That was great, really interesting to hear how sustainable brands are using Okendo to their advantage and also for the planet. So thank you so much. Okay, now we are going to go straight into the event.Welcome, everybody and thank you very much for coming. I'm Krissie and I am one of the two cofounders from MindfulCommerce. Rich couldn't attend but he said hi. MindfulCommerce is a community of ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who share a common goal. And that goal is to make ecommerce more sustainable and positively impactful. So we have a Facebook group, a Slack channel and an expert directory. And some of you are already in the community and it's great to see you! Kat is our marketing whiz and she's going to be co hosting with me today. This event is casual, relaxed and collaborative. It's a nice conversation between nice people. If you want to unmute then unmute, and say whatever within reason and there will be some time for q&a at the end. Over to you Kat. Cat Hunter  7:35  Okay, thank you so much Krissie. So, as she said, I'm Cat! I help out with marketing some stuff for MindfulCommerce something I'm super happy to be involved with. I'm absolutely loving everything that I'm seeing in the community at the moment and how it's growing, especially kind of in the in the wake of the crazy year that was 2020. There's been like a huge growth in interest in this. So it's been really lovely to see the community kind of really growing legs and taking off. Just to give you a little bit about my background, I'm actually ex Shopify, so I worked on the partner programme at Shopify for three years, and ran lots of their events for them. I got super into the world of ecommerce and then eventually decided to go freelance as a copywriter and content creator, but I'm still very much working within the realms of ecommerce and SaaS. So that's my bag, but obviously really interested in sustainability and making the industry as green as possible too.So without further ado, we will introduce our amazing panellists. Today, we're super duper happy to have them join us for this event. So first of all, we'll say hello to Lucy. So Lucy is not only the MD of a Shopify Plus agency called Brave the Skies, who are on a mission to create, launch and grow online stores with their expert crew of very skilled designers, marketers and developers, but she's also the founder of an online boutique called Reverie, which is a really luxurious, sustainable vegan brand. We really recommend checking them out if you haven't already. Krissie is repping some of the jewellery today, very subtly. So she really knows her stuff when it comes to creating these customer connections and ecommerce and most importantly within the sustainable ecommerce space.Also joining us today we have Rachel from Okendo. Hi Rachel! Rachel is VP of partnerships at Okendo. And we're incredibly grateful that she's joined us because it's very early in the morning, where she is. Okendo, as you all know, is a customer view app for Shopify stores but it's more than just a customer review app to us that MindfulCommerce. We think they have like a sort of secret superpower for sustainability and fighting climate change. Because Okendo not only creates great customer connections through reviews and some fantastic integrations which Rachel will talk about, they also help tackle one of the biggest issues in ecommerce when it comes to carbon emissions, which is returns.Gerry McGovern gave us a crazy stat the other day that it will take 1.5 billion trees to be planted to deal with the annual ecommerce returns in the US alone, in terms of carbon emissions. So reducing the number of returns is making ecommerce more sustainable. By having that user generated content, those reviews embedded in your site, people are able to make better choices, more informed choices about the the items that they're buying and hopefully this leads to fewer returns! Okendo is used by some really great sustainable brands like Finisterre, and WAG. They enable customers to show how the products really are. You know, how they fit into their life, helping people buy the right thing the first time.This event today, it's the first event of the of the year for MindfulCommerce. The first of many, we're hoping. We're going to be running these throughout the year. And they are very much a community focused event, we want to make sure that we are providing you guys with the content that you're looking for. With regard to that, when we set about trying to set up this first January event, we polled the community in the Facebook group, which you should all be, hopefully lovely active members of. Loud and clear, you told us that what you wanted to hear about was customer connections. We kind of had a sneaking suspicion that the topic might be something kind of along those lines, because we've been talking about this quite a lot behind the scenes, and customer connection really matters more in 2021 than it ever has before. I think the pandemic has really accelerated ecommerce.You may have seen some stats laying around that ecommerce has grown more in the it's basically had like five years growth in one year, in terms of how it has been accelerated by the demands placed upon it by the pandemic. And customer expectations have also kind of been accelerated in line with that. So, it's a really great area to invest your time and resources in, in terms of creating those lasting more authentic, deeper connections with your customers. We all know that retention is more cost effective than acquisition. And loyal, engaged customers are generating higher rate of ease and have better purchase purchase latency status, etc. So all in all, brands are looking to really create those deeper, more reliable connections with their customers going forward into this year.So yeah, great topic. Thanks for choosing it, guys! And once again, we are super, super honoured to have Rachel joining us to talk about customer connection from their own experiences. So without further ado, I will pass over to Krissie, who I think is going to kick us off with a few questions. And we will have questions for a while and then we will take Q&A from the floor. Over to Krissie. Krissie Leyland  12:47  Thank you so much, Cat. That was awesome. And so Rachel, can you tell us about like some more about Okendo and how customers can leverage the tool to create better customer connections? Rachel Tyers  13:01  Yeah, sure. So Okendo is a Shopify specific customer marketing platform. We work with about 2000, fast growing DTC brands. And we're really focused on helping them in their marketing across the board. So not just reviews, but how can we leverage your social proof to improve each area of your business or all the channels that you're marketing from? So I think a really important thing is that we know reviews increased conversion on site. Partly all of us on this group chat look at reviews before purchasing and product. The stat is 93% of people will read reviews before they purchase something and it's just showing you that there's credibility there because you've got that social proof. "Okay, these people like this product, so I probably will too!" It really puts our minds at ease when we're used to going into a retail store and maybe looking at some clothing, trying it on... having that self experience, which we can't have anymore, unless we're purchasing a product with the intention of maybe returning it later, which of course we don't want to do: Not sustainable, we don't want those carbon emissions. So by reading other people's feedback, we're able to sort of simulate that experience. But beyond that, it allows you to sort of create these connections with your audience. With a lot of brands that we work with, we see them using reviews as a tool to leverage to actually speak directly to your customer and allow your customer to speak back to you.We work with a company called Wanderer Bracelets. They are a sustainable brands that employs Balinese artists to make these custom bracelets. They pay the Balinese artists a fair wage that allows them to support their family. So reading through these reviews, it's so interesting to me because I'm able to connect with the person and their reviews. So this lady Tiffany, she ordered them for her girls, and her friend bought this anklet for the boys, for the preschool that they went to. They're all best friends. So all of a sudden, I'm having this deeper connection with the brand and with the product when I'm able to submit and let them know why I bought the product and how I feel about it. And then me as a reader or us reading together, we're able to see how personal and how beautiful the stories are there. So it's really helping to build out those connections that we're feeling with the brains. Krissie Leyland  15:45  Okay, great. So it's all about showing what your current customers think of your products. And then how does that help you to connect with new customers, for example?Rachel Tyers  15:58  So you can use those UGC, so these are generated content or the review content in your marketing as well. So you can push the star ratings through to Google product listing ads, and there, we know that if your Google Shopping ad has stars on the bottom, people are going to be more likely to click through than if it doesn't. So that can help draw more customers in. Or you can also leverage the user generated photo or video content for your other marketing campaigns. So in my decade of experience in Facebook media buying before I moved into partnership, the highest converting ad creative was always the scrappy UGC. So I put together UGC video, taking little sound bites are people saying how they love the product, how they use the product, what they think of it... And then you chop that together to make this really kind of like scrappy, bit short, sharp and entertaining. user generated content mashed-up clip. When you're using that across Facebook, or Instagram marketing, it often feels more real, more believable and more compelling. It's more natural in the setting that you're showing it because we're used to having our friends like talking to the camera, or the celebrities that we follow whatever it is, kind of scrappy. So if we're presenting something back that feels natural on that platform, sometimes it gets more attention. Because it feels real, you're also more likely to be building that the credibility and the trust side of things.Krissie Leyland  17:36  Yeah, definitely. I think I'm the kind of person who say, for example, I'm on an online store and I've seen a product that I quite like, I'll always go to something like Instagram, and look for real life people that are wearing that product orusing that product. Kind of putting myself in that person's shoes, or the item that I'm looking at and just thinking, "how do I relate to this person? And are they you know, a similar type of person? What are they doing? Are they outdoors?" Which is the kind of person I am, I like to be outdoors. So I'll relate to it more and and probably want to buy it if I can see someone in real life using it. So that makes a lot of sense. And so with Okendo, and I'm pretty sure you work with another app, which helps with that. Can you talk a bit about that one? Rachel Tyers  18:35  Sure. We work really well alongside Foursixty. They are a UGC platform that allows you to curate images that you're tagged in on Instagram and show those on your site. There are all of these images that people have tagged on Instagram, and then you're able to go in, and you can actually shop that product from within the image. And then you've got the Okendo five star ratings being pulled through here to add that little bit of social proof. So it's pretty nice to be able to use those together really compelling, you can put it anywhere on your site. Then of course, you as a brand own any of the imagery or any of the contents committed via Foursixty or via Okendo. So you can use it to leverage your products across all the marketing campaigns too.Krissie Leyland  19:39  That's really cool. I'm just thinking about like, people in the audience and the businesses that they've got and that sounds really great. But with the user generated content, sorry I'm still talking about that... Can you kind of say if someone's tagged you in something you're not very happy with, and you're like my my target audience won't relate to that, can you not accept it? Rachel Tyers  20:04  Yeah, absolutely. So on the Okendo site, you might get a review that has an image alongside it and really love their review, you love the story in it or it's just great content but this image maybe isn't on brand. It's super easy for you to hide that image and then publish the review. You can also set up automations in the back end so that all of your four or five star reviews that have positive sentiment get automatically published, so it's one less thing for you to do. But maybe if it's a four or five star review with a photo, it doesn't get automatically published so you have control to really maintain that brand image. The same thing for Foursixty on that UGC side: you curate everything in the back end, before it goes live on your site. So there are no mishaps of someone showing their new underwear that maybe isn't strictly on brand for you. Krissie Leyland  20:59Yeah you don't want that... [ laughs ] Lucy, I have a question for you related to UGC. I think you are a big fan of micro-influencers. So do you want to talk about that and introduce and what you're up to?Lucy Roberts  21:20  Yeah, for sure. I think I absolutely love the whole concept of user generated content. I think it's so smart. I think there are some brands who just use it so so well. A personal favourite of mine, and I think Rachel's probably heard of them as well as they're an Australian brand, is Spell and the Gypsy. I'm not quite sure how many people on the call have heard of them. But if you haven't, like please go and look at their Instagram page on our website, immediately. They do UGC so well. A feature that I really love on their product pages is you know how at the bottom of your standard econ product page, you'll have, "you may also like" and they also have a little bit where you can toggle to like "as seen on Insta". And it's really that thing that Krissie was talking about just there, which is you can see the product that you're looking at, in a real life situation. So it's not just on a 5'11", size 8 model. I'm 5'3.5" and like a solid size 8 or 10 so that's really not relevant to me. But having those micro-influencers, who really become more like brand ambassadors for you, as opposed to kind of having that influencer tag associated to them. They're uploading their content, they're sharing it, they love the brand. And it really becomes like more of a cult following, which I think a lot of Australian brands do really well. So I used to work for a brand called Cinnamon. And there was this insane cult following around the brand like people couldn't get enough of it. There's a few brands that we're working with, at the moment at Brave the Skies, which is the agency which I run. So for example, Rixo, Kitri and Les Girls Les Boys have this really interactive conversation with their customers, except that Les Girls Les Boys are actually using their customer base to cast for the upcoming campaign that the basically the tagline is "Show us your underwear." This is a really weird concept, but it works for them. Their tagline is "bed to street". The idea is that you wear oversized pyjamas and you wear their pyjamas shirt tucked into your leggings. And then you go to the shops like that. Stuff is amazing quality, the brand is really cool. But all of their customers, especially once you have really active social profiles, so specifically your Gen Z & Millennials have this really interesting opportunity to become micro-influencers or almost brand ambassadors. I could talk about this all day, so I'm probably gonna let someone else talk.Krissie Leyland  24:00  I was gonna ask how can a brand do this? They're like "Right, that sounds great. I want to find some micro-influencers, and I want to generate some user generated content." How can they find the right people to create these great customer connections that they can relate to?Lucy Roberts  24:18 I think if I could answer that one from more of a Reverie standpoint, which is the brand which I started a couple of months ago, I've actually got these little cards I'm just gonna reach behind my computer. Don't mind me guys, sorry. All of the orders that I send out have little "Thank you" cards. I don't know if you guys can see... Krissie, you've seen a few of these but essentially on it, it says "Thank you so much. We sincerely hope you enjoy your purchase from Reverie. Please tag us on Instagram with our hashtag and our handles so we can follow your daydream too!" The whole messaging of the brand, Reverie is a fanciful state of musing or a daydream. So we've only built on this.I say we because it's myself, my fiance, he's definitely a really big part of like building the brand. It's all about involving people in this concept of the daydream. So a lot of the brand messaging on Instagram and email is very much about letters, follow your Daydream come and join our Daydream. It's really conversational.And I find that when you're really authentic about your brand, and you really kind of back yourself, and we do this with Brave the Skies as well. We have a really heavy space-themed brand with the agency, people really respond well to that. If you really back your own brand, people naturally want to buy into it and get involved. I think I've been really lucky with the kind of brand messaging across social channels like Facebook and Instagram, mainly. It seems to attract some really wonderful people who have really similar values, who really like the brand aesthetic, who naturally want to be part of the conversation and support a small business. And especially when you send a really nice order out with a really cute little card. I always write a handwritten message on the back to say, "This is one of my favourite products, too. I really hope you love it." It's genuine and it's nice for people to want to help and to want to share it and to spread the message. I suppose in a way your customers become your micro-influencers.Krissie Leyland  26:20  Yeah, it's amazing. Every time we... well, I've made a few orders on Reverie and also, my partner got me a really nice Christmas present from there, which is this one. Yeah, we both went, "Oh, look! It's handwritten." It's really nice. Like, it just connects to the brand. and the person behind the brands. You know, the necklace and jewellery is really nice but it's nice to know that there's a person there. And it's real and authentic. Yeah, I love it. I was going to ask about-Sorry, I am going to ask you another question-the conversation and how do you keep the conversation going from that lovely card over to social media? And which kind of, again, going back to the connections: How does it help with engagement and how do we continue the conversation? Lucy Roberts  27:15  Yeah, that's a really good question. I think for a lot of customers, the journey tends to start on social, especially when I think with Instagram's algorithm, for example, it changes all the time. I'm sure there's loads of you guys who are listening at the moment who have your own small page or small business that you're starting Instagrams algorithm can really trip us up, and it's super annoying. At the moment, I think it's based quite heavily on whether or not somebody saves your images. So, I tried to make a lot of the images quite save-friendly. So a really nice image that you might want to come back to later, like a nice shot of interiors. Everyone might notice how fantastic Rachel's background is... I've been lusting after this call. But I love sharing content that people find some kind of escapism in. And I think that that starts to build a bit of an aesthetic for your brand.So I find that there's a lot of customers, who are always the ones who like everything on Instagram who comment on everything on Instagram and same with Facebook. And I always reply to everybody. The thing that I've said since day one: even if it's just an emoji, I want to reply to and acknowledge that it's there. Because I think a relationship where you're not just a faceless brand. There's actually someone behind it. A lot of people messaged me now and say, "Hey Lucy, when is this coming back into stock? I really like it." And when that kind of continues on to the website, for example, if somebody places an order, I've got a really good memory. It's one of my very few very strong skills, I'm really good at names. So I'll always remember if I see a name on an order, I'm like, I'm sure she's liked a couple of things on Instagram before I'll go back and check before I write the card.And I've had this absolutely amazing woman who was the first person to follow me on Instagram who wasn't a family member or a friend. She's called Elizabeth, and I absolutely love her. She likes everything, she shares everything, she comments and everything, she always buys a candle. And I actually did a post on Instagram might have been last week or the week before. But it was really it was really authentic. I just wanted to kind of appreciate her and give her something back. She always sends messages from her Pinterest board that she thinks that I'd really liked for the Reverie feed. So I've kind of done a bit of a story and a Facebook post about how she was the first person who I didn't know who followed my page and how it's so nice that she's been there since day one. And just like celebrating that connection that I have with her... though I've never met her. Obviously, we've only ever messaged on Instagram, but somehow we've kind of built this amazing connection and almost a friendship, just through her engagement with the tone of voice that I'm using on Instagram.There's been a couple of people like her. I think Instagram can get quite a bad rap for being quite toxic but I've had nothing but positive experiences through doing it for Reverie. Had an amazing call with a lovely girl in South Africa last Friday, we had a coffee. She's starting a brand &  we had a nice chat about it. I think the connections really come down to, as well as everything that Rachel has said, which is obviously so valuable about the reviews like collecting feedback, like simulating that in store experience. It's just for me, it's complete authenticity, and just having a really, really honest tone of voice and speaking to someone as though they're in the same room as you, I guess. Yeah, it's really long-winded answer again. I'm really sorry.Krissie Leyland  30:49  I love that though. It's almost like everyone here. Well, I've met Alice and Cat in real life, but everybody else I've probably never met you. But I feel like we know each other and it's really nice. Yeah, just wanted to say that.Lucy Roberts  31:10  You know, we love a good tag on Instagram. That was something that said "normalise girls messaging each other on Facebook and Instagram to be mates."Krissie Leyland  31:22  Yeah, it's amazing. I love it. Especially at the moment, you know, crazy times. It's nice to be able to connect to people still online. Thank you internet. Me and Alice, we met in Portugal on a surf trip and now we're reconnecting over business, brands, ecommerce and how she built websites. It's just great. I love this. So Cat, do you want to ask some questions?Cat Hunter  31:59  Absolutely. I do. I was thinking from what you were saying, that idea about starting up conversations, about that two way flow that connection necessitates by its very, very nature. Obviously, it's so important that it's a two way street. I was just wondering, Rachel, perhaps you could tell us a bit more about how brands can ensure that they're getting that right. That idea of, of listening to customers, as well as kind of initiating that conversation... making sure that that connection is a two way flow?Rachel Tyers  32:30  Yeah, definitely. I think there are a few really great platforms and ideas you can have in your back pocket for that. And a way that Okendo allows you to connect with customers beyond the reviews is the Q&A section of the widget. So customers can actually directly ask you questions there, and you can respond to them. Another really good tool that we love working with is Gorgias. Gorgias allows you to collect any customer questions or concerns from multiple platforms, and then you have them all in one place where you can respond to them. So I think being able to offer really great customer service in that way, definitely helps you to grow your brand and create that bond with your audience, like Lucy mentioned.Another good way to use customer feedback is by collecting information on your product, and actually implementing that in your product strategy. So we have a client: LSKD, an Australian streetwear brand that did just this. They were wanting to create the best leggings out there. I want to show what their widget looks like, actually. They used a few different slider bars on their widget to collect information around the product quality, the design and the sizing. So they actually went through many iterations of their product until they got to a level where almost all of these product slider bars were hitting excellent. And it was super important to them that they were listening to what the customer wanted, what they thought of the current product, and then continuing to build upon that. So through doing that, they'd be able to really gain that cult following. They have an incredible product now that people are coming back to buy again and every colour, which I think is always what you want as a brand. They were able to also create those bonds with the customers and they incentivize. So when somebody gave them product feedback and spent their valuable time to do so, they would offer a percentage of coupon for them on the site. So I think that has really allowed them to grow into the brand they are today.Lucy Roberts  34:50  I love that. I think that's so cool. I want those sliders. Can you talk about the sliders later, Rachel?Cat Hunter  34:55  I know, that's something I write about as, as a sort of technical content writer at the moment is audience segmentation and how that can be used. That's something that a lot of smaller brands want to get started with. They know that they could be using their audience data in a more informed & strategic way and really honing in on specific messaging for specific segments of their audience. Maybe they just haven't got it off the ground yet or they haven't started. But I'd love to hear maybe from either of you, if you have anything to say about audience segmentation, and what that can do to strengthen that one-to-one kind of connection that people feel with a brand.Rachel Tyers  35:42  Yeah, I'd love to jump in here, Lucy, and then hand over to you. So I think being able to segment allows us to create these stronger one-to-one connections, because I want to feel like a brand is talking to me about something that I'm interested in as something that affects me personally, rather than just "Hey, I'm one of your many 1000 customers, and I'm just another number." So a way that we allow our brands to do that through Okendo is through using our customer attributes to collect a bit of information on our audience and then we can sync that over into Klaviyo and use it in special ways.I'll share my screen again to show an example. This is WAG, they are a dog treats company that's made with natural and sustainable ingredients. And they have been using our Klaviyo integration. So what that does is it allows you to sync all of this customer data into your Klaviyo or Omnisend customer data profile. Then we can segment out based on the dog breed, the dog age, and the eating habits. Then using those segments, WAG is able to recommend specific products that are going to be right for that dog for your pet. So using that segmentation strategy, they were actually able to increase the revenue per recipient by about 430% just by speaking to that customer.Then another example here, we've got Herbivore who is a cruelty free and vegan brand that we work with. They actually collect information around skin type, and skin concerns. So you can imagine if I've got perhaps acne or dryness, and I get an email that in the copy says, "Hey! Help with dry skin" in the subject line, whatever it may be and it's something that actually relates to me or pertains to what I'm actually interested in solving, then I've got more likelihood of clicking through and converting for that product. It cuts through the noise and we know that our email tends to get clogged up with a lot of other noise. So if you're able to speak directly to that shopper, then you're more likely to build that connection there. Cat Hunter  38:11  Just speaking with my like content marketing hat on as well, that could be really interesting in terms of the way that you structure your content marketing too. Just knowing kind of which topics are going to land well, which ones to be promoting more to which segments, writing "buying guides" and things like that must be very helpful to know how your audience demographic is skewed across those different kind of attributes.Rachel Tyers  38:35  Right, absolutely. Lucy, do you have anything to add from the marketing strategy side on segmentation?Lucy Roberts  38:43  To be honest, I think I think you've pretty much covered it. From a kind of more of an established merchant perspective, something like Okendo, which is what Rachel's obviously talking about is amazing. Having that integration with Klaviyo as well is so powerful, because you can start to target those segments with automated workflows. But the agency side of me is like "100%, that's the way to go", but the Reverie side of me doesn't have the budget to really have a powerful option like that in-house because obviously, it's all self funded, and you're a little bit more scrappy when you're a startup. So a lot of the tools that I would use for my own brand as well would just be things like Facebook Insights or Instagram Business Insights.Reverie's built on the Shopify platform just on one of our pre-budget plans, but you can still get a decent amount of data and understanding as to, even if it's just gender split. You know, like 70% female, largely between 25 and 35 (years). Even the most kind of basic bits of data, I find can be really helpful, especially when you are a small brand and every pound that you're spending on stock or anything really is very important. For me, I've tried to very much build a picture of who the reverie customer is. I think there's roughly three personas and I do try to validate that with any bit of data that I can glean from any of the platforms that I use. But 100% the segmentation of those one on one conversations and connections is amazing. And Krissie, we're getting some questions in this chat.Krissie Leyland  40:28  Yes, so I was gonna go to the question that Chris Butterworth just put in there, which is a brilliant question and I love it. So we are talking about gathering data about your customers, but one thing that we talk about at MindfulCommerce is storing data and being really mindful about the data that you collect, to kind of ensure that you need the data and it's actually going to be useful. So Chris's question was, "what are people's thoughts on the ethics of collecting all of this customer data to allow this almost one-on-one targeting?" It's a great question and it's a rabbit hole that I go down often. So, Chris, do you want to unmute and talk about your thoughts?Chris Butterworth  41:30  Yeah, I've just seen Vickie's response to it as well, "if they the customer voluntarily gives it" I mean, as part of GDPR within the EU, obviously, you have to get consent, or at least let people know that you are tracking. My concern is how much data that is collected is actually useful. Not just from an ethical standpoint, but from a sustainable standpoint, obviously, the more data you collect, the more data is transmitted, the more data is stored. So it's kind of just to try and cover both of those areas, really, just to try and get people's thoughts on it... whether it is completely ethical or not.Krissie Leyland  42:21  So just to explain it a little bit more, like you said, it's not just about the ethics of GDPR, and stuff like that. It's about the more data that you store, the more impact it has on the planet, and the more energy that you basically zapped from the earth. What Chris and I are saying is just be mindful of the data that you collect. Lucy, what your thoughts are on that because you're a small brand. At Reverie, like you said, you don't collect much customer data, but say a client at Brave the Skies... Is it something that you might bring in conversation or do you just collect needless data?Lucy Roberts  43:13  I would potentially suggest that no data is useless or needless, I have very strong views on not sharing data with other businesses that you haven't directly opted into. I hate it when that kind of thing, those damn T's and C's that you have to click to check out that drives me mad. I hate hearing from businesses that I haven't directly signed up with. So if something like that does happen, I do make it a personal mission to find out who sold my data and wage war with them. That in the spirit of creating more meaningful connections with customers, offering a better service offering more value, I think as long as you're using the data proactively that you have, and like you say, You're not just collecting data for the sake of collecting data, then I think ethically, I'm on board with it. As long as it's being used responsibly, and in a way that genuinely benefits the customer and not the business. Yeah, then I think it's a nice thing to be able to do because tying back to everything that Cat and Rachel were talking about, like at the started at the start of the chat, like having those better connections, being able to not necessarily sell a product better, but advise the customer better on things like the fit or things like whether or not based on your previous purchase in the previous data that we've collected, we're pretty sure we're actually 85% sure that the size eight is going to fit you then I think that that solves the problem as well. So it's interesting, it's almost a bit of a double edged sword. It's like we didn't have the data, we might create more returns which might create more questions. Rachel, help me out.Rachel Tyers  45:04  For midsize enterprises, the data were collecting is only scratching the very surface. It's so insignificant compared to the billions of points of data that Facebook or Google stores on every single one of us. And as SMPs, we use that too. So all of the Facebook marketing targeting that we're using, which is very comprehensive, incredible, and allows us to get in front of customers that are going to be interested in our products, that is stored somewhere. And that's significantly more than, like a couple of skin type questions that you might have on your reviews widget. So I think that's like more of a consideration and there's certainly a line. You know, it's always really creepy, when I'm talking about back pain, and my phone is sitting here, and then I get ads on Instagram. And I'm like, "Okay, back pain ads? Come on. My phone wasn't even unlocked!" So it's tricky. But that said, we're opting in for this every time we use Facebook or Instagram, like we have opted in to share all of our data with Facebook. So, you know, it's definitely a grey area. It's really creepy as a consumer, but it's really fantastic as a marketer.Krissie Leyland  46:23  Yeah, it's like Lucy said, it's definitely double edged. I think, what Chris will say and what I will always say is, just please be mindful of the data that you collect. Don't store it for too long if you find out that you don't need it or use it. Going back to customer connections, it can be really great if you can personalise things, and for example, you're using data to create an ad that's more relevant. Perhaps, that's okay. But yeah, just be mindful. Thank you so much, Chris. I love that question. And I think we should do it entirely different event with me, you and Cat and anyone wants to join about that. And so yeah, thank you!Lucy Roberts  47:14  There is a really good question that's just popped up in the chat about sensitive versus non sensitive data, which I think is a really, really interesting question. I don't think there's any need for anyone to collect sensitive data. I don't think marketers need it. I think everything that Rachel was just saying is completely accurate. Like it is a marketer's dream to have access to loads of information and data about your age, your buying patterns, which device you shop on, that kind of thing. But I really can't find a use case for a marketer to need the full name of somebody, the full address of somebody. I don't think anything needs to be that specific. So if I was being targeted based on very sensitive data, like, you know, my exact age or my birthday, or whatever, unless i'd specifically opted in because I wanted a 10% discount on my birthday,, I would be pretty annoyed about that. So I would always say sensitive data is no no.Krissie Leyland  48:21  I totally agree. So, again, thank you those really good questions and I like that topic a lot. Shall we go back to marketing and customer connections? So Lucy, you mentioned something called opti-channel marketing.Lucy Roberts  48:50  It's a good little buzzword, isn't it?Krissie Leyland  48:54  It is, it's a new one! It's anew one even to me & Cat! We were like, "what is it?"Lucy Roberts  49:01  I've had quite a few people talking about it recently. I was just mentioning to you ladies, before we jumped on the call: I've just started as an associate lecturer on a fashion course up in Newcastle at the university there. One of the senior lecturers that I was speaking to was talking about how they're talking to the students about the concept opti-channel marketing. I was like, "but surely you mean omni-channel?" and she was like, "No, I mean, opti-channel." Okay, so I was doing a bit of research into it and the more I looked into it, the more I thought "this is actually so smart." Because for being an omni channel retailer, you're everywhere where your customer is and your brand is everywhere. But this concept of opti-channel marketing is more about optimising your brand, your tone of voice and your message for the channel that you're operating on. So you might speak to a slightly different set of customers who engage with you more on email marketing. So your tone of voice might be a little bit more salesy. It might be a little bit more, "hey, you bought this, you might like this as well!" Whereas your conversations on a social platform like Facebook, or Instagram might be more about those one-on-one connections, where you've got the same people commenting and messaging every time. So you can be a lot more, "hey, I'm the face behind the brand. Let's have a chat. I'm really glad you like this image. What do you think about this?"So, I really liked this idea of this opti-channel suggestion. It's something that I've spoken to a couple of our clients about at the agency and it seems to have struck a chord with a couple of them. Because they think you very much do present yourself and your brand in very different ways, depending on the circumstance. It goes back to what Rachel was talking about before, which is more about customer segmentation and there are certain segments of customers who respond really well, for example to "we've got a flash sale", because the only time they're going to buy it is if it's on discount. But then you've got another section of customers who are incredibly brand loyal, and anything you put out they want to buy, because you have promised them that it's got your stamp for approval, and they're just going to buy it anyway. So I think this concept of opti-channel is actually I think it's common sense for a lot of people and I think we do it anyway. But I quite like that there's that there's a name for it, so I'm going with it.Krissie Leyland  51:27  Love it. That's really cool. Yeah, I was just like, "what? what is this" and Cat said, "That's good! Give us the dirt!"Lucy Roberts  51:36  Coin the term, take it and run! Go for it.Krissie Leyland  51:42  I'll be an opti-channel marketing agency!Lucy Roberts  51:47  I would like a revenue share please. [ laughs ]Krissie Leyland  51:52  Yeah! Rachel, what do you have any thoughts on that? Have you ever heard of that concept before?Rachel Tyers  51:59  I haven't heard of that concept before, but it makes so much sense. I think, when we were kind of getting used to SMS being a part of our structure, people or brands werre worried about, "okay, we're sending an email to this person and we're also sending them an SMS... Isn't that a bit much? You know, we're double handing this message." But being able to use the correct sort of address in SMS is going to be really different to what you're using an email and you know, it's so short-handed and sort of off the cuff. Maybe you're throwing in a few emojis if you've got extra budget for SMS that month. So it's really different way of messaging someone, and both are equally valuable.Lucy Roberts  52:51  Chris is throwing me a curveball here. It doesn't seem like he's on board with opti-channel marketing.Chris Butterworth  52:57  Sorry, it's because I come from a brand background. So a lot of the work that I've done is basically been all about kind of consistent brand experience and brand strategy, and that sort of side of things. So changing your voice depending on the medium is a little bit odd to me, purely because I would think about it is something where it's completely consistent in terms of tone of voice and everything like that.Lucy Roberts  53:27  I totally get what you're saying. I think you're totally right in that all of your core values and your core messaging should always be the same. But the way that I thought about it was, I'm the same person as an individual. I am very much the same person in every situation, but I definitely have a phone voice. I'm definitely extra polite. When I'm around my parents friends, I'm definitely a little bit more of a wine girl with my girlfriends. And I'm to be honest, a bit of a loose cannon with my fiance, but I'm still the same person all around. I think you naturally have slightly different versions of yourself, even though you're still the same base person, it's still the same brands. You just act ever so slightly differently depending on your environment. So I'm going to go with that metaphor. I think it works.Chris Butterworth  54:22  Absolutely amazing. Yeah, I didn't even really think about it that way.Krissie Leyland  54:27  That is so good.Lucy Roberts  54:28  Yes, Thank you so much!Cat Hunter  54:29  We have a question from Bridget as well in the in the Q&A. I'll read out. So Bridget says that she has a question on marketing strategy. They recently launched a sustainability Shopify tool for fashion retailers. We know that consumers are interested in sustainability ratings, but our tool is a b2b product. Any tips on how we can get in touch with the right type of retailers?Lucy Roberts  55:01  First of all, I would love to hear about it because I'm sure the merchants that we work with that Krissie works with at her agency and that I work with... 100% would love to hear more about that. Bridget, I'm actually going to drop my email address in the chat. So, yeah I'd love to hear more about.Bridget  55:24  Sure! We only launched about a month ago, and we've got some traction, but we put so much work into it. Really, I guess, you know, the more work we put in, the more we thought we were just gonna blow up as soon as we launched. Guess things are harder once you're in the real world. So I'm just trying to reach out to brands, because I know a lot of consumers will be interested in seeing this, but it's just sort of highlighting the need to retailers and trying to get in touch with the right people because Shopify is so vast. Yeah, I think it's a good tool and we really thought of all the hypotheticals. What if this, what if that? It has a lot of flexibility, but in doing that, I worry that we've made our marketing more complicated. And so yeah, please let me know if anyone's interested.Lucy Roberts  56:13  I mean, I'd love a demo of it. Maybe we could connect and kind of chat about it more. From my experience in the agency, for example, I went down & met Rixo, which is a brand that we launched on Shopify Plus middle of last year. As part of their discovery, I kept saying to them, like, what about sustainability? What are you guys doing there? I mean, you sell 350 pound viscose dresses, like made in China? What's the message? Like? Where's that price coming from? And I don't think the founders were really expecting somebody to ask a question like that. I think they have enough of a cult following that the dresses sell themselves but we ended up doing a really big section on the site about meet the makers. And like, who's actually designed the clothes where they're being made. Like, where the factories are, what factories specialise in. I think that the more you almost propose the tool to brands, even brands, who aren't actively doing anything on sustainability on their websites, they naturally want to be associated with it, because most of them are thinking about it, they're just not doing anything about it. I always think those Rixos & Les Girls Les Boys, the independently owned small-medium sized business, I think they're going to be your bread and butter for it all like that on Shopify, for sure. I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can and get you connected with merchants like that.Bridget  57:42  That would be great. Yes, please.Krissie Leyland  57:45  I was just gonna say... Well, I know what the apps called, but can you tell everyone what the app is called?Bridget  57:53  That's just another example of how marketing is not my... But yes it's called Fashion Impact - Clothing. I have a data science background. It's not actually my main job. It's a hobby that we started in March when the first lockdown hit. Then my husband is a programmer for Shopify tools. So yeah, it's obviously a passion of ours. We launched it in December. In the end, I really hoping to get some traction on it. You know, because it's a business to business product, I guess it makes the marketing, a little bit more complicated for us. We're used to being at the bottom end of business to consumer marketing. So we know, how we received that and those kind of strategies at a basic level. But we are out of our depth, I guess a little bit when it comes to business to business marketing. But platforms like this are so helpful, and I'm really enjoying this.Rachel Tyers  58:46  Bridget, I would just say, if you can get some data and metrics around how the app helps is stored, and that becomes really compelling. For me, like I really love LinkedIn for reaching out to brands. I think, like the SMB area is a really good place to start and get those early adopters on the board, get more data and metrics, and then even working with agencies. I mean, being in partnerships, I know that if I make friends with a great agency and show them with my show them my product, it's way better use of my time than going out to each company individually. So I think that would be a strong sell for you, especially if you're looking at agencies that are focused on ethical marketing or ethical development. So there are those agencies that are specialising in that space. And then for me, if anyone's interested in learning more about Okendo, I will drop my email in the chat. I'm happy to do a demo with you or chat more about your marketing strategy. And thank you so much Krissie for inviting me to share some time with you all today.Krissie Leyland  59:52  You're very welcome. Thank you. And yes! Lucy?Lucy Roberts  1:00:02  I've had I've had a great time like, this has been so much fun. It's been a lovely like relaxed conversation. It's been great to see some new faces and put some faces to names. I dropped my email in the chat as well. But if anybody ever needs any advice or anything on like startup brands or anything Shopify or econ related, just drop me an email, I'm always happy to help, or LinkedIn is cool, too. And everyone, make sure you're following Reverie the Boutique on Instagram, and save everything for the algorithm! [ laughs ]Krissie Leyland  1:00:38  Yeah, if it helps, I'll save everything! Yeah, thank you so much, everyone. There'll be lots more events like this, I hope. People like Bridget, and everybody in the ecommerce space, this is a place to connect! And, yeah, I loved it... thank you so much! Thank you very much as well to our panellists, Rachel, Lucy... and Chris and Bridget for coming on in. If you're not a member of the MindfulCommerce Community yet, please, please join us if you're interested in ecommerce sustainability, and helping to make the ecommerce world more positively impactful. Also, don't forget to have a look at our brand new MindfulCommerce Directory listings for all the experts, including Okendo, and you can learn a bit more about them on there. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been great. This is the first event I've ever done like this. So yeah, thank you again.Cat Hunter  1:01:43  And we will create a space to kind of continue this discussion on the MindfulCommerce Community on the Facebook group. So if people do want to have a space to connect or raise any issues that are questions that they had, that kind of grew out of the conversation that they've heard today, if you want to carry on the conversation, then that's very much what the MindfulCommerce Community is all about. So we will make sure that there's a clearly identified thread in the Facebook group for you to get.Krissie Leyland  1:02:10  Yeah, and so a little task to take away: Just think about what you're going to do to create better connections with your customers this year and then let us know you know, on Instagram, whatever, and tag us! Yeah, let's start a conversation!Cat Hunter  1:02:27  Fantastic. Thanks ever so much, everyone! Rich Bunker  1:02:32 We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  1:02:39  So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io, click on 'Community' and register from there.Rich Bunker  1:02:46  If you liked this episode, please share the review and remember to subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Adam Pearce:Adam Pearce - LinkedInWhere to find Blend Commerce:Blend Commerce - WebsiteBlend Commerce - BlogLinks Mentioned in Episode:Magento CommerceAccentureDue WestOctane AIKlaviyoClubhouseBrewDogDr. Will'sShoppingGivesInsights Profiles'Start With Why' - book by Simon Sinek'Find Your Why' - book by Simon Sinek, Peter Docker, David Mead'The 4-Hour Workweek' - book by Timothy Ferriss'Life Leverage' - book by Rob MooreShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00Hello and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie.Rich Bunker  0:11and I'm Rich. We are your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community.Krissie Leyland  0:18The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of e commerce as a force for good. Rich Bunker  0:30You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and then clicking "Community". See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:36Today, we are talking to Adam who is the CEO and cofounder of Blend Commerce, a Shopify agency specializing in turning ideas into reality. Blend are driven by success with a mission to help Shopify entrepreneurs achieve significant and sustainable growth. I love Blend Commerce's motto, which is "clarify, create and convert," which we will go into more detail on in the show. So hello, Adam. It's great to have you here. How are you doing?Adam Pearce  1:08Yeah, very good. Thanks, Krissie. Thanks for having me. I'm really pleased to be on here.Krissie Leyland  1:13Good, great! It's always nice to hear that you're pleased to be on the podcast. So do you want to start by just telling us a bit about how Blend Commerce came about? So I believe you're running it with your brother-in-law, which is interesting.Adam Pearce  1:29Yeah, so shout out to anyone else who is in business with their family, because it's good and it's hard too. But yeah, just a detail about how it came about. So my business partner, Peter, who is also a brother-in-law, he started out developing Shopify stores about seven or eight years ago. We'd always talked about going to business together. He was banging on about Shopify, and how it was this great thing that was allowing people to have ecommerce stores. He said they're all these people in the US and Canada that were building out these stores and making really good money from it. I just kind of brushed it aside and said, "yeah, whatever...  it's just another fad." People were already already use Magento for ecommerce. I was actually managing a Magento store at the time. I didn't really kind of think much of it. Then, probably about a year into developing, it really started to pick up and Shopify started becoming more mainstream lexicon. When I looked at it, you know, having the fact that I was actually owning a Magento store at the time, I started realizing what the opportunity was. Basically what happened was that I was a sales and marketing director for an educational app company. We had been talking about this idea of going to business. I said, "Look, I've worked with agencies before, and what really annoys me about agencies is that I can't get everything that I need done under one roof. Because I come from marketing, while Peter came from development, that's how we came up with the idea with Blend Commerce. It's the idea that we are blending both development and marketing in one. So that's where the cheesiness of "Blend" comes in. We now trying to be the on demand digital department for companies. A lot of growing businesses, they think about recruiting, but actually trying to recruit a developer, a designer & a marketer: there's a lot of costs with that, as well a headache in that. Basically, we just come on essentially, as that automatic department that you can then talk to, and get everything you need from one team. So yeah, that's how we came about.Krissie Leyland  3:46Perfect. I love that. It's like blending your two brains together, as well, so not just your creativity from the marketing side, but also like the geeky techie side as well, which is perfect. Yeah, it's such a headache trying to find all the unicorns in the world, isn't it? So if they're all in one place, that's perfect. So I recently saw that you went through a bit of a rebrand and a new website so you want to talk a bit about that? That'd be cool.Adam Pearce  4:19Definitely. Well, we are you know, not unlike any any other business, we imagined what our business should be like... And it always gets to a point–and we get this with our own clients–where we go "Look. Actually, what we will be pretending to be or what we were aiming to be initially is not actually what we are." So we've been through a few different versions of websites now. The first ever website that we did, it was very copy heavy, it was very tongue in cheek... A little bit rude sometimes. That was kind of "our take" at the time, that we want it to be very different. But the problem is that people weren't really going to take us that seriously. We got some really good clients but I think a lot of people couldn't see through the fact that we were very jokey & that we had a lot of means on our site. It just didn't really fit in with the kind of customers that we were working with.Fast forward, coming out two years after we launched our initial site, we then sort of started obsessing about this. It was actually a financial services company: They got this really cool looking black and green thing and we decided that we wanted to have that. But again, I'm not saying with the Average Joe's of the Shopify world, but we're definitely a company that values each other and has got a very strong team mentality. So that black and green at the very start was trying to be a little bit too "too cool for school" and that just wasn't us. So we actually went through a process with our head of design Stephan to look at a different brand archetypes. Now, if you're not familiar with brand archetypes, have a look on our website, blendcommerce.com, there's a really great blog in there. Essentially, what brain archetypes are is looking at different parts of your company as a personality. While going through quite an in depth process of working out exactly who I wanting to be, we landed on the fact that we were: the Everyman, the Sage and the Hero. You can kind of look at that a little bit like  an aeroplane: so the hero is the body, then we're tipped on the wings by the everyman and then on the other side there's the sage. I won't go into too much detail but when you look at our site, if you understand archetypes, hopefully you'll see that that's what we're looking for. That was the main purpose of going through that rebrand, because we wanted to make sure that people see us as that helpful, honest, and really direct company that is going to help people rather than the typical very skinny looking site that is very flashy, and has got big brand names all over it. That really isn't us. So we wanted to make sure it reflected what we do as a company. I think the other thing as well, Krissie, is that our site is also on Shopify. It always has been, always will be. Ultimately look, you know, Shopify wasn't made for for service-based businesses, but there's definitely capability of doing it. We want to show that with our own website, some of the things that are possible with a Shopify store.Krissie Leyland  7:26That's so cool. So for example, when you do win a client, do you do the payment system through Shopify or is it just purely fo a front end website?Adam Pearce  7:40Yeah, we actually used to sell our services through the Shopify payment system. We're going to be bringing in more productized services in the next 12 months. So we'll go back to using Shopify for that but in terms of, larger scale projects, we do that externally at the moment.Krissie Leyland  7:58Yeah, probably makes more sense. Did you notice a difference in the types of clients that you were attracting after you did the rebrand?Adam Pearce  8:10Definitely. I think that the thing was, is that with the rebrand, we also made sure that our tone of voice was right. Obviously, you know a lot more on this than I do, but that was the thing: making sure that we were talking in the right way to our customers. That was also things like podcasts that were on & social media, just trying to make sure everything was aligned. I think now, as a result of that, we've definitely seen the kind of clients that we're looking for. We work best, really, with clients that are doing 100k a month plus, or maybe just below that. So helping us to get in front of those type of people was a big part of that rebrand. Yeah, it definitely has made a big difference.Krissie Leyland  8:55That's so cool. So the guy that you went through that process with, was he kind of like helping you to understand who your customers are and the way that you want them to feel? Was that part of the process as well?Adam Pearce  9:09Definitely. Stephen, our head of designed delivery, he actually came in at a great time. Because we were looking to do this and we actually tasked this to Stephen as his first first project. So you didn't kind of have that issue you've got you know, when we're usually in a company for over six months, and you get a little bit blinkered in terms of what the company is really about. So Stephen came in with a real power of sort of fresh eyes. So if you have an opportunity where someone is coming into your company, even if they're not a designer, I think it's always worth you talking to them and then getting their opinion of what they think you should actually be doing. Obviously if that's not possible then using someone external thing is a really good move because what we would have resulted with with just me and Peter, or me and the existing team, I know would have been a very different to what we've got actually today.Krissie Leyland  10:05You're always too close to your business to really know if what you're seeing is actually making people think what you want them to think about your business, if that makes any sense. Yeah, that sounds really cool and it's a nice process to go through, isn't it?You get clarity on who you are and the types of people that you want to work with. One of my favorite things in business! So let's move on slightly to your services. So what are your core services at Blend?Adam Pearce  10:46The easiest way to think about it is: we offer something that we call the on demand digital department. What this means is, as a business owner, it's likely that you are going to be facing a particular problem. Whether that is that you feel like your conversion rates too low, you feel like actually, you're not selling in the right markets or you perhaps, are at a point where your your average order value stagnated. I think with those problems, it's not just development. What you're actually going to need is some strategy, some design work, some development work, and you're gonna need some marketing work too.So when you work with us, we are actually going to take a look at your business first and say, "Right. Number one: what's the problem? Secondly, what are the things we think needs to be done? And thirdly, in what order they need to be done it? Off the back of that then, what we then do is say, "Look, you're going to need this amount of time from development, this amount of time from design, and this amount of time for marketing to do these things. We will then set a goal, which will be related around solving that problem and then we'll just keep on reviewing that. Now we don't go down the route of doing sort of large projects. We prefer to actually kind of say to client, "Let's solve the here and now issues and then let's build on that, from the growth."If you look at that as a model, it is slightly different to what a lot their agencies do. I always talk about an example: a few years ago, I bought a very nice, flashy car. When I bought it, I went into the garage, I asked for all the additional bells and whistles. So all the tech in there, the heated seats, all that jazz. I think after a month, what I realized is that I probably used about 10% of that stuff and it started to frustrate me that I paid all this extra money for Sat Nav, when the Sat Nav was crap, and I could've just used my phone. And I think "No, if you think about a website, it's exactly the same thing."Ultimately, when you're having a website, you want it to get from A to B. So if you focus on solving that core problem that you've got–which might be low conversion rates, so that's your A to B–as time goes on, and you get more data and you've experienced using that site, you can then work out what bells and whistles you do need to actually add. That's the way that we work as a company. We'll have that time to sort of get settled in and then after we'll add the things that we actually do need to add, rather than just going for the add ons from the immediate start point.Krissie Leyland  13:32Yeah, that's so nice and probably less overwhelming as well. Because even so with the MindfulCommerce Directory, we found it really hard to give our developers and designers the exact thing that we wanted straightaway. We were like, "Oh, I don't know!" It wasn't until we got something launched, like an MVP site, that we went, "Oh, it would be really handy to have this, this and this." Yeah, so to start off small and have one goal... I like that and the bit at the beginning too when you set your goals. It's just really nice. You like wake up every morning go, "Right, how am I going to work on this, with whoever I'm working with, to reach that goal?" I guess that's part of 'clarify', which is one of the goals that we're going to work towards. Then, "How are we going to create it and then convert?" So, how does that process work if I was a one of your clients?Adam Pearce  14:41The "clarify, create, convert," we just felt that it summarizes exactly what we do. So the initial call that we tend to have the clients is all about clarifying, "What exactly is the problem?" I think that the interesting thing is that when when you look at a problem, typically clients can say, "We don't feel like we're selling enough." But when you drill down on that, what you're actually finding is what they're really saying to you. And that is: we have this product that we thought was going to be an absolute winner and it's not selling in the way that we thought it was. But we do have other products that are selling well. So rather than actually saying, "Well, let's try and fix that product that we thought was going to sell better. Let's ramp up on the product that is selling very well but it's not maybe kind of a sexy product that you wanted to sell, and then get your growth in that way." So I think that clarification process is kind of flipping the mindset a little bit here saying, "What actually can we change and what is the real problem?" So that's the first thing. The next thing then in terms of the "Create" is to say, "We've got the problem, you know the cause of that problem, and now we actually need to start putting things into place that are going to actually changed that situation." Again, we don't want to necessarily go in and change everything overnight, but what we do want to do is make some smaller changes to see if we can get them to that convert point. Then basically, we're just going to loop that process around again. So, we've had three months, we clarified it, we created something, we converted. Now, let's go again and say "What are the problems now?" So it might be that once you've done that change the site–so maybe you've got new landing pages, what we're finding out now is actually the email signup rate on those pages is not as high as we need it to be because we know that email, for example, is a very good sales channel. So again, starting up that process again. It's these kind of small, iterative changes that are going to get you beyond that threshold of that 100k a month. I think that's where, a lot of our clients get a little bit sticky, because we always tend to see there's a bit of stagnation, 82k - 110k a month. Once you can get beyond that, that route to 500k a month is actually a lot smoother.Krissie Leyland  17:00Oh my god, I love it. I love how you talk through that it's so nice. I bet you're really good at sales.Adam Pearce  17:07I don't do sales anymore too much. (laughter) The reason it sounds quite polished when I say it to you, isthat its something that we've been doing a lot of work on Krissie. I would definitely recommend anything by Simon Sinek, "Start With Why". It's a little bit cliche, I suppose in a way but a few months ago, and my business partner actually did a very short workshop with with Team Simon. I think it was about $29–so, super cheap–but what it did is it helped us get our 'why'. What we did with that is that we then translated that into the "why" for our company. By having that, we can ask, "When we're doing something, does it align with that reason of why we get out of bed in the morning? If it doesn't, then that's not do it." I know, it's probably sounds like I've got a lot of conviction to it–and I do–because I see how the things that we're doing are aligned to that particular 'Why?'Krissie Leyland  18:10I absolutely love that. Is that the guy that wrote the book that is in blue writing ("Find Your Why")? What's his name?Adam Pearce  18:24It's Simon Sinek. There's a five minute version of his very famous TED Talk, where he talks about "the why, the how, and the what?" So what he says is that a lot of people are very good at explaining what they do. So if I go to a party or networking event, and someone says to me, "What do you do?" Well it's very easy: "I'm a CEO of a Shopify agency, based in Warwickshire." Well, frankly, who cares? But if I said to someone, "Look, what I want to do, my why is that I want to inspire people, so that actually everyone can achieve what they're capable of." Then if you get a few more raise eyebrows, "Well, what do you mean by that?" That's actually my 'why'. So if you kind of have that as your center point, not only can it then generate better conversations face to face for also marketing, but also then it makes you a lot easier to then differentiate yourself from other people. That's the big piece of what we've tried to do, both as individuals but also as a company.Krissie Leyland  19:32Wow. And is your 'why' as an individual the same as your 'why' in business.Adam Pearce  19:40So we've basically got two very different peopleat the head of our company, me and Peter. We're also very big into this thing called 'Insights Profiles', which basically looks at how you as a person & your personality aligns to particular colors, which represent different moods and activities, things that you're doing. So you can read more about the insights profiles but I think, me and Peter are very different. Now Peter's 'why' is more about being able to solve problems quickly to empower people to work rapidly. So his is quite different to mine. What we've done is that we're working on a company at the moment & we're there [at the 'why'] I think. But we're changing it slightly, because as more team members come in, we want to make sure that our company 'why' is aligned. So it needs to be something where everyone in the company cam feel like they're part of this. That 'why' is reflective of what people actually get up in the morning for. But equally, we can convert that into something that clients can then actually say, "Yes, I want to work with these guys for that reason!"Krissie Leyland  20:49Yeah because then they're aligned, hopefully, with your 'why'.Adam Pearce  20:54Absolutely. I'd recommend for you to do a session as a team. You know, we did one with our team probably about three months ago. The key thing that came out of our session on the 'why' with the team was that all of us had been in a situation in our lives where someone had told us that either we weren't good enough, we couldn't do something, or we weren't allowed to do something. That was a common theme that was coming across from everyone. So for me, it was the fact that when I was at schools in a careers lesson, my teacher leaned over my shoulder while I was looking at Accenture, which is a consultancy company. He said, "Oh Adam... they only employ the best people there!" From that point at 16, I was like, right, "screw you, I'm going to prove you wrong." And I did. A lot of people on the team had similar stories about parents, colleagues, friends & family that had told them that they couldn't do something or weren't allowed to do something, and they went on to prove them wrong. That's where we're going with our company wise: If you've been in that situation, where you faced adversity or people trying to put up roadblocks to where you want to be, then actually we're a great company to work with, because we've experienced that. We know how to move past those roadblocks. That's the similar thing that clients have, they get to a certain level, and they think, "Actually, the market is telling me that we can't go any further." We'll actually, screw that. You can! You just got to work out different ways of how to get there. That's how we aligned our 'why'.Krissie Leyland  22:32You know what, that's amazing and that was literally touched me? I recently published an episode, just a bonus random one, talking about my experiences and why did I end up in business? Well actually, I think it's because in school, I had a bit of a shit time and had people telling me, "You can't do that. You're worthless. You're this, you're that." And it's like, actually a can! Now my 'why' is to inspire other people to just follow their dreams and do what they want to do, because they can. One of the reasons why I love Shopify is because it gives lots of people in different situations access to business. Adam Pearce  23:23I completely agree. I think that's what I love about it too, Krissie, because I think the nice thing is with Shopify: most industries are 50, 100 or 200 years old, for example. We're talking about an industry here that in effect is less than 15 years old. You haven't got the old boys club that you get in finance, management software–where I used to work–or in teaching, which again is an industry that I used to be in. So everyone's got that opportunity to not feel like they're being judged. We all get imposter syndrome, I agree, but I don't think it's as prevalent in Shopify, because we are all new to this industry. It's a new thing that we're doing and we've all got a damn good right to be here. So yeah, I completely agree on that front.Krissie Leyland  24:15Oh my god. I didn't expect you to like bring that up but I totally, totally agree. I actually also love Toby's little story, you know, snowboarding stuff. Then I can relate to that about surfing and whatever. It's just also giving people freedom, like you said, we're all in this at the beginning of something. Even though I still get massive imposter syndrome, it's about finding your niche within it anyway and then telling the world.I need to like, take that in. So going back to your process of getting clients beyond the 100k a month threshold, do you wanna like just talk about how you have helped any particular clients to do that? And what that looked like?Adam Pearce  25:21Yeah, certainly. Typically speaking, when we work with a client, they've got a particular problem that they're trying to solve. Here are a couple of different examples: One is that we had a company called Due West that we work with, who are a clothing brand based out in Canada. The main thing for them was that they were seeing that their sales started to stagnate. The reason for that was that the they had a very strong customer base and those existing customers had stopped buying at the rate they were before. Trying to acquire new customers, of course, is costly, and then the profitability of your sales is then going to go down. So the main thing that we focused on with them is really twofold. One is that, first of all, they haven't refreshed their website for a very long period of time. And also, because they have brick and mortar stores, there wasn't this alignment with the brick and mortar stores and the online shop. A lot of people were shopping in store and online. Or they have a lot of tourists who come in and shop in store, and they continue to shop when they're back home. So the main thing for them was that we need to do a redesign of the store. And it wasn't about, you know, basically fundamentally changing what was happening on site.The first step was actually, we just need to make sure that the brand looked the same consistently through the store, so that the site actually has some alignment with the brick and mortar store. The second thing was that on their email marketing front, they again needed to do the same piece of work there. So those are basically the two key things that we did. What basically happened with those guys was that after three months, they increased their sales by I think 45%. So it had the the impact that they wanted and now we're still working with those guys to basically say, "Right, we've got the actual branding right now. People are interacting better, but what can we do to actually push them to buy more." So I think that's kind of a good example of look, where you've got an issue, you're using two different mechanisms to actually change it. You're looking at the conversion, and then right, we're back at that clarify point.Each time, it's not just necessarily about "Just go and do a redesign." for example. It's not just about that. I can't really share with you about particular clients that we do work with but it goes a lot further than the actual online store. You know, it can be about internal relationships, within members of staff or members of the team. It can be about delivery processes. It can be about taxation issues... all these things that we're not experts on. But if we can identify it, and then we can put them in touch with someone who can help them, then actually, that then does have a trickle down effect to their sales. Because if you've got a situation where you know, two members of your leadership team aren't necessarily seeing eye to eye, but we can come in, and actually, by going through the process of working with you, get you to work better. Then there's a lot of, I guess, unexpected changes that happen when clients work with us. Ultimately, they trickle down to the bottom line. So I think that's the important thing to know here: from my point of view, when you work with an agency, ultimately they should be looking at you as a business and not just a website. And I think that's the kind of thing that a lot of clients like is that the website is just actually an asset. It's not their business. There's a lot of things that go behind that website that are really important to try and tackle as well.Krissie Leyland  29:00That's so true. Cool. I've never heard of an agency doing that actually. But obviously, the Shopify partnerships is really valuable as an agency, because you can do that–as long as they live up to what they say that they're going to do, because then obviously, it will come back to you, if not. Then that helps to grow your client's business, and they'll eventually come back to you anyway. So that's interesting. I was just thinking about the client, that you sorted out the website and the branding for, and then I think you mentioned email... So how do you tend to get a potential customers from the website onto their email list and then sell stuff through email?Adam Pearce  29:57Yeah, good question. The thing at the moment for us, and the thing that I just absolutely love, is a product called Octane AI Shop Quiz. What this does is that you can actually have on your site, a quiz that will ask that person a set number of questions that you want to ask them. So, when you think about a quiz, we always probably think like the Facebook quizzes where you work out what Disney character you are. I'm not talking about that but the principle, I guess, is the same. Let's say, for example, you're a beauty brand. If you can ask them a series of questions about their skin type, the age or lifestyle, and then also ask for their email address, what you can do is then recommend them a particular number of products that you think they should buy, there and then on the site, but what you've also done is you've collected that data.Now we use Klaviyo with all of our client and because you can integrate, obtain our shop quiz with Klaviyo, all of that data then get stored on that person's profile. So let's say for example, Krissie, you complete that on my beauty store. Then,, I find out about your skin type, your age group & your lifestyle. If you buy when you complete that quiz, great. If you don't, by no problem, because I've collected a lot of data about you that I can then personalize that email marketing to you. So it might be that, maybe for example, you're telling me you've got dry skin. So then I'm gonna send you an email that says, "Here's three great products for making sure that you get more moisture into your skin." Personalize without kind of feeling like, "Hi, Krissie, you must buy these products!" A lot of people do, but that doesn't really work. So, in terms of getting people to sign up, that is my hot tip for the moment, certainly.Krissie Leyland  31:48That is so cool. I love it. Can you do that for a normal website?Adam Pearce  31:53Yeah to be honest with you Krissie, well, I I've actually been talking about using it for our own website. And look, let's say if someone wanted to join the MindfulCommerce Community, you could create a quiz that would basically ask a series of questions that would assess if they're a good fit or not. If they were a good fit, you could then recommend them to apply. If they weren't a good fit, you could say please join our waiting list, you know, and kind of go through that way. So that that would be a way I would say to use it for you.Krissie Leyland  32:23Oh my God, I'm sold! I'm doing it. That is awesome. But I was also thinking, like, you know, if I'm a brand, I'm a sustainable brand, you could ask, "what are your values?" So: what's important to you? Are you vegan? Do you need plastic free? Like that could be the quiz! The quiz could be: What do you care about? That's just great. We can just personalize everything and then that's not spammy. While you would think it's less spammy because it's actually interesting to that person who's reading the email?Adam Pearce  33:02Absolutely, I think the other thing is while you can do with it is that if you were looking at sustainable brands, people would be interested in different paths. If we were talking about environmentalism, sustainability, mindfulness... If you then were selecting that then naturally, you're interesting in those different things. You could then send a guide, PDF, or an ebook related to each one of those different streams as a result of completing that particular quiz. So yeah, I think there's a bagload of opportunities with that.Krissie Leyland  33:41I literally want to put it in my search bar right now. How much is it? Just interested.Adam Pearce  33:48Um, I believe it starts at $29 a month. And then I think if you convert someone to a sale, they charge you literally cents for each conversion. There's an enterprise plan, which I think is probably into the high hundreds.Krissie Leyland  34:09Nice. I was on clubhouse last night at 10pm, like in bed–or was it 11? I don't know, it was really late. Anyway, the Octane AI CEO was talking. It was really interesting, I loved it. So now just in my head, I'm gonna have to probably invest in them.Adam Pearce  34:35It's definitely worth having a listen to Ben Parr, who's the president. And then there's also Matt Schlicht as well, who's their CEO. Those are two people definitely worth following.Krissie Leyland  34:46Yeah, I think that was the guy. I think it was Matt or maybe it was both of them. Anyway, are there some pointers that you would give to those who aren't quite on the 100k mark. Is there anything that they can kind of do in-house, apart from Octane AI and Klaviyo that can get them to the 100K, and then maybe they'll work with you.Adam Pearce  35:14To answer you, the biggest question that people ask me is: "I've got x amount of money, what should I spend it on?" Nine times out of 10, if you're not going to be working agency, I would say photography. It's one of those things that, honestly, is one of the biggest reasons for slowing down sites. So the mistake that some people make is that they'll go out, and they'll source a photographer that then put the huge high resolution images on the site. They'll see the conversion rate goes down and say, "Well hang on, what's going on here?" The reason will be is because those images are too large. So first things first, everyone who's listening: if you do have a Shopify store, go and check your site speed. If it is poor, use one of the many free tools that are out there that you can use to actually reduce the size of images. But if you've got images, you know, where they're different sizes, you've got different backgrounds, you haven't maybe got consistent angles on all of your images, all these things are a real turnoff. There's been a lot of studies done, the real in-depth white papers produced on this. Photography is always one of the things that has an impact. So if you're able to pay for some decent photography, then I would say definitely, it's worth doing that. I think the other thing too, is that if you're trying to drive that traffic, and you haven't got a lot of cash at the moment, try new things at Facebook groups. They can be a really fantastic way of not only driving people to your site, but also as well, a lot of market research. We have a company that we work with that actually sells candlemaking supplies and the very first thing we did with them is that we set up a Facebook group, which is all about candle making in the UK. From that, we learned straightaway what kind of products people are interested in. We understood what problems they were going through. We understood what they didn't like about the competition. So all of that was a really good thing to do. Look you know, starting a Facebook group is easy to do. You know, it will take time to build a community up around it but if you are low on cash, that's a great way to work out what you need to do next. It will give you that roadmap you need to grow.Krissie Leyland  37:29Completely agree. On the photography side, oh my god, it's the worst. If somebody's got terrible imagery and it's all different sizes, and Higgledy Piggledy... oh, I'll click off straightaway. Also, one thing I was thinking then is, with photography and resolution, if you lower the resolution, it not only increases site speed, but it reduces your impact on the planet, because you're taking less energy. I talk about this all the time but it's basically: solve your site speed and also help the planet. With the community thing, of course, I totally agree. There's tons out there like, eco pod. And also, at MindfulCommerce, we're going to build a second directory that will be completely free where brands can get listed and stuff like that. So yeah, there's so much out there but that was really good tips from you. Thank you! So have you worked with any brands who are trying to be better for the planet? And if so, what are those projects like?Adam Pearce  38:55Yeah, definitely. So there's one I wanted to talk to you about in particular. A company that actually basically sells supplies to a particular hobby–I don't want to say too much because I don't necessarily want to give too much away here–but the issue they're facing was that the owner of the company was very, I think, cognizant about packaging. He was seeing what Amazon were doing, in terms of sending out these huge boxes with very small products inside–and sometimes, you know, three or four levels of packaging within that. With his company, he wanted to bring down the cost of shipping for his customers, but he also wanted to reduce actually the amount of wastage and his carbon footprint with each of that shipping. Now, one of the things that we were very keen on doing: "How do we basically indicate to someone that when they purchase something, they're not doing this in a very sustainable way because of the way that that product needs to be packed?" So we actually built them a tool that will allow people to build a box so that they could actually visually see the space that was left in that box. BrewDog did this very well. So if you go and order beer from BrewDog, if I put six cans of my favorite beer in there, they're actually going to show you on the screen, that your crate, your box, is still got six spaces in there. Psychologically, that's quite powerful because you say, "Well, okay, actually, I'm being a bit wasteful here. I could actually get more in there rather than waste that space." Actually, also with that, they also do a down sell on it where they recommend that you buy less. So that actually you're reducing the amount of waste in terms of packaging. So I think that's a project that we've been really pleased with. And we're actually diong something else with another brands about just being more efficient with that packaging. So I think that's an important one.Krissie Leyland  41:01Wow, that's cool. One thing that I just thought of then is, if you've got a brick and mortar store as well, and you've put things on the shelves, if you could make your packaging ready to be shipped, if that makes sense. So it's already, like in a box. I don't know if I'm making sense here.Adam Pearce  41:33I think that what you're saying is that then you don't have to completely repackage or repurpose your product. So then, it makes sense, from an operations point of view, from a sustainability point of view, from a cost point of view. It's got to be ready to go and I think that that's exactly the right thing to do.Krissie Leyland  41:54Yeah and that's actually really cool of BrewDog to do that. Also, I was thinking, "Oh, I've got room for six more. Okay! But then does that increase how much you buy, so it would increase average order value as well." But then you said that they encourage you to buy less, which was quite interesting.Adam Pearce  42:20I mean, I think on the one hand, you could say, "Well, look. You're increasing the carbon footprint by adding more products." But it also depends on your products. BreweDog, for example, I think they're even carbon negative now, definitely carbon neutral. But if you then got an associated carbon footprint with that delivery, then actually, as a proportion, that level, you're actually being better, because you're then not gonna have that other order on top of that, to then give the extra that you would have ordered in a second order. So I think it kind of depends on the way you look at it, but it's kind of win--win. You know, from an environmental point of view, but but also from a sales and business growth point of view as well.Krissie Leyland  43:09Definitely. Cool. Love it. I was super excited to see that you had read "The Four Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss. I personally get stuck in my work zone, I can't get out of it but I'm trying to not work as much, like give myself time outside for doing nice things and spending time with my friends. So have you experienced burnout before and is there a way that you were hoping to combat that... or?Adam Pearce  43:44Yeah, I've 100% experienced burnout. The thing is with the four hour workweek book, I'm nowhere near a four hour workweek at the moment. What I have done is though, that I we only now work Monday to Thursday, so I'm getting close to it and that's basically my business partner. I think the main thing that that book taught me is that actually, if you can put structures into the way that you work, you can work a heck of a lot more efficiently. For example, one of the things he talks about in the book is, checking your emails twice or three times a day. We've all been guilty of opening your laptop at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, spending 45 minutes responding to emails, then feeling tired and getting a coffee, then basically, killing that morning. The one thing that I got from the book is that I also do this "eat the frog" thing where you're going to be your biggest task of the day, the first thing. So I generally work from quarter past seven in the morning, till half past four in the afternoon. From quarter past seven to half past eight. I'm smashing something out that I need to do. Like I need to do a finance analysis, and I've done that, it's out the way. Then I can go and check email. Because you feel like you've accomplished something, you're also then more efficient with your time, so I think that's kind of the one side of it. So in terms of burnout, I don't mind admitting that I still suffer from depression. I've medicated for depression for probably about four years, along with kind of a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy. The thing is with this is that, a lot of the mental health issues that I had were exacerbated by burnout but obviously, not the root cause of it. I think I'd say that if anyone is listening, number one, if you ever want to talk about mental health to me, find me on LinkedIn. I absolutely would love to talk to you about it and tell you about some of the coping strategies that I've used & tend to use.But I also think having that awareness that is actually something that's real, and not like you're being a flake, which is how, you know, some people will tell you if you've experienced burnout. Everyone will have something that indicates when they're burning out. It might be the fact that you're not sleeping as much or it might be the fact that you're not being able to make decisions. So look around at those warning signs, and if it gets to that point, then literally take a step back. Because ultimately, wherever your business is now, or wherever your job is right now, wherever it is that you're doing, it can stay at that place for the time being. It doesn't need to be pushing forward, and you're not going to lose where you are, and what you've achieved so far. So if you do need to step away from it for a week, two weeks a month.In my case, I basically had three months out to figure out what the hell I wanted to do in life when I had my big, I would say, a sort of meltdown–but after that point, you can pick up on the things that you've done. So I don't think it's that case, you think like I've got to get over it. If you are that point, just say, "Look, my mind is just devoid of ideas. I'm not enjoying anything. I'm not taking any benefit from anything that I'm doing." Then just step back from it, and just say, "What are the things that truly make you happy? What are the things that really don't make me happy?" I actually did this one because I actually had a breakdown when I was a teacher. I just completely was in beds in tears in a ball for probably about a month. When I got out of that process, that period, I actually got a piece of paper and I wrote down the pros and the cons of things that I liked and the things that I didn't like about my job, about my relationship, about my life, about our friendships, and I looked at all the things that I didn't didn't like. Then what I did was that I looked at it said, "Is there a job where I can get more things that I like that I dislike, and what are the things that I disliked that I can actually remove from my life, or I can actually make better? The result of that: certain relationships or friendships that had, I got rid of. Certain things that I did, I got rid of and never did again. Certain things I know that I need to start doing, I start doing. So for example, running, exercising with a thing that I never did that I now do religiously. And that helps me with my mental health and avoid that burnout. So that will be my tip.Krissie Leyland  48:33That is amazing. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. It's also really brave to like talk about that kind of stuff. Yeah, normally whenever I feel burned out, I just can't do anything. I'll just sit on the sofa, sat there going, "I don't know what I'm doing my life!" But then, yeah, you just have to take a break. That's what I'm trying to teach myself is to, like you said, take a step back and just think, "you know, what do I enjoy doing?" and then just do more of that for a little bit. So for me, I have to go surfing or just be in the sea and then come back to working when I feel positive again, and ideas are coming in my head again. So, I think that's really powerful. And how you said to write down a list of all the things that you like doing and all the things you don't like doing and then what can you get rid of or delegate as Tim would probably say? Yeah, love it. So... do you think it's actually possible to reach a four hour workweek?Adam Pearce  49:59Good Question. I wonder, you know, whether actually, it is possible because I think delegation is something that I think I've learned to do better, I'm still not great at. I'm too much of a control freak but ultimately, that's going to be the thing that stopped me from doing that. And for me, when I initially started thinking about this, that thought the four hour workweek was like, "that's going to be amazing!" But actually, what I realized is that that's not actually what I want. And it might be that actually, for you, it might be the same: "well actually, I just want to work mornings, or I want to work four days a week, because I want to do this particular thing." So I think the main thing for me & my business partner, Peter: two years ago, we both set it up, we would love to not work Fridays, because at that time, both our wives are both expecting children. We said, wouldn't it be amazing, while they're not at school, from birth to four, to be able on a Friday to then go out to the zoo for a day, or go and do something fun with them, or take them horse riding, whatever it might be. That's what we realized will make us happy: to have more time to that with our family. So it could be possible, but I also think there's no point putting that pressure on yourself because, ultimately, is that the thing that you really want to do? I think I for if I was in four hours a week, I would just be a wreck.Krissie Leyland  51:44If you just did four hours a week, you'd just sat there itching thinking "I need to work on that!" because you like what you do it. That's why you choose to be in the business that you're in. But I really liked it when you said, that progress that you've made isn't going to just go away and you don't always have to be working towards the next thing and the next thing... which is what my mind tells me quite a lot the time. But yeah, I don't think I could do four hours a week either.Adam Pearce  52:16No, I think it would drive me crazy.Krissie Leyland  52:20Oh, gosh. Well, I just love that book. But also there's Rob Moore's. Love that one. What's it called?Adam Pearce  52:34I don't know but again, he's he's very active in Clubhouse.Krissie Leyland  52:40"Life Leverage," I think.Adam Pearce  52:41Yes, that's it.Krissie Leyland  52:43Brilliant book, you should read it. So yeah, I think we've covered quite a lot. I'm very conscious of your time, it's 11 o'clock and we did have technical difficulties at the beginning. So I guess one final question would be: I'm really excited that you are officially on the mindful commerce directory... When I approached you with this, what was it that you were the most excited about?Adam Pearce  53:16I think the main thing is for me is that the way that you set this up, Krissie, is the fact that around the issue that we've got in the world is that there is a lot of shaming going on, around not being sustainable. What I liked about this is that you you're not basically saying with this directory, that you have to be completely 100% sustainability in everything that you do. What you're saying here is that let's start taking steps to be more sustainable. And that's what really appealed me to it.It's the same with me and my company: I feel like we are fairly sustainable in some things that we do. You know, we don't do travel, we work remotely, all those kind of things, but there's definitely things that we do buy for the company that are sustainable. And that's fine. I'm not gonna lie that we are 100% perfect.I think that's the thing here for brands and also for agencies. I feel that a lot of brands are scared about going down this route, because they feel they have to be 100% focused towards being sustainable and it's not the case. You can start small and start thinking about the actual impacts in your business. It's not also about saying, "We've got to do all these things, and it's going to cost us 'x' much." It's actually about saying, "You can be more sustainable and actually help yourself become more profitable, which is something I know that you know, quite a few brands, like Dr. Will's, for example, have found that sustainability is actually helped their bottom line as well. I think that's when it starts going a bit more of a two way conversation rather than something to be dictated to like some of the other kind of discussion and discourse that's out there on sustainability.Krissie Leyland  55:05Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? I think we just wanted to make it really open and just to be more of like facilitating a conversation. Like you said, definitely, there's no such thing as being 100% sustainable but there are things you can do like small things that have a big impact or have a big difference in the world, like even as simple as downloading ShoppingGives, which is an app that helps you to give back easily as a ecommerce brand. And like you said, it then comes back to your bottom line, because your customers will have more trust and loyalty and yeah, that's another episode but I'm super excited that you're part of it. Thank you.Adam Pearce  55:53We really appreciate being part of it, thank you.Krissie Leyland  55:56Welcome! Actually... this is my final question: Where can people find you?Adam Pearce  56:03Yep. Cool. So if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, just Adam Pearce. If you want to find out more about Blend Commerce, just go over to blendcommerce.com and you'll find lots of different useful blogs on there. You've got to the one about brand archetypes that I mentioned. You've got different things about Shopify apps, and things like mental health, a little blog that I've written recently. So quite an eclectic blog over there so yeah, go and take a look and let me know what you think.Krissie Leyland  56:30Perfect. Thank you so much. And yeah, thank you for your time today. It's been great.Adam Pearce  56:37No problem. Thank you!Krissie Leyland  56:38Thank you!Rich Bunker  56:39We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  56:46So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io. Click on 'Community' and register from there.Rich Bunker  56:52If you liked this episode, please share, leave a review and remember to subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Katie Boothby-Kung:Katie Boothby-Kung - InstagramWhere to find Shopify:Shopify - Website (Home)Shopify - Social Enterprise Slack channel (Sign up)Shopify - Open LearningShopify - EnvironmentShopify - Sustainability Fund (Read more)Shopify - Compass, Free Online CoursesShopify - CommunityShopify - Operation HOPE (Read more)Links Mentioned in Episode:Copper Root Collective (Katie's Skincare Brand)TechnovationRecurateGenuseeKiwibotShoppingGivesDailyKarmaKotnSon of a TailorShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00Hello, and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, ecommerce service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. Today we're talking to the fantastic Katie Boothby-Kung from Shopify's social impact team. Katie is doing lots of incredible work at Shopify and we wanted to chat about it here on the podcast to inspire others to follow in Shopify's footsteps. So hi, Katie, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. You know, I'm a huge fan of Shopify and what you're doing so I'm extremely excited to have you here. Do you want to start by introducing yourself and just tell us a little bit about your role at Shopify? And what you help Shopify to achieve? Katie Boothby-Kung  0:46  Yeah, totally. Well, first of all: Hi, Krissie. Thanks for having me, super pumped to be here. This is awesome. So I am Katie, I am the Senior Manager for social impact here at Shopify. In my role, I am specifically focused on working with the social enterprises, on and off our platform. I do that by or through strategic partnerships, building education tools, and working with our partners and our platform so that we can help grow and scale. And even launch new social enterprises, on Shopify, and also to give them the resources that they need so that they can be successful.Krissie Leyland  1:32 Oh, my god, it's so good. It's like the dream job. I love it. Katie Boothby-Kung  1:35 It really is! (laughter)Krissie Leyland  1:37  I'm always like, "oh, how did she get that job?" I'm gonna pick your brains. So what is the definition of a social enterprise business to you and Shopify?Katie Boothby-Kung  1:52  Great question. How we think about social enterprises is that it's at the intersection of environmental action, and human rights. So businesses that are working to create a better climate for generations to come, or be it through supporting communities and workers within their supply chain, making sure that they're treated fairly and with dignity. The combination of the two is really where we see that long term sustainability, long term social enterprise. We like to think about it as a Venn diagram. So you have, environmental action over on one side, and then you have human rights in the other circle. When they come together, and there's that sweet spot right in the middle, that's where we see, where long term sustainability happens: at the intersection of the two of them–social enterprises working on either of these circles, or both of them together.Krissie Leyland  3:01  Nice. So, what do you think then, is the intersection between sustainability and social impact? How do the two work together and do good?Katie Boothby-Kung  3:13 Well, by the sounds of it, you guys are just defining sustainability more from an environmental lens.  mean, that's certainly how a lot of the discussion around sustainability has been framed: is that it's, it's environmental. However, we see it as both being environmental and social human rights coming together in that intersection in the middle of those two circles. That's how we define sustainability. So by focusing on either or, and coming together, you are creating social impact. Without getting into kind of the complexities of climate change its effect on human rights, and vice versa, that's kind of see how we see it. If you're working towards sustainability, environmental action & human rights coming together, then you are creating a lasting social impact.Krissie Leyland  4:12  Yeah, it makes total sense. I think I do always think of sustainability, as you know, things that are going on in the environment, but you are right, it does link back to social impact, communities and things like that. So I'd like to talk a bit more about your role in particular. Also, what are the community projects that you're working on at the moment that has a positive impact socially, and potentially environmentally, then?Katie Boothby-Kung  4:48  For my role in particular: I'm working on ways Shopify can better support the community of social entrepreneurs and also support other communities that are hungry to learn more About being socially conscious. Recently, I was able to team up with some of the folks in other teams here at Shopify to help them expand their educational offering to include ways to help merchants inject more sustainability into their businesses. So we have a team called Open Learning that works with a lot of post secondary education institutions. Also, our Shopify for startups, which is our startup program. By working with them, they're providing education that can not only help businesses grow, but to also help them become more socially minded as well. So that's a lot of what we're focusing on this year is just continuing to support this community, and bring that education to communities that maybe aren't thinking about this all the time, so that they're more inspired to not only create businesses, but to create socially minded businesses as well. My team is always incredibly busy and so maybe you saw, we recently announced we have a global partnership with Technovation. Therefore, we can deliver STEM education to young women and girls around the world. Our team is certainly very, very busy focusing on entrepreneurs, and also within the tech community as well.Krissie Leyland  6:24  Hmm. Okay. So on that then, because you know, I love a bit of tech conversation: What do you think is the role for tech partners towards a more sustainable and positively impactful ecommerce world?Katie Boothby-Kung  6:42  Here on Shopify, we can't say enough good things about our partner ecosystem, and the tech partners that are building some wickedly cool tools. I mean, that community is always drumming up really creative ways to support our merchant community. So keep it up. There is a lot of potential for them to impact this space. It's no surprise that sustainability is becoming a top priority for consumers and therefore it's becoming important for brands as well. So I'm sure we're going to see a lot of new offerings from the tech partner community being launched this year in order to keep up with with this growing demand.Obviously, there's Recurate that's working on the resale market, and allowing our brands to resell their their wares, to keep it from going to landfill–giving their products new life, which I think isn't very exciting. Especially because the resale market is growing so quickly and I don't think that's going away anytime soon.We're seeing Genusee. They're a an eyeglass company based out of Flint, Michigan, that have a really cool tool on their on their shop, to allow you to try on their sunglasses so that we're reducing the rate of returns. I say we as if I'm a part of it. (laughter) Their customers don't need to return as much. I'm not involved in that at all. They're doing great work.And then there are even more sustainable shipping alternatives, like Kiwibot. Also the social impact of shopping local, I mean, it's accelerated. So our partners are creating more tailored pickup locations and delivery services. I think this idea of "shop local", is here to stay beyond 2021, kind of like the resale market. So consumers are looking for ways that they can be more supportive of their own communities and the small businesses that are essentially our neighbors. There's a lot of really great tech partners out there doing some, some really, really incredible things to help make sustainability and easier choice for merchants on our platform, for sure.Krissie Leyland  9:07  Do you think that there's been a rise in, you know, apps that are specifically to help sustainability and social impacts because of the pandemic? It just seems to be on the rise? I don't know if it's because I'm involved in it, and I see it everywhere. But yeah, do you think it's because of the pandemic or it was going to happen anyway?Katie Boothby-Kung  9:33  Honestly, is a great question. I don't know if I have the right answer to you. I think perhaps the pandemic accelerated this trend. I mean, we were seeing this, as things were kind of heating up in in March and April: this idea of shopping local and "voting with your dollar" and things like that. That became something that people were really talking about, they really wanted to support brands that were helping people throughout the pandemic. I think that there was a stat that I recently read–and I might butcher it a little bit–I think it was something like, I don't want to say it was specifically like 84%, but it was a percentage in the 80s. That said, more consumers were willing to shop from brands that were out there to help those in need during the pandemic. That's a pretty significant stat. Do I think that there was a trend towards more climate action and human rights? So I think that that there was already, but I think that the pandemic certainly helped speed it up.Krissie Leyland  10:40  Yeah, definitely. I think ecommerce in general is just gone mad. Apparently, five years worth of growth has just happened in six months. Yeah.Katie Boothby-Kung  10:55  Okay, that's insane.Krissie Leyland  10:57 I probably butchered that stat as well. So yeah, we need to be mindful of how we're doing it and how we're doing business and ecommerce to make sure that we continue to protect our environment. Okay, so on the topic of the environment, obviously, Shopify did an amazing thing this year during Black Friday: Cyber Monday, to offset all carbon emissions from sales. I'd love to hear more about that and what Shopify achieved.Katie Boothby-Kung  11:37  Totally. I will, I'll represent Stacy in our Sustainability Fund here. So we purchased a wide range of nature-based and engineering offsets under the assumption that all of the solutions have a role to play in the fight to reverse climate change. Our purchases go beyond just buying the offset itself. We purchase offsets to send a demand signal and we're overpaying for these offsets so that companies can then conduct research and pilot projects to refine their technologies. We're helping these companies to scale and bring their costs & prices down. Then by doing that, more buyers can participate. In 2020, it was really exciting, we invested in 13 companies across 10 different industries. We're already seeing companies gain more traction, in part because of our investments. Again, I'm not I'm not the offset expert so if listeners do want to learn more about this initiative, you can google Shopify sustainability, or you can head to our website, and it's shopify.com/about/environment.Krissie Leyland  12:50 Amazing. Everyone should definitely go look at that and look at the specific projects that you worked with to offset carbon emissions, because that's super interesting. One big thing about offsetting is to always make sure that it's actually going to the right projects or another project that you align with. Yeah, so everyone should go and check that out.Katie Boothby-Kung  13:16 Even these offsetting businesses are just so cool to learn about. There's some really cool things happening in this space, for sure, and I think more people should know about it.Krissie Leyland  13:29  And there's so many of them, I think. Obviously, with the community, we've got app companies & tech partners from Shopify, in the community. Honestly, there's about 10 offsetting apps, but it's so interesting, because each one has worked with completely different projects, people and communities. It's like, if you're a brand and you've got an online store, choose the one that you align with the most and really look into it like, "Where will my customers money go? What's the impact that it's going to have?"Katie Boothby-Kung  14:09  100%. I mean, you should be doing that for anything. That's woven into your brand, right? Just understanding your customers, you should know your customers so well that you know, the causes that they care deeply about. If they care about you buying offsets from kelp farms, and you should be doing that. Or if maybe there are some charities that are really important to them, you have a donation app installed into your Shopify store. What are the causes that speak directly to your consumers and what is important to them? That's super important to your brand building.Krissie Leyland  14:53 It's amazing. On that as well, obviously we know that there are apps out there like ShoppingGives and DailyKarma that put the power in the customers' hands so that they can choose the charity that they want to donate to, or the project or whatever it is. I just think that's great, because you're going to feel good about that, aren't you, as a consumer. Plus, then they'll come back. Katie Boothby-Kung  15:23  Sorry, I'm interrupting you, I'm just so excited! I think there's a lot to be said about building these really amazing experiences so that you can make your customer even closer to the impact that you're making through your business. Whatever you can do to make it so that it's not just a click, or it's not just something that seems simple and almost like at the back of your mind. But bringing them into that experience, bringing them into those choices, really allows them to feel like they're part of the impact that you're making. I think that's super important going forward.Krissie Leyland  15:59  Yeah and that just makes really nice customer connections as well, doesn't it? If they feel good about making a purchase with you, they're going to tell their friends & family and be like, "Look, you can go and choose your own charity or whatever!" I love it. I love it. It's so funny, because whenever I do a podcast, I end up talking about either Recurate or ShoppingGives. People are gonna think I'm sponsored, but I'm not.Katie Boothby-Kung  16:31  There are certainly apps that have been around for a while before this trend–I don't want to call it a trend because that makes it seem like it's going to go away–or movement really took off. So giving them a shout out is really great because when you think about some of those donation apps, they've been around for a long time.Krissie Leyland  16:53  I can just imagine how when we go back to normal, and at point of sale in in an actual physical store, I imagine the shop assistant saying, "Okay, so what charity do you want to donate to with your purchase?" Imagine that... online and offline? Katie Boothby-Kung  17:15  Cool, very cool. Definitely.Krissie Leyland  17:19 It's endless, it really is. So, what are some possibilities for tech partners going into 2021?Katie Boothby-Kung  17:30  Oh, my goodness. The possibilities are honestly endless. I feel like at this moment, you're just opening it up for me to share my wish list, which I'm not going to complain about at all. So, they already existed and I mentioned one of our merchants that's using this, but: to have AI tech or VR tech rather ,across all industries to help reduce the rate of returns. Making returns should be avoided because it is causing a lot of carbon emissions, as as you're all aware. By creating these tools that our Shopify merchants can easily plug and play, I think, will be amazing to reduce those emissions. Right now, if you're coming to Shopify, and you're really excited, you already know that you want to build a social enterprise... that's really, really amazing. However, once you realize that you want to become a social enterprise, the how and sourcing that first product can be a bit of an uphill battle. I know this isn't quite a tech partner, but even just thinking about like the experts in our ecosystem: how can you help brands source from factories that use smart environmental practices and treat their workers fairly and with respect? Brands can source these types of products faster & easier, get up & running and making their first sale. I know again, you're framing this in terms of how tech is in more of the app partnership community, but I'm even thinking about it from all the cool tech and science companies out there that are building really sweet, environmentally friendly alternative materials.Thinking about fashion and in textile, they're doing some really amazing things! Just this past week, there's brands that are building it out of algae, they're making eather from fruit pulp or they're making it out of recycled fishing nets that they've managed to find in the ocean. This is so incredible. However, when when you're searching for these types of textiles, there isn't really an easy way to get your hands on it. There isn't an "order now" or a "grab a sample, click this" button. So just making those choices easier and making the process–or the workflow from going to the website, discovering a really cool material, and then getting a couple samples so that you can start your production–building something like that would be really, really cool.My call to action for any tech partner listening is just to make sustainability easier for entrepreneurs. They only have a limited amount of time. In many cases, as I'm sure all of you guys are, as well, they're wearing between 20 to a million hats in a given day. So if making a sustainable choice is a really long and difficult process, these entrepreneurs are eventually going to have to opt for easier options, because they're going to have to move on to the next task. And then the next and then the next. They're running a mile a minute trying to run this business. So just making sustainable choices easier for these merchants so that it becomes a no brainer: "Why wouldn't I make a sustainable choice because it's right there in front of me and it's so easy!" Then, you know, boom: they have 20 products in their store and they're all made with sustainable fibers.Krissie Leyland  21:24 I love that so much. Yeah, I've heard about people making products out of seaweed and mushrooms.Katie Boothby-Kung  21:34  Honestly, it blows my mind. What is out there? I've seen some of that mushroom material too. And I'm just like, "Holy smokes. What can't we build products out of like that there?" There's a lot out there. I just think the biggest hurdle for merchants is: how do you go from discovering the product, to getting it in your hands and being like, "Okay, I'm gonna make 20 shirts out of this really cool nylon or something?"Krissie Leyland  22:05 Oh, it's just so exciting. It gives me like a fire in my belly.Katie Boothby-Kung  22:11 It's why I wake up and I'm ready for work: because I'm so pumped to work with these kind of entrepreneurs and tech partners. Krissie Leyland  22:19 Oh me, too. It's amazing. So when you were talking, I was just thinking: what are the barriers for the merchant to be able to get such materials and make products?Katie Boothby-Kung  22:40  I can't speak for all of them because I haven't found all of them. Just based on what I have seen in my passive research, is just that a lot of the times there's a lengthy "contact us" process where you have to go in, contact them & set up a phone call. Whereas, it would just be great if you could just click a button and have a whole swatch palette mailed to you, and then you can have a "kick it off from there" kind of thing. I mean, obviously, there are reasons why some of these brands have it. They're really small and they really want to work with specific brands, because they haven't gotten to the point of larger production.So there is that and I can completely understand. I don't want to dictate how these types of materials should get this to be easier for merchants. Based on my perspective, also, as a merchant who went to one of these websites, and was like, "Woah." because I have a skincare company, right? So it's like, "Hey, I can make these really cool. facecloth out of this material! Okay, how do I do it?" And then it was this whole process and it thought, "Oh my god, I have 20 things to do tonight. I can't think about this. I'll get to it next time." It's that mentality of "I have so many things to do, like I'll get to this later." Whereas if they had given me a button where it said, "get your swatch sent to you," I would have been just be like, "Yep, done. Okay, now I have my swatch and I know that I really want this material, I'll give them a call and make an order."Krissie Leyland  24:31  Hmm, that's so frustrating. I could imagine that. It's so interesting that you've got so many hats yourself. You work for Shopify, you've got your skincare business, which is amazing, by the way. I'm definitely going to invest one day. Yeah, I was just gonna ask actually: are these the things on your wish list as a brand, or coming from Shopify, or both?Katie Boothby-Kung  25:07  Both. I mean, from my Shopify perspective, I want these decisions to be easier for merchants, because it means that more merchants are making sustainable choices in their business, because it's a no brainer. But from a brand persepective, I selfishly want things to be easier so I don't need to spend a whole evening trying to figure out how to order something. I mean, just how I even got started... It took a long time for me to get up and running: finding the right partner and finding the right materials. It took me almost a year just to find the products and the charity partner where I felt like I was ready to launch and I felt comfortable. So it's like, "It takes one year of a solo entrepreneur doing all this research by themselves." So, how can we take that one year and turn it into one month, one week or one day?Krissie Leyland  26:10 Yeah, that'd be so great. Going back to Shopify, Shopify makes it easy to start a business online as an ecommerce business. But yeah, if we could make it easy to be ethical and sustainable, and use all these really cool scientific materials, which oh, my god sounds amazing,Katie Boothby-Kung  26:35 Right?Krissie Leyland  26:36 It's just so exciting. It's phenomenal, really. If we could make that easy... then the job's done.Katie Boothby-Kung  26:48 I mean, there will always be something but whatever we can do–and again, like I'll say this again toeveryone listening–whatever anyone can do in this world to make sustainable choices easier, let's do it! It's unstoppable at this point.Krissie Leyland  27:06 Yeah. So what is Shopify achieved when it comes to having a positive impact in the world? How is Shopify using commerce as a force for good?Katie Boothby-Kung  27:22  Wow. Well, that's definitely a loaded question. How much time do we have on this podcast? I mean, I can talk all day... Even just going back to the roots of the company, right? Shopify, by design is bringing social impact to the world. If you think about it, a decade ago, people couldn't just wake up one day and start an online business. They had to consider the huge financial burden, how to get a website set up & who could help them with this. There's so many steps that these folks had to take for starting a business. So when Toby started Shopify, he was able to reduce the amount of time and money to start a business, and then get people to realize their independence without having to spend their life savings to start an online business. So by reducing these barriers, more people can realize their dream of becoming an entrepreneur. I think that's impact itself, right? Just the existence of the Shopify merchants, they're able to contribute to economic growth, building their communities & employing people. So I think it's pretty incredible, the impact that one merchant had on their community and in the economy.Then enter my team. We've been working with communities around the world for quite some time. We've been working with under-resourced tech and entrepreneurship communities via partnerships, education, and even sometimes sponsorship. Just this past year, for my portfolio in particular, I've looked for ways to engage and support our social entrepreneur community. As as you know, Krissie, because you're in part of these. So you know, creating an online forum, where folks can come and ask all their questions and get help from our support team when it comes to specifically creating a social enterprise. We have online networking hubs, meetups & panels. Also just a couple days ago, we filmed our first ever Compass Course on building and scaling a social enterprise on Shopify. So there are a lot of really cool things that are that are happening right now where people can come together. They can learn from from either our education team, they can learn from each other or they can build these networks & these connections with one another. So I think that that's really powerful.Krissie Leyland  29:55 Oh my god, you're just speaking my language. Oh, I love it so much. I love how aligned MindfulCommerce is with Shopify.Katie Boothby-Kung  30:07 It's how we became friends, isn't it?Krissie Leyland  30:09 Yeah, yeah! It's just great... Um, damn it. I forgot what I was gonna say. I was too excited. Oh, yeah! Tell me about the video course that you were filming. I saw a sneak peek on Instagram. Looks very exciting.Katie Boothby-Kung  30:29 So it's like a social enterprise one-on-one introductory course. We do cover a lot of topics. We obviously we talked about sustainability, we talked about what social enterprises and you know, this intersection between environmental action and human rights. Then we drill down into each of those. Like, "What does environmental impacts look like for your business?" and, "What can you be doing within your business to create environmental impact?" then, "How can you befostering human rights and taking care of the people in your supply chain, building diversity and inclusion within your own company?" and then "How to support the communities that you engage with and that your customers really resonate with?" I mean, you're gonna have to write a lot of notes down, and you might have to give it a listen acouple of times...Krissie Leyland  31:29  So if there's somebody listening, who wants to get involved with anything that you're doing, actually, how can they do that?Katie Boothby-Kung  31:41  The community forum is open for anyone. Just head onto Shopify Community, and you'll see it listed there as social impact businesses. You can head in there and ask any of your questions. Whether it's the community that's there to help you answer it, or myself or someone from our Shopify support team, then you know, we have your back, and we're there to help you. Then there's our Slack channel. You just need to fill out a form. I will send that over to you, Krissie, so that if anyone's interested in applying to join the Slack channel, then they can do that. We also always tell folks when we're having these meetups and things like that. So if you are a Shopify merchant, we do our best to put that within our newsletter that we send out so that you know, when these types of meetups are happening. And I don't want to have any spoilers, but there are going to be some other very cool ways that you can get involved too, and we'll just keep everyone posted.Krissie Leyland  32:54  Ooh, very good. And just so the listeners know, if you are in the MindfulCommerce Community, there's a link to Katie's Slack channel in there as well. Anyways, that was funny, because I was gonna say that bit at the end, but it just seemed right, because we were talking about it. Other than Shopify, who else do you think is leading the way to a more sustainable and positively impactful ecommerce world?Katie Boothby-Kung  33:35  Wow. There are a lot of really great players in this space, so I don't think I'll be able to name them all. However, a brand that comes to mind specifically is Kotn, they're based out of Toronto. They've done some really incredible work to support the employees within their entire supply chain, "from farm to T shirt" kind of thing. They're just really leading the way in terms of the transparency of how their clothes are made, and what they're made with. So I think that they're a very good example of that intersection between human rights and environmental action. I think they're doing a really, really great job.Another really cool one is called Son of a Tailor and they're doing made to order, on demand. That in of itself has some very positive environmental impacts. I think that anyone doing made to order successfully are doing some really great things for their their environmental footprint. So that's awesome.And then I mean, obviously, you guys: MindfulCommerce. It goes without saying. You guys are building this really, really incredible community where people can come together. I mean, that directory in of itself! Before you guys there was never really a home for these types of experts and partners who specifically worked with sustainable brands to be all under one roof. Now, you know, you're throwing this awesome epic party for all these partners at MindfulCommerce. By doing that, think of the time and energy you're saving merchants who are looking to work with a sustainable partner because they can know that they just have to come to MindfulCommerce. They're going to be able to find on so much there. So, thank you for doing that because that is having a lot of impact for our merchants looking for work with more sustainable partners.Krissie Leyland  35:47  Thank you so much, that's so nice. And thank you for your input on the research project. I was listening back on this, this is this is amazing. This is just what we needed. That's great, I'm glad you like it. So, it's the start of the year... I just thought might be nice to look ahead a little bit. What's next for Shopify in relation to sustainability and social impact?Katie Boothby-Kung  36:20  We're still charting some of this out, but what I can tell you is that we will definitely continue to deepen our support for black and indigenous entrepreneurs over the coming months. That's including our 1 million black businesses initiative that we announced with Operation Hope, later last year. We'll also continue to build support for our social impact initiatives like Open Learning program that's working with the post secondary education students, our STEM education outreach with young girls in particular, and of course, the work that we're doing to support and grow social enterprises on Shopify. So there is lots happening. I can't speak specifically on the fund, so you'll have to poke Stacy for that information but I'm sure that they have some pretty big and exciting goals that they're going to be working on this year.Krissie Leyland  37:15  I'm just so impressed. There's so much that you, Shopify & the sustainability team are doing. I just hope that other platforms will follow in your footsteps, because that would just be amazing. Finally, do you have any advice for anyone who would like to find a role like yours at Shopify? I added that one in...Katie Boothby-Kung  37:52  I mean, it's a great question. When I think about kind of how I landed in my position here at Shopify: I just kept talking about this all the time with people that would listen to me. I remember, I had this old deck. It's fun to look at, because I made it three years ago. It was all about building social enterprises on Shopify and I remember I sent it to a bunch of people. Then, here I am. Just, if your company has the appetite for it, and this is a job that you want, then  go get it. Go start talking to people. Go tell them that this is important to you. Go show them why you're the right person for that job, for sure. Depending on what company you work for, you might need to wait a little bit of time. Maybe there isn't an appetite for this right now and that's okay. Just keep pushing for it. Keep talking about sustainability. Kep talking about social impact. Depending on where you work, if there's nothing stopping you from doing small initiatives off the side of your desk... that's showing initiative, that it's showing that nside of your day to day, this is something you really care about, that you're willing to put in the time for your company. I mean, if all else fails, you should just quit your job and start your own social enterprise so that then, you are doing it every day.Krissie Leyland  39:23 Yes. I like that. I was just gonna say, basically you created your own job! Obviously, because Shopify are very minded in that way, it was good for you. If your company isn't keen, then just do it yourself. Like I did!Katie Boothby-Kung  39:48  Exactly! I think like whether people are ready to hear what you have to say or not, put in the work now. When I think about it, I was putting in the work before we had changed our team name to Social Impact. There were a few other people that were doing the same as me and now we're all on the same team together. Just put in the work now, and I think it'll pay off tenfold.Krissie Leyland  40:18  Great, I love it. So, I think that's it really. Where can people find you if they'd like to chat about Shopify's approach to social impact, or anything else?Katie Boothby-Kung  40:37 If they're interested in learning more about what we're doing as a company, go to shopify.com/about/environment. There's a lot that you can find out there. Take a look at our community forums. Again, like if you're a social enterprise and you want to join this really rad network of other social enterprises that are hanging out together, then come join our Slack channel. If you want to, see teasers about other things that we're working on, you're more than welcome to follow me on Instagram. It's @katiebkung. That's where we had our course teaser just the other day. If you're a social enterprise, and you just want to reach out, or you have any feedback for us, or if there's a partner that we really should be thinking about, orwhatever will help you guys help and grow your social enterprise: lay it on me. You're more than welcome to send me a message and I would love to hear from you.Krissie Leyland  41:41  Great! Especially if you can tick it off the dream list. Katie Boothby-Kung  41:45 Yes. Get to work, people. Go!Krissie Leyland  41:52  Amazing. Thank you so much.Katie Boothby-Kung  41:54  Thanks Krissie, I've loved this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find MoreTrees:MoreTrees - WebsiteMoreTrees - TwitterMoreTrees - InstagramMoreTrees - FacebookLinks Mentioned in Episode:ShopifyWooCommerceExpandlyZapierIFTTT (If This Then That)Wilkinson SwordMy Green ChristmasZoomShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00 Hello, and welcome to the mindful commerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm KrissieRich Bunker  0:11& I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce community.Krissie Leyland  0:18The MindfulCommerce community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.Rich Bunker  0:30You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and clicking on 'Community'. See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:36Today, we're talking to Niki and Alan from MoreTrees. You probably know that carbon dioxide is one of the biggest drivers of climate change and we know we should be playing our part in reducing and negating carbon emissions. So MoreTrees are a tree planting app. MoreTrees not only helps offsets your emissions, but it comes with tons of other benefits too. Every tree planted helps the planet & it reduces extreme poverty and combat deforestation. We're going to be talking about what inspired Niki and Alan to start MoreTrees, how that makes it super easy to offset your carbon for e commerce businesses of all sizes, but also we want to know exactly how offsetting with MoreTrees can help with those four benefits I just mentioned. So, hello to both! How are you?Niki Tibble  1:33We're good, thank you. How are you?Alan Wilson  1:35Great, thank you.Krissie Leyland  1:38Could you start by introducing yourselves and tell us a little bit more about MoreTrees?Niki Tibble  1:44Yep, definitely! I'll let Alan go first.Alan Wilson  1:57Okay, so background-wise, I'm a "techie"... so about boatloads of software and startups for years. My last startup was called Expandly, and that's an ecommerce platform used by "one man bands" up to global companies like Wilkinson Sword. So it's a multi channel ecommerce system and so that's where my background is: building tech for  ecommerce and other industries.Niki Tibble  2:30Yes, and I am Niki. My background is copywriting. I have a copywriting business, writing for all sorts of different sectors. I think the most obscure thing I've written about was calculating your construction overheads. But predominantly, I work with ecommerce platforms, tech, and sellers with their content. So that's my background and I've worked with Alan, on previous projects before. Alan came up with the initial idea.Alan Wilson  3:03So originally, I went to a meeting and they were planting trees for every person that attended the meeting. So I thought "That's just a great idea! There's actually companies that plant trees and it's good for the environment." For a meeting, just think of the people that come there for traffic and stuff... I thought actually, that could be a good thing in the future! So then, I told Niki, "I'll get this fantastic idea and get this button in every meeting room around the world. People just come in, press a button, then it all connects to my API, they plant a tree, and it's all gonna be great! And then Nikki said that it's a crap idea.Niki Tibble  3:47I did, I'm not going to lie. I thought all I could envision was this big red X Factor style button, where people are just hitting it in meeting rooms... horror stories of disgruntled employees, hitting it 1000s of times. Which you know, would be fantastic for the planet but then these businesses are planting millions of trees unknowingly. But I really, really liked Alan's thinking behind it and I knew as a business owner that I wanted to do more to help the planet. You see things on Netflix, you read the papers, you see in the news all about climate change and you want to do more. But actually knowing what to do, having the time to do it, understanding the different parts was just difficult for a business owner. You know Krissie, it's a hot topic in ecommerce–people are talking about what you can do all the time, but actually, the options aren't always that obvious. So we definitely felt that there was a gap in the market for a tech lead solution to just make it easy for businesses to plant trees and to do something positive for the planet without it costing a lot of money & without it taking up time. But also to open it up so that ecommerce in particular, involve the customer so that when you plant a tree for them, they're actually being told about that tree. Then they get an email telling them about it so that there's no concern that someone saying they're doing something they're not actually doing.Krissie Leyland  5:18Yeah, that's really nice. Something you said there made me think... There are lots of different offsetting apps out there now. So when you first had your initial idea was that not the case?Alan Wilson  5:35I think that some apps out there offset but I think overall–there's some neat apps as well, there's some really neat carbon calculation apps–but I think it's still a very early fragmented marketplace that is very confusing for a lot of companies and organizations. Wales, within the very small industry as at the moment, is starting to see more of them emerging. I think it's actually quite a very, very early marketplace currently.Niki Tibble  6:07The amount of people we speak to say,"Oh I didn't realize something like that existed." So I mean, there are fantastic apps and ways to do it out there but a lot of people don't actually realize that they are out there, which is a problem.Krissie Leyland  6:21I agree. Maybe it's because we're involved in it, and so it can pop up. But the thing that I noticed about MoreTrees was like, you work with different projects. So it's obvious where your money is going, if you offset with more trees. But do you want to talk a bit more about the projects that you work with?Niki Tibble  6:47To us, it was important that we work with the right tree planting partners. So unfortunately, it's not me and Alan putting on our wellies and grabbing our spades and going and digging in the garden... our garden's not that big. It was important to us that the people that we were partnering with would be the people that our customers would want to partner with. It also meant that, planting trees and offsetting carbonare the primary focu. But actually, there's a lot more that these projects can do to extend the benefits so we make sure that anyone that we're working with on the projects are actually planting trees that are going to be making a difference. They're helping with reforestation, or they're providing agroforestry trees to provide food and sources of income, but also that they're benefiting the local communities. A lot of our projects are in impoverished areas where actually the trees are providing an income, they're teaching these people a skill that they can use, and they're protecting the local area. For example, some of the projects they've got problems with flooding, they're planting the right trees to deal with that. Areas that have suffered deforestation need reforestation to give wildlife places to come back to. So for us, it was a lot more about just picking projects that weren't "just trees": It was actually making a wider impact. It's trees and more.Krissie Leyland  8:17Nice. Perfect. It's really interesting to think that planting a tree can help combat poverty. How exactly does it? What are the links? Someone clicks on "offset with more trees" and then what happens?Niki Tibble  8:40Yes. You click & you buy your trees. Then at the end of each month, we we pull them all together, and we tell our different partners and projects how many trees. When you go into the platform, it defaults to the most needed tree and the most needed project, but you can also pick a specific project and tree type. So at the end of the month, we collect those together & instruct our tree planting partners. They work with local villagers, educate them and provide them with the tools, the equipment & the knowledge to plant these trees. They also fund forest guards to actually protect the areas and they're there for a while so it's not just a quick plant and run. They're helping them grow these forests and and they don't leave them until they're in the position to want to be able to carry that on themselves. You read the stories & get the feedback from the fields and it makes you feel lucky inside knowing that you're doing so much with just a seed, effectively. Krissie Leyland  9:43I love that. It's so nice.Rich Bunker  9:45It's so much more than planting trees than you can imagine, to be honest which is great... lovely projects at work. What stands out is your favorite project.Alan Wilson  9:57I like Madagascar because of the film... Nikki, you have a favorite, don't you? I think I actually like them all. There is Madagascar and stuff but the ones that do more than the poverty alleviation as well as environment, really strike a chord with me as much. You can buy offsets and as you'll know, those just prevent people from cutting down trees and stuff. They're just not as good as planting a tree and given the income to the farmers as well.Krissie Leyland  10:42So something that just has more meaning behind it than just planting a tree.Alan Wilson  10:47More meaning and also as I say, the offsets that you can juust pay someone not to cut down a tree can be a verified project... it's great that the trees not being cut down, but it's actually developing more the whole concept. The ethos is getting the more trees out there and actually creating more of these great carbon capture species out there.Rich Bunker  11:13Yeah, there's funds out there that support people not knocking down trees and educate them of why it's a good idea not just to cut trees down, as you see fit, willy nilly, yeah. Alan Wilson  11:28Yes, it's great. Exactly but also, I do believe more in getting more trees planted. But anything that helps us is the way forward.Rich Bunker  11:38Amazing. So how does it work? What's the app? How does does the money get sent to the project and what's the tech involved in in the background? Alan Wilson  11:51We've built a platform. So it's not like a sort of front end website or a Shopify store, it's a whole entire platform. We've got a whole process: when we add projects, we add them in our back end, system adds it to the platform and then as a user, you come onto the platform. You can either just quite quickly plant a tree within minutes. If you haven't got any credits in your account, you can pay straight away for that tree–that's one pound a tree–or you can preload credits. You can preload, say 100, and then you can plan them all automatically as well. You can either plan for yourself or other people. If you buy a plan for your customers, you can see right away the plan. You put the name, email, and quantity and then that emails will send the user the certificate. So you can either do that, just manually typing them or you can upload them via CSV or via the API, which we have.Krissie Leyland  12:52So for MindfulCommerce–obviously, we already use MoreTrees, but I'm doing it manually at the moment–eventually, we're going to connect it with our payment system.Rich Bunker  13:10Yeah, the automation takes the decision out of it. It's done.Krissie Leyland  13:14No manual work. So easy.Niki Tibble  13:19There's no reason to not plant trees, because it's just done for you. So why wouldn't you do it?Alan Wilson  13:28We used to have an API and we have some larger companies already using the API and doing it that way. So that takes a bit of development. We're also developing an app for the app store's at the moment. So we have multiple of them in the pipeline, which won't be that long. We also use a great tool called Zapier and Zapier is fantastic. It's an easy integration tool that connects straight to Shopify, eBay and Zoom as well. So basically you can connect your Shopify store and connect your MoreTree account in minutes. You could prefund your MoreTrees account and then for every order plant a tree or you can see for every order over 50 pounds plant a tree. The scope of it is huge so literally, for every street payment, make a "plant a tree for every invoice" and it just goes on. We have customers who are setting themselves up in minutes. It's incredible. Currently, I get an email every time someone plants. So I wake up in the morning and see all these people planting through the night. They haven't actually planted obviously, it's just the automation of their systems where the process are coming through. So we just got it made quite easy and that Zapier is really, really useful.Krissie Leyland  14:51Definitely. I love Zapier.Alan Wilson  14:55Nikki, you have one don't you? We have them for people doing mortgage companies and stuff. Do you have a good example of that?Niki Tibble  15:04Yeah, we've got this great company and they've just love it. I messaged them the other day and just said, "Oh, how are you getting on? How are you finding it?" And he was like, "We absolutely love it! We've drawn a massive tree in our office (I presume it's on a whiteboard wall) and every time we plant a tree, we go up and write it on it. It's like attending this massive competition in the office. We love it, we just can visually see all these trees. Everyone's running up and writing that they've planted another one." I think it's fantastic.Krissie Leyland  15:40What was that? It's if somebody signs up to a mortgage deal, then?Alan Wilson  15:45That's what they do. So automatically in their system, someone signs up for a mortgage deal and it automatically plant them a tree. Then the customer gets the emails with the certificate that the tree has been planted as well. It sounds like from what Nikki says, that their senior sales team also flags it on a whiteboard as well.Krissie Leyland  16:09I think they can just look at it every day and be like, "look what we've done!" I love it because–obviously me and Niki work together in other means–I received an invoice from Niki and was like "Ooh! I feel good about paying this invoice and planting!"Niki Tibble  16:27Every time anyone pays an invoice there, I plant my little tree. It's just little things and it's so much fun because everyone's thinking of different ways that they can plant trees. It's almost become a bit of a competition where people are like "what innovative way can I think that someone planted trees?" Pop quiz winners the other week, for example. There will be different things people come up with, it's like, wow.Alan Wilson  16:49I planted 11 trees when Scotland beat England that weekend.Niki Tibble  16:52Alan set a Zapier to plant a tree every time it rains, didn't you? And I said, I said good that you're not still in Scotland.Krissie Leyland  17:09So what are some of the kind of businesses that you've worked with so far?Niki Tibble  17:18With our backgrounds, we have built the platform with ecommerce in mind. So we have lots of online sellers who are either selling by their Shopify, WooCommerce, or any other platform. We've got a lot the typical businesses that we expected when we first set up MoreTrees. I might speak for myself Alan, but I've been amazed at the variety of people that are using it. We've got window cleaners, personal trainers. accounts and what else?Alan Wilson  17:52Clothing brands. Ecommerce brands in sustainable clothing. There seems to be so much of them coming up, which is great.Niki Tibble  18:01Yeah. People building the fancy garden shed. All sorts. It's just been amazing that so many different people want to get involved for so many different reasons.Krissie Leyland  18:13Fancy garden sheds? (laughter)Rich Bunker  18:23What will it become when people go back to working in offices? Hmm...Alan Wilson  18:32I think one of my first case study business was a company called My Green Christmas. They do Christmas cards and stuff. We didn't know them at all and it was really good. All of a sudden, they were integrated and then we saw these trees going out for every order over 30 pounds. So they effectively help drive their sales so that people pay not that much, but they're really good company and good people. So that was a really good daily sort of case study.Krissie Leyland  19:09Yeah. And a big boost I guess during Christmas.Alan Wilson  19:13Exactly. They're a young team as well, and they've done fantastically well.Krissie Leyland  19:19And I bet Niki, that you're writing case studies.Niki Tibble  19:22Yes, which is nice because there's so much to talk about. People want to get involved. You know, people really love using it, and they want to talk about it. They want to share that they're doing it, which is lovely. And then you really do see this viral effect, where you know, we've had a customer who's come to us saying, "Oh, one of your existing customers planted my friend a tree, and they told me about it when we went for coffee, and now I'm planting a tree." So there's an really nice knock-on effect and also then businesses and ecommerce sellers have this amazing platform to encourage their audience to live a more sustainable life. I was speaking to someone on Friday, and their setup setup was a bit a bit complicated. The people they were sending the tree confirmation email to wasn't actually the personnel planting the tree for. So we were batting things backwards or forwards about how they could do it. I said to them all, "Possibly, we could see if we could set it up so that when you planted a tree for someone, they didn't get the email from us saying that they planted the tree." And this person said, "No. I want to tell my customers and show them how easy it is to plant a tree. I want to send them your way, because I want them to find their own trees." I think it's so great that we've got so many brands that actually want to plant trees themselves and they actually want to encourage other people to get on board and do it as well, so that we can all make a bigger impact. Yeah, that's been really nice as well.Krissie Leyland  20:58A network of tree planters. A community.Alan Wilson  21:04I think it's a network of good people as well. That's been the best part about MoreTrees. We meet so many good, good people, instead of a lot of the harsh realities of what's going on in the world. It's a lot of good people.Krissie Leyland  21:19Yeah, it must be really refreshing. We find that, don't we?Rich Bunker  21:24A lot of really positive people recently.Krissie Leyland  21:28Positive and inspiring, just like you two.Niki Tibble  21:33That's the great thing about MindfulCommerce: you have a community of people who are doing something pretty much off their own back, because you know, at the end of the day, currently people don't have to do anything. But there's always people that want to do something for the better good.Rich Bunker  21:50I guess there's a social shift for people as well. David Attenborough has been a champion of bringing that to people, especially in the UK's forefront, and wider globally. So hopefully, that is a social shiftand a movement that will stay. People will look after their environment a bit more.Krissie Leyland  22:15What a legend. Quick, get him on the podcast.Niki Tibble  22:21During a Zoom quiz yesterday, I found out that he's the reason that tennis balls are bright yellow? Something about making them visible on TV. It was either true or false: David Attenborough is the reason those tennis balls are bright, luminous orange or yellow. He is just wonderful in all different ways.Krissie Leyland  22:50Every time I see a tennis ball...Rich Bunker  22:55Touching on the integrations, you mentioned Zoom, Shopify, WooCommerce... What are the other integrations you've got and is there anything coming up in the pipeline?Alan Wilson  23:07The Zoom one. I mean, that's that's a really neat one where people say "for every person who joins the zoom–every attendee for the meeting–will automatically plant a tree." We're finding that more and more popular.Niki Tibble  23:19That's the original idea, Alan, your original meeting idea... (laughter)Alan Wilson  23:22Exactly. Just virtually, it saves me from having to visit every office in the UK. So I realized my mistake, now Niki. But yeah, this week we've got a new subscription and "auto top up" will be liv. By the end of the month, we will have WooCommerce up live. Shopify and other carts that we're working on will very quickly follow after but, we're going to launch on one foss, which is WooCommerce. Then we have If This Then That (IFTTT) which is another sort of Zapier type API platform, which is great, which we're working on. I mean, ultimately, being a techie, I love that part of it: just making it easy. I love integration and all the amazing ideas you can do with it. So eventually, "every Uber ride, plant a tree", and "everything you spend on your card, plant a tree", etc. They're coming very soon.Rich Bunker  23:23Integrating some of the challenging bank tasks. "Deal with your savings, you can plant a tree". There you go.Alan Wilson  24:40We need to give you a commission now, for that idea.Rich Bunker  24:44It's helping more people.Alan Wilson  24:46Exactly, no, it's a good idea.Rich Bunker  24:52Is it just you Alan, tapping on your keyboard, coding away or have you got a teamAlan Wilson  24:59My last app, I built the whole platform initially, and then had raised a couple of million pounds, built a big team and done it that way. So this time, I built an MVP myself to learn how it works–so all the lessons from last time–but then I've got a development team that I use, and I've known for 10 years. I basically paid them to build it. I just architected, designed and worked out how it would work. They've been fantastic. They do the development, Nikki tests it, and then makes it live.Rich Bunker  25:40The collective mind is always more efficient.Alan Wilson  25:43I mean, the development-wise, it's hard to build a business and develop. That's what I learned from the past. You spend so much time. There's so many talented developers out there. If you can just harness them the right way, then it gets easier. I think what you mentioned about a lot of products out there, competitors are just front end shops and stuff and some of them are even just Shopify stores. So, what we actually have is a platform that is scalable, and can plant hundreds of 1000s of trees a second. Not right now, but we've got the technology there to scale it so that it can plant massive amounts of trees and grow in scale... to large enterprise customers.Krissie Leyland  26:33I had one question for Niki, actually. It is probably going back a little bit about the project: Are you looking for more local projects? At the moment I see Madagascar, and other areas, but as we're in the UK... I just wondered.Niki Tibble  26:54Yeah, so that's a high, high high on my to do list. We are actively looking for a UK project. The biggest challenge for us is getting that at a price point that people will want to pay for. Currently on MoreTrees, you can plant trees for a pound but obviously, in the UK cost of labor and things like that, it just costs more. So we're just trying to find a project where we can get that price to where, though it will be more than planting a tree in Madagascar, it's still a price that's reasonable and that businesses will actually say "Actually, I'm willing to pay that bit extra to have a UK project" rather than being the difference between 1 pound and 20 pounds. Most people just can't afford to make that that purchase for their customers. So if anyone listening knows of any UK projects that could be a good fit, then please do let us know. Hopefully we could help.Alan Wilson  27:52We're very close with a couple.Niki Tibble  27:55Yeah, they should be shortly announced, but we're always welcome to more. Alan Wilson  27:58That will be up to the customer, then. It'll be up to the individual or business that's using MoreTrees. If you want 20 trees planted, but they're not in the UK, that's fine.... Or if you want one in the UK, and it's a 20 pounds We're trying to get it a lot cheaper than that as wel but it's an understandable labor cost in the UK. So the idea is to give everyone the choice and transparency of what you want to do.Rich Bunker  28:24I suppose, yeah. I mean, the idea is to plant more trees and that could be more that you support the project by your donation rather than planting a tree. But it's nice to get that "Oh yeah, I've planted a tree today by buying some item" or "I just want to plant a tree today and given some money to find the tree."Alan Wilson  28:44Exactly, I think there is a large scope for different people out there as individuals, small businesses or enterprise businesses. That's what we will provide: the choice of what you want to do, and here are the options for you.Niki Tibble  29:00A lot of people have different motivations. So I 've spoken to people who like the fact that it's good for the planet and is offsetting carbon, but actually, they said that they're much more motivated by the poverty alleviation or the wildlife side and things like that. So yeah, it's having a range of projects that suit different people's motivators.Rich Bunker  29:28You just mentioned carbon there, and that's something I wanted to ask: Is it obvious how much carbon planting a tree somewhere is offsetting, for like a business if their goal is carbon offsetting? Can they use your platform to basically offset carbon as well as do good planting trees?Alan Wilson  29:49We've got some verified carbon credits coming. The tree planting is expensive. Currently it is voluntary, so you can still pass your ISO and everything using MoreTrees. If you're a large company and using it for your scrn... again, it's still voluntary but there's a carbon tax coming out in future as well, so that that could affect that. So we do offer additional carbon credits and in different variety. It's the Woodland Carbon code ones in the UK, so you can buy WCUs, but they start at like 12 pound a credit. So the way we estimate the carbon is by what the partners said they estimate: 300 grams per tree over the life cycle of it. The difference with that: UK WCU has to be verified over the years. Ultimately again, you're paying for scientists. That difference between one pound and 12 pound for a scientist to validate and ensure it has already happened in the past. If you buy it in the UK, and then you have to wait for the five years or so that it is completely validated that the carbon has been sequestered. As opposed to say, planting 12 trees. It is an estimate based on the planting partners. Do they have audited and validation for it but it's not the same as the WCU one.Krissie Leyland  31:33I'm just thinking: if I'm an ecommerce business, and I know that my carbon footprint is 'x, y, z'. And then I've started to offset trees with more trees. Is there a way of kind of seeing you know how far you've got to be carbon neutral? or carbon positive?Alan Wilson  31:58We have a small calculator. There's obviously some great tools out there and some great tools developing. I'm developing one myself as well. Again, it's that scenario of you've bought a product, and you maybe have brought in Turkey, then you've imported it from Turkey. But also even if you manufacture in Turkey, you've then got the person who's created the cotton... where did that cotton come from and who's the liability of the ownership of that carbon that was used to deliver the cotton there? So I think it's a very early industry as well. Currently, there really isn't a good full carbon calculator tool that is easy to use, and really does understand it because it goes to the massive level.Krissie Leyland  32:56What it could do is just estimate what your carbon footprint is and just maybe offset more than you think you need to. Then hopefully, you're at a higher level.Niki Tibble  33:11On the platform, when you sign up, there's a dashboard that tells you all your stats. It tells you your estimate of how many trees you planted or gifted and it gives you an estimate of what that is in carbon, according to what our projects have been audited at.Krissie Leyland  33:30So based on that, then, what are some milestones that you've reached that you're really proud of?Niki Tibble  33:39As you know, when you start a business and you're like, "Oh, god, no one's gonna use it1" then you get your first customer that you don't know... So that was a big milestone, when it wasn't my mom planting a tree. I mean, it happened really quickly. I think it was the next day, wasn't it Alan.Alan Wilson  33:58Yeah. I mean, we kept saying, "how long is it gonna be before someone tells someone to tell someone who wants a tree?" Yeah, Nikki's mum's our first customer. So Nikki's mum, when she she planted the first one: it was five o'clock in the 14th of October... then we did a soft, soft launch, wasn't it Niki? Niki's mum posted on Facebook and then 24 and a half hours later, the first person who had no connection with us started planting trees, which is great. So a lot quicker than we thought.Niki Tibble  34:37Yeah, that was a nice milestone. And I think the first person that automated a tree without any input from us–we didn't talk them through the setting up, they just went they did it–that was, for me, that was a big milestone to think we've actually created this system where you can just plant trees automatically. And it works and people are doing it without us having to build the tech for them.Alan Wilson  35:01That you didn't have to deal with tech? (laughter)Niki Tibble  35:10Yeah it was because I didn't have to do any of the tech. That was the actual milestone for me. (laughter)Krissie Leyland  35:10Do you get notified when someone does that on their phone?Niki Tibble  35:17Yes, we have it popping out whenever trees are planted. And it's getting to the stage where it's like, "I can't cope."Krissie Leyland  35:26Really? That's amazing. I'd be like up first.Rich Bunker  35:38Yeah, amazing.Krissie Leyland  35:44People–what, sorry, were you going to say something?Alan Wilson  35:47No, no, no. Just other milestones. I mean, we've planted tons of thousands of thousands of trees. It's just really been, I think, overall it's just a milestone in terms of doing that business that is good. My previous business is great business and ecommerce, but it's about growth, customers and making customers good. But this is just about everything. I think its customers, partners, end customers, our customers... Just everything has just been so great. I think so. I think pushing towards environment has been good, it's just been brilliant.Niki Tibble  36:23And it must be like what you two feel with MindfulCommerce, where you've taken something where you're making an actual impact, you know, genuine difference. As opposed to, before obviously copywriting I love and I can bring joy to people at work... but to actually make a positive impact on the planet is just heartwarming.Alan Wilson  36:45Actually... just as we've talked, someone just planted 100 trees.Niki Tibble  36:48Woo!Krissie Leyland  36:48Yay!Rich Bunker  36:49Well done on that!Alan Wilson  36:55We do have a bad news story... On our early days with some test customers. So my Auntie Barbara...Niki Tibble  37:03Oh, yeah...Alan Wilson  37:04...we asked some people to test that out and then my auntie dedicatedly bought five trees, and then she gives a four star review.Krissie Leyland  37:21but Five stars!Niki Tibble  37:23She says she doesn't get five stars.Alan Wilson  37:26Yes, I replied. So I thought she must have done a mistake. "What are you doing? Why'd you give us four stars?" She was like "I never give a five star son"Rich Bunker  37:37She's clearly one of those poeple that's a bit like myself, "there's always room for improvement!"Alan Wilson  37:43She's only gonna get a four star Christmas present this year. (laughter) Everyone else's gave us five stars.... But yeah.Krissie Leyland  38:03I think we've asked quite a lot. Anything else that you'd like to cover?Niki Tibble  38:10No, I don't think so. Alan?Alan Wilson  38:12No, no.Krissie Leyland  38:13Where can people find you if they have any questions about planting trees with MoreTrees?Niki Tibble  38:18So our website is moretrees.eco and there's loads of tons of information on there. And we're always hanging around in live chat, as well.Krissie Leyland  38:29Do you have an email? And are you on social media?Niki Tibble  38:33Yeah, so the email is team@moretrees.eco and all our social media handles are moretreeshq.Krissie Leyland  38:41Perfect. Thank you! There's a question there about how can people get started but I think we've kind of covered that to be honest.Alan Wilson  38:54 It's just easy. I mean, that's the beauty of it. You can if you want the pre top up credits, you can. You can automate if you just want to buy it there straight, and then it is really, really quick. And Niki has done some nice little User Guide videos and stuff.Niki Tibble  39:08Yeah, what we haven't covered is that the process, the sign up is free. Then you can plant trees for yourself. You can either plant the most needy tree and most needy project or you can select the specific tree and project type. Then if you're planting for your customers, you can either do it manually, which is just typing in their name and email address by a spreadsheet. So just Bulk Upload, which is the same details (name and email address) or you can use Alan's wonderful API's and Zapier integrations to do it all automatically. It really is that simple. In fact, we actually have to add in a step to make it harder to plant trees because people were saying, "well, I wasn't ready to plant trees. I didn't know I was going to plant a tree!". Because when you do it for someone else, they get a customized message, which you can tailor in the email settings. People were like "I didn't realize. It was too easy. I hadn't set up my message and I wasn't ready." We had to add another little step saying, "Are you sure?" because people found it too easy. You have to make it harder to plant trees...Krissie Leyland  40:20But it's good because it made me personalize the email and I thought, "Oh yeah, this is better." (laughter) Thank you very much. This has been great.Niki Tibble  40:29No, thank you.Alan Wilson  40:29Thank you, appreciate it.Niki Tibble  40:32I mean, I think MindfulCommerce is such a brilliant idea and a great community.Krissie Leyland  40:37Thank you! We could we could maybe do an event or something together soon.Rich Bunker  40:44We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  40:51So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io. Click on 'Community' and register from there.Rich Bunker  40:57If you liked this episode, please share, leave a review and remember to subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My Instagram for Murphy photos to make you smile - @krissieclaire@mindfulcommerce@kollectifyHead to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantwww.mindfulcommerce.iowww.kollectify.comHappy Valentines Day, Rich xKrissie Leyland  0:01 (it's all me chatting to myself) Hello. So this is Krissie here. And this is a little bit different to what we are normally talking about on this podcast.I've just been thinking, like, for a while now, why did I end up as an entrepreneur? And why did I want to start a business?So I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur since I sold ice creams from the tub in our freezer to walkers who used to walk past our farmhouse. Because there was a lovely bit of countryside where I used to live in the middle of nowhere, as I was growing up, I had two sheep. One was called lucky and the other was called very lucky because we did not decide to eat it.Anyway, so I was probably about six, when I had my first business, and selling ice creams.My parents were very encouraging of me and would buy some to make me feel better. Mum tried to tell me about the fact you have to minus expenses to work out profits, but I ignored her. And actually, it was not my own money. But anyway, the thought was there. And I really enjoyed I remember choosing the right colours, for my for sale sign and in my best bubble writing and whatnot. And anyway, so I had a really nice upbringing in the countryside, field surrounded by fields and trees and deer and all kinds of lovely things. So I guess this is just a bit of a, I don't know, like a self reflection episode for me. But also, I'm hoping that this could help even just one person who's listening. So it's quite interesting, really, when I think back, and like I said, I had a really good upbringing, but I have had some struggles.I was bullied in two different high schools. Because basically, I had a really good friend friendship unit in primary school, and then decided not to go to the same high school as all my friends. So anyway, thing is, I was severely bullied. And when you're in that kind of situation for a long time, you know, you've been called ugly, freckled face, as they used to call me.You tend to feel quite worthless, and I lost every inch of my self confidence and self esteem. So I went from a happy, funny outgoing kid to someone who would react to every or everyone with a bit of defence because I just thought that everyone was out to get me so and, and probably including my parents, which I might feel quite awful for now. But anyway, these kids in school would make me feel nervous to even walk or talk in front of anyone else. Because I was afraid, people would start picking things out about me and using it against me so but looking back, I was a beautiful kid, I was not ugly, I was fit. And I loved to run, play netball and everything like that. But I just went into a bit of a shell afraid to show my true personality and my true self. So it's quite funny that I'm recording this now as I'm 31 years old.And I just thought, sod it. I'm going to tell people my story. And if you can relate, then that's great. Please tell me.So I can remember not wanting to get out of the car to go to school, and my mum would say ignore them. But it was so bad that I obviously couldn't. However, college and university was better. I made some wonderful friends through my new found love of surfing, which I'll talk about a bit later on in this episode. And my God, my life is so good now. I have a wonderful boyfriend who is just my rock. I have a Portuguese water dog. And he is beautiful called Murphy and you'll probably see lots of pictures of him on my Instagram if you check it out.He makes everybody smile. So do that. Um, so the reason I'm telling you all of this is, I don't know I've never really been able to hold down a proper job because I didn't cope very well with having a manager telling me what to do.I would kind of get defensive even with you know, it's coming from the bullies and making me feel like shit, and I would just think that, you know, my manager, if he would criticise my work, they would then make me feel a bit worthless. And that kind of brought back feelings from being in school. Anyway, it just didn't sit right with me. So I needed creative freedom and individuality. And I'm the type of person who wants to work in my own time, at the time of day that works for me. And when I can have my deep focus time and create great ideas, most of the time, I'm in the shower. And I can't write it down. haha.I think creative people like people listening, you probably get this, like, you need to be able to work at your own time, when you feel like working on something in particular. So you know, and some people like working in the middle of the night, whereas I'm like, I'll wake up at 5.30 in the morning and think, oh, crap, I need to get working on that right now, before I forget, or something. So yeah, 9-5 didn't really work for me. And I'm not sure if that stems from like, I think it's a mix of wanting to create ideas and see them flourish from you know, even seeing an opportunity like walkers passing by and I thought, right, I'm going to use this audience and sell them some ice cream. So yeah, I don't know, I think it's a mix of things, and also not wanting to work for somebody else and have them kind of control me, I guess. And because I just feel stuck, and they can't do what I want. So anyway, I still suffer from huge imposter syndrome. I think everybody does. I'm not sure if I'm more affected by it because of the way I have been made to feel. But I guess I'm trying to say, you know, if you feel the same, and you feel like, you've got this brilliant idea, and you want to tell everybody but you think, you know, oh, who am I to have this idea and roll with it and tell people like this is what I think I'm here to say if not you, who? If not now, when? So I don't think imposter syndrome will ever go away. But I guess I'm now comfortable with being uncomfortable. Because if I don't do it, who will? Especially when it is something for good. And if you have something burning away in your stomach, and you're like, I really want to do this.But you're scared of what other people might think. I say do it anyway. Just like go with it. Go with the fear. Do it anyway. Because you know, if you fail, you fail if you don't, what what could happen, like, what if you don't fail, amazing things could happen. That's what. And if you have the right audience, you can iterate and tweak your offering until you don't fail. The outdoors and surfing saved me and gave me back my self confidence. Surfing grounded me and made me realise that life is more than work. Life is about being outside and like just embracing the elements and appreciating life for what it is. You don't want to be stuck in an office nine to five doing what other people tell you to do, like give yourself a break. And I even did my dissertation on surfing as a therapy for disadvantaged children. I tried to set up a business which would provide more access to outdoor activities for children suffering from low self esteem just like I was, it was called Liberty active. So this business failed for a few reasons. But at the end of the day, I'm still on a mission to make sure people feel empowered. I want to protect our oceans, our environment and the people and animals within it. Ecommerce, Shopify in particular has given me access to a bigger world of entrepreneurship. Maybe one day I'll sell ice cream again. But for now, I want to give the power of entrepreneurship to others. And I'd like to help them to do it in the most sustainable and ethical way possible. Because I want to give back to the thing that saved me. And that's the environment. surfing, being outdoors and yeah, freedom. So I guess my question to you is, what do you want to do? If you could do anything in the world? What would it be and what's stopping you? Because if it's fear, embrace the fear and do it anyway.And also I just to say, like, if you're thinking, Oh, but what if such and such thinks I'm silly for doing this or, you know what if I fail, just do it, just do it anyway. Because you might be the person who helps another person to transform their life. And love yourself enough to set boundaries. I think the best thing about running your own business is that you get to choose to set your boundaries. And because your time and energy are so precious. You get to choose how you use that time. And you should teach people how you like to be treated, and how you should be treated.You decide what you will and won't accept. So back in school, when all the bullies were out there, and they were saying stuff to me, I just let them do it. But I don't accept that anymore. And I will not accept that if I see people doing it to others. And one thing I love about running my own business is that by working with others, so contractors, freelancers, I love the fact that I can give them freedom as well. And I, you know, I always say set your boundaries, don't overload yourself. Learn how to say no. And, you know, don't accept it. Don't accept, if people treat you in a way that you don't want to be treated. You decide how people treat you by deciding what you will or won't accept.Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. And you teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won't accept.I actually thank those bullies now because actually, if you're listening, thank you. I wouldn't be who I am if it wasn't for you. I'm empathetic, caring, Funny now again, my personalities come back.And I'm actually incredibly resilient. Hit me with it. It won't work anymore. So thank you for making me who I am today. Now, I want to help others, in particular, those who are helping to protect the environment, those who are helping communities with social impact. And yeah, maybe I wouldn't have wanted to do these things if it wasn't for you. So thank you. Thank you very much. Goodbye. Oh, and I just want to add don't want the bullies to take all the credit here. Do I? Thank you to all my beautiful, lovely, loyal, caring trusting friends and my absolutely, Oh God, I don't even have words. There's no word that couldn't explain how much I love Rich, my wonderful partner. Beautiful man. He's away at the moment so I'm getting emotional now.And my parents, thank you love you. love you, love you, love you longtime. I'm gonna go now this is weird. Thanks if you've made it this far, and listened.I hope it rounded off all right, because I feel like I was just babbling on but hopefully there's a message in this somewhere and somebody will take take note from it. Yeah.Bye and Happy Valentine's Day rich. I love you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Gavin Ballard:Gavin Ballard - TwitterGavin Ballard - WebsiteWhere to find Disco Labs:Disco Labs - WebsiteLinks Mentioned in Episode:Disco Labs - Carbon ReportShopifyShopify BFCM - Black Friday Cyber Monday 2020StripeStripe ClimateWildbitDigitalOceanWho Gives A CrapThankyouBrooklinenGCP - Google Cloud PlatformAWS - Amazon Web ServicesSponsor:Shownotes: Krissie Leyland  0:00Hello, and welcome to the mindful commerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, ecommerce service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. Today, we are talking to Gavin from disco labs who make things possible on Shopify plus through custom development. They're a team with deep platform knowledge and world class expertise on Shopify Plus, and have a list of happy clients. Gavin and his team have worked with brands like Who Gives a Crap, a sustainable toilet roll brand–who I've mentioned a few times within the community–and they've worked with big brands such as Harper Collins. So hi, Gavin, how are you? Would you like to add anything to your introduction?Gavin Ballard  0:45I'm very well, thank you. Happy to be here. Thank you, you nailed the introduction. That was a goodbreakdown of who we are and what we do. If listeners can't tell from the accent, we're based down here in Melbourne, Australia.Krissie Leyland  0:59Great. And so could you tell us a bit about what how you ended up in the Shopify space?Gavin Ballard  1:06Yeah, sure. My background is as a software engineer, so that's always been something that I've been quite interested in. Then quite a few years ago, I got involved in Shopify, just building a site out for a friend who who wanted to sell something online. That was nearly 10 years ago, I think, or maybe it is 10 years ago now. A few years later, after that, I was thrust into into freelancing. A couple of friends and I had moved overseas to start a company that didn't work out that well so I needed to pay the bills somehow, and just started freelancing in the Shopify arena. It just grew from there started out doing all of the standard stuff that you do on Shopify: theme builds design, setting up stores, etc... but because my background is in that software engineering, I eventually decided to focus on the apps & integration space, and we have sort of grown out the agency around that.Krissie Leyland  2:01Okay, so like, the apps integration space. So what do you do, there then? Like, what does that mean?Gavin Ballard  2:09Yeah, so what we tend to do is work with (these days they tend to be) larger merchants who are using Shopify and they have something they need to get done-whether it's connect Shopify to an external system, like a warehousing platform or something like that, or they want to offer their customers a new experience or something to improve the way that they sell things to those customers. (We work with them when) there's nothing off-the-shelf that does it-there's nothing in the Shopify app store, or their platform doesn't have an integration, or the merchant has these really funky, bespoke needs. So we step in there, and we work with a merchant to work out exactly what they need to get done to solve their problem, and then build the software to do that. We try to do that in a way that's really, because we're very much focused on Shopify and Shopify Plus, compatible with the platform and working with it rather than hacky workarounds or anything like that.Krissie Leyland  3:13Nice. So whatever your clients need, you can tweak things and make it custom to what they need, which is really good, obviously.Gavin Ballard  3:23Yeah and because we're just focused on the back end of the app, the thing is that we also work quite a lot with other agencies who are more focused on the front end of things (so design and theme development and things like that).Krissie Leyland  3:39That's cool,that's quite unique then, because I don't often see that people just focus on the back end, I guess. It's more popular as a Shopify agency to kind of niche into marketing or development. So yeah, that's cool.Gavin Ballard  3:56Yeah, it's a niche, but it is quite a large niche with the way that Shopify is growing at the moment. It's keeping us busy, so that's a good thing.Krissie Leyland  4:07Yeah, I can imagine a lot of partners coming to you. Like, "Can you do this super techie bit? I can't do it." So that's good. Rich, do you want to ask a question?Rich Bunker  4:19Well let me jump into the environmental footprint side of things... What do you believe is your role as an ecommerce service provider to improve the ecommerce world in terms of sustainability and social impact?Gavin Ballard  4:34I mean, I always am hesitant because I don't want to be seen to be preaching or anything like that... but ever since I started the business, I've always thought that the way that we actually do things is just as important as what we're doing. If you look at our company's mission statement, we have this dual purpose: One of which is to basically be the best in the world at building software for ecommerce merchants, but that's kind of our external mission. Then the internal one is to be building the company that we want to work for. I think that it would be really difficult today, in 2021, to say that you want to be working at a company that isn't being quite conscious of the the society we live in, the planet that we we live on and not be keeping that in mind so that we can do what we can to make that better. So that's why I say, that our role is being part of the society that we live in. We wouldn't exist without everyone else on the planet. I think it's just about being a good corporate citizen. That's my personal view and I think being public about that is meant for the people that we work with, internally at the company, to share that that goal, that value.Rich Bunker  6:05It's great and it's about being a good example, as well.Gavin Ballard  6:10Again, I am very conscious that I don't feel like my place, or our place in the company is to be preaching and making other people feel like, "Hey, this is what we're saying you should be doing" but I think it's more about leading by example, and trying to talk about it as much as possible.Krissie Leyland  6:27Yeah... Acknowledging it and building awareness around it. What do you think are the biggest issues in ecommerce when it comes to sustainability?Gavin Ballard  6:40Well, I think probably the thing that is on top of everyone's mind is climate change and carbon impact. Those two certainly have been a big part of where our focus has been in terms of our environmental footprint and what we think we can measure and improve quite significantly. Then, from a merchant perspective–given that a big part of your job as a merchant is often selling physical goods that need to be shipped across the world and that good itself is probably made of parts that have been shipped from everywhere else in the world–that's certainly a big factor when it comes to ecommerce: what that carbon impact is and how sustainable that is longer term.Rich Bunker  7:36How do you communicate that  message? Do you communicate that to your clients, when you sort of have initial meetings or do you just communicate it through your own community?Gavin Ballard  7:51We've started becoming a lot more public about this sort of stuff in the past year, I would say. Even though we're not a merchant that's shipping stuff around the globe, we do have an impact, like every business does. So, there was a decision made at the start of last year that we wanted to become a carbon-neutral business. Towards the end of last year, we we hit that goal. Part of our success criteria that we defined at the start of last year was that "We're going to do this, but we're also going to have a report about our carbon impact and give us a baseline to measure against in future years." In having that report, it makes sense to make that public. Not only as an accountability measure for ourselves internally, but also to hopefully, show other people that it's very possible to do it. It's not that expensive, it's not that difficult and it's not that time consuming. I think we have definitely started to think about part of our contribution is actually becoming a carbon neutral business ourselves. Then another really important part of it is just talking about it and that tweaks. If us publishing a carbon report means that one other agency says, "Oh, we should do that, too!" then in a way, we've kind of doubled our impact with just publishing what we're doing. So yeah, we're definitely keen to talk about it more. I don't think it's necessarily something that a lot of merchants will look for but it can be a nice thing to put on the pitch deck. I think it'll become more and more of a factor as time goes on.Krissie Leyland  9:42Definitely, I totally agree. Love that. More people need to follow in your footsteps. What inspired you to do it? What was it that kind of kicked it off for you?Gavin Ballard  9:52So we have a company retreat every year. I was just mentioning to you off-air that we're about to have our next one next week but we we had one at the start of last year or the end of the year before... back when you could actually gather and meet with people... It was an idea that I'd sort of brought to the table to say, "Well, what about becoming a carbon neutral business?" Then as a company, we decided that would be one of our company goals for 2020. Once we set that, I said, "Well, that's part of my accountability and my KPIs as a CEO: to get that sort of stuff done." So I pushed to make sure that we did that. Despite the weird year that 2020 was, it was quite a good one for people in ecommerce, relative to a lot of other people in society. So, it seemed silly to think that we should abandon those goals. So yeah, it was a community discussion and setting that. Part of the process of putting the carbon record together and the research that we did for that, certainly reassured me that it was probably a good decision to stick with it and to actually do the carbon record.Rich Bunker  11:26It's an amazing report. I commend you on that. Did you do all the research in house, get an outside agency to help you or was it all just hours of internet searches?Gavin Ballard  11:40It was driven internally. This goes back to the earlier question about the inspiration for it, but part of that has been seeing other companies do this. Probably the biggest, the most useful examples of what drove our carbon record structure and what we were looking at were: firstly, a company called Wildbit, which is a software company based based in the US. I think they align very closely with us in terms of values. They're completely outside of the Shopify space, but they build software products. Then Basecamp, as well was another. Both of those companies published a blog post that was basically going through "this is what we did to estimate our carbon impact, this is why we did it and this is what we did with that information." So we took those as a starting framework, customised a bit for our industry & our business. We did research through a couple of books we looked at: going through things like Apple's environmental pages to work out what the impact of our physical goods were, and things like that. Then doing some general research on ways to calculate carbon impact, especially for software businesses where you're hosting stuff in the cloud. That was the inspiration. Then we definitely used them as a starting framework to build it out but there was a fair bit of original research done, as well. I know there are businesses in helping companies put these things together, but for a small business like ours, I think it can be less work than people may think it is.Rich Bunker  13:39If you don't have a huge infrastructure of hardware, services and personnel, you can probably dial it down quite quickly to what the exposes are and it's the difficulty of calculating it.Gavin Ballard  13:55We are a small company so I think that it's certainly a lot easier for us than for a massive company with multiple office where you can't easily survey everyone to find out what electricity provider they use at home and that sort of stuff. But I think that it's important for us to do it while we're small because it is easier to do it. As soon as you start doing it, because then it just becomes ingrained and part of the business. We certainly have plans to grow in the next few years but hopefully, as we do that we can grow the carbon report with that.Krissie Leyland  14:28So if another supply agency was interested in doing the same thing, would you like give them six steps? Would your current report kind of provide those steps for them to take as well?Gavin Ballard  14:45If someone wants to do it, I would absolutely jump on a call with them and work through it... Give them our spreadsheets. Absolutely. That's part of the reason that we we published it. I think for an agency or a software company that is similar to ours, taking out that carbon report as a starting point would be quite valuable because the similar emissions profile. You know, for our type of business, really the the biggest impact that we have is cloud hosting and then close after that it's office space–including home offices for us as well. So, I think they're going to be similar sort of environmental impacts for any businesses similar to ours.Rich Bunker  15:37Excellent.Krissie Leyland  15:38Should we ask for more details on the cloud?Rich Bunker  15:40Yeah, definitely. It's something close to our heart, because we've engaged in that process of trying to find the better cloud hosting service. But you know, that's using renewables and even just better services. In general, how do you go about that and what do you perceive as the best renewable hosting services out there?Gavin Ballard  16:04It is tricky. I was surprised when I started digging into it. There are platforms that are carbon neutral and there are kind of different ratings. There are some that are carbon neutral because they're doing offsets while there are others that are carbon neutral because they're they're actually powered by renewables, and they know that they're powered by renewables. Then, there's the the dirty ones that don't report on it. Even for one particular provider that can change depending on what region you're hosting things in. So AWS, Amazon's cloud hosting, for example, depending on where you're actually hosting your servers will change whether you're using carbon neutral hosting or not. It actually surprised me a little bit that was difficult to tell. Sometimes you just don't know because you don't actually get a report on that. For example, we use a provider called DigitalOcean, as well as AWS and Google. They don't necessarily tell you for sure whether you actually hosted on carbon neutral stuff or not, so we try to do the research. At the end of the day, we didn't know for sure so we just went with the assumption that they weren't when we were calculating our impact and our missions. Then the bigger players like Amazon, Google, Microsoft are good at publishing that sort of stuff. It's certainly better than the smaller providers. So that is one of the advantages of going with a larger provider in that sense.Krissie Leyland  17:45I actually asked DigitalOcean the question and they just sent me to a forum where someone else was asking the same question. It said, "Some of our some of our service centers are using renewables, but not all of them." So it's like, alright, we're not gonna know for sure then, are we?Gavin Ballard  18:10I think I must have been going through that exact same thread at some point.Krissie Leyland  18:14Yeah, probably.Rich Bunker  18:16I guess there's an element of "better, best and the BEST" isn't there? You know, if you're on a journey to change your infrastructure up a bit, choosing a better service that has some renewables is better than not doing anything.Krissie Leyland  18:32For sure. I think there are offerings now, which clearly, optimal or they have optimised that. This isn't a paid advertisement or anything but yeah, Google's JCP, their cloud platform is 100% carbon neutral. A lot of that is from actual renewable energy, rather than just offsetting. In the research that I've done, they're probably either the best at it, or they're the best at talking about it.Rich Bunker  19:12It's not new, but it's getting to be more in demand that people want to know that information. So I think some of the smaller players, who aren't even thinking about it, will probably realise that that's a potential and bigger customer base. Then they can market to them or maybe they already are renewable and aren't telling people.Krissie Leyland  19:32Yeah! People just might not even realise that they're actually doing good and need to talk about it. So, shall we move on to talk about Shopify? We're not sponsored by Shopify, I obviously talk about it a lot. How is Shopify good in terms of carbon neutrality?Gavin Ballard  19:55This is gonna sound like I am sponsored by Shopify, but I'm in not. Obviously, we're big, big fans because all of our money and livelihoods depend on Shopify but in terms of their commitment, I think that they're probably one of the biggest, best larger companies going around. Maybe this is just my bias but I think they're very cognizant of the climate impact they had themselves, and then also that their merchants have. In 2018, they started a sustainability fund. That's at least 5 million a year to invest in carbon technologies and then another million on top of that to focus on investing in weird or underfunded ways to look at sequestering carbon, going forward. They're putting that money in.  They're on Google cloud platforms or their hosting, they're carbon neutral and then there is their operations. Like I said, this is definitely sounding like a Shopify ad, but they've done the work to calculate the carbon impact of their operations. They're carbon neutral there as well with both renewable energy and offsets. So, I think in terms of them looking at their own business, they've done a really good job, and they're clearly caring about it. And then they've done some things to make it a lot easier for merchants to think about that as well. They have an official offset app, which you can install into your app store and it will calculate your shipping emissions and automatically bill you for that. I think they say it's between half a cent to 10 cents per order they'll take a clip of and put that towards offsetting. Their payment providers short pay. If you purchase something with short pay, then the shipping for that product is offset as well. They're definitely very aware of it and I think they're doing more than a lot of large companies are.Krissie Leyland  22:21Yeah, we definitely don't see the other platforms talking about this. You know, they definitely haven't got a fund for sustainability. One thing that I loved about what Shopify did recently was offsetting Black Friday, Cyber Monday shipping, and I just thought that was genius. You can see it on their BFCM globe. You know what I'm talking about, don't you, Gavin?Gavin Ballard  22:46Yes, yes.Krissie Leyland  22:48I just I loved it. I was like, "Look, it's like they show each order... But then they're like we've offset these billions of orders!" They offset the shipping and it's great. I love Shopify.Gavin Ballard  23:01I think that's really impressive and, you know, it's a it's probably a bit of a marketing thing for them as well. But at the end of the day, it's good that that sort of stuff has become good marketing.Krissie Leyland  23:14Yeah, true.Rich Bunker  23:15It would be nice to be in a place where offsetting is the norm and everyone's chasing being carbon neutral.Krissie Leyland  23:26Yeah, I think one of the things I like about the Shopify approach as well–that I think also goes for Stripe, the payment provider behind Shopify or short pay, who is another company that I think is very impressive in the climate arena– is that they're very much focused not only on the offsetting stuff, which is good and wonderful but also actually looking at getting to negative carbon. As well as taking carbon out of the atmosphere with sequestration and things like that. So they're impressive in leading the way.Rich Bunker  24:12I think, going back to the carbon offsetting for any company looking to have less of an impact, that is a good place for them to start. Then, like you've done your carbon report, you've got a plan to reduce your carbon. So it's a good place to start. Then, as long as you've got a way forward to reduce it, and that's even better.Gavin Ballard  24:33You definitely need that baseline, right? You don't really know where your biggest impact is and what you can actually do to address that.Krissie Leyland  24:45So on a normal day, what do you and your team do to ensure you keep your footprint down to a minimum?Gavin Ballard  25:00A lot of it is being conscious. We were in the process of addressing what we've done, or what we identified in our carbon report. So, we're looking at moving more and more of our hosting over to other platforms. In a new project, we'll make sure that we're setting that up on something that is carbon neutral. Because we're working from home so much still, I think that'll be a long term thing for us even though here in Australia, COVID has thankfully not had as much of an impact as it would have elsewhere. We are able to go back into our offices, while I think a lot of other people are really lacking the flexibility. But that then means that we need to look at things like longer term such as people using that the houses as offices. So, "What's the electricity that's powering that office", "How are their houses are heated?" and things like that. There's a renewable energy supply here in Melbourne that we helped by sending out a way to get started with or how to swap over to them. They that had a promotion so we were just promoting them within the company to try and encourage people to swap of over. Again, it wasn't like we were saying, "You have to do this to work here." I think that's a very personal decision, that sort of stuff. But we're just promoting those sorts of things and then making choices about where we work and how we work. We moved office recently. While this wasn't the only factor, the fact that the office–which was close to public transport–provided good facilities for cyclists and things like that was certainly a factor in that decision as well. I think there were a couple of things that we're sort of looking at on a day to day level, but hopefully we're going to bring our overall carbon footprint, numbers down in 2021.Krissie Leyland  27:03Nice. At the moment, I don't have a high impact at the moment because I'm just at home working.Rich Bunker  27:13So as a developer yourself–and thinking about Shopify, in particular, and its massive app platform–again, you don't want to sound preachy, but do you think that other app developers should be looking towards promoting what hosting services they're on? We've had discussions with them.Krissie Leyland  27:37They didn't even think about it.Rich Bunker  27:40Or they're like, "We have to be hosted on 'x' platform." So we don't know what they do. So are there any quick wins or things that you'd advise other developers to do?Gavin Ballard  27:54It is difficult because, at the end of the day, there's probably other priorities around that. But I mean, one thing that I would say is really advantageous for a Shopify app developer, specifically, is that if you're hosting your apps on Google Cloud Platform, you're on the same platform as Shopify. So, you're gonna have much lower latency when you're calling their API, which is definitely something to think about when you're picking a host. I don't think we're at the point yet where merchants are really using that as a factor, or they're not asking the question of their app providers: "Hey, are you carbon neutral?" I think it might be a nice thing to do. I could say, of all the app stores in the world, the Shopify Apps are potentially being one that has a little badge or something for carbon neutral providers, but I don't think we're there yet. I just don't think it's top of mind for a lot of merchants when they're looking at their stores. It would be good to change that, though. I think that that could be something that app developers are doing. If they do happen to be carbon neutral, they should promote that fact. As soon as one app developer starts promoting it, then it might get in the minds of others. Again, a lot of it is promoting it and making sure others are aware of it. Rich Bunker  29:17Definitely, communicating it.Krissie Leyland  29:20Put that in our framework, Rich.Rich Bunker  29:21We could. Krissie Leyland  29:24Just ask if they're using renewable energy or not.Rich Bunker  29:27Yeah, I guess it depends on the merchant as well. You know, if they're a merchant that keeps stainability close to their heart, then they're gonna ask those questions. But if it's not that close to the heart or if they perceive it as an expensive thing to do then they're not going to ask. But if it's easily identifiable on the Shopify platform, then that'd be a great place to start.Krissie Leyland  29:53So if the Google Cloud Platform is the same as Shopify, that means that it will call the API quicker, and that means that app will be quicker, right?Gavin Ballard  30:10Yeah. It's probably a small difference but if all other things were enabled, then that's a good hard technical reason to choose it above and beyond the carbon neutral element. So, if people need a way to justify it to their boss, that's a good starting point.Krissie Leyland  30:30Oh, I love that. I'm going to put that in the framework. Does that also mean that the store will load quicker because you know, if you've got tones of apps, it slows it down, right? So if your app is known to not slow down the lowest speed, then that's a good thing!Gavin Ballard  30:53I mean, I'm a massive fan of app developers taking a bit more responsibility for store performance so anything you can do to improve performance is worth it in my view.Rich Bunker  31:07I guess that leads us a bit onto the next question, really, which is about ways to build a store or development in Shopify in a low impact way, as well as hosting on the Google Cloud Platform would probably be one of those things.Gavin Ballard  31:28Again, I think if you're a merchant and you're faced with to two apps, and making a choice between them,... at the end of the day, you're probably going to be focused on the one that's going to serve the needs of your customers better. So you're going to be more focused on the functionality, what specific features it has, and how many reviews it has, rather than "Is it's hosted on Google versus something else?" But for merchants that are more conscious about it, or for merchants who are serving a customer base that is really conscious about it, it pays ask. I think that if an app developer is getting that question during the sales process, even if it's just one in 50 times, then it's going to get them thinking about it. Maybe they see the value and then maybe it flips one person or one developer over. So, asking that question is something that merchants can do. Even if they're not hosted on a neutral platform and you you still use them, at least you've asked a question, and they're thinking about it. Beyond that, this is definitely where I get into the territory of how merchants work incredibly hard to build their businesses. There's a lot of things that they need to think about so I don't want to be suggesting that we just add one more thing on top of the list. Obviously, the choice of what type of business you're running, the product you're selling, where you're shipping to and from... it all has a bigger impact than almost anything else on things like carbon emissions like where you're sourcing your stuff. I'm sure that you've spoken to merchants about this, or with notions about this a lot. That's definitely going to be a big impact: the type of business you have and where you're sourcing from into.Krissie Leyland  33:35We have talked about that quite a lot but we don't have a solution.Rich Bunker  33:41The solution is communication and an education: making people aware so that they're gonna ask the questions. Hopefully, that'll ignite the developers and agencies to be more.Krissie Leyland  33:56Yeah and for the shipping, say for example, if a shopper's at checkout and they have the option between: next day delivery or wait a few days, but if you wait a few days, it's better for the planet because it's being shipped by–Rich Bunker  34:16–road or rail. Yeah, especially in larger countries like I guess Australia and America where next day delivery would sometimes mean the delivery jumping on a flight.Krissie Leyland  34:27Just being mindful of how your choices can help. But as a merchant building that checkout experience to help consumers to be more mindful... do you need this to be next day delivery because it costs the planet this and just helping them to think as well as a consumer?Gavin Ballard  34:47If you've got multiple items in an order, shipping them out individually... If there's going to be a couple of days difference between when you can fulfil them or if you could just wait an extra day or two and get them all in one parcel would be better. Some of the packaging waste that you say from large retailers is pretty ridiculous–and it's all done in the name of automation, obviously–but when you order a toothbrush and it rocks up in a 1m x 1m package. That's an exaggeration but I've certainly seen situations where it's not that different to that. Rich Bunker  34:48No, we've definitely seen that... tons of packaging and an item that comes that's really packaged ready to go.Krissie Leyland  35:23Say, if you have a physical store as well, could the packaging be ready to be just shipped as it is? You know, you don't need to put it in another box.Rich Bunker  35:58That's really for package designers or product designers but I just think if those guys could think in a more sustainable way: we're gonna make this product and we're going to put it in this box. Is that box capable of big shipping the product in it? Krissie Leyland  36:15Be innovative in that way because it's changing and ecommerce is growing. At the moment especially, it's more popular than physical stores. Anyway, that was a slight tangent. Sorry, but if there's tech that can solve that, like an app maybe that's at checkout that can say, "Have you thought about the cost of this?"Gavin Ballard  36:44It was interesting, because as part of the research for this podcast, I was looking through the offset app that Shopify publishes, which does that. A really common feature request, which I don't think I've gotten around to yet, is providing a really easy way to communicate what they're doing to customers. So, from a merchant perspective, they may be happy to pay that extra amount but if they can't tell customers that that's what they're doing, or make customers feel good about their purchasing decisions, then that's the missing link. I think this is definitely the theme of what we've been talking about a lot today is: doing the work is obviously the most important thing to offset or reduce, but very important also is talking about it and making sure that people know about it, because that's how you keep pushing the boulder up the hill, inch by inch.Krissie Leyland  37:51When you talk more, you'll all find the gaps and then maybe come up with an idea together to fill that gap and make it better, I think.Gavin Ballard  38:01Mhm, absolutely.Rich Bunker  38:06Krissie's looking at my like it's my question time...Krissie Leyland  38:10Well, I was just thinking we could talk more about the projects that you've done as a team with conscious brands. How do you usually work with clients? In particular, those that are conscious and sustainable?Gavin Ballard  38:27Look, at the end of the day, we really like working with social, socially conscious brands. Especially if you're working ecommerce in an agency, some days, you find yourself thinking, "we are helping people buy more stuff and is that necessarily what the world needs right now?" So it's nice when you're working with a client, and you're actually saying what they're doing with what they're selling. Who Gives a Crap is a fantastic example of that. Thankyou is another brand that we have worked with previously. Working with those clients makes you feel good about what you do every now and again, which is nice. Even the brands that you maybe wouldn't necessarily think off the top of your head are super socially conscious, I guess. So, Brooklinen is a big client of ours and they sell linen, bedding and things like that, in the States. You might not necessarily think of them as a socially conscious thing but they've gone to quite a bit of effort and expense on their end to set up their return system to make sure that anything that's returned goes to a local donation centre rather than getting shipped all the way back across the country just get thrown out in their warehouse. We built the returns management app that helps facilitate that for them. So you know, those sorts of things are really nice to work, especially when you're working with large merchants. You build this one app for them, and you can see how how much waste you're saving or the impact that you having. One of our projects with with Thankyou actually, was to build a custom app that let people pay what they want for a particular book, which was the history of Thank you, the company and where they wanted to go. Obviously, it was essentially a donation type product. Every single dollar that went through that, was going straight to Thankyou's projects. Those sorts of things are always really nice to, to work on and for. But also, I said at the start that we don't necessarily treat working with those clients super differently to working with any other client because at the end of the day, the merchant is always the hero. It has to be what they care about, and what they want to do–that's what is most important for us as an agency. It's nice when they're doing they want to do things that are nice, but there's no way that we can come in and shift a company that doesn't already want to do something good. We can't shift them into doing that. At the end of the day, everything has to come from the merchant themselves when you're in a service business.Rich Bunker  41:46Just jumping back to how the shipping and returns part of ecommerce is massive. The fact that you've helped a company try and eliminate or reduce their return costs is a double win, isn't it? You know, financially, for the environment and all. So that's really amazing, to be honest.Krissie Leyland  42:08Yeah, I was just taking that all in about Brooklinen as well. I just thought that's genius. So say for example, the customer bought an item and there in Manchester, would they donate that potential return to somewhere more local?Gavin Ballard  42:32A lot of bedding stuff, if you returned it, would just get thrown out because they couldn't resell it. So rather than doing that, they've worked with charities, that have hubs around the country, that will make sure that they get to them, rather than just going in the trash or shipped back to a warehouse where it will get thrown out. From the customer perspective, it's the same as any other return. They will get their return label, go and take it to the post office. But instead of getting shipped rom Tennessee, all the way back to New York where it came from, it'll go to a local Tennessee charity or return centre where it all get distributed properly. It's probably a win for Brooklinen as well, not having to deal with all of that coming back when they're just gonna throw it away. Just being a bit more thoughtful about it means that it's a win win.Krissie Leyland  43:45It's great for the planet and it's a social impact, as well. I really like that. It's the start of the year, so let's look ahead. What will you be doing differently in 2021, in terms of your carbon footprint.Gavin Ballard  44:11The first thing was that literally four or five days ago, we signed up for a program called Stripe Climate. So this is Stripe, the business I was talking about before, who handles all of the payment processing for one of our products. So we process a fair amount of money through them every year and they've just made it very, very easy to flick a switch to get the percentage of the revenue that you're pushing through Stripe to climate projects. So, we've we've done that and it's been operating for a few days and that's quite nice to think that it's a very low effort way for us to do it–to make an impact. That was first project for 2021. I think the other big thing for us will be moving all of our hosting to carbon neutral stuff this year. It will take a while because we have a lot of apps that we host, and it does take time to move them. I'd like to think they we're at least 80% of the way there by the end of the year, and that'll be probably the biggest way for us to reduce our footprint from from 2020. We'll continue to do our offsetting at the end of this year. So anything we do create will be offsetting and probably just trying to get a bit more sophisticated about how we're calculating our hosting missions and things like that. Then, I could happily put the spreadsheet for our carbon calculations for any other agency that wanted to do that. Maybe even potentially wrapping that up and making a little public tool that people can just plug in to the common things that you do when you're a creative or digital agency: just get a number and then a link straight to an offset provider and just make it a very low effort, low brain way to do that. That was really, for something like Stripe Climate, which is committing not-insignificant amount of money to that every year but they just made it so easy and so obvious that it really became a no brainer. If we could do something like that for agencies, that would be really exciting.Krissie Leyland  46:47That's incredible. Please definitely do that.Gavin Ballard  46:54Fingers crossed. It's a it's a busy year, but of all the things that we shipped in 2020, the carbon record was, though not a traditional bit of software that's out in the world, definitely one of the things that I'm proud of us doing this company.Krissie Leyland  47:17Nice. Thank you. How will you further support merchants to be more conscious of what they're doing?Gavin Ballard  47:27Well, I'm going to appear on this podcast and convince everyone else! ...Again, it comes down to that promotion. In terms of how when we're engaged by a merchant, it's not really our place to be changing their business model, how they ship things, or what product they're selling or anything like that. It's about, just making sure that they're aware of the things like the offset app from Shopify. For the right type of merchant, have them think about how if you offset all your shipping, you may be paying money for that but let's have a look and see what it does to the conversion rate, if you're publicly promoting the fact that this is something you're doing. Try to help merchants think about that a bit more holistically. And again, just letting them know, there's a thing that we've done. You don't need to do that but if it's something that you want to do, then we're very happy to help you out with that.Krissie Leyland  48:36Yeah and give them some examples for example, the Brooklinen case study.Gavin Ballard  48:43Again, I think it's something that we're very bad at as a business: talking about the stuff that we've done. We have worked with a lot of large merchants on interesting projects and we justreally lacked doing that. We jump straight onto the next big projects that are exciting, but then forget to write up in detail what we actually did for everyone else. So.... terrible marketing strategy. I should really get better at that this year.Krissie Leyland  49:12Well, you can pass it on to Kollectify! We do content.Rich Bunker  49:17So finally, if you had one message to Shopify experts and merchants listening to this podcast and hoping to improve their own business in terms of how they can have a positive impact on 2021, what would it be?Gavin Ballard  49:30I think my first message would probably be 2021 can't be as bad as 2020, right? So anything you do is probably going to have a more positive impact. I think, given what we've been talking about the most in this interview has been around the carbon report. The best thing that you could do is just start by estimating your impact. Doesn't have to be necessarily to then go out and offset it. It doesn't need to be something that's done in a huge level of granularity or anything like that. Just find a baseline and have some idea of like, where your biggest impact or where your imprint is. That's something that most businesses would be able to sit down and work out in a couple of hours with a bit of research on the internet. Doing that would be a really interesting way to start thinking about it and thinking about ways to reduce and potentially offset down the track. If you just go into it with a bit of curiosity about what is our footprint, where are the big things, then I think that'll at least put you in a position to really be able to do something about that.Krissie Leyland  50:53Perfect answer. So Gavin, where can people find you if they'd like to chat more about custom Shopify development or your carbon report?Gavin Ballard  51:04For me personally, Twitter is probably the best place for me. I am just @gavinballard and if you'd like to learn a bit more about Disco Labs as a company, or read the carbon report them were at www.discolabs.com.Krissie Leyland  51:19Thank you! One more question: What made you choose the name Disco Labs? Gavin Ballard  51:25I wish there was a great answer to this question but in all honesty, it is purely domain name availability. We just needed to name a business and looked at some .coms and that happened to be available. Yeah, there's nothing deeper to it than that.Krissie Leyland  51:51I thought you liked discoing or something?Gavin Ballard  51:56I don't mind the disco, but not too much in 2020 or 2021...Rich Bunker  52:05Remote discos! Krissie Leyland  52:06Yeah, on your own!Rich Bunker  52:07Zoom disco. There's probably a niche software isn't there?Gavin Ballard  52:21I don't think anyone wants to spend any more time on Zoom than they have to, at the moment. Krissie Leyland  52:25No thanks! Oh, wait... we're on it right now. Thank you Zoom! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Tom Locke:Tom Locke - LinkedInTom Locke - InstagramWhere to find Noughts & Ones:Noughts & Ones - WebsiteNoughts & Ones - InstagramLinks Mentioned in Episode:PatagoniaFinisterreKnow The OriginPeople TreeTwelveRed Bank CoffeeBlossom Coffee RoastersContentfulGithubNetlifySponsor:This podcast is sponsored by the MindfulCommerce Directory.Shownotes:  Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to the MindfulCommerce Podcast: a place where we talk to ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. Today, we're talking to Tom from Noughts and Ones: a Shopify agency working with purpose-driven ecommerce brands who want to make a meaningful impact online. We love their advocacy for a better world, their passion for Shopify and sustainable commerce... and they're great to work with. And I know this firsthand! Hello Tom, welcome! Would you like to introduce yourself.Tom Locke  0:42  Yeah, so I'm Tom. I run an agency called Noughts and Ones in Bristol. And we're a web agency specializing in Shopify, working with ecommerce conscious brands, helping to make meaningful impact online.Krissie Leyland  1:07 Nice. I love it. What are you up to at the moment? You didn't always have that focus on conscious brands and purely Shopify, did you?Tom Locke  1:19  No, early days, we started out doing actually quite a lot of custom Squarespace design and development. We started doing a bit of ecommerce on that platform but we always knew that other platforms are a little bit better when it came to the functionality for ecommerce brands. Shopify was something that we'd always wanted to really get stuck into. Then, it just happened semi-naturally, although it was definitely our plan. Now we focus pretty much entirely on Shopify and we've replaced Squarespace with an alternative web tech stack basically, that you're obviously very familiar with.Krissie Leyland  2:11  Yeah, definitely. What was it that attracted you to Shopify, in particular? That Squarespace didn't have as much functionality, did you say?Tom Locke  2:23  Yeah, we were finding limitations from a development perspective. But also, we were starting to work with bigger commerce brands that needed more of their platform. Shopify, being a commerce-focused platform, just has a lot more strings to its bow. We were finding that it was a much better fit and we knew that in order to kind of serve those customers as an agency that Shopify was a much better fit as a platform.Krissie Leyland  3:01  I've used both and I much prefer Shopify. It's easy to use as someone like myself, who's not a developer, but then you can also use a lot of different technologies. You can code–do the geeky code stuff and scale. It's also quite simple and easy to use for maybe a brand owner that doesn't really know about the back-end and that kind of stuff.Tom Locke  3:34  For us as an agency, we were born out of working with a platform like Squarespace, which obviously, the idea is that anyone can make a website, upload content and that sort of thing. So our approach to Shopify development is very much focused on the actual kind of day-to-day usability. I guess that's something that has always stuck with us in terms of our approach is that: yes, we can build out really custom themes, but still maintain the actual usability on a day-to-day, on a content management level. Whenever we're building out a specific feature on a Shopify store, we're always trying to think about who's going to be in the seat–that's going to be using that eventually, which is generally going to be the merchant. So we try and build in any custom features within the theme editor itself. That's something that's super important for us.Krissie Leyland  4:44  Also, do you find that the App Store helps? I don't know what the App Store–if there even is an app store on Squarespace... but is that something that attracted you to Shopify as well?Tom Locke  5:02  Obviously, there's a whole host of additional features and functionality that you can plug into Shopify that, you know, at the time you couldn't in Squarespace, and now, it's still very much restricted. And certainly, for us as developers, having that kind of starting point for a particular feature... it just makes total sense to use an existing app as the basis and maybe, tweak it from there or get it to do what we needed to do, basically.Krissie Leyland  5:32  That's very cool. I wish I could do that. I do. I wish I could because I'm always like, "If only there was an app for this, this & this and I could just like tweak one or build one from scratch would be great."Tom Locke  5:45  I think with a lot of things, it'd be great if there was one thing that did everything. But inevitably, you've got to tweak things somewhere.Krissie Leyland  5:54  And then also, you've got to have a focus, haven't you? It's like you said, what's great about Shopify is they only focus on commerce. Whereas Squarespace, you know, they do everything... well, they say they do.Tom Locke  6:10  Sort of a catch-all type thing.Krissie Leyland  6:12  Yeah, which isn't always great. It's good to niche and get really good at one thing. Actually, on that note, so you have tweaked or shifted your niche a little bit. So we mentioned that you're focusing on working with purpose-driven brands, and do you want to talk a bit about that?Tom Locke  6:37  Yeah, it's felt like a real natural evolution for the agency. Ultimately, Noughts and Ones is built around the values of each and every team member. I have an amazing team that works at Noughts and Ones, and generally, they're just a passionate bunch of creative, lovely people. So, I think I've always wanted to shape the agency around the collective vision rather than just my vision as an agency owner. I think that's kind of something that's long been championed through our own values as individuals and now it's all kind of coming together, basically. It is super cheesy, but I said the other day that, "You know, it really feels like Noughts and Ones now is becoming the agency that it should be." So, we're always looking to do what we can do in a more conscious way. Despite the madness of the last–well, it's basically been a year now, hasn't it?–year (not that this is going to be podcast about COVID), I think it is really exciting to see ecommerce growing so significantly. Which, is very positive but I think that means that ultimately, there's a bigger opportunity for agencies and tech partners, to make sure that we're scaling with that growing ecommerce world to make sure that it's happening in a way that is as positive and meaningful as possible.Krissie Leyland  8:39  I love that. Yeah, definitely. That's what we're all about. I remember when we were first talking about it. It was like we both went down this rabbit hole at the same time. Do you remember?Tom Locke  8:51  Yeah, absolutely. We were–I feel like it was maybe almost a year ago, was it?Krissie Leyland  9:00  I think, yeah–no longer. Tom Locke  9:02  Really? Krissie Leyland  9:03  Yeah. Anyway... I was so excited to talk to somebody who understood what I was talking about.Tom Locke  9:11  Yeah and I think it's certainly from us as individuals, but also a collective realization of the impact that ecommerce does have. Obviously, that coupled with how much it's growing as a result of things that are going on in the world. I think it was serendipitous that we connected, and as you say, went down that rabbit hole.Krissie Leyland  9:40  Like you said, ecommerce is growing but so is its impact and we need to do everything we can to lower that impact. Tom Locke  9:50  That's exciting, right? Krissie Leyland  9:51  Yeah!Tom Locke  9:52  It's a huge opportunity to start a conversation and make sure that sustainability in commerce and ecommerce, specifically, is being talked about.Krissie Leyland  10:04  Definitely, and I think ecommerce can be part of the solution to combating or fighting climate change... It's just about working out exactly how we can do it. Talking about it is also the best thing and that's why we're talking now. So, what projects have you got on at the moment and what is it about those projects that are helping to make ecommerce more sustainable?Tom Locke  10:35  We've got a really nice mix at the moment, actually, of projects. So, we've just kicked off a Shopify project with a plant-based, single-use plastic-free deodorant brand called Fussy, as you may have seen on Instagram. They're a recent startup and they're just an incredible brand and they want to do everything right and do right by this "big round thing" that we're on... Which is really exciting. Then we've also got just a really beautiful coffee brand, based up in the Lake District, and they're really focused on the traceability of their products, obviously, and quality. Fundamentally, the brands that we'reworking with want to have a positive impact and do what they do best in as conscious a way as possible. So it's really exciting.Krissie Leyland  11:47  That's really cool, I love it. I bet you just feel so content, so happy with the work you're doing.Tom Locke  11:54  Yeah, so the coffee brand we're working with up in Lake District. It's called Red Bank Coffee. Aside from being an absolutely amazing brand, I don't know what it is, but after every call that I come off of, I just feel so zen. I don't know whether it's Tom, who's the guy that runs it but every call that we come off with as a team, we're all just feeling super chil and it's inspiring.Krissie Leyland  12:26  Oh, that is so nice. I just think it's because you're aligned! It's because you know what you want & what your team needs to feel happy about the work that they do. Great! So, I want to get into the nitty gritty of the projects that you're doing: How do you build or create an online store that is good for the planet?Tom Locke  12:58  It's a very good question. Yeah, there's a lot to that. Firstly, we we feel a huge responsibility for the part that we play in the whole kind of ecommerce world. So as an agency, we do feel that we do have a big responsibility and with that, obviously, opportunity to actually do what we do in a meaningful way and actually have a positive impact. For us, that kind of breaks down into three areas. So, delivering what we do: our core services and how we exist as an agency, as consciously and sustainably as possible. I think the other aspect is supporting like-minded tech partners, as part of our preferred tech stack so that the partners we work with to achieve certain functionalities for a brand are so important–which is where something like the MindfulCommerce Directory and framework is a game changer. Then obviously, who we work with. So that means, partnering with brands that are focused on doing what they do consciously and not on my over-consumerism. Supporting and working with the right people, fundamentally. I think that's our role I see as being to connect with the right people and ultimately lay out the best course of action when it comes to building and growing an ecommerce brand. I know, it's cliche, but we're all in it together and it can only really be achieved by working together.Krissie Leyland  14:58  And by working with people who are on the same journey and are also doing everything they can in the way that they work and the way that they live. Yeah, that makes sense. You mentioned the MindfulCommerce Directory, which we haven't talked about yet. You obviously helped us to build that, or you basically built it, you and your team... So, what were your initial thoughts when we approached you with this idea for the directory?Tom Locke  15:37  We connected over a couple of other projects and ideas and, as you say, we went down that rabbit hole of sustainability and ecommerce. What came out of that as MindfulCommerce just felt totally right & the right time. It just felt like a really natural kind of thing and I think when the idea was presented, it just sort of clicked. You know, I was super fired up. I just knew that it wasn't an option to not do because it was super exciting! Obviously nothing really like it has properly existed before and I think the amount of work that you guys have put in along with Twelve on the framework is incredible. Honestly, it does feel like the start of something... really... game changing.Krissie Leyland  16:40  Ooh, I like that! Thanks! So the MindfulCommerce Directory is a directory of experts. So: service providers, technologies, to ecommerce apps... anybody who can help sustainable brands to grow or a brand that isn't necessarily sustainable, but they want to be more sustainable, and kinder to the planet. Just in case people didn't know of it yet.Tom Locke  17:11  And actually, I think on that: it doesn't have to be something that's just closed off to a certain number of brands or companies that thinking a certain way. You don't have to be selling sustainable or eco friendly products, to be conscious and to be sustainable in the way that you conduct your business, right? So actually, for me, that's the even more exciting part: is that we can make a real positive impact with brands that aren't necessarily in that space. Then that opens it up to basically anyone, which is pretty cool.Krissie Leyland  17:56  Yeah! I spoke about this app in the previous episode, so it's like I'm promoting them but I'm not–for example, Recurate is a plugin that you can plug into your online store where you basically can have a secondhand shop on your brand's website. So, any brand, even if you're not selling products that are made out of sustainable eco-friendly materials, you can still resell your clothing or your products or whatever, if you can. You know, you can't resell everything–like you can't resell deodorant– but it's accessible to everybody. Tom Locke  18:47  That is what's so important: it's having the conversation and having somewhere that the educationcan happen with those brands that aren't necessarily in that space. Because ultimately t's not just going to take a handful or 200,000 conscious brands with eco friendly products. Really, the proper impact is going to come when people outside of that space or sphere. That's really when there can be some significant changes.Krissie Leyland  19:29  That makes a lot of sense, because if we can shift their mindset to start thinking about it, then that's actually just as powerful as speaking to the brands are already thinking about it. We can help them to improve it, but we can introduce it to those that haven't thought about it yet.Tom Locke  19:54  I think that's where the the framework obviously comes in... Which is just exciting.Krissie Leyland  20:02  Yeah it is just exciting. So that's great... Who do you think is leading the way towards sustainability in ecommerce?Tom Locke  20:20  Yeah, another big question. I think there are obviously a number of amazing brands and individuals that are driving, change or having conversations. On a previous episode, where you're speaking with Lucy from Reverie, you discussed the problem of how over-consumerism is really at the heart of where ecommerce and sustainability & yet also where those issues lie. It isn't necessarily a new thing, but it's not something that can really quickly be fixed. So in my mind, the kind of the people who are leading the way are the people who are willing to talk about it, being proactive in conversations, taking meaningful action by holding events or exactly like you're doing with the podcast. But when it comes to brands, there are obviously some some amazing brands out there. You know, Patagonia, Finisterre, Know The Origin... I don't know if you know those guys?Krissie Leyland  21:38  Yes. Love that website.Tom Locke  21:41  And People Tree. They've been around, obviously, for absolutely ages. They're obviously the kind of brands that focus on not the sort of throwaway fast-fashion, when it comes to those sorts of apparel brands. As far as tech companies go, obviously Shopify, as a platform, does work quite hard on on sustainability, and their impact as an organization or as a platform.Krissie Leyland  22:38  So if you're building a low-impact website for a brand, something that you can say to them is, "Make it really obvious that it is (low-impact)" because then you're communicating the message, and you're building awareness around the fact that a website has a high impact on the planet. So there's advocacy and sharing innovative ideas, as well. You mentioned the coffee brand that you're working with... I don't know if their packaging is fully recyclable, or... I'm not sure because I don't know that brand. But there is a brand in our community, they're a coffee brand called Blossom Coffee and we use them all the time. They're amazing.Tom Locke  23:13  I've had another coffee. That's very nice.Krissie Leyland  23:15  So good, isn't it?Tom Locke  23:16  And actually, Tom at Red Bank, I think he does partner with them. They're in Manchester, aren't they?Krissie Leyland  23:21  Yeah! So is [Red Bank's] packaging recyclable?Tom Locke  23:27  Yes.Krissie Leyland  23:29  Oh, cool! But the thing was with Blossom Coffee: we didn't know that it was 100% recyclable because it didn't say anything on the packaging. So I'm just saying that communication and stuff is really good to do. If you're working with a brand, just remind them to communicate what they're doing.Tom Locke  23:47  I mean, if you're doing something positive, why wouldn't you obviously shout about it from your own kind of brand's positioning? Fundamentally, if you're doing something like that, then make it known.Krissie Leyland  24:06  Yeah definitely, tell everyone! So the directory, the MindfulCommerce Directory... we have tried to build it, for this phase one, with the lowest impact possible. So, because it's a Jamstack... how does that make it better for the environment?Tom Locke  24:35  Well the MindfulCommerce Directory stack, or our approach to web development outside of Shopify: we're building out our own low impact framework that we call 'Conscious Development'. So what we're looking to do, and MindfulnessCommerce is our real first proper project with this new framework in mind. It's an evolving beast, obviously, in terms of both the directory and also the framework. But fundamentally, we have a number of principles that make up our Conscious Development framework–all of which we've obviously applied to MindfulCommerce and the directory. So really, the biggest thing is having a low-impact design principle. So obviously, questioning absolutely everything and making sure that nothing, that is featured on the site, isn't needed, basically, or doesn't serve a purpose. Then, more on the tech side, what we're using is basically a headless approach. Rather than using an overarching platform, like Squarespace or WordPress, we're actually breaking out the individual components that make up a website: content management, asset storage, your code storage, you know, domain hosting–all of the bits and pieces. Which traditionally, platforms like WordPress and Squarespace want to bring under one roof by taking a headless approach. Essentially, you're kind of breaking those out into individual platforms, almost. So the content management is done through a platform called Contentful. All the code is hosted with GitHub and then deployed through Netlify. What that means is, we can build everything that we need, and with none of the stuff we don't, basically. Then within that, we can build super efficient code that ultimately doesn't sit on a server somewhere. We basically try and use the web browser to do as much of the work as possible. Basically, we try and render as much as possible on the browser side. Ultimately, that minimizes impact when it comes to servers and things like that.Krissie Leyland  27:47  I'm just looking at now, it's so beautiful as well. You don't sacrifice it looking nice but like you said, it's your first one and there's still things that we could do to make it better.Tom Locke  28:01  Yeah, for us as an agency, we're still very much on that journey and it's very cool to have you guys as part of that journey. Every day we're learning new things so it's constantly evolving and improving.Krissie Leyland  28:20  That makes so much sense and then you can just put your Noughts and Ones everywhere in the spotlight! Great, so how do you think the MindfulCommerce Directory and framework will support ecommerce businesses (so apps, agencies, brands...)?Tom Locke  28:42  As we've said previously, it's really all about conversations and connecting with the right people or someone that knows one very specific thing. Then, basically it's all about putting all of those pieces of the puzzle together. So, really what the directory enables that kind of connection with like-minded tech businesses, and to facilitate that kind of conversation. Obviously, there's a huge amount that we can get stuck into when it comes to more of the educational piece, which would speak to brands outside of that kind of space. Then further to that, the framework then obviously gives those brands–that are looking to have a more meaningful impact or conduct their business in a more conscious way– it actually gives them something tangible to work with and work towards. It obviously hasn't existed until now.Krissie Leyland  29:55  It's so interesting, because yesterday, I was speaking to Jessica & Naomi about the framework (because they helped us with that) and they were saying, from being so in involved with the framework, that the directory is actually the action. Because in the framework, it's asking you questions and things to think about in your business and then saying, "Here's an example of somebody who can help you." And then it links to the directory, then you can connect with them, and then you can get going on tackling that specific pillar or task that you're working on. It works both ways, doesn't it?Tom Locke  30:38  Yeah, absolutely. Even if, there are brands that may already know tha they really want to work with a tech company that specializes in X, Y, Z or they want to partner with a packaging company that only does fully recyclable packaging, for example. Yes, you might be able to Google that and find someone that potentially does it, but you never really know. I guess that's kind of touching on the realms of greenwashing, but ultimately, now there's a place to look, right? Which is cool.Krissie Leyland  31:32  Yeah and we've taken the time to get to know, everyone who's listed on that directory, because they're in the community. They're doing things like this podcast and events with us and we know that they genuinely want to help with sustainability and social impact. So, I love it. Thanks! It's like this really nice cycle, you know? Like a flywheel of different points of the directory, the framework, the community, education... It is all about education, connection, and collaboration–working towards one goal. I keep coming back to it, but it's just about talking: Just talk, talk, talk.Tom Locke  32:23  Obviously, there's a load of exciting plans that you guys have for MindfulCommerce in both areas. Ultimately, what you're kind of creating is something self serving when it comes to the framework, the education & the directory. You know, eventually, it will just become completely self serving and hopefully become an absolute beast.Krissie Leyland  32:51  Yeah and also, I hope it's the norm. We always said, if it's not actually needed, you know, if it becomes the norm, then it's like, our job's done, if that makes sense? Obviously, it will still be there, but it'll just be "Oh, yeah, that's the place to go to find an expert to help me with ecommerce stuff and it's also good for the planet!" I'm just so excited about it. Ah! Best thing you said, which literally made my brain happy, is: "It's not just about the brands that are already on the journey." I think with MindfulCommerce, we need to start speaking to brands that are outside of the space.Tom Locke  33:55  Those brands that are outside of the space, make up such a huge amount and so there's potential impact that they can have–really, just by making some pretty small decisions on the way they even just do one aspect of running their business. The actual amount of positive impact that could have is incredible. Obviously, it's super important to champion those brands that are taking those steps. They should absolutely be celebrated and championed but, they're already kind of in that mindset, right? But then think about all the brands that aren't in that mindset, then it starts to get pretty big. Krissie Leyland  34:49  Yeah, even just saying to them, "Do you know there are things that you can do to improve such and such", whatever it is. And then they're like, "Oh, yeah!"Tom Locke  35:02  But fundamentally, it is in their best interests, in terms of their brand because people are willing to spend more money to invest and connect with brands who are conscious and who are trying to do what they do in the right possible way. So, although it may seem that it's not the best business decision from a profitability perspective, that really is quite a short sighted viewpoint because ultimately, the conversation is growing and consumers are becoming a lot more conscious. So engaging with that is a no brainer.Krissie Leyland  35:54  Definitely. I always say, "the future's conscious commerce" because if you're not thinking about it, you're just gonna get left behind. So, think about the future, and long term, ecause if you don't, then there won't be a planet to live on.Tom Locke  36:10  [No planet] to think about or sell your products on.Krissie Leyland  36:18  Exactly. So do you think, this is a big question and I love it–Tom Locke  36:22  Oh, stop with the big questions. No, I'm only joking.Krissie Leyland  36:34  So, on that note then: If we tell all those brands that we were just talking about that aren't yet on the journey and we say something to them like "We're going to create this huge wave & educate them all." In 10 years, do you think we could have a fully sustainable world?Tom Locke  36:58  Obviously, that would be incredible. There's certainly a huge amount or there's so much more that can be done. Fundamentally, there is still an incredible amount to unpick, undo or address. So I think something like that could be possible but it does need buy in across the board, which really is where the biggest challenge is. That's only ever going to happen if it is addressed and people are talking about it, just like we're having a conversation right now. I don't want that to be like a sad answer. Krissie Leyland  38:00  I asked because I myself often just ponder this in my head. Obviously, that's the biggest goal.Tom Locke  38:08  But what does that look like, though? Like, the other aspect completely changes things. What that might look like for you might be very different for what that might look like for me. I'll flip it back to you: what's your definition of a fully sustainable ecommerce world?Krissie Leyland  38:29  I think it's all brands, all service providers, all app companies, and operations being mindful. It's them taking a step back and thinking, "Do I need to do this? Do I need to collect this data? Do I need that high res image? Do I need that video?" Taking more time to be conscious about if you're a brand, the materials that you're using to create a product, or thinking about end of life. So: "Where is this product that I've got in my head going to end up once it's created?" So if people can do that–and that's basically what the framework is.It's just asking you questions, the things that you need to think about: about your product, about your business, about supply chains, communications, website... All that stuff is just being mindful, in my head. But then obviously, you've got all the big businesses that are profit-hungry. and don't really... I don't think someone like me and my small community can even get the chance to talk to people like the guy at Amazon. But, you never know!Tom Locke  40:00  It's not something that is not discussed–I said that in a really weird backward way–but it's something that is being talked about and is only going to be kind of growing. So ultimately, it's going to get to a point where that sort of thing can't be overlooked. That's what the challenge is for us: to make sure that we're facilitating and expediting that conversation to get to that point where it's something that cannot be ignored, as soon as possible.Krissie Leyland  40:41  So it's like building the community or just a network, partnerships with people that want to make a difference and just talking about it. Instead of saying "a fully sustainable, positively impactful, ecommerce world," I could have said, "Do you think we can have a more mindful ecommerce world in 10 years?" And it'd be us and like, you know, our community–me and you, our network–will hopefully be able to make a difference. Even if its just someone looks at the framework and takes one thing away about the website data, and the impact it has. It'll just make them just think about it twice a day or in their day to day. Then yeah,I think you'll be more mindful and positive.Tom Locke  41:41  I think that is 100% something that that can be achieved. Like you say, even if this community can connect to a single person that makes a single decision, the the knock on effect that that will have eventually is huge. So, it can totally be achieved. There's a lot of work to be done within ecommerce. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done everywhere but I think within commerce, specifically, there's a huge amount that can be achieved through something like MindfulCommerce and the community,that you guys are creating, and the framework to give people a platform to actually think about this stuff. Just because a website or buying from an online store is not a physical experience, obviously, it still has an impact through the way that that business has been conducted. I think that the framework gives that platform to think beyond the screen, basically. Well that's a cheesy line. You've got to put that cheesy line in there. Krissie Leyland  43:07  Oh, I will now!Tom Locke  43:10  Looking at the, broadly, business directories that do just become a place to get listed in order to get business... obviously that is an aspect of the directory but really, you're not wanting to connect with brands or tech partners that have that mindset of just wanting to get listed so that they can, you know, work with X,Y,Z. The sort of the weight that MindfulCommerce can carry and the framework, ultimately needs to be at the center of everything. Which obviously, it is and we're working towards that for sure.Krissie Leyland  43:59  Yeah, definitely. So anybody who gets listed on the directory needs to go through our onboarding, which includes the framework. But if it was a Shopify agency, for example, and they're not currently just specifically working with conscious brands, that's fine. Because as long as they have the idea in their head of how they can help a conscious brand, or maybe it's just that we've triggered something and now they do want to. Like you said, MindfulCommerce is at the center and it's making people think differently.Tom Locke  44:47  Ultimately, MindfulCommerce is the facilitator, facilitating conversation within the space and within agencies & tech partners that are already thinking that way. But to some extent, more importantly, facilitating the conversation outside of those outside of those spaces or industries... that's when it becomes really powerful.Krissie Leyland  45:18  That is what I'm taking away from this conversation. I mean, that's changed my mindset a little bit because I've been focusing on people that are already on the journey or thinking about it–at least, they're talking about it–but actually, I think he needs to work harder. Well done, Tom.Tom Locke  45:40  I think you already work very bloody hard. And obviously we're stoked to be a part of the project and to be working with you guys and MindfulCommerce. As I say, it's super exciting because the potential is almost too much to get your head around. Yeah, so for us, it's just great to be a part of it.Krissie Leyland  46:12  Right, so I'm going to try and wrap this up, because I could talk to you about this forever... What is your number one tip for ecommerce businesses who want to build an ecommerce website in a planet friendly way?Tom Locke  46:32  Log on to the MindfulCommerce Directory! Obviously that is something that you definitely should check out but fundamentally, I think it's just to really question everything: every decision that you need to make when you're building your ecommerce brand, or your website. "Is it serving the right purpose? Is it working towards that goal that you set?" That can come down to a content (a page on your site), the tech partners that you work with, or any sort of operational decisions. It's quite a broad answer but fundamentally: question everything.Krissie Leyland  47:27  Yeah, and be mindful.Tom Locke  47:29  And be mindful when you're doing it.Krissie Leyland  47:33  Thank you. That was great. That was a good answer.Tom Locke  47:37  I hope so.Krissie Leyland  47:38  So where can people find you, Tom?Tom Locke  47:43  You can find us on our website, which is noughtsandones.com. You can connect with me on LinkedIn, my name is Tom Locke. As an agency, we're on Instagram. That's our only real sort of active platform. So feel free to check out Noughts and Ones on Instagram.Krissie Leyland  48:07  Perfect. Your Instagram's beautiful, it's so pretty. Who does your Instagram?Tom Locke  48:15  I do my Instagram when I get a minute, basically. That's why it's fairly sporadic, but when it does happen, there's a lot of thought has gone into it.Krissie Leyland  48:26  Yeah, like it's so good. Everyone go on the Instagram. It's pretty.Tom Locke  48:31  Check out my "rows of three". Krissie Leyland  48:34  Yeah, exactly. That's exactly why it's nice on the eye.Tom Locke  48:40  Thanks!Krissie Leyland  48:44  One more thing, you're part of Ecology, are you?Tom Locke  48:48  Yes. So we partner with Ecology just as as a business. So we offset our own impact through supporting Ecology. Then as part of our approach to our Shopify projects, we do offer an optional tree planting scheme, as part of a project with Noughts and Ones.Krissie Leyland  49:15  Cool. And how many trees have you planted?Tom Locke  49:21  How many trees have been planted? I think we're about 1600.Krissie Leyland  49:27  And how long has that taken?Tom Locke  49:31  I think about six months and we've got other projects we're working on at the moment. Basically when we hit a milestone, we celebrate that by planting 100 trees. So it's growing... it's always growing.Krissie Leyland  49:49 That's cool. You even planted you planted me a tree for Christmas.Tom Locke  49:53  Yes, we planted a few trees for Christmas for our clients rather than sending out gifts or cards. Everyone got enough chocolate, I'm sure. So we just started planting trees and stuff.Krissie Leyland  50:09  Yay, love this. Thank you, I think that's it.Tom Locke  50:17  Anything else?Krissie Leyland  50:19  No, other than saying, "Bye!"Tom Locke  50:23  Yeah. Thanks a lot for taking the time speaking with me & for having me on.Krissie Leyland  50:29  It's good to reflect on everything, isn't it?Tom Locke  50:32  Yeah, certainly when you're in the weeds of a project in particular. We've obviously achieved some pretty cool stuff.Krissie Leyland  50:43  Thank you for listening to this episode. If you would like to contact Tom, please visit his website: noughtsandones.com. It was an absolute pleasure to talk to Tom. We have loved working with him on the MindfulCommerce Directory. If you're interested in the MindfulCommerce Directory, framework or community, just visit mindfulcommerce.io and you'll find everything there. If you enjoyed this episode, you're bound to enjoy every other episodes that we do or that we have done already. So please hit subscribe. Every subscribe helps us to reach more people and spread the message about being mindful in the ecommerce world. Thank you! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioMindfulCommerce Sustainability FrameworkMindfulCommerce Directory (mindfulcommerce.io)Where to find Jessica and Naomi:TwelveLinks Mentioned in the Episode:Gerry McGovern Podcast with usPukka HerbsFinisterre - Leave No TraceBcorpShownotes: Rich Bunker  0:00  Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce experts and brands who care about protecting our planet.Krissie Leyland  0:07  Today we're talking to Jessica and Naomi from Twelve, a sustainability consultancy firm, helping businesses respond to the climate and ecological emergency and embed sustainability in the way they work. Happy New Year, everyone. This is our very first podcast of 2021. And we are very, very excited because we'll talk to Jessica and Naomi about our sustainability framework, which we built with them last year. It was a very interesting project. And it is, we think, is going to be very beneficial for the ecommerce industry, and also for the planet. All notes will be in the show notes. And if you have any questions or input, please feel free to email us at info@mindfulcommerce.io. Enjoy.Hello, and welcome Jessica and Naomi. Jessica, because you are the founder of Twelve, would you like to introduce yourself first? And tell us a little bit about your agency?Jessica Ferrow  1:23  Hi, you just did a great job of introducing me. Yeah, I am one of the two co founders of Twelve and we set up as a business in 2020. And yeah we're here to help businesses respond to the climate and ecological crisis. But yeah, I've been working in sustainability for about 10 years, working with businesses, mainly purpose driven businesses, to help them be better and have more positive impact in the world.Krissie Leyland  1:52  Cool. And what about you Naomi?Naomi Lawson  1:55  Hello. Um, so thanks very much for having us on the podcast. I'm a sustainability consultant and I've been working with Jessica over roughly the past year, which has been great. I kind of started out my career working for BCorps like Pukka herbs. And I've specialised in communications, marketing, and working on policies and campaigns that kind of focus on big impact to help tackle the climate and ecological crisis. That's me.Krissie Leyland  2:32  Perfect. And Jess, what brands have you worked with?Jessica Ferrow  2:35  Sure, yeah. So I spent some time... Well, a few years ago, I was kind of working with large businesses. So mainly, like on corporate responsibility, so I did a lot of work doing sustainability reporting for companies like IKEA, Vodafone, BT, those kinds of organisations. And then lately I've been working more with purpose driven founder led BCorps so I work with Pukka - been working with Pukka for the last three or four years. Worked with Ella's kitchen, Finisterre... I've done some work with Ecover. And yeah, so it's just Oh, and was really one of the companies I'm working with the moment is Edgard and Cooper who made pet food, and I think your doggy eats Edgard and Cooper!Krissie Leyland  3:22  Yes he does! We just transferred him over fully. And he loves it.Jessica Ferrow  3:29  Great. Yeah. Krissie Leyland  3:29  We love it too, not to eat, but you know, the brand, I look at the packaging, and I'm just like, this is amazing. I'd probably eat that.Jessica Ferrow  3:37  Yeah, I feel like the rule for us, like for the kinds of brands we like to work with my co founder, Ellie and I, we often say like, Is it the kind of brand that we like, and we want to use? And that we maybe probably have in our cupboards or on our shelves? And if the answer is yes, then yeah, we want to work with them for sure.Krissie Leyland  3:54  Perfect. Rich Bunker  3:54  Cool. Krissie Leyland  3:55  Um, so what are the kind of projects that you work on with these brands? And what does the process usually look like, working with you?Jessica Ferrow  4:05  Yeah, so basically, what we tend to find is most businesses in the world they want to make a positive impact. Or they want it you know, more and more these days, people are waking up to what's going on in the world with the climate and with nature. And, or if they haven't yet, they're kind of, they're going to wake up soon. But they it's been amazing the last few years, ever since Gretta, has become a big name and and extinction rebellion and the school strikes and all the things that are happening. And then of course, now with pandemic, David Attenborough and all these things, people are waking up and now most businesses are feeling the pressure from them. Their employees or their customers or even just their own consciousness of just being a better business and doing better things for the world and leaving the world a better place than they found it. So what we do is we help businesses to navigate those challenges, because it's all very well saying I want to be really sustainable business, but a lot of people just have no idea where to start. So, yeah, what we'll do at Twelve is we help guide businesses through that process. And we normally help them to create a strategy, a sustainability strategy, which would help them identify targets and set a roadmap for improvement. And then also, we'd help them to communicate that with their consumers. We also help businesses to become BCorps and so if you don't know what B Corp is, it's certification for ethical and sustainable businesses. So it's, if you don't know what it is, you should definitely check it out. Because it's an amazing movement that's sweeping the globe. I know you guys know what it is.Krissie Leyland  5:49  There's something else that might sweep the globe that we worked on together recently. So obviously, we recently worked with you on a very exciting project. So we built the MindfulCommerce Sustainability Framework together. And it sounds like this isn't normally your usual style of project. So what were your initial thoughts when you? Well, when we approached you with this idea for the framework?Jessica Ferrow  6:17  Yeah, great question. So yeah, we loved working on the MindfulCommerce Framework you guys, what we love about that project is that normally would be working with one business, on their own sustainability strategy, and how they're going to become a more sustainable business themselves. So it's kind of on a micro level, when you approached us and talked about your vision for the MindfulCommerce Framework... It just is basically the same thing but on a whole industry level, or even beyond an industry because ecommerce isn't exactly an industry is a kind of, it's a what a channel, it's a it's a way people are selling. So it encompasses so much more on a much more macro scale, but it's a similar process that we followed with you to get to the result that we we wanted, we essentially, well, should we talk about the the project and what, what, what we did?Krissie Leyland  7:10  Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, talk us through like, so I approached you. And I said, or we said, actually, originally, I think I wanted to make my business more sustainable, and then work with you to define a framework for Kollectify and then you were like, I think it's bigger than that. Because we would then use that framework to help other businesses in the ecommerce industry to kind of do the same thing. And then, yeah,I totally forgot about that. Rich Bunker  7:43  Yeah, yeah it was because I suggested it is like, for us to be on not authoritative but have experienced the process, then we could better understand it, to deliver it and help others get to that place. So I was like, let's put Kollectify through it. But then you guys like, it's too big for Kollectify, it doesn't work enough for Kollectify, we need to go bigger.Jessica Ferrow  8:08  Yeah, I think that that's right. I think what happened was, it was just, it was great to see that you, it was really obvious when you first approached us is that you really wants to make an impact. But you weren't quite sure how you had a huge amount of energy, that you wanted to channel somewhere. But you and you want to have this positive impact in the world, but you just were like, help us figure out what to do. So I think what we really noticed that your vision to bring everyone together in this MindfulCommerce Community was was going to be the key. And what we really needed is something to hold together that community. Yeah, we needed a focus. So it's like you bring all these people through the door and saying we want to make ecommerce more sustainable, and more mindful. But when there's no answer to the question of Okay, how do you do that, then it's a little bit up in the air. So what we really wanted to create was a kind of best practice framework for all of the things that anyone working in ecommerce, can look at in terms of steps to become more sustainable, more ethical, more mindful. And then provide that to them as something they can work through.Krissie Leyland  9:20  Yeah. And then the next step was, you went and did loads of research. So yeah, do you wanna talk us through that?Jessica Ferrow  9:29  Sure. Naomi, you want to talk us through that? Naomi Lawson  9:31  Yeah, sure. I was also just going to say, because I wasn't on the initial phone calls as well. So I remember when Jessica briefed me as well. It was obviously a really exciting project, because we were talking about the fact that it could have a really big impact. And that really came through when we did the initial research as well, because it was clear that this was like a big open space where not a lot of work had been done. And it was and it was definitely needed. So it was Yeah, it was a great project to work on from that perspective. For our stakeholder research, we had a couple different approaches. Firstly, we did a survey for the MindfulCommerce Community, and kind of identified what the main environmental challenges that are facing the ecommerce world. And as well as that, we also interviewed 10 key stakeholders from large merchants through to small ethical merchants, as well as tech developers and web experts to get a real range of perspectives and views on again, what the most kind of prominent environmental challenges there are facing ecommerce. And we used that information to develop an insights report and kind of gather our key recommendations for building the Framework.Jessica Ferrow  10:56  When when you approach us we realised that we needed to find out more about what was going on out there. So the best way to do that was to speak directly to people who are working in e commerce. So we ran some surveys, we did some interviews with some experts. And through that, we gathered a load of insights into what was happening out there, what was missing, what people needed. And the main things that we heard, were that people really wanted to be more sustainable in their ecommerce, but they just had no idea where to start. They wanted to be more sustainable businesses, but they weren't really sure where to go to find those materials. They really valued that idea of a community that they could be part of. And they also really, they there just wasn't much out there already. So we could really see an opportunity. And what this this told us is that the MindfulCommerce Framework could have a really massive potential impact. Because there's lots of people out there who are just poised to do something, but they don't know where to start.Krissie Leyland  12:04  Yeah. Why do you think these people didn't know where to start? Like, I guess because ecommerce is a specific world. And it's not just like your supply chains. And yeah, why do you think no one's done it before?Jessica Ferrow  12:21  Yeah, it's a great question. Because some of the brands that we spoke to, even if they have quite robust sustainability programmes in place, even some of the more kind of sustainable brands that you think of, they hadn't quite tied up their sustainability department with their ecommerce department. I think quite a lot of the time in the kind of medium to larger businesses, those two aren't necessarily crossing over. So you've got the ecommerce team who just focused on growth and sales. And they aren't necessarily embedding really sustainable practices. I just think it's not quite come on people's radars yet, I think a lot of people are thinking about packaging,  that's the main thing that consumers will be noticing and flagging up. But I think beyond that, I think a lot of brands haven't quite thought beyond the packaging piece. Or we just saw, those are great opportunities for how, for example, there's so many tech tools on the Shopify App Store, where you can add carbon offsetting at checkout, you can add charitable donations, at checkout, you can there's even apps or kind of tools that you can add plug into your Shopify website where you can create a whole secondhand store on your on your site. And that is called ...Krissie Leyland  13:49  Recurate. Jessica Ferrow  13:50  Recurate! And they're part of the MindfulCommerce Community. Krissie Leyland  13:55  They are.Jessica Ferrow  13:55  But I think a lot of brands don't know about these opportunities. So what we really wanted the framework to do was to not just tell people what they could do, but actually link them up with the apps, people the organisations, the partners who can help them do those things.Krissie Leyland  14:13  Yes, that's my favourite. They're my favourite benefits, you just nailed them.Naomi Lawson  14:18  And I also think that when we spoke to ecommerce experts, and people who work for different for different brands, and spoke to them about the different challenges, I think it all seemed a bit overwhelming. So we needed to think of a way where we could kind of break it down and, and people who kind of work in ecommerce could type kind of, like take it step by step because they didn't know which challenge to prioritise. And that's kind of why we framed it and we took like a value chain approach. So first, so people who want to use the framework would start with sourcing and kind of end with like, product end of life. Yeah. But that's kind of going on and getting into the nitty gritty of the framework. Are we ready? Yeah,Jessica Ferrow  14:37  yeah, it's really important to say that like, there are lots of tools out there for businesses to use to become more sustainable. But I haven't seen that many that have been specifically cut for those working in ecommerce. So I think it's just, this is a specialist tool, that speaking the language of people who are working with ecommerce in e commerce, and it specifically identified all the issues that they are working on or that they need to prioritise. So we, you know, I talked before about how we work with businesses to help them become more sustainable, what we do we help them to, like set a strategy and to figure out what they need to do. We've done that, yeah, or a company that's got an ecommerce operation. So it's, it's specialised, Krissie Leyland  15:39  yeah and it can scale and that's why it could make a big impact.Rich Bunker  15:46  So that's great. So what is the framework? And sort of, can you give us an overview of it?Jessica Ferrow  15:53  Sure. So the framework is a best practice guide for any company who's working in the ecommerce world. And it's split into six categories, or pillars. So I'll just list them off. And then I'll go through them in more detail. So there's mindful business, mindful sourcing, mindful footprint, mindful deliveries, mindful products, and mindful communications. So mindful business is all about your business model. So it's, what kind of business are you? Do you have a strong mission? Do you have a mission for social impact? Are you doing anything to try and tackle the issues around for example, overconsumption and people buying too much? And I have you got any aspects of your business that, for example, are you working in the circular economy? Or are you doing something that's not just traditional types of business, but something that's inherently sustainable? So that's kind of what kind of business model are you. So the Framework contains loads of prompts, and questions to help people navigate some of those ideas. And it also provides links to case studies or examples of businesses that are doing these things, or it links to resources for them to learn more.Krissie Leyland  17:16  And to the MindfulCommerce Directory. If, for example, there is a tech company that is involved with the circular economy. So for example, Recurate who offers, like we mentioned before, a plugin for a brand to have a secondhand store, then they would be kind of listed as an example, for the brand to find on the directory to help them with that.Jessica Ferrow  17:46  Exactly. And that's one of the things I love about this tool is that it's linking back to the directory, and it's all the people within the community that can help each other out. So we tried wherever possible to link to people in the community, and we really hope that over time, the framework can evolve and grow. And more and more, we hope that we can add more links in to people within the community itself who can help each other.So yeah, the second one is mindful sourcing. So it's all about what kind of supply chain do you have? Where are you getting your products from? What are they made of that kind of thing. Then we have multiple footprints. So this is all thinking about your carbon footprint as a business. Even thinking about things like your website, and the data that you're using, and how much carbon emissions that's causing. And so it's really helping you think about - maybe things you haven't thought about before. And deliveries. So that's obviously a big one for ecommerce. So in here, we talk about packaging, of course, different types of delivery methods, and we so some people might not realise that if you choose next day delivery, on an online purchase, that that might mean that it has a much higher carbon emissions than if you chose a slower method of delivery. That's because often, especially in the United States, next day delivery means probably it's going to be popped on a plane overnight and flown to you. Whereas if you chose slow delivery, it might make its way to you by road or another way. So I think just a lot of people who are just buying something on a website might not think about that. But we're trying to encourage businesses to offer more awareness to their consumers about that and offer them different options.Naomi Lawson  19:37  Yeah, because I guess the thinking behind that as well as like, obviously, if consumers are aware, then they might choose a better delivery option and also are given an incentive to.Jessica Ferrow  19:48  Yeah, exactly. So that's deliveries and then products. So the products themselves, what we're really trying to think about is yeh, what is your product? How are you thinking about how you can make your product better how you think about how you can cut out waste ending up in landfill could it end up as something else, and designing it. So for example, Fairphone, design phones that can be their components can all be replaced easily. So instead of it becoming e waste, it would become something that could be used again. And then finally, mindful communications, because we think it's all very well doing all these things. But if you're not telling people what you're doing, then you don't, you're not unlocking that opportunity to lead change in the industry. So we really encourage that kind of to talk about what you're doing and sharing with others in your industry and leading that change.Krissie Leyland  20:45  Yeah, that one's a good one. Because it by doing that you're building awareness as well. And then giving the ideas to other people to do the same thing. And like influencing, because we buy from a really good coffee brand. And didn't know for a while that their packaging is actually like fully recyclable, which is really interesting for a coffee brand because it's difficult to normally how to have like the foil inside and stuff. But if he had said it on the packaging, then you know, yeah, we would know we could recycle it. and he is doing really cool things as well like making it will be like actually,Rich Bunker  21:28  home compostable Krissie Leyland  21:28  home compostable. Yeah. So he's like working with another organisation to create this home compostable packaging. And then I was like, oh, would you mind when you've done that, sharing that so then we could tell some other coffee brands. And yeah, it's like, innovation, spread the word, build awareness and a nice little circle. Rich Bunker  21:53  Exactly. Jessica Ferrow  21:55  Yeah, and a great example of a company that's doing that is Finisterre. So Finisterre, make ethical apparel. And they are they create, they've created what they call Leave No Trace bag, which is made out of water soluble material. And they are using that instead of kind of poly plastic to send out their clothes. And, and instead of keeping that innovation to themselves, and giving themselves the kind of competitive advantage for being a really sustainable company. They've just open sourced it. So they've just said anyone who wants to use this bag can just speak to us about it, so and they they've gone to other B corps and offered it to them. So that's a great example of communications and kind of advocating for change and, and sharing open source information.Rich Bunker  22:44  Super - thank you for going through that.Naomi Lawson  22:47  And I guess another thing to say about the framework as well is that it's all about asking questions, and prompting people to think about different, like different areas of sustainability, rather than telling them what to do.Krissie Leyland  23:04  Yes, yeah, definitely. Rich Bunker  23:05  Definitely. It's a good it's a, it's a helps them ask the questions about themselves. That's what I found sort of looking at it was definitely, you can gauge yourself by it, and really deeply get into almost sometimes too deeply, to where you can go and what you can do to make yourself your business more sustainable or better for the environment. And that's great. And I guess, a little bit - in reflection now that it's been out there and delivered. And we've had a few weeks to play with it and, and ask the community what they think about it, but like, what are your guys thoughts on it? Now that you know you're looking back at the project and where it is now? What do you think about it?Jessica Ferrow  23:54  Yeah, so I'm really excited about I think what we found in our research, or what we really felt with this project is that we didn't spend, you know, it was quite a quick project to just get started. And we didn't want to spend like a year perfecting it and getting it to like the perfect, perfect thing and test and tests and tests. We just wanted to get something out there that people can start using. And what I'm really excited about is seeing how it evolves. And we by no means think that it's perfect to begin with, even though we know it's really great start and I'm sure that anyone who goes in and starts playing around with it and finds it, they'll definitely find some really useful resources. And I'm sure they will find things in there that they've not heard of, or they've not come across before. So even if we can get someone to know about one app or one tech company that they've never heard of, then we've done some good, but I would expect that most people will find a lot more than that in there. And as time goes on, we can just keep tweaking it and keep improving it and keep adding more and more things, more resources to it. I very much see it as a work in progress that can grow and grow. And with feedback from the community with input, and as things improve, so I'm excited to see where it goes.Krissie Leyland  25:09  Yeah, definitely. I'm already like, constantly thinking of how we can improve it and add more solutions, more brands as examples. And yeah, it's great.Naomi Lawson  25:20  Yeah, definitely. And I think we also spoke about how we could kind of expand it and draw on your amazing community of experts that you've already got to do things like run kind of workshops and webinars on like specific areas of sustainable e commerce. So there's so much that you can do with it.Krissie Leyland  25:41  Yeah, that's a good idea.Rich Bunker  25:43  Jot that one down!Jessica Ferrow  25:48  And I'm just really just seeing it as something that can create so much impact because we are Twelve, as so we set up Twelve because it was all about - it is called Twelve because in 2018, there was a report by the IPCC released that said that we had less than 12 years to avert the climate and ecological crisis. So we've now got less than 12 years to go. So yeah, we only really want to work on projects that are game changing, and they're going to make a big impact. And that's why we love this project. Because the scalability of it, you know, there could be hundreds or 1000s of people using this framework and making positive impact to their business. And that really gives us a really good feeling. And we really hope that even if one business changes the way they source their materials, or reconsiders, the kind of packaging that they use or thinks about how they could be a more purpose driven business, then we've done our job. But I would just say that the the scope for scale is huge. So I really hope that lots of people do use it.Naomi Lawson  26:55  And the key thing as well, just in the framework that we spoke about a lot was needed to show users how to think beyond their own operations. So it's not just about reducing the negative impacts, but also about how they can increase their positive impact. So it's a bit of a mindset change for for some organisations.Krissie Leyland  27:13  Definitely. And even like, you know, the thing that I kept saying was, we need to talk about the websites and the impact of an e commerce website. Because not like I say this all the time, but not enough people realise that because it's just because it's not physical, it's still having an impact. And it's taking energy from the planet. And I think that's the biggest thing that people go, Oh, I never realised that. So just by, like you said, if one person takes one thing away from this framework, or being in the community, then we've done our job.Jessica Ferrow  27:51  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And I think what the the important thing that, that as sustainability consultants, we would try to get people to think about is how material those issues are. So if you are a huge company, like a huge, you know, clothing company, that selling fast fashion, and your website is probably not going to be your biggest impact. So it might not be the thing you focus on. First, you might want to think about the fact that you're flying clothes all around the world, and you've got a truck to transport going everywhere. If you're a small company like yourselves, and with a few a small team working remotely, then yeah, your digital footprint is likely to be one of your significant impacts. So you have to think about it like that, that different companies need to think about what their biggest impacts are, and they're not going to be able to do that until they start looking into it.Krissie Leyland  28:43  That's very true. Rich Bunker  28:44  I think that was one of the big Penny drop them for me was, you know, when we found out about listening to our friend Gerry about the digital impact of business businesses online. And that was just I was kinda like, we just have to tell people about this. How do we how do we let people know about this so they can make more informed better decisions? And that I think that was one of the biggest things that kicked off.Krissie Leyland  29:10  It was it was the rabbit hole. Rich Bunker  29:11  Yeah, the MindfulCommerce reconing.Jessica Ferrow  29:15  We're really lucky to speak to Gerry as part of our research for the Framework, we had a great conversation with him and he has some extraordinary facts around the amount of data storage and and how many trees you'd have to plant per year to just account for the returns. I think it's something like 2 billion trees per year.Krissie Leyland  29:36  He has some shocking stats that make you think. And and by the way, we did interview him on the podcast on episode three.Jessica Ferrow  29:47  Listen to that definitely. Yeah, no, it's really it's really great to have such a wide range of experts in the community, just who are all supportive of this and what we found when we did our research was there was appetite and support from all the people we spoke to for this. So it was really great to, to feel that love from the community and enthusiasm.Krissie Leyland  30:10  Just out of interest on that topic of, you know, digital impact. And did you ever think about that? Did you consider it before you met us? Or was like, was it already on your radar?Jessica Ferrow  30:26  It's definitely on my radar it's probably not something that I had, it's probably something that I had thought I need to act on it. Like, I've got some shocking amount of emails, you know, old emails that I probably need to delete are just like digital clutter. And it probably just gave me the kick to just tackle it a bit or think about it a bit more. But yeah, I think you guys have done a great job of raising awareness of that issue. So yeah, keep doing it. For sure.Naomi Lawson  30:56  Definitely. I too am just, I kind of, I knew it was a thing before, but I am so much more conscious of it now day to day, kind of things like thinking before sending an email and storing images and watching videos and things like that.Krissie Leyland  31:13  Yeah, definitely. I think in ecommerce, it's quite tricky, because, you know, it's quite image heavy. And videos and graphics and stuff. But yeah, hopefully we can help people to do better.Jessica Ferrow  31:31  Yeah, I don't, I also think that people need to think about the thing that is, like I said, the thing that's going to be the most material impact, you know, if you, if you if your house was burning down, you wouldn't go outside and like, put out the tiny fire in like, a tiny corner of the garden, you know, like, do you know, I mean, it's just you need to kind of focus on the areas that you are your biggest impact. And, and that's what as sustainability consultants, that's what we kind of help people to figure out. And there's lots of ways that you can do that you can do that through the carbon emissions that it creates the spend that you're spending on it, the amount of impact it has on your business, and how relevant it is to your business, that kind of thing. So, but you've got a lot of our thinking in the framework, you know, as sustainability consultants, we've put all that together, and we've literally externalised our brain into, into a resource that you can read and look at. So it's like, we think about it as like having a sustainability expert in your pocket? SoRich Bunker  32:33  It's a great way to you know, you can use the framework to sort of go Okay, maybe that is my big ticket item, that that's the biggest impact we have. But we can't afford to change that just yet. What else can we do? It gives us that, you know, because sometimes businesses get focused on Oh, we need to change this massive impact that our business has, but then can't see past it. Krissie Leyland  32:53  can't do it right now. So in the meantime, I'll look at this small thing that I can do, which has a big impact small but big change.Jessica Ferrow  33:02  Yeah, exactly.Rich Bunker  33:03  If you do several small things that are easy to change, you can have quite a big impact in your business, as opposed to just doing the one big thing that might take some time and have quite a lot of institutional changes that you need to do you know, soJessica Ferrow  33:16  yeah, that's totally right. And sometimes it can be cheaper things are easy things or behavioural changes. And I think the most important thing that I'd encourage people to look at is, is that kind of mindset, mind set shift. So actually getting them to think and ask questions of themselves that are a bit more like a business that takes sustainability seriously. And just, some people might have never asked themselves those questions before. I think when people are new to the idea of sustainability, they're always asking, what's the right thing? Should I do this? Or this? You know, should I use this type of packaging? Or this type of packaging? Which one's better? Which one's best? And what I often have to explain to people is, it depends. It depends, and it depends what best is. And what best is depends on what your priorities are. So what do your consumers care about? What do you care about? is plastic The worst thing for your consumers and they don't want to see any plastic? Or is it Do they want to have Do you have to also balance all these other things like durability, and it's no good if you have a really sustainable packaging, that means all the goods insides get damaged or it gets damaged 50% of time, so you have to send it back and that's going to create more carbon emissions. So it's all about as a sustainability consultant, what we're always trying to do is think holistically about all the different multifaceted issues that will add up to your environmental impact, and social impact and trying to balance all those challenges.Rich Bunker  34:47  you know, and tech can help with that. I think tech can be really helpful in leading that change. You know, there's lots of good calculators out and there's probably scope for more calculators out there that say like a business has got a product and they ship it in plastic packaging, or it's a plastic bottle and they're like, we want to be more sustainable or something that's more recyclable or something that can be reused, we're going to use glass. But then what is the upshot of using that glass, like the co2 footprint of transporting that glass product, as opposed to a plastic could be, you know, in tech can play a big part in in that where there's lots of online calculators that you can gauge your co2 footprint and you know, against the two, again, it's, it's what's best or better or the best. And there's there's definitely scope for tech, to help with that. And I guess what, what's your guy's views on tech in e commerce and its place in sustainability?Jessica Ferrow  35:48  Well, tech,Naomi Lawson  35:50  tech, I think with tech, there are already a lot of tech solutions out there for different sustainability challenges. I think one of the challenges perhaps for kind of tech developers and applications is kind of them getting the message out there and communicating and kind of promoting their own service potentially. And kind of seeing themselves as a sustainability solution. I guess an example of that would be, maybe it comes down to to the brand or merchant using them. But an example of that would be Okendo, which is an app that enables shoppers to review their purchase online. So I know that Finisterre for example, use Okendo so that people can purchase an item, once they have done they can leave a review, say if the sizing runs large or small, which obviously enables future shoppers to go look at the reviews and say, okay, that runs large, so perhaps I'll get some size down, which means that they are reducing the number of returns, which obviously lowers their carbon emissions. But so that's that's an amazing initiative. But I would say that a lot of a lot of organisations maybe don't see that as being an amazing initiative or being something that is an incredible sustainability solution.Krissie Leyland  37:23  I absolutely love that. it's true. They don't they don't recognise,  in particular Okendo... so I've got a good relationship with Okendo, and they, I was like, have you worked with any, you know, sustainable ethical brands? Can you help with this and that and they're like, I haven't really thought about that. And yeah, they're in our report, they're in our framework and now on the directory, and all of a sudden, they're like, Oh, yeah, I can be a solution to help fight climate change. And, yeah, it's just, I liked your answer.Naomi Lawson  38:01  That's good.But actually, quite an interesting fact that Gerry McGovern gave us is that 1.5 billion trees would need to be planted to deal with annual ecommerce returns in the US alone. So yeah, reducing the number of returns is making ecommerce more sustainable.Krissie Leyland  38:20  Yeah. So Okendo, a customer review app are a solution a solution to lots of , well, the biggest ecommerce issue, which in my opinion, retruns like returns are the biggest issue in ecommerce, huge Like...Jessica Ferrow  38:39  yeah and we want to get more people realising how they can be an actor in that in that response, or into kind of fight one of those big challenges. So if we have the issue of returns, like how can we get more app developers to, to kind of step up and say we we've got solution to that. And there's some really cool as well, just thinking about other tech tools that are at play. And quite a few companies now like ASOS and Finisterre using AI, lead size fit guides. So you go online, helps you find the right fit. And so you click you know, or you average body shape, or you know, above or below and then what height you what weights, and it kind of figures out the best size for you and says you should by size 10 or size 12 or whatever. And then it's it's much more likely that you'll get the right fit first time. So again, reducing returns. So more and more that of companies that can do that. They're also going to save money, because often returns are free. So it's it's a win win for businesses to do this. Rich Bunker  39:41  Definitely.Krissie Leyland  39:43  Yeah.Naomi Lawson  39:43  I also think when it comes to returns, as well as it comes back to the communication piece up. It's most people I would say, think oh, I'll just order two sizes of that because they can easily send it back and they won't think about the impact that that has which is massive. But all it takes is is kind of raising awareness and people to think about it to just completely change their habits, which if you know, like the impact that that could have if there was sort of a big industry led campaign around, it would be huge again.Krissie Leyland  40:20  Yeah, I've actually recently come across an app that at checkout says, like, your impact or a comment what it was, but I was like, Oh, my God, that's a perfect app to say, like, prompt the shopper - Do you really need this, like, this is the impact that it's going to have, and make them just be more mindful about their purchases.Jessica Ferrow  40:49  I love that. I love that I'd love to see that. You know, why you got Three? Three have the same dress in your basket? Why don't you head over to our fitness system to find the right size? You know, like that. And if we had a industry wide example of best practice, if we have more and more people saying, well, we're doing this, we've got this tool, we've installed this plugin, we're using this. And then if we had an industry wide campaign, where we tried to get all the power companies to do something similar. I just think that's where we need to go, we need to get all the people have the solutions to start telling everyone Hey, this is the way to do it. We all need to do this. Come on, let's get on board. And I think you could see some really rapid change.Naomi Lawson  41:32  Exactly, yeah. And partnerships are important in e commerce, which is why the directory is needed. But yeah, another thing that I've seen recently, I can't remember where it was, was basic, I think it was a men's clothing website. And it basically told people, it would tell you, like how much water was used to make a T shirt, or you know how much energy was used. And that's just amazing. Just to get you to stop and think about whether you need something as well, and to realise, like the impact of your purchase. Yeah,Krissie Leyland  42:11  it's just cool. And definitely transparency. And yeah, communicate your impact.Rich Bunker  42:18  I think, I mean, there's, there's a lot of businesses and a lot of tech, and a lot of good solutions out there. And there's just not enough awareness about the solutions, I think is the biggest problem.Krissie Leyland  42:31  That's our goal to build awareness of them.Rich Bunker  42:35  And if there isn't, if there is a problem that a lot of brands and merchants are facing, and then they're asking about it, and there's a there's sometimes a gap in to be filled by some tech, possibly so that that'll be part of the framework, where there isn't a solution for merchants problems. So ...Krissie Leyland  42:57  We will be like, can you fill this with your current app or like add a feature to your current app or build an entirely different app for to fill that gap?Jessica Ferrow  43:10  Yeah, 100%. Like, I would love to see tech companies kind of doing massive hackathons to figure out the solution, you know, to these things, if we're like, we really need something that's going to help us track our carbon footprint from warehouse to end user. And we don't have a tool to do it. But we're pretty sure using mobile data, we can do it. And who can do it, as well as so many clever smart people out there. There's so many young graduates who are just absolute coding geniuses, who I'm sure if we gave them that challenge, they could meet it, I'm sure they could learn something amazing. So it's identifying the need, it's identifying the fact that we want to do this. There's a lot of people out there who who want to do it, and it could be a great opportunity.Krissie Leyland  43:58  So I'm very aware of your time. So I guess I might ask Naomi first. What's your number one tip or words of wisdom for any ecommerce business who wants to be more sustainable?Naomi Lawson  44:20  Phwor that's a good one. I'm just gonna go to my notes. might have to cut this out.Rich Bunker  44:31  How professional, you have notes. Krissie Leyland  44:33  Yeh, we didnt even share the talking points!Naomi Lawson  44:38  So I would like to encourage organisations to really reflect on their business model. I think a lot of businesses fall short when they're setting sustainability goals and targets because they're so focused on short term gains. And actually thinking long term is so critical to ongoing commercial success and to the protection of our planet. And if we're not thinking long term then there won't be a planet for us to make profit to run our business. Krissie Leyland  45:07  Ohhh...Rich Bunker  45:07  Very deep, I like itKrissie Leyland  45:10  I like that. I like that a lot. So over to you, Jessica.Jessica Ferrow  45:18  Yeah. So my top tip would be, just get started, it can feel really overwhelming when you just see this huge list of things, or you look at other businesses, and they seem so far ahead of you. But really, every journey starts with a single step. And it really is important just to start where you can start small, get the wins, celebrate the wins. And also just find the right people to work with. Just reach out to people who are doing it, find experts to work with find brilliant people on your team, quite often, if you have a team, you know, young people will be very interested in helping you with this. And you can delegate projects to interns, or, or, or senior managers, or anyone at most people will be really motivated by this kind of work. So just get everyone involved and just try and set a target to get something done by a certain date, and then keep going. And good luck. Krissie Leyland  46:20  Perfect.Rich Bunker  46:21  Great, great answer.Naomi Lawson  46:22  That's a great answer.Rich Bunker  46:24  I guess one final thing to touch on. You mentioned it early on in the podcast there was you help businesses with B Corp certification? And really, what are the big differences between B Corp and what you've created for us at MC?Jessica Ferrow  46:43  Great question, because I think that's a really, it's really good to to recognise that there are other frameworks out there. And the BIA, the B impact assessment, which is the one you do for the B Corp certification is also a big list of questions, which you tick. And the main difference I would say is that the MindfulCommerce Framework is first and foremost geared up for people who are working in e commerce in some way. So it's been tailor made for that kind of organisation. So it has more specific questions to that kind of business. However, it does also have some broader sustainability and business related questions and topics. So I would say the MindfulCommerce Framework is really great place to get started and to start your journey towards becoming a more sustainable business. And I think the BIA B Corp assessment, after you've done the MindfulCommerce  Framework would be a lot less daunting and a lot that you find quite a lot of overlap. And you'd be on a great, you've done a great start to continue and do the B Corp as a next step. But I would say that when you first approached the BIA, it can be a bit overwhelming, because there's more than 200 questions, and some of them you're like, how does this even relate to my business and some of the way the languages can be quite difficult to navigate. So for a company that doesn't have a sustainability strategy in place, it can be quite difficult to know, where you should be focusing. So that's what that's why we find that often we work with businesses to help them identify what their priorities are, and help them set their own strategy before tackling the BIA because it helps them not just go down rabbit holes, focusing on how to measure water consumption in their suppliers, when actually they really should be focusing on the you know, environmental footprint of their offices, which are massive, whatever it is, it's just like, you've got to you've got to it was like I was talking about for you need to go where the big impacts are. And the people that are in your company and your stakeholders care about.Krissie Leyland  48:52  What about the other way around? So if you're if you're doing the B Corp assessment, so the BIA Jessica Ferrow  49:00  Yeah. Krissie Leyland  49:05  And and then you came across the MindfulCommerce Framework. So you're an e commerce business, obviously.Jessica Ferrow  49:09  Yeah, I still think you'd really find the MindfulCommerce Framework useful because as we talked about, there's loads of case studies, which you never even find that in the BIA. It's not like an informative thing. It's more like a questionnaire asking you about your performance. Whereas I feel like the MindfulCommerce Framework has got more focus on improvement, and also linking you up via the directory of people who can help you. So it's more like a one stop shop for thinking about your business but also improving rather than just assessing where you're at. So I think if you've done the BIA or you're already a certified B Corp, I really think you will still really find the MindfulCommerce Framework to be super useful in your journey.Krissie Leyland  49:46  Perfect. Wow. I love this.Why didn't we do this ages ago, I would have found it so much easier to write the website copyRich Bunker  50:01  The first iteration is out there.Jessica Ferrow  50:02  Well that's it it's an iteration. You just have to keep improving. And done is better than perfect, right? Rich Bunker  50:11  Like the framework is, it's a journey.Krissie Leyland  50:14  It's a journey for us as well. Um, thank you so much. It was lovely to chat to you both.Jessica Ferrow  50:24  Thank you. Great. Talk to you guys, too.Naomi Lawson  50:26  Yeah, it's lovely to catch up.Krissie Leyland  50:28  Thanks for winging it with us. Rich Bunker  50:30  Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for the catch. And really, thanks again for helping us get to where we needed to get to to help others. Krissie Leyland  50:39  Hmm, it's amazing, honestly.Jessica Ferrow  50:42  Aww it was great to work with you. And we really look forward to seeing all the impact that the framework and the directory will, will make, and we look forward to hearing what people think so do let us know.Krissie Leyland  50:51  Definitely. 100%Naomi Lawson  50:53  I can't wait to see how it develops as well. In months and years to come.Rich Bunker  50:59  It's very exciting, so excited.Krissie Leyland  51:03  Thank you so much. Um,Rich Bunker  51:06  And yeah, we'll speak again soon.Krissie Leyland  51:10  If you'd like to find out more about Twelve you can head over to their website twelvefutures.com. And I will leave the link in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this conversation today, you'll love the MindfulCommerce community, head over to mindfulcommerce.io and click on community and I'll see you there! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Lucy Roberts:Brave The Skies - Shopify Plus AgencyReverie The Boutique - A Curation of Luxurious, Sustainable PiecesLinks Mentioned in Episode:CrueltyFreeKitty.com - A Directory of Cruelty Free BrandsSponsor:This podcast is sponsored by Kollectify, a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. Show notes:Krissie Leyland  00:00Hello and welcome to episode number four of the MindfulCommerce podcast. Today, I'm talking to Lucy Roberts, an amazing woman in e-commerce. Lucy is not only the MD of a Shopify Plus agency called Brave The Skies. She's also the founder of an online boutique called Reverie. Reverie is a curation of luxurious, sustainable and vegan pieces. Amongst some very girly giggling, we discuss how Lucy ended up in the e-com space, what it's like juggling two very big roles and how she's breaking the vegan, sustainable and luxurious debacle. And Lucy reveals her top e-commerce branding and marketing secrets, which you simply can't miss. I hope you enjoy.  Should we just start by talking about your story. So what's your story? What are you up to? How did you get to where you are now?Lucy Roberts  01:02Yeah of course. Um, it's quite a big question and I can give a long answer or a short answer. So I'm going to try and go somewhere in the middle. So I have been, I suppose, working in e-commerce since I was 18, which feels like a really long time now, because I've just celebrated my 30th birthday, which was exciting in lockdown. So I guess yeah, I've kind of worked client side and agency side, in the UK and in Australia. Obviously, at the moment, I manage a Shopify plus agency called Brave The Skies, which is super exciting. And the merchants that I get to work with are amazing. So I get to work with RIXO, with KITRI Studios, and it's just, it's really lovely to work with such amazing brands who really care about their products and their branding and that customer experience. It makes my days very, very happy. Um, but it's been, it's been nice to have so much experience on both sides of the fence. So I guess I started on client side, working at different e-commerce brands, here in the UK, and then in Australia. And it was always so interesting for me to be like hearing from customers and working, obviously, within the companies and talking to agencies, because there would always be, in my opinion, such a big disconnect between the brand and the tech partner. And it was almost like we weren't speaking the same language. So after I finished up working for Zimmerman, which was my last client side job, I ended up moving to an agency because I was really, really keen to understand, you know, all of these really creative ideas that we have on the brand side, how do we actually build it? And who builds it and how does it happen? And who needs to do what and how does that work with the ERP and the in-store experience and the online experience and email marketing and ads? So I joined, I joined at the time, it was a Magento agency, and we ended up diversifying into Shopify plus as well. And it was so much fun, kind of being able to fuse fashion and technology. And I ended up, yeah, really happily staying on the agency side. So I've been agency side now I think I'm in my seventh year. And being yeah, being at the at the head of an agency and being able to run it in the way that I want to run it is is super exciting. It's really rewarding. Krissie Leyland  03:32That's so cool. What's your role then as an MD, so I'm never really sure what it is?Lucy Roberts  03:39So it's really funny. So my team members, call me Mama Bear. I call myself an intern. And I guess technically, I'm an MD. It's um, it's a really, really varied role. So it kind of, every day is different, which is amazing, because I love variety. And I love change. There's some days I'm working with new business like talking to new merchants about what kind of solution they need, which tech partners they need to work with. Some days, I'm working with our existing merchants on what their new collection is going to be and how we're going to market it. What the website needs to do to support it. Some days, I'm working predominantly in HR and catching up with all of our team members, making sure they're all happy. And other days, I'm just trying to keep my head above water. Krissie Leyland  04:27It sounds like you are a lot of hats. You might just wake up in the morning. Be like what is on my schedule today. Lucy Roberts  04:37Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely some days it's a case of "Okay, I've actually got no meetings today. What am I going to do? Like where is my time going to be the best spent?" And other days like "Okay, which fire is the biggest? Which one needs to be put out first?"Krissie Leyland  04:52Oh, wow, that sounds really exciting.Lucy Roberts 04:55It is. Yeah, it's very, I think dynamic is a tactful word to use.Krissie Leyland  05:00Yeah, you have to be very organised. I bet Oh, but also quite flexible, which is probably the exciting bit. Lucy Roberts  05:07Yeah. And like, I'm really lucky. I've got the most amazing team and like the team really kind of keeps me in check and like, diverts me where they need me. So I'm really, I'm really lucky to have such a great team.Krissie Leyland  05:18Yeah, yeah, I bet. And So, do you want to talk a little bit about Reverie?  Lucy Roberts  05:24Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I started Reverie, officially, Reverie The Boutique launched at the end of August in the middle of lockdown. It had kind of been an idea that I'd had for, well, probably about five, six years, I'd known that I'd always wanted my own business. And I wanted it to be something but I wasn't quite sure what. And I decided to actually switch to a totally plant-based diet about four years ago now while I was living in Australia. I was working with an amazing brand that at the agency I was with at the time called Edible Beauty. And Anna, who was the founder of Edible Beauty taught me so much about natural skincare, vegan skincare. And I was just completely inspired by her to be honest. And everything at that point kind of came into focus for me like Reverie, could be this amazing destination that fuses luxury and sustainability because there wasn't really anything, anything like that at the time. And I was finding it really frustrating after turning vegan and starting to only use cruelty free products that I'd have to order everything from a different website and like I couldn't go to Sephora or Mecco like with the girls and and just shop because I'd be like, okay, is this is this lipstick vegan? Is it quality free? Okay, who's the parent company? Okay, does it sell in China? It was like, it was really exhausting. And it really took the fun out of shopping for me because my degree was in fashion, I'd always worked for fashion brands. And all of a sudden, it felt like a really, I don't know, like, like an industry that I couldn't be part of anymore. And I was like, well, that's rubbish, because surely there's a way to do it. It's just that maybe the people who are doing it on that prominent or they're smaller businesses that I just have to look a little bit harder for. So Reverie, I guess started off very much. I call it a daydream because obviously a daydream, a reverie is a daydream, a musing. And now I feel like it's become a reality which is super exciting. So I'm working with some amazing brands. The Wild One jewelry who do really beautiful handmade pieces from recycled gold and silver and the Honeymoon Apothecary, which do these beautiful vegan candles. George & Edi, which is a Wanaka based brand, gorgeous home fragrance really lovely diffusers and Edible Beauty as well. I spoke to Anna about my idea, and she wanted me to be her first UK stockist. So having her support throughout has been absolutely incredible.Krissie Leyland  07:54So exciting. I love it. Love it. You know I love it.Lucy Roberts  07:57And you've got your earrings. You love your earrings.Krissie Leyland  08:00Yes I'm actually wearing them right now.Lucy Roberts  08:02Are you? That makes me so happy. Krissie Leyland  08:04They're so nice. So, I'm kind of interested what, you know, your role as MD, as you know, fairly big Shopify agency, so does Reverie help with your roll at Brave The Skies? Lucy Roberts  08:06Yay! Yeah, definitely, I think they feed really nicely into each other. So at Brave The Skies, we got, we got so many inquiries from merchants of all different sizes, obviously, we work with RIXO, Manuka Doctor, you know, hundreds of thousands a year. And then we also get these inquiries from really quite small brands who are just starting up. And it's really difficult because one of the things that I'm really passionate about is helping people is, you know, I think that when it comes to starting a website or a business or anything, information should be really accessible. And more often than not the only tool you've really got is Google. And it's so easy to just go down an absolute rabbit hole and not find the answers that you want. So I guess previously, if we got an inquiry from a really small merchant who had say, zero budget, but had this amazing idea, I'd have to say I'm really sorry, we don't, we don't have the, you know, it's not feasible for us to help you for the budget that you've got. I mean, we're a big plus agency, we've got a lot of overheads to cover, having, you know, a local team. Whereas now, it's really nice for me to be able to spend, you know, half an hour, an hour on the phone to these people and say we as an agency can't really help you but I've completely bootstrapped this on my own. This is how I did it. I'm not a developer, I'm not a designer. I use this theme, I installed this app, I had this idea. I used a Pinterest board as like design. I used Instagram as a mood board like this is how I did it. So it's it's really nice to be able to bring that to Brave The Skies and not just have to turn people away and say we can't help you because you don't have the budget but here's how I did it on a budget. And if you still need development help, I can refer a small agency or a freelancer. And I think yeah, I mean, I mean, I suppose, having worked in e-commerce for 12 years, and, you know, being so lucky to work with brands, like work for brands like Zimmerman and Manning Cartell in Australia, work with brands like KITRI, here in the UK, like, it's taught me so much. And I feel like I've spent so much time with so many different businesses, helping them grow their businesses and their online strategies. And like, okay, like, I've learned quite a lot, I can bring this to Reverie. Krissie Leyland  10:37That's amazing, because they've got all these big budgets and big project you can take little bits from them, but I think it's amazing that you actually, you know, you spend the time with the smaller brands and give them advice. And that's like, it's just amazing, because you can kick start, their small brand and then, you know, what it's like having a passion. And I love that, that's really nice. Lucy Roberts  11:00Thanks. I always kind of say, whenever I speak to a smaller merchant, like I get it, you know, you've got this big idea, but you don't know where to start. And I always give them my mobile number and like my LinkedIn profile, and say, if you've got any questions, I come always happy to answer them. And I just think that everybody should have access to that help. And that information, because you know, when you've got an idea, and you're so like, you like you're so incredibly creative, like you've got so many ideas in you, then I just think if there's somebody who maybe doesn't know, as much as you know, about e-commerce or digital, like, it's almost not fair that they don't get the chance to share that idea.Krissie Leyland  11:37Yeah, I mean, I literally have a video on my LinkedIn where I'm like, come on agencies like, give them a chance, you know.Lucy Roberts  11:45Exactly!Krissie Leyland  11:47You know, and if you can give them advice to kick start it, and then they go and do it, they will probably come back to you when they've got the budget. Then go that step further. So yeah, like I love that. I love it. So if you're a brand and you're listening, speak to Lucy!Lucy Roberts  12:11Talk to me, let me help.Krissie Leyland  12:14Um, so you've mentioned or I think we both mentioned this that often, when you think about a vegan brand in the luxury space, it's like you might have to sacrifice luxury for vegan or for sustainability. So yeah, talk to me about that. And how have you kind of overcome that? Lucy Roberts  12:36Yeah, I think I mean, there are obviously the really big players in the space like Stella McCartney, I think is just paving the way for that luxurious, sustainable vegan lifestyle. Obviously, her designs are incredible. Her brand is amazing, the pieces are just to die for. But it's such a high price point. And it's just it's not accessible to everybody to you know, make the switch to vegan and buy Stella McCartney, you don't kind of get paid for making the switch. And it was the same with with even stupid things like with shampoo and conditioner, like I would always just buy it without even thinking. And the same with moisturiser. And it was you would buy it from these beautiful luxury brands, and you get the really nice packaging and you feel really nice about it. And it was just, it was one of the things that was actually quite daunting for me and perfume as well. For example, I always used to Alexander McQueen and Chanel perfume. I loved the boxes, I loved the bottles on my dressing table. And it was something that I don't want to say it put me off. But for a long time, it was really daunting. I was like, oh, when I I know I need to make this switch. Because I'm eating vegan, I know that I need to switch to cruelty free and vegan beauty. But I'm really going to miss these things like these little luxuries that you just feel, make you feel so nice in the morning when you spritz on your perfume. And that was a problem that I really wanted to address because I was like that's not fair. Like I'm trying to do the right thing. And I want to have these luxuries in my life. Like they make me feel good. And it's it's a nice thing to have. And I started doing a lot more research into it. And now for example, I use one of the cream perfumes from George & Edi, which, I've ended up stocking at Reverie because I love them so much. And then they last for longer, the fragrance is stronger and they look just as beautiful. It's just about, I think it was just really about finding those brands which have luxury and sustainability as their values that have really beautiful packaging. The websites are really nice. The products are really beautiful. And it's almost like it's an afterthought that they're vegan. And that's something that I really wanted to do with Reverie. I wanted it to appeal to people who who are vegan and who do shop ethically and consciously because everything on that is cruelty free. Everything is from a small business. I think everything bar three things on the website at the moment is vegan. And I also wanted it to appeal to people who are luxury shoppers and who really love those beautiful things in their lives. But you know, it's all, it's vegan, it's cruelty free, and it kind of shows you that you can have both and that you don't have to choose.Krissie Leyland  15:14Yeah, definitely. I must admit, I do have a Chanel perfume on my shelf right now. Lucy Roberts  15:19I mean,  they're beautiful, I get it. They're really gorgeous. Krissie Leyland  15:23It's the end of the bottle, and I'm so glad we just had that short, like that bit of conversation. That means I can make the switch now. It's at the end, and then I'm done. Lucy Roberts  15:34Yeah, it's, you know, it's so it's so difficult. It's such, it's such a really difficult switch to make. Because it really does depend on you being willing to compromise on something that you really, really want. Like, I want a Chanel perfume desperately, I miss it. I love the fragrance. I love the smell. But I know too much about it now. And I know that I can get something else which is vegan and cruelty free. And that's completely fine with me. Like I'm happy to make that compromise because I know that I don't have to compromise on the luxury side of things. I know I can get a product, which is just as good. So let's see. Krissie Leyland  16:13Yeah, definitely. What is it about Chanel then, the perfume? What's the bad things about it?Lucy Roberts  16:20I mean I don't want to slag off Chanel.Krissie Leyland  16:23I mean, no.Lucy Roberts  16:27I think the I guess it's a common misconception between brands that say that they don't test on animals unless it's required by law. And those brands being cruelty free. So there's, there's tons of brands that all say, we do not test on animals unless it's specifically required by law. And obviously, in the UK and EU, it's not required by law to test on animals, it's actually illegal. But if you're selling your product in an overseas market, so for example, China, testing on animals is mandatory in order to sell in that market. So while they might not test on animals to sell within the UK, or within Europe, or any other parts of the world, if you want to sell in that market, which is obviously a lucrative, luxury market, so of course you do because it's going to be amazing for your sales, you have to pay to have your products tested on animals before you can sell in that market. So yeah, there's an amazing website actually called crueltyfreekitty.com. And it's the most incredible comprehensive directory of brands, which sell in China don't sell in China, all of their like animal testing policies. It's, it's a brilliant website, I recommend it to anybody who's looking to learn more about which brands are cruelty free.Krissie Leyland  17:37Wow. Okay, I'll be I'll be going on that, and I'll have a look. Nice. Thank you.Lucy Roberts  17:43Of course.Krissie Leyland  17:45So switching it up a little bit, but staying on the Reverie topic, what was the branding process, like, because I love your branding, and your Instagram feed.Lucy Roberts  17:55Thank you. Thank you so much. Um, to be honest, I'm really I'm really lucky because my, my fiance is a designer. And he helped me so much with the branding, with the fonts, with the colours, with the way that the website was going to look. And the he actually runs his own design studio called Field and Black. I think you've actually spoken to him before he was gonna help you out with something. Yeah and you know, having  a live in designer is like, super handy when you've got no budget to do anything. So yeah, I was I was really, really lucky that he helped me out so much. And he's been, he's been so supportive of everything to do with Reverie, because I have kind of a constant fear of not wanting to do something in case it goes wrong. And I think especially when when you work in e-commerce, there's almost an immediate expectation that if you launch your own business, then of course, it's going to go really well and your sales are going to be amazing, and everything is just going to sell out immediately. So it was quite daunting, like putting it out there like this idea that I'd had for so long. And I didn't know if I was ever really going to be ready to do it and to share it but my fiance was incredible about and so like, so when my mom and my sister, my dad and my best friend, Charlie, they were all just always encouraging me like "No, you do it, you should go for it." So yeah, they were they were an amazing part of kind of actually bringing Reverie to life because I definitely wouldn't have done it without their kind of encouragement and support for sure. Krissie Leyland  19:31Yeah, definitely. I think um, top tip everyoneLucy Roberts  19:39Get engaged to a designer.Krissie Leyland  19:43I mean, what can I say that's a bit perfect, isn't it?Lucy Roberts  19:48It's an unfair advantage.Krissie Leyland  19:53Okay, so similar to that topic. I'm wondering, you know, I know that when I got on your Instagram, I just feel really relaxed and mindful and at ease and positive. So is that part of your marketing strategy? Or is it just part of like, what you feel like putting out there in the world?Lucy Roberts  20:15I suppose, I suppose a little bit of both really. I've, I used to know an amazing woman who is actually a brit, she lives in Australia and she has a brand called Flora and Fauna. It's um, it's like a vegan superstore. It's absolutely amazing. I mean, if there's anybody who lives in Australia that wants to make a switch to a vegan lifestyle, Julie Mathers started Flora and Fauna to be just that, it's got everything. And I was really lucky to meet her a couple of times while I was living in Sydney. And she always used to tell me that she, she founded Flora and Fauna on kindness. And that is what she leads with for everything. Kindness to the environment, to the people that she works with, to animals, to everything across the board. And that really stuck with me. And I also have a wonderful friend called Beck who actually also has her own small business called Silky Studios does the most amazing silk scrunchies. Unfortunately, they're not vegan. So which is the only reason why I wouldn't stock them on reverie, but I use them, I have bought them. They are incredible. And she told me when I started Reverie, that if you become your own brand, then your brand will always feel honest and will always feel authentic. And that's probably one of the best bits of advice I've ever had about Reverie. And I want it to feel like me, I like to think that I'm a nice and positive and warm person and I want the brand to feel like that as well. So kind of a healthy amount of escapism in the Instagram feed like lots of really nice travel shots. But I just want it, I want people to feel how you feel like calm and mindful and, you know, like you're in this really nice destination where the outside negativity doesn't matter. It doesn't affect you, and you can just relax. That's really what I want Reverie to feel like. This whole idea about it being a daydream and a fanciful state of musing. I love that, I think it's just sometimes it's nice to just switch off a bit from everyday life. Krissie Leyland  22:18That's so nice. You just feel like content when you look at your Instagram feed, like "That is me, that is the brand"Lucy Roberts  22:27Yeah. And it could be you know, burning one of the really beautiful candles or it could just be having one of the pieces of jewellery on or, you know, the sleep masks or the bath salts, anything like that. Just almost finding that time in your day to just relax and that, that's the reverie for me. It's just those little, those little luxuries.Krissie Leyland  22:47I love it, whilst being kind to the planet.Lucy Roberts  22:50Exactly, without compromising on anything.Krissie Leyland  22:52Yeah. And also the Duchess of Cambridge.Lucy Roberts  22:59Oh my god, I love her. Honestly, anyone who knows me will know I have been to Kate Middleton fan since literally day one. I've had my hair blow dried like her, I dress like her. Krissie Leyland  23:13And then she just was wearing a necklace that looks, Is it the exact same one?Lucy Roberts  23:17It's not unfortunately, but my mum actually texted me the morning that she saw Kate wearing that necklace because my um, basically my mum has helped me so much with Reverie. She really keeps me in check. Because I just want to buy everything, stock everything and do everything at a million miles an hour. And mum's always like "No, I don't think that product is right" or "I don't think that's correct." And I'm like, No, Mum, this is gonna be really good. And she actually said that about the pearl choker. And she was like, I don't know if that's on brand for Reverie. It's a little bit modern. It's a bit too trendy. And I was like, No, I've got a really good feeling about this necklace. And she texted me the picture of Kate wearing and she's like, okay, you're right.Krissie Leyland  23:23That's amazing I saw it I was like, No, way, is that the same one?Lucy Roberts  23:44I wish it was honestly, if I could send a Reverie gift box, it would be the Duchess of Cambridge. Krissie Leyland  24:15Has anyone like... did you see an increase in sales because of the photoLucy Roberts  24:21Sadly not. I was really excited about it though.Krissie Leyland  24:25I can imagine you probably dancing around. I've got the giggles now.Lucy Roberts  24:33I know this. This always happens to us. Krissie Leyland  24:40Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm gonna try and stop laughing. So, yeah, so what does your marketing strategy look like? Taking in, like keep in mind that, you know, you've worked with all these big brands with bigger budgets and stuff like what have you taken from that? Lucy Roberts  24:55Yeah. Um, it's a really it's a really difficult question because the honest answer is that I am completely winging it. I am just seeing what, that's just me being completely honest, I'm just trying to see what works and trying to see what people respond to. So I've tried doing like a big gift away on Instagram, you know, you're kind of standard, like this post and share it and tag a friend and make sure you're following the page kind of thing. And that went really well, I feel like people responded really well to that. And it was also a nice way to introduce the products to somebody as well, which was great. Whoever won, you know, you send them this beautiful box, and it's a nice way to get the products out there a bit more. I do a lot of just emails, email marketing, and I like to make them quite conversational and kind of talk about why, why I really love the products and why I think they're really, really great. So or, or whatever, make a really great gift. And I've tried Facebook and Instagram ads. And that's actually something that I'm looking for a little bit of help with, so if anybody's listening to this, they know how to do Facebook and Instagram or Google Ads really well, please let me know.Krissie Leyland  26:06I actually do know a few people.Lucy Roberts  26:09I was gonna ask you about this. And I was hoping that you would know some people. So yeah, I haven't got the world's biggest budget. But if you, if there's anybody within like your community, or like the MindfulCommerce network, like super keen to talk to someone about helping me with that, because I think that that is quite a good strategy. And whenever I've randomly thrown some money on an Instagram ad, it seems to do quite well. But I know that it's not, marketing is not my forte like e-commerce is. E-commerce is my thing, really. So if there's anyone you can connect me with, who knows more about digital marketing, that would be amazing!Krissie Leyland  26:45I may have someone in mind who i'll tell you about after this. Right. So, okay, now I'm completely changing the subject. Lucy Roberts  26:58So that's okay. Let's jump around. We always do this, we do this all the time. So that's fine.Krissie Leyland  27:03I could go off on so many different tangents. Yes, so sustainability in e-commerce. Obviously, this is a big topic and it's probably a joint favourite topic between us. So what do you think are the biggest environmental challenges in e-commerce? Lucy Roberts  27:29That's such a big question Krissie. You know, that's a big question.Krissie Leyland  27:36I know.Lucy Roberts  27:37I don't even really know what to begin with this one, to be honest, because I think that, I think the first problem happened years and years and years ago, where fast fashion rose really quickly. And it was kind of this immediate demand that you wanted to have a rip off version of something that you've seen on the runway or on a celebrity, and I think brands, brands responded to that really, really quickly. And companies sprung up with that as their whole business model, which is, you see something on Saturday, on a celebrity in a magazine or on a runway at Fashion Week and by the Wednesday, you're selling it to like thousands of people. And at the time, I think everyone was ready, quite naive to what the impact of that actually was. And it was like, Oh, my God, amazing, you can get, you know, you can get a version of a Gucci bag or a YSL blazer, and it's a fraction of the cost, and you get it before the brand has even manufactured it. And it was, you know, I think I was probably even a bit of a sucker for it. At the time, I was probably about in my late teens, I suppose, early 20s, when this was really happening, and it was quite exciting, you know, being on a fashion course, at uni and thinking, Oh, my God, yeah, you've got the the Primark version of the whatever it was, an Alexander McQueen dress or whatever. And it was quite exciting. Whereas now I think we're really feeling the impact of that and the effect of it, which is, well, what is that done? I mean, it's completely exploited factories all over the world where, you know, you can't pay your workers a living wage, because they're working around the clock, and you have to manufacture this fabric in double time. And the quickest, cheapest, easiest way to do it is not sustainable. And, of course, the way in which these things are manufactured, it's done cheaply, so that you can sell it cheaply so that people don't have to wear it for that long, because it's not really going to be in style for that long. So the reality is that all of those products, more often than not just end up in landfill. And because the fabrics that they've been developed from aren't sustainable, they're obviously not natural fabrics. They're not biodegradable. They've got thousands of micro plastics in them, and it just goes straight back into the planet, into landfill. That kind of over consumerism almost about to the right term, it's constantly servicing that demand and then meeting the new demand rather than almost challenging the customer to shop with longevity and sustainability in mind. And it's just every single brand, it's a race to the bottom and a race to see who can ship their products, the fastest by air mail or by courier vans or whatever. And it's this constant need that's now now now now now, I want it tomorrow. And I want this, I want that. And brands are constantly on the back foot. Because they feel that the only way that they can meet that demand is just to figure out a way to do it.  Totally at their own costs, and definitely an environmental cost. Yes, probably the biggest problem that I see. Krissie Leyland  30:43Definitely, I totally agree. And I don't think that the brands will like that. They're probably quite stressed about it, you know? Lucy Roberts  30:51Yeah, exactly. Krissie Leyland  30:52They have to keep up with all the other brands and who's the fastestLucy Roberts  30:57Exactly, and who's who's doing next day shipping for free, like who's doing same day shipping, you know, in some postcodes, you can get it the same day, like, how stressful is that to have somebody constantly on your orders grid, refreshing in case something comes in, like, I can't imagine the amount of anxiety that someone must feel for that. Krissie Leyland  31:15It's horrifying. It stresses me out thinking about it.Lucy Roberts  31:19No same thing here. And it's just, it's this constant demand for now, and immediately and cheaper. And there's no, there aren't really any brands pushing back on that. I think other than, you know, your really big ones, like Stella McCartney that really incorporate that whole messaging in their brand. And I guess the people who follow her brand are really invested in those values as well. So they're happy to shop with a brand that matches those values. Whereas your run of the mill average customer who doesn't really care too much about sustainability and doesn't really care too much about the fabric content of their jumper or top or dress or whatever. They're not going to ask the questions. They're just going to think, well, I'll just shop with the brand thats the cheapest I can get it to me the quickest.Krissie Leyland  32:02Yeah, I mean, I do think that there's obviously the rise of conscious consumerism, and people are waking up to, you know, these green washing brands. And it's, it's hopefully changing, hopefully, and in five years time, we'll be moving towards a more sustainable world. Lucy Roberts  32:24I hope so. I really hope so. I think it's just, it just takes a couple of the, I suppose the market leaders of your high street stores, of bigger fashion brands, just to start educating their customers on where the products come from, where they're manufactured, why the price is what the price is, and really start making it part of their brand identity as opposed to just being these faceless, brandless fast fashion brands. Krissie Leyland  32:55Yeah, I agree. I do think that small brands like Reverie, do have power and I do think, you know, if we, if we get together and do it together, fight combat, you know, and just boycott them all.Lucy Roberts  33:13I hope so. I hope so. And it's kind of it's it's something that's so beautiful about small businesses, because they're these tiny little ideas that have become online businesses that specialise in these beautiful products. And that's really all I ever wanted for Reverie, I wanted it to be more than just an online shop, I wanted it to be a destination where you can go and you can browse. And you can see really beautiful content, and you can shop and you can send gifts. I wanted it to be very inclusive and very, I suppose very socially and environmentally. And it's if more brands, if more brands do that. I mean, it's definitely the way that things are moving. I mean, with all of the David Attenborough documentaries that people are seeing now. I mean, hopefully people are actually listening to what he's saying, rather than just thinking, Oh, yeah, David, David Attenborough is really cool, he's really awesome. It's like, yes, so do what he's telling you to do now. I really hope that that's going to be the way that it's moving. Krissie Leyland  34:10Yeah. And if you you know, you watch you watch David Attenborough programmes, and you're really inspired and, and then, yeah, if you don't do anything, then what's the point? Anyway... Lucy Roberts  34:23Another rabbit hole, we could go downKrissie Leyland  34:26So many, oh, gosh, find myself in them all day. On a personal note, then, um, what's your vision for the future? Where do you see yourself in five years? Oh, sounds like an interview question.Lucy Roberts  34:40It does sound like an interview question, one which I wasn't actually prepared for. I mean, there's so much more that I want to do with Brave The Skies. You know, the agency is it's changing really quickly. we're evolving really quickly. There's new brands who want to work with us, which is awesome. I've just actually hired an incredible general manager who I'm so excited to start working with. And I think that she's going to be a real breath of fresh air. And so I definitely see Brave The Skies as a big part of my future, regardless of what happens with Reverie. But I want to spend more time building Reverie, I feel like I've got so many ideas for what I want to do with that, I would love to introduce clothing at some point as well and really make it more of a lifestyle boutique, or sustainable, you know, beautiful vegan fabrics and your bamboo silk, which is what the eye masks are made from. And linen and organic cotton, I would love to, I'd really love to expand the product range into my own stock rather than just essentially other people's products and ideas. So I would love to do that. And I think with Brave The Skies, I'd love to I would love to focus more on working with brands on their marketing strategies, and what they're going to do with that new collections and new products and possibly even be part of that process would be amazing. Krissie Leyland  36:07Wow, good. Nice. Lucy Roberts  36:09Yeah, a lot. Quite a lot of thingsKrissie Leyland  36:13I love the vision, though. It's good. It's all good. Brave The Skies are very lucky to have you. And also it's very nice to hear that the, did you say Managing Director, not your Managing Director, but your new person is going to be a woman? Lucy Roberts  36:34Yes. Oh, my God, I'm so excited about that. Yeah, I'm super excited. There's, there's not enough of us. There aren't enough of us in management positions or leadership positions, you know, industry, industry wide, but specifically in a e-comm and tech. I think we're very underrepresented gender in that sector. And I think, you know, it's, it's so nice, I speak to so many of our clients who have, who have actually said that one of the reasons that they like working with our agency is because we're female lead. And there aren't really any other plus agencies, there might be one or two in London, who have women at the top as managing directors or COOs. And I think naturally, as women, we're a lot more empathetic. And you think a lot more about the bigger picture and the end customer and you know yourself how you feel when you open a beautiful new delivery and whether or not that's a new dress, or a pair of earrings, for example, you know, the feeling that you want that customer to have. And if you, if you know that feeling, and if you know how to create that feeling through technology, through packaging, through branding, it means that the client has the most amazing experience with you, because you understand this to be their customer, and you understand how their customer wants to engage with their brand. And you know how to advise them how to make that brand feel like that comes really naturally to me because I am a customer. I'm an avid customer of so many of the brands that we work with. And it means that I can get a shipping email or an order confirmation email and say, not really too sure on the tone of voice here. Like it doesn't really make me feel particularly engaged. It feels a little bit business-y, a bit cold. How can we change that? So yeah, it's yeah, again, I feel like it's an unfair advantage, being a woman.Krissie Leyland  38:31I think it's great. I think it's great. And, um, congratulations, by the way on being nominated for amazing women in e-commerceLucy Roberts  38:42Thank you so much!Krissie Leyland  38:45I honestly was thinking about nominating you because I saw it I was like - who... ah I know! How does it feel to be nominated? Lucy Roberts  38:55Oh my god. Honestly, I was so excited. I was so so excited and so touched that somebody or some people, you know, thought that and it was yeah, it's an amazing, I suppose recognition to have your name out there as someone thinks that of you. And I posted it on my LinkedIn profile. And I just got the most amazing comments from, you know, people who I haven't spoken to for years. And it was just oh, I honest, I felt quite emotional, to be honest. Oh, I know. It's only you know, there are hundreds of thousands of women who are in e-commerce who are absolutely incredible. And I have no expectations that I'm going to even come close to winning. But it's just, it's nice on a personal level to feel I suppose, recognised and supported. Yeah, it was. Yeah. quite emotional. I think is the word. Krissie Leyland  39:47Yeah. I mean, it's great. Its Yotpo isn't it?Lucy Roberts  39:51Yeah, it is and they're donating I think $5 for every nomination to a girl's charity which which is just incredible. I think supporting, supporting young girls with education and progression. It's just it's such a hugely important part of like, the global economy and like what girls can do and what women can do when they're educated and empowered is just, there's no limits. So it's it's definitely an amazing thing to be part of, even if it is just for the, you know, for the support of the charity.Krissie Leyland  40:23So exciting. So exciting. So, yes, I think I need to wrap this up. Lucy Roberts  40:30We could chat for another solid few hours. Probably. Krissie Leyland  40:35I mean, we need to meet in real life one day.Lucy Roberts  40:37We do! Well COVID has kept us apart hasn't it like we've been chatting for months now. And it's always been video calls and and Facebook Messaging. Krissie Leyland  40:46Yeah. I'm normally me with another idea. Lucy Roberts  40:51Or me being like, Krissie, what do you think I should do about this? Krissie Leyland  40:56I love it. So if you could give your say, I don't know, one or two tips to an aspiring brand, a sustainable one, What would that be? Lucy Roberts  41:10Oh, and I think, I think I would actually have to repeat Beck's advice to me, which is just to be your brands, be honest, be authentic, and it will be the easiest thing in the world. just build a brand around you and what you think is right, and your passions, and I don't think you can go wrong. Krissie Leyland  41:31Perfect. And did you kind of like write a list? Or, you know, at the beginning, where you're like, what is my Why? What is, Who am I? Lucy Roberts  41:42So, so that is something that Joel, my fiance was trying to get me to do for years. And I really put off doing it. Because I was like, these questions are so intimidating. I don't know the answers to these questions. I really don't want to do it. And he sat down with me and did it. And he was like, I know the answer to all of these questions because it's just you. So yeah, he was, he definitely guided me through the whole process, I wouldn't have done it on my own. I was ready to just wing the whole thing. What happened? And he was like, No, you can do this, answer this question. You know, write this down. See, I can't I genuinely can't take any credit for every, it's all been my mom and Joel and my sister and  my dad and my best friend. They're the real brains behind the operation. Krissie Leyland  42:33I should have interviewed them on the podcast.Lucy Roberts  42:37Next time, I'll bring them all you'll get much more from them. Krissie Leyland  42:43Because that's like my favourite thing ever to just, I'm probably very different to you then. Because I like sitting down and just like brainstorming and being like, Who am I? What's my vision, what's my why I can get grounded. And then I'm ready.Lucy Roberts  42:57That's such an amazing quality, though, like you're so good at that you've got because you've got so many ideas. And you're really good at getting them all out and putting a structure to them and writing it down and mapping it out. And I think I naturally find it quite intimidating. And I feel like things are very safe inside my head. And like I kind of know what it is I know what it looks like, if I close my eyes, I can really visualise it. And the second I put it down on paper, it becomes very, you know, it feels like it becomes very real and quite scary. And I feel quite intimidated by that sometimes, which is something that I need to work on. Krissie Leyland  43:33Very interesting. And so you're probably if you're visual, then maybe it'll be mood boards. And like you said, Pinterest boards and stuff like that. Lucy Roberts  43:42Exactly. I've got thousands of Pinterest boards, and my Instagram saved items is quite out of control.Krissie Leyland  43:49Wow.Lucy Roberts  43:50But I feel like I get so much more from an image and I can look at an image and be like Yep. Okay, so that's how I feel. And that's how I want it to look. And that's how I want people to think when they look at it, whereas writing it down is I don't know, it makes it very black and white and it doesn't feel as I suppose warm and cozy to me. It's like a big image mood board does. Krissie Leyland  44:10Yeah. Or like your Instagram feed. Lucy Roberts  44:12Exactly. Yeah. And it's nice to you know, when you're looking at different images, we looking at the colors and like the tones in them and the way that they make you feel like that makes me feel very comfortable. I wish I could do mind maps better. And Rachel Jacobs, who we both work with. She is amazing at mind maps, and she did this major one for me in our catch up last week and I was like, oh god, this is so good but also so intimidating. Where do I begin with this? Krissie Leyland  44:42Yeah, that's so interesting. It is funny, isn't it? How everyone's got different ways of just mapping things out. I mean, I like oh my god. My reason I think the reason why I do start so many different random businesses. I just really like the Ideas phase and then like the branding, so like colours and then like the fonts and yeah, like and then and then it happens it is like it comes to life. Lucy Roberts  45:10Exactly. But you're so good because you do all of the planning, you do everything. You've got all of the information, the whole structure and plan is down before you do anything. It's so good. Krissie Leyland  45:20Yeah, but then I'm like, oh, okay, now I've got it. What do I do now? Lucy Roberts  45:24Now what? That's fine. We work well together. We bounce off each other really well.Krissie Leyland  45:30Yeah. Oh, well, I'll let you go and have your lunch. Lucy Roberts  45:3It was so great to talk to you. Krissie. Thank you so much for inviting me to do this. Krissie Leyland  45:40Thank you. And best of luck with everything I know you're going to be great. Lucy Roberts  45:45Too Kind. Thank you so much, and we'll catch up soon. Krissie Leyland  45:49Yes. Perfect. Lucy Roberts  45:51Thanks so much Krissie. Krissie Leyland  45:53This series is sponsored by Kollectify. Kollectify is a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. Episodes go out every Monday, so don't forget to subscribe or you might miss a few knowledge bombs. And finally, if you'd like to join the MindfulCommerce community with lots of conscious brands and ecommerce experts, who are all working together to make change, please email info@mindfulcommerce.io and I'll send you the deets Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Gerry McGovern:Gerry McGovern's websiteGerry McGovern's Books - Including World Wide WasteContact Gerry - gerry@gerrymcgovern.comSponsor:This podcast is sponsored by Kollectify, a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency Show notes:Krissie  0:00  Hello, and welcome to episode three of the Mindful Commerce podcast. I'm Krissie, and I'm your host for this episode. In this episode, I talk to a very inspiring man who knows all about sustainability on the web and his name is Gerry McGovern. Gerry has written a book called Worldwide Waste, which is all about how digital is killing our planet, and what we can do about it. In this episode, we talk about how the digital world is killing our planet and what Gerry thinks e-commerce brands and tech companies can do to combat the problem. Amongst many other topics, we discussed the ideal synergy of going back to localisation and community with a dash of innovative technology and less data collection. I hope you enjoy this episode. It's really fascinating. If you have any thoughts or comments, please feel free to email us at info@mindfulcommerce.io and all the details will be in the show notes. Enjoy. Hi, Gerry, welcome to the MindfulCommerce podcast. Thank you for joining us today. Would you like to kick things off by just telling us your story and how you ended up where you are today?Gerry McGovern  1:22  Okay, Krissie, and Thanks for the invite to be here. I used to many years ago, I was a freelance journalist back in there in the 90s, in the early 90s, and doing all sorts of different work for music and some, a little bit technology as well. And I came across the internet very early, maybe about '93 or so '94, sometime around then. And I thought wow, this is gonna, it's gonna change the world. And basically, from then on one way or another, either true, you know, for a while, I got commissioned to do a report for the Irish government around '94, about the future of the internet and society. And so that kept me busy for a while and then started some companies and you know, some of those companies went bust and had the whole, had the whole dot com bust experience. And then, you know, started writing books, this is my last book, worldwide waste is my eight. And traveling and doing workshops and working with clients and developed a methodology called top task, which is a kind of a prioritization system for, you know, really focusing on what matters, and that's been my main kind of work for the last 10 or 15 years is helping organisations implement top tasks projects.Krissie  2:56  Okay, interesting, then, so when was it that you kind of realised that digital is not so great for our planet? So, obviously, if used in the right way, it's, it's great, but yeah, tell me a little bit about that.Gerry McGovern  3:12  Yeah, really, only maybe two or three years ago, you know, because I always changed my computer every two years, changed my phone every two years. And, you know, I really had the impression that, that I was lucky to be working a digital like, I was, you know, watching, you know, the movements out there, and, you know, Greta Thunberg, and all those other wonderful young people, you know, really being passionate and idealistic and trying to make changes, and I kinda, I thought that's, that's nice to see. And, you know, isn't it great that, you know, where I'm, what I'm doing is, is helping them and, you know, but I taught in the back of my head, then I realised I was taking back over my careers since the 90s. And just, it kind of struck me that so many times in so many organisations, what we needed to do, specifically, say I did a lot of work for Internet's for a number of years. And that internets were just dumps and that to make them work, we nearly always had to delete 80 or 90% of the data and then systems, going into organisations and finding five or six or seven systems for training and, you know, all these duplications of systems that just got the sense of "Wow this is an incredible amount of waste in here", and nearly all the projects I've worked on where, you know, huge dumps that either the public websites, I remember, you know dealing with the US Department of Health and in one area there 200,000 pages, and they deleted 150,000 of them and nobody noticed. They didn't get a single inquiry. And I kept just seeing that. So that kinda was in the back of my head. And I thought, wow, you know, maybe digital listeners, as green as I, you know, Todd was and then when I started doing research and looking at e-waste, you know, recognising e-waste in particular, because, you know, I, I never really saw where these old computers went or cables or stuff like that. So it was really digging into the dark e-waste story that, you know, began to open up some talks that maybe digital is, is not nearly as green as I had been thinking as was over most of my career.Krissie  6:01  Yeah, so e-waste in terms of like, you know, your laptops, your phones. And then like, do you know where they end up? Do they end up in landfill as well? Gerry McGovern  6:12  They do most of them. See, what we have, you know, us in the rich countries, we've created a really nice system where our air is clean, and, you know, our environments are very clean. But we've essentially outsourced waste. So we go to poor countries, and we get them to manufacture the products very, very cheaply. And whatever waste is accrued there. And, you know, in the manufacturing process, or getting the raw materials, it's rarely, like a lot of these raw materials are for, they're called rare, rare materials, because they are rare. And they're difficult to find. And often they're found in virgin habitats, or, you know, in Western Africa, where the great apes, you know, there's certain type of rare, rare that's only found there. And, you know, in unusual places, that humans had not really been in insignificant numbers. So that's how we, you know, we suck all those raw materials out of certain countries then we give those materials to people in other more poor developing countries. And then we get our nice shiny products. And then two years later, we dumped them. But what happens is, they often get back to the very set back to the very same countries that the raw materials were dug up in. So we recycle less than 20%. And even recycling is incredibly crude, like a lot of like, somebody was telling me that in data centres, they just shred, they shred the servers that are working perfectly well, you know, every three or four years, they just shred them for either security or privacy, or they're worried that data might be accessed on them. So there's these perfectly working servers, because they've got this commitment to uptime, you know, they, they have to meet 99.9% uptime. So they don't want to take that statistical chance that the server will break. So even recycling is most recycling does not actually recycle in any real sense. And then the other 80% are put on big containers and, and are sent back to poor countries where they often end up in landfills, and they end up being burned, you know, with toxic fumes, so as to get out some gold or wood. So they're in open pits. So this, we never see these pictures when we see the Apple iPhone or the or the Samsung, we see the most beautiful things. But behind the scenes is a very ugly, very ugly world that we've created. But our world looks great, you know, because we outsource. We outsource all the nasty stuff to places that consumers won't see.Krissie  9:18  That's crazy. That's really crazy. So would you say, so someone like me? Oh, what can I do? Can I just you know, don't upgrade my phone every year or two?Gerry McGovern  9:32  Yeah, that's the single biggest thing. Like somebody did a study recently at a UK entity and they said that "If you kept your phone for five years versus two years, you essentially have the water issue in making devices" so they're making less phones, right. So you, you cut in half the amount of water required and the amount of co2. So keeping it between two and five years, has a huge makes a huge difference. Because, see, the problem with electronics is that electronics are very manufacturing intensive. So, the piece of electronics requires much more energy to create than a screwdriver or a knife, you know, or, you know, some other physical object. So there's a much higher intensity of energy. And as with energy is waste and often material. So these rare earth materials to get one tonne of Iridium or whatever it is, I can't remember they did, there's about 16 or 17 rare materials, well, you probably need to do 100 tonnes of mining. And often that mining is a kind of a pollutant, they add a kind of chemicals to actually filter out these materials. So, so the the very act of mining is very toxic in the environments that it actually happens in. And it creates these huge large kind of lakes because they use a lot of water and chemicals, that kind of have got to be dammed up in in the area. So, if we hold on to, and I think I think what we need to do, as well as somehow is to agitate for repairability and fixability, because many of these phones are deliberately designed to break. Krissie  11:43  YesGerry McGovern  11:44  So they deliberately designed them so the designers sit around, deliberately specking out how do we make this not work after 2, 3, 4 years? And often it's with software updates, you know, so there's a deliberate strategy to actually break our phones. So that sort of, we have to buy more stuff. So, you know, there's the right to repair. There's movements beginning in the European Union are looking at, so holding on and if your phone breaks, trying to get it fixed, and going into it, why can't it be fit? Because they know if enough of us are getting in touch with the local politicians are saying this, I should be able to fix this? So fixing it when it breaks, like, so I've committed now, you know, there's my computer I've got, I'm gonna stick with it. And if and when it breaks, I'm going to try and fix it like, and I'm going to go and say, Well, how do you replace to hard disk? I want to replace to hard disk. You know? And how do I replace the screen? And why can't you replace this? You know, because if enough of us started saying that, basically we accept this world that we've been given. So hold on to it as long as you possibly can, and demand the right to repair and repair it and get it, you know, repaired and ask about those issues when you're buying. I never asked, I never considered warranty or stuff like that, or issues or you know, and get a five year often longer warranties, you know, are better. You know because they make a commitment to the organisation that they will repair it, you know, for X number of years. So, so holding on and thinking about repairability it's stuff that you know, I've already started thinking of in the last two or three years like I can't, I don't know, it's just invisible to us in so many ways. Krissie  13:55  Yeah and then I think if they can't repair it, they can't fix it. Well, then can they recycle it? And then are they actually recycling it properly?Gerry McGovern  14:05  exactly, exactly ask questions, ask. Because if thousands of us, like, somebody told me this story about a lady, I don't know if it's in Ireland or the UK or whatever. And every week she goes to the local supermarket to do her shopping. Then she buys her shopping and then she just goes beyond the tail and she takes everything out of the plastic that you know, she tries to avoid plastic if she can, but anything that has plastic, she unwraps and puts it into a bag she has carried with her and then she she just gives the plastic. Here you go. I don't want it. You know? And if only we could scale that woman. You know by a 10,000 or a million. Then we'd see change. Yeah, I think we have got to have change. at a national level, there's not this idea of blaming the consumer. Yeah, that's what the plastics industry did for 50. That was great PR, you know, we got this better recycling. We know that 90%, well, a huge percentage of plastic is not recycled. You know, that's stuff I learned. Most plastic is not recycled. It's does all we think we're doing good in the green bin, but actually, most of the time we're not. And even being aware of that, you know, that, really demanding that if you make it, you take care of it, you know. And that making the manufacturers responsible, I think, until we make the manufacturers responsible, we will never solve this problem. But I think it's up to the consumers to make the manufacturers responsible, because unfortunately, politicians, yeah, many good many bad, but are often more controlled by the hidden powers behind the scenes than we would want them to be and will nearly always defend those powers over ordinary citizen, and certainly over planet rights.Krissie  16:18  Yeah, definitely. I think if so, because it is to do with consumerism and overconsumption and, you know, mostly, it's the big businesses that need to change. But what do you think the small to medium size like I don't know, any e-commerce brand doesn't matter if they're, they've got sustainability at their core or not, but what can they do to make a difference?Gerry McGovern  16:43  Well, I think what you just said they're genuine sustainability at your core, because I was reading an article there at the weekend about luxury brands and luxury thinking now. And I don't know if that's true or not, but the writer was saying that there's a real shift in what is luxury? You know, that, that it's a movement away from, you know, this, whatever that Kardashian logo, you know, that visual bling, or whatever, or variants of that gold, to days, how it's made, how much water it use, you know, that there's a shift in thinking about what is luxury, and, and what is quality and what is things I want to buy? So, I think, if we are genuinely sustainable and sustainable at the core, I don't know how much of a business that's, that's out there. But certainly, I think there's a feeling or a mode to buy local, you know, because the closer you are from the thing you consume, the less waste. So if you've got onions out in your garden, there's less waste in consuming those onions than if you buy the onions in the supermarket. So distance, so there's ideas, you know, around, you know, being local, and being nearby and, you know, calculate, and people genuinely, because a lot of times you look at it, here's a T shirt that costs, you know, 40 euros, but here's why it costs 40 euros, and we give three euros to the person who made it. Whereas she typically only gets 50 cents, you know, and there's some very good e-commerce entities, I think ask it is one of the console, where they're calculating the entire lifecycle of the product. And they're saying, and we make 10 euros on that, you know, and that's okay. Yeah, be honest and transparent and tell their story. And, you know, and yes, it costs a bit more, but here's why it costs a bit more. And actually, this will last you 5 years or 10 years, and you know that and I think I've been thinking as well like my old jeans and things like that, and then committed to where and I think, wouldn't it be great if we had a whole network of designers, you know, local design within an area, and that you say, Hey, here's, these jeans, they're beginning to shred now in places I don't want them to shred and to do something and, you know, be willing to pay the price of a new pair of jeans for the design of that pair. I would be. I don't know how many other, you know, and so they've used 70% of the materials of the jeans that I gave them, but they added 30% new material, and they put a nice design, you know, and then you're going around, and then you're genuinely unique. You've got a custom pair of jeans. But um, you paid 30 euros or 40 euros, or whatever you paid for it. And that is going to be good for the planet. And it's good for local business, and it's good. So I'm quite hopeful in many ways of, you know, genuine sustainable business is not, there's so much unfortunately, in marketing that has been a con you know, over the years, but genuine stories of genuine people, like I see, you know, I cracked my wedding ring, there a couple of months gone. I got it fixed in, in this, you know, workshop that just specialises in this sort of stuff. And it was just, it was just lovely to, obviously, the mask on and everything on the screen. But I could see the people working behind. And I could see that it was just lovely to see these people who you could just know that have 30 or 40 years of experience and, and you know, all at all cost me I think was 30 euros. I was I was thinking to myself, why would I get from a writer or a developer or a programmer for 30 euros? Like, here, I got the ring back and it closed. It is like new, polished. And there's no way you could see the crack, the old crack. This was just, just beautiful work. And it cost me 30 euros. So it's not that expensive to give craftspeople work, and you get beautiful stuff back. You know, so I think there's models and this is how the web can be used that to connect up with Google and then to connect up with Coca Cola, or, whoever wants to manipulate the next election that we we can connect up with, you know, John, the goldsmith, you know, or Susan, who's a great at designing, you know, clothes and, you know, she just lives 20 miles away, or that you can somehow get it to people it who are more distant, but it's sent by a really economical energy conserving transport mechanism, and they'll do it. And I think there are ways and means that whether it's genuine sustainability, whether it's making cheese, or, you know, like, I think there's a mode for that.Krissie  22:53  So basically, going back to the old times where there was no online shops, there was no, you know, it's all local and lovely, and community of makers and craft, crafty, men. Gerry McGovern  23:07  Yeah, but with technology, like with, like that, that you get a notification that says, oh, your friend Marius is in the coffee shop now, you know, I mean, obviously, all of this has to be careful in privacy and but with the, because often we don't know what's local, that's the funny thing. You know, we don't know what's near us, in many ways where we're more aware of what's 10,000 miles away, you know. We don't know that there's a craft cheese maker down the road, most of us don't. So the technology can connect that, can be a connective local tissue. So it's not, I don't want, I grew up on a small farm, you know, where we didn't even have machinery, I don't want to go back to that work. As nice as some people might think it was, I thought was absolutely horrible. Like, I like having a phone. I love checking up stuff. You know, online, I like connecting up with interesting people. And so I don't, I want the benefits of both. And I think we can, we can have both. So I'm not, I'm not anti technology. I'm just anti waste. And a kind of us being owned by Facebook and Google and Amazon and just making another trillion for Jeff Bezos. I have no interest in that.Krissie  24:32  Absolutely not. I think there needs to be a really nice happy medium. But I think, so the biggest thing of technology is data. And big data is a solution to many problems, but only used in the right way. And I just think, I'd like to ask you if you think there's a happy medium between the amount of data that we need and the data that we don't need, so for example, Facebook, Google, like, what do you think is the happy medium there?Gerry McGovern  25:09  I think most data is not useful and is not used. And there's a very crude way that we work in that we try and collect everything with the expectation that we are, at least we have it, and we might find a use for it later. So I think we need a much more mindful understanding of what we need to collect and what we need to use, like, i've had an email newsletter since 1996, just a simple 500 words every week. And then, you know, over the years or recently I was trying to say, How do I get it? Because I don't want or I don't care who opened it or didn't open it? It's no, I don't want to track people. Like I don't I don't want to do any of that. It's almost impossible to find a company that doesn't track that you know, tracking is just inherent what you mean, you don't want tracking? You have to have it. Like No, I don't want it does, it has no benefit to me. It is zero benefit and have zero interest in it and in tracking. So I don't want it, no, but you have to have, like we collect, whether people want it or not. Whether it's used or not. It's collected. And, you know, for years as well, like I just wanted a text newsletter. And the systems I choose, I set it up as text, and then six months later it be HTML will become an asset. How is this happening? Like, it's like, the system is demanding that you go to that ultimate level, like we've designed systems and structures that they always seek to max out either on features or collection of data. And I think, really thinking do we need this because when my core has been this the research, the top tasks. And then with the top task list, there's a number of segmentation questions. And, you know, really trying to get, I always say no more than 5 to 8 maximum or whatever. But often keeping people within the maximum is a real challenge in many situations. And then even with that, often, they don't even look at the detailed data Even then, to 5 to 8, the look at it once, they'll take the top level data and maybe use it but you know, we don't, it's like we're buying tomatoes, and we buy, you know, 10 kilos of potatoes every week. And we only use one kilo or a half a kilo. And nine and a half kilos is just get stored in the cloud. And,  it's nine and a half kilos or gigabytes every week. And we only use half a kilo. Why don't we collect the half a kilo that we use? Then, you know, the impact on the data centres on our servers on our computers on our processing. All these stats that say 90% of data is never used three months after it's created. If we could, if we could only deal with 50% of that. Think of how many less computers, less meetings, the amount of meetings I've sat in over the years of teams on a Monday morning or whatever, talking about the The Google Analytics and trying to seem intelligent about bounce rates and time on pages. Most analytics is bullshit. It's analytics theatre. It's, it has no meaning. And people go and they do things that oh, we should. Oh, that page was really looked at a lot. Yeah, well, yeah. What are you gonna do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, we're really popular now. Yeah, you're the WHO, It's a pandemic.Krissie  29:14  Yeah!Gerry McGovern  29:16  You know, most of these metrics can mean, horrible are good. You know, lots of people visiting the page. Yeah, maybe your product is crummy. Like, your pricing is confusing. Like so, so much of this stuff. And when I talk to people, they really don't know what they're doing. I think there's an awful lot of people and an awful lot of companies that actually don't know what they're doing.Krissie  29:45  Yeah, especially with data.Gerry McGovern  29:47  They're about a month ago, we were looking at the blackberries out on the, you know, the roadsides or the hedges and, and I was thinking now if this was a big data problem, Look, what would what would Big Data people do? They'd hire a huge digger, and a trailer. And they'd go out and they take off all the hedges, you know, for a five or 10 mile radius. And then they'd bring them back to a huge yard, and they dumped them in that yard. And then they'd start looking for the berries. Yeah, that's the way we approach big data, we collect, you know, all of this stuff. And most of it is, is absolute crap. It's totally, it's totally never, it would never be used. Because when you look at it, at a level of data, you get down to a certain level, there is data, that is totally, absolutely without question, useless. You know, it's like you saved, for some reason the system is outputting Excel files, and CSV files, you know, there's these sorts of it, and you only need Excel files or you only need CSV files. Yeah. Or there's a duplication happening here, or there's a, you know, there's this happening, or there's, like, there's things happening in data, that anybody any sort of analysis would look at it, we don't need that that's a, that's not used, there's no way we'll ever use that. You know, I don't care whether we bring in 50 Einsteins, that's just not usable. And that can be 20, 30, 40, 50% of the data being being collected, and not alone is it not useful if you're training the AI on crap. Krissie  31:35  Yeah for sure. And then their technology isn't right, then, if they're learning.Gerry McGovern  31:42  It's getting these strange biases, or these strange, you know, behavior patterns. Because, you know, if AI was a human, you know, we bring it into McDonald's every day and force it to eat everything, you know, 15 Big Macs, and eat and then go to the West Bend and eat that as well. You know, that's, that's the way we're training our AI. Our AI is will be strange beasts.Krissie  32:09  Oh weird, what a strange thought. So in your opinion, then. So say if you're building an app, what are the most important considerations that they should think about? For example, like, I don't know, a customer review app, which integrates on Shopify stores. Like how can they decide which data they collect, and which they don't?Gerry McGovern  32:40  Yeah, so number one, do you even need the app? Or do you know like, I downloaded the government app for COVID-19? I don't know if it works any more, you know, or is it really useful? Or, you know, is it practical? You know, we don't ask those hard questions like, Oh, you know, this really requires Bluetooth, to work effectively. Like, is that, you know, is Bluetooth stable? Will it really collect? You know, so really asking, is this one, you know, kind of, can we collect this properly and efficiently and  really digging into, you know, we're coming out at the cult of move fast and break things and we've seen, they've broken a lot, you know, Facebook, et al, they've, they've really managed to break America kinda to break the USA. They've move fast, and they broke the USA, in,  their cult of speed and stuff like that, and a little bit of thoughtfulness and about, what are we trying to achieve? And can we achieve it through the website? Why do we need an app? You know, why can it not be, can it not work, true to you, what does it actually need to really do? And then, you know, even if we're unsure of our data, well say, well, well, let's collect for six months or three months, or, like, why do we need to track like, and what can we achieve by not tracking? Like, what if we say to, you know, what's the cost of tracking? You know, what can we say, to, you know, the customer, like, we don't track you. What's that world? You know, what sidewalk as a branding statement, you know, no tracking here. You know, we we'll chat with you, but we don't track you. We don't collect information on you, you know, other than if you buy something from us, but here's exactly what we collect. And otherwise, you know, we don't and how much faster will our page with things be if we don't track and you know, and If we don't do this not enough people ask, what's the benefits of not doing this?Krissie  35:05  Exactly! And also, I was going to ask you, if I was trying to persuade a tech company, like don't store this data, because it damages the planet, because dot dot dot? What would those... how would you fill in those dots?Gerry McGovern  35:21  Well, speed will be well, privacy and, you know, definitely, you know, and I think there's a big moment. I think there's a building tsunami of privacy coming of people, you know, wanting to be protected and wanting to be more anonymous, and, you know, much more skeptical about people collecting their data, I really get a sense that a movement gathering momentum, so I think the organisations that are positioned in the future, that actually are the least intrusive, you know, in people's lives will, you know, have a real positioning statement of, you know, sustainability will probably be a key element of that will be, you know, minimum collection of data, because the less data, the less waste. You know, there's every piece of data requires energy to create and to store. Yeah. So, you know, and of course, the less data created, or the less tracking, the faster, the better the experience on the page downloading. I see. Yeah. New York Times have announced they're, they're stopping cookies, you know, they're, moving. And see, most of this doesn't even work. You know, I've seen in studies that you get just as good an advertising return from contextual advertising than from all this. But most of it is, most of it is trickery. And it's, it's, it doesn't actually work. Like it actually, it's just phantasmagoria stuff. It's magic. You know, Google said years ago, they got rid of the magic in advertising. No, they didn't, they just, they brought back the magic micro targeting God, called Google. Most of the times, it doesn't actually work, putting an ad for sports shoes, or whatever, in the sport section is just as effective as trying to target me, you know, and understand that now I need sports shoes, like so. So no, this stuff actually doesn't work. So find out what actually works. And, you know, at least if you're going to destroy the planet, have a purpose to destroy. You know, if you if you're going to create waste and use energy, at least use it for a purpose, but to create waste just to fill a dump. Yeah. You know, so purposeful. And knowing that, you know, there is a there is an argument to go out there to consumers and say, well, we are, you know, we're in the lowest tier of tracking, we collect the minimal amount of information on you. Certainly, that's the type of company I'd be interested in doing business with.Krissie  38:24  Yeah, for sure. I think at the moment, the struggle is that, you know, personalisation in e commerce is a really big trend. And it has been for a while. And so you know, you get personalised emails, where the recommended products based on what you've previously purchased. And so if your company is based on that, and like, that's what your USP is, we're a personalisation app.Gerry McGovern  38:51  Yeah, and if it's working, it's what, you know, but a lot of these are not working, you know, they're actually not work. I saw studies that you know, something 80 90% of these personalisation projects did not show return on investment. A lot of this stuff is magic. You know, it's, it's snake oil sales, it's actually not as effective as it's been made out to be. You know, so is it actually working? You know? Like, is it actually all these personal emails? You know, or is it just annoying the hell out to your customers? You know, for every for every one that you convert, have you have you pissed off 20 more?Krissie  39:36  Yeah. Because I think, you know, yeah, like you said, you're gonna piss people off, and if they're more switched on to it now, it's like, oh, that's just a personalised ad.Gerry McGovern  39:49  I don't know about you, Krissie. But every time I get an email from anybody, you know, and like that, the first thing I got is straight unsubscribe. I said I didn't give them permission, you know, everybody  seems to think they can bombard you? You know, and and I go straight unsubscribe or, you know, they're going into junk or whatever. So I think then, because everyone is doing, everyone's trying to be personal with you, and, you know, think of how creepy that is.Krissie Leyland  40:29Yeah, yeah. So I guess, then the three things that you would recommend is to think, is this actually going to be, Is this going to work? Do I need this data? And if not, then don't store it. Gerry McGovern  40:49Yeah, don't. And maybe there's an angle, you know, that you could test even if you've got numerous companies, or you're an open start and you say, you know, you come out, you're young, you're a start, and you say, we're not creepy. We don't personalise, we don't collect. Well, you won't be getting tons of emails from us, I promise, you know, you, we will not be bombarding you. You know, that's our commitment. Could that work? Or we will only send you six emails a year maximum. Krissie Leyland  41:25You know, only if we really need to email you. Gerry McGovern  41:28Yeah. You know, so we're not going to annoy you. That's part of our commitment. That's part of our total calculation, you know, of, the total cost of this T shirt. You know, because the 15 customised emails are part of the T shirt as well, cost as well. You know, and, the data it sucked up. So, you know, I think there's a conscious consumer out, or more conscious consumers. I mean, I hope there is because if we, if there isn't, we have no chance. Krissie Leyland  42:03There is. That's what the MindfulCommerce community is. So, but then a brand might argue, right, so if I'm not going to send any emails, I'm probably not going to be on social media that much. So how do I get my message out there? How do I tell people about this new product that we've got that is sustainable and it is ethical? Gerry McGovern  42:26Well, maybe maybe, you are on, you are calculating you know, are you saying, we will just send you six emails a year, you know, we will just say, you know, and our emails are, X number of K, you know, and actually two of those will be text only, you know, for those who read, and we will, we use social media, but we don't, we only use video, every 50 post and we really think about video. And we tend to use text. And, you know, we use SMS messages in a clever way, because an SMS message creates 295 times less pollution than an email. You know, so there's different scales up from, from a text message to an email, to an audio to a video, like 30 seconds of video is like 60,000 or 100,000 or 200,000 text messages, you know, one 30 second, you know, so, you know, we're careful. And we compress well, and we do all these sorts of things. But if I thought, you know, somebody was consciously, you know, connecting with me, like, I'll open, if they do send me an email, then, you know, from, you know, that ring, they fixed the ring. Yeah, but we're bombarded you know, we just bomb everybody's telling us how much they care about us during COVID-19 whether they're airlines, you know, like, whatever. Krissie Leyland  44:08I delete those ones now. Gerry McGovern  44:10Yeah, well, it's all a blur, isn't it? Like, it's all you just, you just thought you want to live your life a bit like, you know, so? I think that there's a space as you say, for, for mindful commerce. Krissie Leyland  44:26Yeah, definitely. And and I think, you know, when we are back to normal, because we will get back to normal, or the new normal. Instead of emailing and you know, social media, maybe we'll be able to do more events and like, you know, community events. And then they can promote their brand that way. But yeah, I like the idea of just having just saying, right, we're not collecting your data, we're not going to target you. And here's all the reasons why. Gerry McGovern  44:57Yeah, or here's all the data, here's what we collect on you. And it's typically only 20% of what others will collect. And you can go out and check that, you know. So we say, we need to collect it, you know, or we feel or this helps, because we want to keep the size your size of your shoe. You know, and, and we will let you know, but only, you know, if, in a maybe in two years or, and we take back your shoes, we will repair them and sell them or, you know, or, you know, that's our sort of stuff. It's really, truly useful from both sides. You know, it's not it's not "No", you know, but some, some environments will say we actually, we don't need any. Some will say, you know, actually, when we look at it, the nature of our product, we don't need to collect anything. So all we need to collect very little, but really thinking that every, every collection is an invasion. Tracking, I mean, when the tracking ever seemed like a positive thing. You know, think of the very word tracking, you know? And the dangers inherent in being tracked? Who wants to be tracked?  Krissie Leyland  46:20I just don't know if anyone is aware, like, because businesses aren't that transparent about it, or, you know, there's this really long chunk of text telling you about the data, and you just accept it without reading it, because you just don't have the time to read it. So they get away with it. Gerry McGovern  46:37Yeah. Krissie Leyland  46:39Yeah. So if, if brands are more transparent, about if they are collecting data, why they are, then I think that's okay. Gerry McGovern  46:49Yeah, and, you know, let's see real sustainable brands, mindful brands that, you know, are not out to screw us, are not out to fool us and not out, you know, and say, here's a reason, here's our problem. Yeah, great. You know, I think there's lots of people want to buy gold from those sorts of people. Yeah, you know, that, work hard and create beautiful things and that are genuinely useful and are repairable and are, you know, use as natural products as possible and don't use too many chemicals in the creation. You know, there is nothing wrong with that. That's a nice story. That's a good story. And, and if we need to collect some data, to make that story work, that's okay. But we do, we think about it, you know, what do we need to collect, what's really necessary, you know, and, you know, we're constantly trying to reduce the waste, whether it's the waste in the data, or the waste and the garment or the waste in the laptop, like, you know, for not, if we're not processing all this stupid data, then the laptop will last another year.  Krissie Leyland  48:13Yeah, good point.  Gerry McGovern  48:14Oh, you know, because the less stress I mean, if you don't drive your car as much your car last longer to, generally speaking, you know, so. So computers, like everything else, are affected by use, and if there's lots of intensive use, and so if you're not processing, if you're only processing, one gigabyte versus 30 gigabyte, that's, it's less energy, it's less stress on the parts. And you didn't need that other 40. And a lot of it is comes back to this mindfulness of really thinking about what you're doing, rather than just grabbing everything, and then bringing it all back home and saying "Now what? Oh, I don't want this, I don't want this, don't want this, don't want this" you know, be much more conscious about our decisions. And technology, the great danger of technology, Is that it is it stopping us actually thinking. Krissie Leyland  49:15Yeah, it is. Especially when you're sending an email and it finishes your sentence for you. And you're like, Oh, so I don't need to use my brain nails. Gerry McGovern  49:27Yeah, and that a, then you use it less and less and then we just become addicts. We don't, you don't, we lose our sense of agency in our very lives and then we start doing things to our customers because we don't, they're not it's not even that is, It's some it's some AI record on McDonald's data. Yeah, no, that's bombarding customers because of some flaw in the, in the connection or the interpretation of the data, because here's the thing about customisation. It can be wonderful. It can work. But when you get it wrong, you can get it extraordinarily wrong. Krissie Leyland  50:17Oh, gosh, so true. Do you have an example of someone who's got it?  Gerry McGovern  50:22Well you know, try, you know, all of these things like, you know, figuring out, you know, that, hey, someone in your household is pregnant, why not buy some clothes for the baby, or, you know, that has actually happened, or, you know, or, you know, all sorts of things where, you know, Facebook would be showing pictures of children who had died and families and so on the, the remembrance, or the, you know, what nice things happened this year, you know, it can get really, really ugly in people's lives. I mean, and look at the way these algorithms really operate. The work on our worst instincts. I mean, we see, I mean, the society that AI is building is not a pretty society in the USA at the moment, you know, it's not a pretty society, it is not building the society that tech is building. We are the customisation in or the targeted advertising. And it's not it's not a pretty society, we, you know, the USA is the most tech advanced society on Earth. Is that, is that the future we want for the world? Krissie Leyland  51:43Probably not. I think we need to talk about all of this more so that people realise what's going on. And then... because basically it you know, big tech companies are manipulating us.  Gerry McGovern  51:55Yeah, and all they care about, and these those big tech companies, they have no, they have no nations, they don't belong. They may be in Silicon Valley, but, you know, their accounts are in the Cayman Islands, or they they don't exist in any community. They have no loyalty to nothing. Other than the accumulation of the maximum, they don't, they will... Look at them, they make the biggest profits of any companies on earth, and they pay the least taxes because they are optimised to screw the earth basically. I mean that's what Facebook and Amazon are, screw the earth, that's their optimisation model. You know, maximise profit, minimise tax. It's not that they're bad people or, you know, it's just that that's the machine they've built.  Krissie Leyland  52:47Yeah. Oh, crazy times.  Gerry McGovern  52:52Yeah but not, but not, beyond our reach yet. Krissie Leyland  52:56We can still stop can't we? We can still make a difference. Gerry McGovern  53:01I think so. I mean, we at least have to try. Krissie Leyland  53:04Yeah. More conversations like this, I think. Gerry McGovern  53:08Yeah. Krissie Leyland  53:10Um, so if you could give one tip to our listeners. So they are e-commerce, tech developers and e-commerce brands, what would that tip be? Gerry McGovern  53:22I mean, I think move slow and fix things, you know, and be thoughtful, be mindful. Think about your decisions more. I mean, this, you know, agile and sprinting, it's great, but you can sprint in the wrong direction. Like, and really thinking about the decision before we make it and the parameters of the decision, I'm thinking, we've got trapped in this total short term loop of, we can't think beyond a week or a month. We got to think longer. And we can, and it requires exercise and requires disciplines and requires doing maybe games or whatever, to actually stretch our minds, you know, like, like, we stretch our muscles who we need to stretch our minds. We still can, we've got this wonderful human brain that is actually still much more efficient than the most efficient AI, you know, like that consumes the energy consumption, you know, of the brain, it's about 20 watts an hour. Think of all the stuff that the brain does for 20 watts an hour. It's good value. And it's an it's the most sustainable thing you know, that that's out there. So getting people and, designing things, you know, that get people out there, away from the machines. Like that they're taking walks or you know, enjoying food or they're, you know, because everything in digital is consuming energy. So how do we get help people using technology partly but to live their lives more in nature rather than in technology? In technology 20% at a time rather than 80% and I don't mean no technology, but that like getting people to be more human, because we are human. We are not machines yet we are not circuit boards. Krissie Leyland  55:32No, not yet. You said yet, does that mean we might be one day? Gerry McGovern  55:36We will be, we will gradually become, you know, over 50 or hundred years, we will become, we will have brain implants. And we will have, you know, eye implants and become a time where we either when did the human stop and the sidebar begin I'm sure that, you know that. But that is a potential outcome of the way things are progressing. If we're not, unless we say well hold on a minute, do we really want to go this path but right now, we're still human. Unless in giant here, we made lots of mistakes. And hopefully we can learn. But right now we are flesh and bone and brain and if we do that, right, we can be less impactful on the environment, and less destructive. Combining the best of technology with the best of humans. I think that's the perfect outcome, but just treating technology as if it's some sort of a magic God, like, we are so susceptible to this idea of the God that knows it all. That'll figure it all out for us. And really, we replaced, you know, the traditional gods, with Apple and Google and Facebook and AI and they will no more lead us to a blissful world than the old ones really did. Krissie Leyland  57:13Amazing, very powerful. Very powerful answer, Gerry. Thank you. Thank you so much. So Gerry, where can people find you and how can they find out more? Gerry McGovern  57:28Worldwide Waste is available at GerryMcGovern.com. You can read it for free there or buy a copy of it. Krissie Leyland  57:38This series is sponsored by Kollectify. Kollectify is a content marketing agency working specifically with Shopify solutions to successfully position and promote the app or agency. Episodes go out every Monday so don't forget to subscribe or you might miss a few knowledge bombs. And finally, if you'd like to join the MindfulCommerce community with lots of conscious brands and e-commerce experts, who are all working together to make change, please email info@mindfulcommerce.io and I'll send you the deets! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioLinks mentioned:CarbonClick WebsiteCarbonClick Facebook CarbonClick Instagram CarbonClick Climate Friendly Cart on ShopifyContact Jan - Jan@CarbonClick.comShow notes:Krissie Leyland  00:00Hello, and welcome to episode number two of the MindfulCommerce podcast. In this episode I, Krissie, talk to Jan from Carbon Click, a carbon offsetting platform that makes it really easy to add carbon offsets to the checkout. We talk about how e-commerce merchants and their customers can offset their carbon footprint and why CarbonClick feels this is important. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to email us at info@mindfulcommerce.io. And as always, the full details of this episode will be in the show notes. Would you like to introduce yourself and CarbonClick?Jan Czaplicki  00:41Thanks, Krissie. Pleasure to be here. So yes, obviously, my name is Jan. Difficult surname Czaplicki. The origin of that, I guess is, I'm from Norway, but my parents are Polish. So that's why I have that difficult surname. Spent some time in London and funny that we, you know, used to live not too far from each other a few years ago. Well, now I'm actually in New Zealand. So on the absolute other side of the world, which is, you know, quite exciting and really the grand scheme of things because it feels like we're just, you know, neighbours. So, yeah, well, as you said, I'm co founder of CarbonClick and CarbonClick is carbon company, what we sort of the story that we normally say, when introducing CarbonClick is it started when I was working at an airline back in the day when you know, used to fly, one of the selections in that booking process is, do you want to offset the carbon emissions of your flight? And it got me thinking, this is a relatively simple question. But for the airline, it was not an easy feat to add that. So that sort of initial thought led me to go into a rabbit hole. And a few weeks later, me and a few other colleagues, we ended up thinking, what if we could make this question, make it very simple for businesses to ask their customer "Do you want to contribute with a carbon offset at the checkout?" And yeah, two years later, we have pretty much launched our system and we might get into this in detail later but it's really a off the shelf carbon offsetting platform with multiple ways to enter that platform. One of the ways is a Shopify plugin. But we also have other channels to that core system. And, yeah, we officially launched during COVID, which is terrible time to launch any business. But it's been a very exciting journey so far, and got some good, good traction and good early results. So really excited about that.Krissie Leyland  03:04That's great. So did you first launch in e-commerce straightaway? And or was there anything else that you thought about launching the app for so offsetting?Jan Czaplicki  03:17Yeah, great question. So yes, because we were sort of born at an airline, we were initially focusing on airlines, airports and tourism. Then COVID came along, and that entire sector went sort of to a hibernation mode, where the business, the core business is at risk. So sustainability, unfortunately, for a lot of those businesses, takes a second sort of back row seat and those projects we had going with those businesses were either put on hold or cancelled, which is really unfortunate. But because we had built that core system that was effectively untouched, and when I was initially designing the system, I was designing it with the size of the problem in mind. So climate change is absolutely the biggest problem out there. So I always thought we need a very flexible core system to support more or less any business to use it, use CarbonClick. So it was very easy for us to, I avoid using the word pivot, it was very easy for us to refocus to e-commerce and we went ahead, we had a prototype Shopify plugin and we decided one of the industries that COVID will not impact will be e-commerce. So we decided to focus purely on e-commerce for a number of months. And yeah, we tidied up our Shopify plugin and started offering that to the world. And 450 merchants later, we're starting to see some some good early results. Which is very exciting.Krissie Leyland  05:01That's really cool. So in e-commerce then, what are the things that you offset? So where's the biggest impact coming from in e-commerce?Jan Czaplicki  05:10Yeah. So this is, this is a great question because we initially thoughth "Hey, let's try to have some smarts behind the system." Let's try to offset the freight or offset, and then approximation of the product's carbon footprint. But when we went out to talk to users, and we tried to do this, as much as possible is just to understand who our users are, and what do they want? They were very often kind of confused when we said "Do you want to offset your freight for 17 cents?" or whatever it was, it was normally a very low, low figure. And I remember specifically, this one gentleman told me "You know what, if you're asking me to carbon offset, just make it meaningful. Like, I've already read that sentence, I don't want to offset 17 cents, I want to offset at least a dollar." So that became our go to market offering and although we're still working on a clever calculator in the background, normally, merchants and consumers are very happy with a round figure, because with $1, or with £1, you're offsetting, sorry, I can't do conversion in my head. But it's quite a few hundred kgs of co2 that you're offsetting with a relatively small contribution. And when you're looking at individual product, that's actually not that big of a carbon footprint. Take a T shirt, for example, that's about 15 kgs, similar with a pair of shoes, 10 to 15 kgs. So why not ask the customer to offset some carbon and make it as impactful as possible, which is where we're at right now. And it's having, it's a interesting approach that merchants are really enjoying and customers are also providing great feedback on so we might actually stay with that.Krissie Leyland  07:07Yeah, that's great. And it might be then that they're actually offsetting more than the product. So you know, if it's 17 cents, that the product is the weight in carbon, for example. Then they might be offsetting more than that by donating or not donating but giving $1 of offsetting $1. And so when you say that you're doing things in the background to measure more and more accurately, I guess, what is it that you're looking at? How do you see yourself? As a business, how are you measuring carbon usage of an e-commerce purchase?Jan Czaplicki  07:50Yeah, so because just coming back to that sort of original thought I had where this has to be scalable, has to be a mass scale, because the problem is so huge. So we thought, any small medium, and quite a few large e-commerce businesses, they don't have the capacity to go in and do deep dives into the carbon footprint of their product. So what we're looking to build, and this is still in the research phase for us, is a system that will approximate the carbon footprint of everything you're selling by using data that's already out there. And what it will do is it will look at, at what you're selling, so identified, let's say it's a pair of shoes, and it will look at any other information that has about that product you're selling. So for example, if your shoes are made in Vietnam, it will look into the database, and it will see okay, we know how much a shoe made in China, the carbon footprint of a shoe made in China. But what that tool will do in the background is will actually just change some of the so called emissions factors in the background, adjust them for Vietnam, and give you an approximation of, Hey, your shoes are approximately this carbon footprint. And I'm super passionate about this project. But yeah, I'm so glad we went live with with an MVP or with a basic offering because I think there's minimum six months left of research, just figuring out how to solve this problem before we can start offering merchants one of these sort of clever calculators in the background.Krissie Leyland  09:30Yeah, it's so huge. It's so huge. And that's talking about the product and then, you know, you've got the shipping and then the digital footprint and so much and it's like, like a rabbit hole. Once you start, you can't stop but it's kind of like yeah, it's just an entire journey, isn't it?Jan Czaplicki  09:50Yeah, I agree. And it feels sometimes like the more you dig into it, the harder it gets to take a step forward. Which is actually one of the, one of the main reasons why. So I started with the story with, you know, the airline example but what I'm thinking is that this is a powerful tool, this carbon offsetting thing. Because it's difficult it, or it's confusing, or you don't have all the data you need, it becomes too hard and merchants and people, businesses all around the world are putting it into the too hard basket. And that there I think, is real wasted opportunity, because carbon offsets are a tool in the toolkit of sustainability. And they are effective, and they work now. So I think unlocking some of that potential is going to be a real well, it will contribute to solving the climate change problem.Krissie Leyland  10:53Yeah, definitely. Hundred percent. I mean, I think you could say, well, just don't buy that product at all. But if you really need it, then that's when you would offset. What, in your opinion, you know, say for example, now you're on holiday, and you've flown somewhere and obviously, your story started from flying and seeing that you can offset. So are, have you already offset this holiday? Where did you go and how does that look?Jan Czaplicki  11:24Yeah, so that, that there. You've touched upon something that I'm... is actually contributing to me feeling kind of bad about my holiday. So yeah, we did. We did take a flight to get this holiday and most people don't know, but flying is actually one of the worst things you can do in terms of your carbon footprint. So local holidays, if you can swap flight for local holiday, that makes a huge difference. But yeah, I'm also moving towards the slightly more practical approach that there's a certain lifestyle people have, and there's around, I would say there's probably 10,000, at least solid initiatives globally, that are being researched or implemented to help people reduce the carbon footprint of their life. For example, flying sooner, I think, than many people realise we will have lower carbon ways of flying. So coming back to your question, I think one of the things... Firstly, yeah, do avoid holidays or flying if you can, don't avoid holidays, avoid flying if you can. But if you decide to fly, try to make it short, which is what we did. And if you are flying, make sure you do carbon offset, because it is a way to reduce some of that environmental impact that your flight is having. And what we've done at CarbonClick is we have created and this is still in early beta, but open to you sharing it with your audience if they would like is a product for teams or groups of people. So we as CarbonClick the company we have subscribed, or yeah.... subscribed is the right word. We have subscribed to our ourselves, our own offering and we are creating a climate positive team. So all our staff at CarbonClick, we buy carbon offsets on a monthly schedule. And we will offset the average person's footprint. So people have a lesser impact or sort of our team has lesser impact on the environment. And that's just one way we're using that core system to help reduce environmental impact.Krissie Leyland  13:57Yeah, okay. Actually, I've never, so I used to fly quite a lot. And I never knew until recently about offsetting. I think it could be made easier and more, you know, there should be more awareness around it. I also think you shouldn't feel guilty for you know, because, like you said, it's lifestyle, and as long as we're reducing our impact and you know, like you said, taking shorter flights and just considering it before you do it. "Do I really need to do this?" or  "Do I really need to buy that?", then yeah, I think...Jan Czaplicki  14:33Yeah, exactly. We're certainly on a journey and that goes there's so many parties involved, like governments are on journey in a way "Are you adopting strict sort of climate change policies?", then businesses are on a on a journey, you know, "How much are you embracing sustainability as a business?" and individuals are on a journey. So I guess what is I think important is for people to recognise that they're on a journey and start to take action on on certain things. For example, one of my favourites is slight diet adjustments. So, you know, I love my burgers, but I'm actually pretty much equally satisfied by a high quality vegetarian burger as I am with a meat burger. And that I think those are some of the ways you can personally take action to reduce your footprint. Same with secondhand clothing. I think there's a huge opportunity in that space for more people to start using secondhand clothing. And yeah, offsetting as well, I guess, very few people are engaging with carbon offsets. And it is, like I mentioned earlier, it is a valid tool that does support projects that are fighting climate change. And yeah, if we made that easy, little bit more like an Uber experience, then hopefully we can see more people engaging with that and eventually seeing even more funds being funnelled to projects that are either avoiding emissions or actually sequestering carbon from the air. So quite a few exciting projects out there that are doing that.Krissie Leyland  16:14Yeah. So when somebody uses CarbonClick to offset, say, for example, at checkout, when they've just bought something online, where does that go? So you mentioned project. So what are the projects that you are supporting?Jan Czaplicki 16:29Yeah, so what we did here was, we wanted to understand where do people want to see their money go and add that sort of gut reaction, or the first thing people say is "I really want to see my local environment being reforested." And this is one of the things that I struggle with with carbon offsets, is there's a general perception that carbon offsets are tree based, because people associate carbon offsets with trees, but trees are just an average way to sequester carbon. They're prone to lots of issues. Not all trees survive, and there's forest fires and things like that. So what we did is we decided, Okay, half the funds are going to go to a tree based project, because this is what people really associate with carbon offsetting. And we try to make it local as well. So we don't have a local UK project yet. But we have local projects in the US, Australia and New Zealand, where we're from. So there is that component of the local environment being reforested or yeah. Then the other half goes to, I call them high impact projects and there's a number of different types of projects that fall into this basket. But generally, they're in developing countries, where there's generally a high carbon intensity of various things. And what I can mention here is solar power and wind power, so that those energy sources are replacing coal. Normally, that's used to power the grid. But there's also lots of other cool projects like clean burning cookstoves, so people don't need to go and collect firewood, they're using a much cleaner burning gas, that it's often collected, actually off of a waste, agricultural waste to cook on. That has lots of benefits, really much better for health because people aren't breathing in smoke. And actually, that really, that's a really good segue to co-benefits, which is one thing I think people really need to recognise with carbon offsets is that they have so many great benefits in addition to carbon and those benefits are often encapsulated with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. So I recommend anybody listening if they're looking at carbon offset projects, look for projects that address many of those Sustainable Development Goals. So yeah, long story short, we put half the funds into local reforestation or forest conservation projects and the other half is to international projects and we really love clean energy projects and those cookstove projects.Krissie Leyland  19:26Amazing! Yeah, what was it? You said the co...?Jan Czaplicki  19:29Co-benefits? Yeah, so it's almost like carbon is just the currency, right? You could look at different currencies like biodiversity  currency or health of the community currency or equal working opportunities, or education, sort of community, education currency. All those could really be included in a carbon offset, but it's generally the carbon that is the currency of these projects. So in terms of carbon offsetting projects, I think there's a movement towards even greater recognition of all the other things that these carbon offsetting projects contribute to. Krissie Leyland  20:12Yeah, that's amazing! So changing the subject slightly, as Christmas is not that far away. What's your opinion on big sale days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday? Do you think brands should participate? And do you think you'll see an increase in people offsetting?Jan Czaplicki  20:37Ah, that's a great question. I was recently informed there's a alternative to Black Friday called Green Friday, I don't know if you've heard. It's quite, quite exciting that sort of counter trend there. But just having learned much more about the realities of e-commerce and how these businesses are struggling actually to, to sustain it's a very tough business to run an e-commerce business. I think Black Friday, will exist and in a way, it's, you know, like I mentioned earlier, this is the reality of the society we live in, people are buying, and there's sales, and there's days where there's extra good sales. I don't really have any particular issue with with Black Friday, or the fact that humans consume What I think is useful, or would be great is if we include sustainable sustainability in that consumption. So when we go looking for a deal on Black Friday, and I'm talking to the consumer now. Look for businesses that focus on sustainability, like these are, there's so many merchants out there and we as consumers, we have a real power and where we spend our dollar. These businesses are forfeiting, often near term profit, to implement sustainability in their brand. And they are relying on the consumer to go and recognise that so they have a long term gain. So I would say for Black Friday, as a consumer, go and engage, sorry, spend your dollars with businesses that are focusing on sustainability. And equally for merchants, make sustainability a big thing. Make a statement, attract those people that care about sustainability. And here I'm thinking, there's so many ways you can take action as a consumer, as far as a business.Krissie Leyland  22:34Tell me a list of things that a merchant can do in terms of sustainability on Black Friday, or in general?Jan Czaplicki  22:44Yeah, so there's, there's quite a few things. And one of the things we look for is to help merchants on that journey because it is a journey and some businesses are further down that journey. But I in particular, like there's a few things that I like suggesting to merchants, and one of the things is sustainable packaging, so it's really visible to the consumer, and it actually has a pretty good impact on the environmental impact of the things you're shipping. The other thing that I'm really fond of is, you can really simply change your power provider of the business, to a power provider that provides renewable energy, that's another one. Slightly harder is to actually look for local suppliers. So very often, your products have a, you know, high international sort of footprint in terms of where it's manufactured. Very often supporting local is, is both really great for the local economy and the environment footprint is quite significantly reduced. And yeah, you can very often meet the people that work on your products. And you can also get higher quality products which is which is also a really big thing and the sort of big, big picture of sustainability. We also, there is a relatively big component in terms of the shipment. So fast shipping normally involves air freight, so there's a bigger carbon component associated with that. So maybe look to promote the regular delivery a little bit more. And yeah, that's, that is my top tips. What we do just to because I just got a little bit distracted there what we do is as CarbonClick when a merchant installs climate friendly cart, obviously we add a, as part of that we add a little green button to the checkout, which adds a carbon offset. But what we really want is to help the merchants do things in house that reduce the environmental footprint of their business. So we've commissioned, so we have a lot of fashion merchants. So we recently commissioned the researcher to look into the fashion trends and ways for fashion merchants to address sustainability. We have a e-commerce specific footprint guide, which lists a bunch of tips and ideas how to reduce the environmental impact of your business. And yeah, we we want the business to really join us on a journey of sustainability. So the proposition becomes a little bit like, hey, as a business, here are all these things you can do to reduce the carbon emissions of your business and the carbon intensity of your business and how do you embrace sustainability as a business to have a lower impact on the environment and also attract those customers that care about environmental impact? And then with the green button, the customer can join that journey, and offset. So it becomes a little bit of a complimentary thing. So, the business is doing as much as they can to reduce and the customer, if they want to, they can join at the checkout and add a carbon offset. So that's, that's a little bit of where the storyline is going with us.Krissie Leyland  26:38That's cool. So do you have like a place where the business can show like how much impact they're having or not? Do you have anywhere that can show the numbers, so the business can be like, look at what we're doing, you can do it too. That kind of thing, you know, like a community that you've built?Jan Czaplicki  27:01Yeah, so we are just building out this area of the system. So we have this concept of cumulative impact. And generally, for Shopify businesses, we are offering the CarbonClick sort of universal, cumulative impact. So because there's a lot of small stores on there, not many... there's not that much impact on a business by business case to show. So having said that, some businesses are in themselves doing, you know, hundreds and thousands of offsets. As in both the business is offsetting, but also the customer is offsetting when those numbers are significant. So what we do there is we let the business have a cumulative impact dashboard themselves. Krissie Leyland  27:50Yeah. Jan Czaplicki  27:51And that, yeah, we're just, this is shortly, shortly to be launched. But we are looking to have a cumulative impact dashboard that the merchant can show to their customers and include in their, you know, sustainability story. And on the, at the far end, we also have a consumers' cumulative impact. So the idea here is that if I hit the green button on multiple Shopify sites, I should be able to see my personal cumulative impact on something we call "My CarbonClick" and you get that full impact insights all the way from the top of all businesses using CarbonClick, then the individual business potentially, that you ended up shopping with down to my individual impact, and of course, the transactions itself.Krissie Leyland  28:41That's really good. I think that's really powerful, because then the consumer or the business will be proud of that and show it off, and then hopefully make other people realise that they should be probably doing it, too. And join in on the movement, I think.Jan Czaplicki  28:57Yeah, I think I do. I do think that well, when we interviewed consumers, we know there's a really big portion of people that would offset if it was simple. And the point of where you want to offset is, you know, not end of year or is not sort of your anniversary, of whatever, normally you want to offset when you make the purchase. So that's when people feel it's logical to offset and that's where we're, that's the space where we're playing is "Hey, let's add an offset with the purchase." Let's offer this to as many businesses as possible so that throughout the year, maybe you can offset, you know, 50 or 100 times and that actually makes your life carbon neutral. So that's really the vision. That's what I'm hoping we'll get to.Krissie Leyland  29:47And that was actually one of my final questions that I wanted to ask. Do you think it's possible then to live a carbon neutral life?Jan Czaplicki  29:57Um, yeah, yeah. I mean, Absolutely it is. And funny, it's almost like carbon neutral, is starting to get a little bit like we've moved beyond that it's now all about sort of carbon positive. So being responsible for taking out more carbon than you've been personally responsible for releasing. So yeah, not only is it possible, it's relatively easy with more and more providers like CarbonClick appearing on the market. So it's really easy for consumers to take action. But with that, I have to really underline that this isn't really, you know, the silver bullet. This is a tool in the sustainability toolkit, or it's one sort of stop along the sustainability journey. It's really, really important that people recognise that there's a lot of reduction to be made, and a lot of really powerful choices we can make to impact the environmental impact that we have. So like I mentioned earlier with the ability to not even sacrifice your love of burgers, but you can choose a vegetarian alternative or an alternative meat product. Same with, you know, choosing local holidays, or buying secondhand or buying with businesses that are really passionate about sustainability. There's so many things we can do as individuals to reduce your environmental impact that, yeah, we really need to recognise that. And that is actually one, one little thing as well, that we try to do is because people, we have some some people that aren't really thinking too much about sustainability, but they are happy enough to click a green button. We have a chance to help educate those people on how to reduce your environmental footprint and that could have 10 times the impact really as as a carbon offset. So, it's a really complicated picture and it's a really complicated story that we're telling in a way. But I think we all.. well, people that are playing in this space, we're all kind of trying to make it as easy and as as good for the consumer as possible. And yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on them.Krissie Leyland  32:23Nice. I definitely agree that you know, reduce or refuse first, and then if you really, really have to, like, for example, if you really have to fly somewhere, then offset. I guess, in the other event that we were doing, speaking to a carbon, a low carbon design agency, and they were saying, you know, just don't do it and then but if you really have to, then yeah, offset it as like the final choice, I guess.Jan Czaplicki  32:54Yeah. Yeah, that is the it's such a typical sort of story, or, like visual representation, the upside down pyramid. So avoid, reduce, reuse, recycle, and kind of offset comes at the bottom there. So yeah, I'm  confident that, you know, offsets at the bottom of that pyramid have their role. We need a lot in the higher tiers as well. And, yeah, I think that's where businesses can play a big part, consumers can make choices in that space and we can move towards reducing our footprint. But also really exciting, i'm really excited about a lot of technologies that are kind of outside the hands of consumers. For example, electric vehicles or just cleaner grids, solar power, battery storage, is really taking off and hopefully, and this is really like all hands on deck situation. Hopefully, technology, lots of providers, like CarbonClick, we'll all work together, and we will help humanity reduce their carbon emissions or fossil fuel emissions and time. Because time is really running out. The atmosphere really cannot take much more carbon. We're probably looking at a very daunting task in the next 20 to 50 years to take some of that carbon out of the atmosphere, which is very difficult. But I I encourage everybody to play their part and let's do it together.Krissie Leyland  34:40Yeah, definitely. And I think like you said, technology is playing a really important role in that but also, everybody, humanity, we need to take action together. So, um, where can people find you then?Jan Czaplicki  34:54Yeah, we I guess we're on the typical social media. Facebook is the main channel for us. There's an Instagram accounts. So I should really be putting the handle. We'll put the handles in the show notes. But yeah, I'm available if you have any questions or feedback at Jan@CarbonClick.com. Our website is CarbonClick.com. Our product on Shopify is Climate Friendly Cart. And yeah, there's quite a few other products that we're releasing to the market. They all use our, our core engine. And yeah, I'm excited to see us all work towards solving this problem. It's going to be tough, tough, next few years, but humanity has a really amazing will how to tackle these big problems together. So I have relatively high confidence on days like today that we will do it. But it's it's really, I think, people don't realise how big of a problem it is and how big of a challenge it is. So we all have to really make it top of our our agendas to play a part.Krissie Leyland  36:08Definitely. Amazing. Thank you so much. And thank you for developing CarbonClick, giving consumers and merchants the option to offset. I think that's it. Thank you so much.Jan Czaplicki  36:19Thank you Krissie and thanks so much for what you're doing as well. I think you're playing a really important part and, and the ecosystem of solutions to climate change. So keep it up. And thanks so much for your time and opportunity to talk to your audience.Krissie Leyland  36:34Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

HeyLow WebsiteFind us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioMentioned Links:Precious PlasticsOrganic Basics Low Impact WebsiteMastodon - Twitter AlternativeSignal - WhatsApp AlternativeEcosia - Google AlternativeShow notes:Krissie Leyland  00:00Hello, and welcome to episode number one of the MindfulCommerce podcast. In this episode, I Krissie, talk to Saskia and Nico from HeyLow, a creative studio designing and building low carbon brands. We talk about the disturbing fact that the internet is dirty, and every website has a digital carbon footprint. Saskia and Nico reveal some quick and long term wins to create a low carbon brand and website. This episode is super fascinating and might completely change your mindset about the internet. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. If you have any thoughts or questions, please feel free to email us at info@mindfulcommerce.io. And as always, the full details will be in the show notes.Welcome Saskia and Nico, I'll dive straight in! What made you decide to start offering low carbon web design as a service?Saskia  00:56So Nico, and I met at Precious Plastic, which was a year long project based in the Netherlands. We were designing and building open source machines to reduce plastic waste around the world. There was this huge community activism project but 70,000 users around the world. Anyway, Nico and I were both on the digital team. So I'm background UX, Nico's back UI and we actually worked on the digital tools together. And then, yeah, I mean, it was a year of really understanding, much deeper the climate crisis and how interconnected it is with all about different types of industries. Because we work on the web, and we had some much bigger explorations into it, and kind of finding out facts, like, the internet is actually more of a carbon producer in the sorry, then all of the airlines put together and, and so this is just like, not a narrative that we hear around what the internet is. And it really is just a large dumping ground for stuff that has to be powered by, basically dirty energy. So we decided to pair together and Nico can talk a little bit about it. He has a long background in low impact. But yeah, we just joined together because it seemed like the right thing to do. And yeah, it's been a really great response so far.Krissie Leyland  02:23That's amazing because yeah, you've never really think about your, well, I do now but I didn't used to think about my impact on the planet in terms of just googling something or, you know, landing on a website. You just think you can't see it, it's not physical, so you don't really think about it.Nico  02:43The story written around the internet, we talk a lot about the clouds. And like, it seems to be a wave, not like a physical thing. But actually, it is like it's a big spaces with a lot of computers, the servers and it takes like a lot of energies. And even you have to build the structure like the cables. You have to build the computers and charge your devices. And  because it's like, digital and not something physical. We think it doesn't exist, actually. It's real.Krissie Leyland  03:25Yeah, exactly. And it's just, you know, I guess. So when did you first learn about low carbon websites?Nico  03:36So I don't remember exactly. But my side, I think it was like something like four years ago. And, then I loved the fact about like the the flight industry, the fact the internet is more carbon intensive than the oil industry. And actually, in the news, we talk only about frying, like, the shame of things that like that. And then when I thought about I was like "Wow, Oh my god, this is like, not amazing, the opposite". And I was like, wow, maybe I should do something about it. Because it's also my watch. And yeah, it was an idea in my mind, like for four years and learn a bit about that. And yes, Saskia already told, we met last year and at some point, it was like obvious. We have to do something and walk on that small and it's also like a great design exercise actually. Yeah, for designers, it's pretty cool. It's even more exciting like to design in another way.Krissie Leyland  04:50Yeah. One of the people that asked the question is actually a web designer and she's like, she's hosts her website on Square Space and was just like "Oh no, this is really bad." And so she asked the question of, you know, how, what are the simple, quick wins that a web designer can do or recommend to their clients to like improve their website that's already up and live?Nico  05:21So the first thing is the hosting. So it's where you put your websites, which server. And for that, then you need to be, the data centre need to be run on renewable energy. You save a really a lot of carbon by doing that. And it's kind of, like it's not really about the design of the website, that model structure. It's like when you're designing a product, a physical products, is like the sourcing of materials. Let's say it's like the equivalence, the equivalence with the websites is the server and the hosting services. This is really the first step.Saskia  06:06It's a little difficult when it comes, because places like SquareSpace. Obviously, they don't run on renewable energy and a lot of the really big, big conglomerates that exist in the internet space. Kind of, they're not very transparent around how they actually use energy for their data centres. So it's a little bit tricky. When it is just you know, we obviously use green hosting for all of our projects. But when you're using services like SquareSpace, or other ones, it's very hard to have control over that, unfortunately. Yeah, the hosting is the most important thing.Nico  06:44For example, there is a lot of services using Google Cloud Platform. I think actually should be fine to use it. And Google is claiming they are like 100%, green. But in the meantime, for events, they help oil company on the job, like to perform even more. So first, that means that Google is not green. And also they got data centres in the world were like, not running on green energy. And they came out green just because they're like, compensate. They offset the emission. And we don't think is the way to do it. Like, you can't really like you can't really claim you're green because you compensate. It's like it's kind of a real thing for us.Krissie Leyland  07:40So offsetting is like, a secondary option.Saskia  07:45Yeah, I mean, you can imagine what it takes to create the energy, you know, you're pulling something out of the earth, or the infrastructure that's created to pull that oil out of the earth, and then it goes through all these ginormously complex processes to be able to be performed into energy. You can't just plant a tree to take that energy out, you know, like, you're comparing the output of carbon by, you know, powering something versus actually the entire infrastructure. And we actually need to be able to move towards a much more green infrastructure. We need to be putting out dollars, you know, and into an opportunity that makes it easy for people to be like, "Okay, cool. Like, this is really valuable to the earth now." Because while I think offsetting programs can be beneficial, they are not equal to, yeah, what it takes the infrastructure and the damage that's created of pulling it out of the earth in the first place.Krissie Leyland  08:42Yeah, so being green first. So using the right server, like a green, do you call it a green server?Saskia  08:52Yeah, green hosting.Nico  08:53Yeah. We can call it that. We should already like, compensate the green energy, because even the green energy are emitting carbon. Yeah, actually. So yeah, like, green green, green energy.Saskia  09:12It's kind of impossible to be carbon free.Krissie Leyland  09:14Yeah. So then, I guess, at what point in a brand's journey then, should they think about, you know, being or choosing the right platform? You know, if they've already got a website in place, is that too late?Saskia  09:31I think that it is not fair to say that everybody should move to be green right now. I think that obviously, if they're, if there's the time and the space and the money to move, I think that's the right time. But you know, you have to be a financially viable business before you can have the investment for that. And I do really believe in small businesses and like a much more distributed economy. So I really admire people that run their own businesses, but I actually come from a long line of family businesses. I know, I know how hard it can be. But I mean, there's no, there's no real one time. I mean, whether you're a small young business, or whether you're very well established, um, anyone can make the move. It's actually probably easier at the beginning than it is if you're much more established. But yeah, anyone can make the move at any time, I wouldn't say that there's like one time to do that.Krissie Leyland  10:23Okay. So do you think then So say, for example, me, I've got a website, and it's also on Square Space. And would it be more efficient to kind of swap my internet provider, build a website from scratch that is low carbon or do things like plant a tree? Like offsetting, which you said, isn't necessarily the best way. What would you recommend I do?Saskia  10:58It really depends if you have the time and the space and the money. You know, like, it's not so much like we said it, we don't believe that just offsetting is the same as not producing the carbon in the first place. So when when people have the time and the space, I think that's the time for them to actually move. But I don't think a low carbon website versus a website on dirty energy plus trees planting is an equal game. What do you think?Nico  11:32Exactly that. You could also can iterate your switch and start by maybe looking at your actual website on Square Space, try to make it lower, like removing images, or like compressing your images you have or trying to design it in another way or like, make the actual website lighter. And when you have the time, or like the budget for it, with the new one, you can maybe start from the Square Space realm. I don't know if you can export. But maybe you can just keep the same design and build it on another platform. And when you have the time and the budgets, and it's on a green server and like really plan, make a plan, don't have to be like, you know, everything at once. Yeah, it's kind of drawn is like, for everyone actually can be like, totally, totally perfect. From a day to another one, it's a kind of a journey.Krissie Leyland  12:45Yeah. So the simple actions would be to change the images to lower res maybe, and perhaps not having animated graphics or stuff that... yeah, takes more energy.Nico  13:00First, try to avoid video. Because this is really the the most heavy thing, of your data, like if you put for example, a video on a website, you're gonna know, like, a website is around, it depends. But it could be around five, three and five megabytes, I would say. And the video is just, you can click on play, and it's already five or 10 megabytes and like, just continue to play in like, I don't know, like a three minute video, it could be like 60 or 100 megabytes, depending on the quality of, but this is really offensive.Saskia  13:46Yeah. So it's really like lowering your website is really relative to what your website was in the first place. So, you know, like a portfolio site could be, you know, 50% lower or 80% lower versus like a larger e-commerce site. They're not going to be the same like weight at the end, but they would have reduced a similar amount. So I think I think it's hard to get all to make this exact same size. But it's more about the percentage of reduction because there's lots of different industries, some will require more images, or yeah, just depending on what your industry is.Krissie Leyland  14:24So then, for example, Organic Basics. Should we talk about that in terms of their lower impact version? So they've got their main site, which has all the what it looks like high, higher res images and graphics and stuff, and then their lower impact site. What do you... do have an opinion on how they've done it? Have they done it well?Nico  14:51So I think it's a great website. Great exercise. So this thing is a kind of easy job for them because they sell basic clothes. So like a white t-shirt, it's a white t-shirt. And then they can do what they did for the design. That means they put like just illustration. And after when you click, you can see the image in a low quality image. So it's works for basics issue. But if you have like, dresses, like shoes or like products and everything, you can't do what they did. So it's a super good exercise. But for me, the downside of that is like, they didn't switch their main websites. So that means just for now, like a marketing tool is cool. Like, like, it's really good to communicate about this programme. But could be even more cool to have like, really that as the main website.Saskia  16:06Yeah, that's the challenging thing about it. It's like a really great example of a low carbon website. But I would like to see like how many clothes or products they actually have sold using this material. You know, like using this philosophy? I think that it is there's a common, there is a middle ground between what they did. And there are lots of examples of websites, lots of use cases so that you can use a website like that. But yeah, as Nico said, the most important thing, well, a very important thing to a small business owner is that they have something that's good for their brand, and that converts well, and, and so like there's a combination between the two. But yeah, it's a good marketing exercise of Organic Basics, but at the same time now they have two websites. And I think one is a marketing piece and the other is where they sell clothes.Krissie Leyland  16:53Yeah, like just wondering if it would actually make a difference in the end? Because, yeah, like you said, they've got two websites now why not just have the one.Saskia  17:03I've bought from Organic Basics and I've bought from their normal website. I didn't actually, you know, I didn't go through that. Because you know, it's hard to buy just like that.Krissie Leyland  17:13Yeah, it'd be really interesting to kind of ask them the results. I'm hoping maybe.Saskia  17:20But I admire them. But I hopefully I think it's probably an experiment. And I think that we might see an evolution of something later on. Because, you know, they're obviously like very committed to finding out what works for them in a more low carbon way. So I think it's just a first step. And I, yeah, it was really cool for us to see because it was like a bigger place kind of, yeah, doing this as well. Krissie Leyland  17:45Yeah, I think it might be... Well, I think it's one of the only lower impact e-commerce sites on Shopify.Saskia  17:55Mmhmm.Krissie Leyland  17:55So it'd be really interesting to see the difference in how many people like shop, or make a purchase on the lower impact site in comparison to the other one?Saskia  18:06Yeah, like now that I've bought, I might just go to the lower impact site because I know what they have already.Krissie Leyland  18:13Yeah. Maybe it's returning customers that will go to the lower impact site. And then new customers will yeah, use the main one. Because they are basic items, like, you know, once you find out that you like it, it's yeah... you may as well go to the lower impact and choose that item again. Nico  18:35The experience is pretty good, because I don't know if I did that, but when you order on the low website, because I order on it, I wanted to see like, the whole journey and actually the email and send you at the end is even designed in a low way. They don't use an image or like weird stuff like that. It's really low. And it's pretty good design. Just it's pretty cool.Krissie Leyland  19:08So the entire journey, even at post, like after purchasing then with their receipts and stuff...Nico  19:16Only if you order on the low version of the website.Krissie Leyland  19:20Yeah. Interesting, hmmm. And I wonder, like, in terms of social media, then because if they're, you know, they've got the low impact website, low impact emails. I wonder what their approaches on social media and then that brings me to a social media question, which is, we've noticed that you're not on social media as much. And is that because they're bad for the planet? Or is it just a personal choice?Saskia  19:53Well, Nico is not on any social media because...Nico  19:56No, I'm just like, I start fighting against. But more like, it's not about the carbon. It's more like...Saskia  20:09Yeah, the power.Nico  20:10The power and what's happened like recently with the Black Lives Matter movement and like what Facebook did or didn't actually when like... so Trump tweet, like not tweet but sent a message. It was like "When the shooting starts... no when the looting starts the shooting starts" and like actually, I think Twitter flagged the message, but Facebook did nothing. And I started to realise like, wow, this is weird. And I did some research and I had a  look and like some thinking and realised like, for example, the Far, far right movements are like super strong because of social media in particular on Facebook. Like I just finished. And so I started like, trying to boycott on my side, like, so I removed my Instagram account and Facebook and WhatsApp. So I came back again, because some thoughts are really difficult to not live with. Like Whatsapp is really hard. But just like realise the power of this platform. And in other way, also Black Lives Matter is really important also because of social media. So in a good way or so.Saskia  21:32Yeah, I think that like the power, the control of these large internet companies is like way, it's way too imbalanced. And I really want to like promote, well, how power communities promote a more distributed way of how we connect online on social media, because I believe in social media. I think it's a great way to communicate. However, like I deleted my Facebook, sorry, yeah, maybe a year and a half ago, because I was so fed up with the way that they do business and the way that they like, you know, they really market on like bad feelings of anxiety and loneliness. And like, they really try to just promote this, like over consuming behaviour. And I think that that is just so, I don't know if you know the work of Tristan Harris, and he does, like, the humane tech society in San Francisco. And yeah, it's just incredible how they really design a tool like Facebook, to be towards our like animalistic behaviour of like dopamine and like, and how we kind of get these highs from this. And yeah, I much prefer social media that will promote human connection. And so I still, for me, personally, I'm still on Instagram. And we haven't actually done any HeyLow social media yet. Just because it hasn't really been a priority for us. Like we, we really, like I've been in this realm of sustainability and system change and social equality, yeah, for probably like eight or nine years. And so like, yeah, just from all the places that I've worked and collaborated with and design projects, I've just got, like quite a big large network as, as Nico has. So we're, for us in our business right now. It's... we don't need to be on social media channels. And to be honest, like, I think that we kind of went way too much on the other side from from having no social media to kind of like, just spending like 100 hours a week on it every week, you know, some people do. And it's just so unhealthy. And I want to find a way that social media has a role in our society, but it's not a controlling force. And I think at the moment, it just feels too controlling. So I look forward to more platforms that might emerge in the future that, you know, for example, like, doesn't own your data. I mean, it seems so simple to like, have a tool, I would love to use a tool like Facebook, but I don't accept that they own everything that I do online. So it's very easy. I look forward to the entrepreneurial spirits of some more ethical founders that will build products like this, because I think we're all bit keen for it. But at the moment like there's only like three things. And yeah, it's just crazy. I watched the anti trust. Well actually Nico watched all of it. I watched some of the anti trust hearings. I watch some of the anti trust hearing of like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple. It was frightening. It's really frightening how much power they have and how just they give like zero, yeah. Actual like community involvement and stuff like that. So sorry, that was a bit of a rant.Krissie Leyland  24:55This is great. I was just thinking then so an alternative to Google, for example, is Ecosia? I think it's called. And you know they don't store your data. So maybe they will come up with a social media platform that doesn't, or someone.Nico  25:16Or like we could have also like, nice to have like a decentralised platform. Think about emails, that you can choose your provider of emails like, and there is like a protocol. Like from one services to the other one, like there is like communication, but it's not like on only one. And you're still about to send messages between the providers. So yeah, the idea would be to have something like that and there is like, little ones, like, there is one can Mastodon, which is kind of Twitter. Krissie Leyland  25:52Okay. What How do you spell that?Nico  25:56Mastadon so it'sSaskia  25:59M-A-S-T-A-D-O-NKrissie Leyland  26:02Oh, yes.Saskia  26:05There's some really cool tools coming up. Like I've seen some interesting social networks.Nico  26:10But the problem is, like, for example, on WhatsApp, so there is like a really cool application called Signal, which is kind of it's the same as WhatsApp. It's a message app. But the problem is like, there is no one there. Like you have to ask your friends to come in and to use it. So as the mentor, I'm like, the centralisation of like, when you meet some people, they asked for your WhatsApp accounts and stuff like that. And that is really like...Saskia  26:42But that might change again.Nico  26:43Yeah. Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. It takes time. And yeah, just wants to add about the carbon impact of social media. More on the technical side, I would say. So first, there is like the same thing as Google. They all claim they are green, or like, I think Facebook says there are 100% green, but the same as Google, like, think as they compensate. And also, like they, like they give space for like, climate denial or stuff like that sort of like it's not, it's weird. And also, there is a lot of video, like Instagram, there is the stories and stuff and it shows a lot, a lot of data. So in that way, it's not pretty good for that.Saskia  27:34I have a good social media, it could be around, like, curating what you want to say. And just really being careful about your message. And not so much like being careful what you have to say, but maybe not using three posts to say one thing.Krissie Leyland  27:48Yeah, yeah. Just being really to the point.Saskia  27:51And yeah exactly, which is hard in the like, mess that we have of just like so much stuff coming through there.Nico  27:58And maybe, you don't have to say anything, every 10 minutes. Krissie Leyland  28:01Yeah, yeah get on with your day. Don't worry about what other people are looking at you for. But like, I just wonder how, because being passionate about, you know, saving the planet, and I feel like my way of getting my message across at the moment is through this community, which just so happens to be on Facebook, or Instagram. And I don't know, do you have any other what, like, suggestions of how people can make an impact without using social media? Because they do have so much control? And that's where everybody is. How would you get your message across instead?Saskia  28:46I think the most important thing is to try and affect the community around you. I think, that like, while we think that everybody is on social media, there's also a lot of people not on social media. And I think the most powerful thing is to rally the people, your community, your family, your, you know, like when we both worked at Precious Plastics like we live, we met and live with 40 to 50 to 60 people, you know, like, dead passionate about the environment. But, um, I don't know, I think I think while it's really helpful to engage in online community, which I do, too, like it's something that I still do. And but I don't know, I think there's nothing compared to spending time with people face to face. You know, rallying local movements, local food movements, local localisation movements. It's really, and this really this, this concept around my pleasure activism, which to be a happy and grounded and connected human being is actually a method of being an activist because everything around us in society is trying to feed off our anxieties, trying to feed up what we're insecure about trying to feed off our loneliness and our you know, like our discontent with what we've achieved so far. Like that's, that's what I think is really driving this over consuming, like very much against the planet. Again, this linear economy is like, I don't know, just to, to work on ourselves and to be spend with our communities and to maybe not want to have businesses to, you know, an X amount of hundreds of thousands or but you know, just just what is the enough for you and like, kind of just, like, bring it down a level. I feel like the last period of growth is just been so focused on, you know, the individual rather than the whole of our communities and our ecosystems. And, yeah, it just, it's much more, you know, controversial, I think, to be a happy and grounded person that doesn't need to buy a whole lot of stuff like, but at the same time, like, I know that there are small businesses that need to sell stuff, but I don't know, like, I've been in e-commerce before. And I've had several go's that you know, this type of thing. And, you know, it's about like, yeah, getting what we need, and not more than that. And I think that engaging in local movement, and local communities is just an amazing form of activism.Krissie Leyland  31:13Yeah, I love that. And I was, like, I feel now I'm happiest, actually, when I have just enough, like, now I enjoy decluttering my life and just, you know, thinking, do I really need this? No, well, don't buy it. Even if all these ads are telling me to, no, I'm not going to do it because it's, it's not going to make me happier. It's not, you know, and just thinking about the planet more and just being more conscious about everything that I do, basically. Saskia  31:53And if you do produce things, and if you do sell things, then you know, do it because people want to buy it and not because you're trying to sell them an idea or, like a something that I don't know might not last, you know, it's much, much more like I buy things, I'm not saying that, like, you should never buy things again. But I think that there can be a much more holistic relationship between people making things to sell and and people buying them. And I believe in economy, and I believe in enterprise, I just don't think that we need to, like, work our entire lives to fill our houses with crap.Krissie Leyland  32:27Let's not do that. Um, so I'm just gonna look at, see if there's any questions that we haven't answered. But I think what, okay, so what is the number one tip that you could give to everyone when they're designing their website to make it, you know, more carbon friendly, more environmentally friendly? Out of all the tips that you've just given?Nico  32:57Okay, so yeah, all the tips. Because the first one is the hosting for sure. Because just to come back to that, like the carbon intensity between the two energies, like classic one and renewable one, like it's like, it's a huge difference.Saskia  33:14Isn't it like 19 times or something? Nico  33:16Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Like, we did like quick like, calculation, about a page we did design recently. Oh no actually, it was about the actual page they got. So it's a page around 10 megabytes. And so if it's run on, non, non renewable energy, like this page, if it's visited by 10,000 people each month for a year, you need 47 trees to compensate the emission, but if it's run on renewable energy, I think it's between three and four tress Its a difference like 10 times. So just that...Saskia  33:58And thats just one website that's not very big and only visited by 10,000. So you can imagine like the news websites the like, all the e-commerce all these big, it's just ginormous.Krissie Leyland  34:11Makes me so sad.Nico  34:13So this is really the first step and after that for sure no video if you can.Krissie Leyland  34:20Yeah.Nico  34:22And after really try to focus on the content and like not putting everything. Actually, it's really also design and like really good for your communication. Because online the attention span of people is really, really small. So it's just send like thousands of messages and you put like, I don't know many image like like lots of images, like you're losing people and but if you focus really on like, your main message and you put one or two image maybe it's way more efficient, and is going to be lighter, actually.Saskia  34:57Yeah, I believe that like it's not even about Low Carbon that like, you know, having a really good strategy around how you communicate your message is actually good for the planet because if you can reduce that, you can reduce people understanding what you do very quickly. And yeah, it's it's also a very big tool that we use, is by starting with the communication, which doesn't seem like a low carbon thing to do but, it's really, really, really helpful and making sure that it's curated and well received and easy to understand.Krissie Leyland  35:28Yeah, because the less time they're on your site thinking, "What do, what is it that you actually are offering?". then there's less impact.Saskia  35:38Yeah and you're less tempted to use more images to break up the content, because, you know, has a big stream of lines, they have animations, and they have images, and they have, like, all this other stuff. So yeah, it's definitely an exercise in trying to achieve that.Nico  35:54And an easy win also is to compress the images. There is good tools online like one is called tiny PNG.  You can go there and like, you just drag and drop your images, and you compress it and you can really, really win a lot of data.Krissie Leyland  36:15I think that's also good for SEO. Just as a side note.Nico  36:20Yeah, no, for sure. Because if you website is fast, Google likes it.Krissie Leyland  36:27It's like the load speed. I was just thinking then as well, you know, if you if you're, you know, when you look at Google Analytics, and you've got the bounce rate percentage, actually, now that might, if I looked at that now, I might think "Oh, that's quite good." Because if they're not spending too much time on my site, maybe it's good. Instead of thinking, "Well, no, where are they going?"Nico  36:54Yeah, but you could have like, the same use of bandwidth, but with more people. Because you're like, you have better communication. Next, you drive more people to your website, but as because your website is lighter like it just uses the same amount. So it's like a win win.Krissie Leyland  37:15Cool. So um, what are some examples of the websites that you've built? So who are your typical customers?Saskia  37:25I wouldn't say that we actually have a typical customer, because we do work across... yeah, people that are just willing to go low. So at the moment, we're doing a e-commerce store, like it's sustainable fashion. And that has been a very amazing and interesting journey. Because, you know, it's a lot about taking them along the journey as well. It's just like a conversation like this. And sometimes there's friction, because there's a very standard way of presenting these types of things. But we did that. We did an organisation, it's actually my organisation on it's like an NGO, based in and around India, and women's work over there. And so we were able to Yeah, that was amazing. We were able, we took that from Square Space, and we put it onto our own custom site, and the reduction was just ginormous. And that was really around removing a lot of images. And yeah, really making sure that the messages and the news, the updates, and the information was very loud and clear. We're doing this, do want to talk about some projects?Nico  38:35Um, yeah, we're working right now on an exhibition, we are doing the website for the exhibition.It's around imagination and our imagination work with design. Basically, there is like example of illustration, like from like 50 years ago, some snags that were people were imagining the wall today. Like for example with like a TV in the pocket, which is actually now phones and now we can like imagination can drive design and the society actually.Saskia  39:13And it's pretty amazing because we have to like use, we have to do an immersive experience but in as low as possible way. So you know, it's not so much like yeah, definitely not lots of videos but yeah, lots of text animations and things like that.Nico  39:29Yeah, and with like now, like so we start with like really like at the beginning of HeyLow and we start to add some gems and which is I found myself pretty cool is we have different type of websites, like e-commerce website, like an immersive website, and we can really test this idea of design, like philosophy and like, because it's not about building the lowest websites ever like because, this is easy like you do like on like, the HeyLow website is actually just text. And that's it. That's like for e-commerce websites, you can't do that for a massive expense. Like, you can't do like that. So it's not like getting the lowest possible. I mean, the lowest possible for that case. To still do be able to do like e-commerce websites, but trying to really lower the impact of that kind of website.Saskia  40:31Yeah and we're about to do like a big, big organisation website, which might be like 100 pages or something. So like, it's gonna be very different to the NGO website we did for me, which is literally like five pages. So yeah, the goal is not to get to a certain level, but more of a percentage decrease and like, show,  because not many people are doing this industry right now. So we really want to have the best examples put forward for how the internet can be like, this is what me and Nico say to each other. Like, we love the internet. We've like, we've been on the internet for 15 plus years. And it can be a really sustainable place. It's just at the moment, it's just like hurtling towards, not that. So yeah, it's more about the approach and the philosophy and the combination of who we work with plus what we think it should be, and then kind of like arriving at a new destination.Krissie Leyland  41:25And that's really cool. So it depends on the type of website. And yeah, so just decreasing the percentage in rather than being like, let's get it to zero.Saskia  41:35That would be easy, don't have a website. Krissie Leyland  41:44Yeah. Oh, cool.Nico  41:47Yeah. See, we try to work with like, sustainable companies. And if we don't work for oil companies, don't even call us.Krissie Leyland  41:59So what would you say that your mission is then? To lower the impact as much as possible?Saskia  42:07Make the internet a better place. Yes.Nico  42:11I do think there is true traditions, there is the design part, the web design parts, which is really trying to, as we said, like, making the internet a better place and a greener place, if we can say it like that. And I do believe there is like a mission, which is helping the brands or organisation to have a better communication and like to, to win, actually to to win...Saskia  42:37the hearts and minds of their viewers. Yeah, we didn't, we haven't really talked about that. But like, obviously, part of our work is the website production and the low design. But definitely a big chunk of it is, is like re-imagination, reimagining their branding and reimagining their strategy and their communication and like how they can, yeah, communicate in a much more connected way towards finding the people that are there crews and communities. And like that, which is also very, we think is like quite an important part of moving the internet to a better place, because then it just feels less cluttered and people kind of know what they're looking for. Krissie Leyland  43:19Yeah, I feel like by simplifying websites or the internet, it will actually make people a lot happier. Because you're not having to trawl through all this information and all this noise to get what you're looking for. It's just, it will make it easier for everyone I think. And at the same time, yeah, saving the planet.  Um, cool. Well, thank you. Um, did you have any questions for me or for the community, or anything that you'd like to just tell everybody? Saskia  44:01I think it can feel a bit scary when you like, learn how bad the internet can be. But I do, I think we both believe that there is a bright future for a place like this. And it is much about the design and communication, it's also about the infrastructure, it's also about the parts that we might not have visibility on. So yeah, we just kind of want to make it easier for other people to do. And in fact, we come from a very open source, like background, Precious Plastic was all open source. So once we get up and running, I do really want to publish a bit more around like, what what brands can do if they don't, you know, if they can't kind of go through a big redesign, you know, I'd really like to help out the community as a whole to say, you know, these are the things that we can, you know, start working together and it's less about having 100 HeyLow, 1000 HeyLow sites, it's more about the internet moving in a direction that is more sustainable, more connected. So yeah, hopefully sometime next year, we'll have a bit more content around like how we think that we can kind of help people in a more community like way.Krissie Leyland  45:12Hmm, cool. And we can we can do it together. And because together, we're stronger. And so you mentioned something else then. Precious plastics? Tell me a little bit about that. And I know that it's really cool. So you can tell everyone.Saskia  45:33Precious Plastic is an open source, collaborative project, designing and building machines to recycle plastic. So it was started by a guy named Dave Hakkens. Yeah, maybe four or five or six years ago. And he started building some machines and like really low flying machines. He saw that the recycling machines were very complicated, convoluted they need, you know, like the whole recycling municipality recycling system was very difficult to kind of get your head around. And he was a designer working in this area. So he made these really simple machines, that one would tread plastic one would extrude it one would, like squish it into a sheet. And anyway, so he put these plans online, open source, so people around the world could download them and like thousands of people did over the years, and they iterated on them and they sent their plans back. And so the machines have gone through several versions. And last year, but actually 2018, he did a big call out for version four and over 100 people came over the year to contribute to whether it be machines, whether it be like solutions to waste as in like biomaterials or by plastic that biodegradable materials. What else do people do product design? We did the digital tools. Okay, cooking, cooking shares, there were lots of helpers around. And so yeah, it was and it's been adopted. And now it's kind of like a pretty amazing resource like you can, you can even like buy entire workspaces now, if you want. So it's kind of for plastic entrepreneurs. So if you kind of want to make a bit of a dent in your local community, you can go onto the Precious Plastic website and see how you can contribute. Maybe you want to start a workspace and you want to collect plastic, and you want to like produce products where you want to sell something. And there's just a general, mostly active and supportive community online that are all trying to help each other. Learn how to decentralised plastic recycling around the world. So it's pretty amazing. It's pretty cool community, I definitely recommend having a look if anyone's interested in it.Krissie Leyland  47:43Definitely. Cool. Well, thank you so much. That was really, really insightful. And all the questions have been answered. Yeah, thank you.Saskia  47:56Do you want to add anything, Nico? Nico  47:58No.Saskia  47:58Okay, cool. Yeah, it was great to talk to you and thanks for setting it up. And yeah, looking forward to making the internet a better place!Krissie Leyland  48:07Yay! Absolutely. Thank you so much. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Krissie  0:00  Welcome to the Mindful Commerce podcast. I'm Krissie,Rich  0:04  and I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This is not your average podcast. This podcast is for mindful ecommerce entrepreneurs who want to make a difference in the world. Most of us are aware that climate change is a problem and the way we go about our daily lives has an impact on our environment. We all need to do our bit to make a change.Krissie  0:24  We will discuss the role of e commerce and how it can be improved to better protect our natural world. We will chat openly and honestly to leaders in the ecommerce space: brands, merchants, tech solutions, web experts and freelancers.Rich  0:41  With the global increase of e commerce, billions of online stores are selling and shipping products around the globe. This shift to online sales has led to overconsumption, increase in carbon emissions, which ultimately contributes to climate change.Krissie  0:55  We want to share our journey to uncover the social and environmental issues in ecommerce and discuss the ways in which we can improve this to be better.Rich  1:05  We have an opportunity through education and awareness to influence shoppers, merchants, tech developers and associated industries to be mindful of our environment, social impact and reduce demand on natural resources.Krissie  1:17  And that is why we started the Mindful Commerce community and podcast.Rich  1:22  Over the coming weeks there will be a number of podcasts featuring interviews with experts and occasional discussions between Krissie and I.Krissie  1:29  Check out the show notes for details of how to find us. We hope you enjoy!Find us: Register to join The MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchant: www.kollectify.com/mindful-commerce-communityInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerce Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.