Henry Reif, COO of Oh Crap, describes the company's creation and growth: they make non-plastic compostable dog poo bags that break down in landfill in less than three months. The idea began from an origin anecdote in 2014; by 2018 they focused on marketing and product fit, and by November 2019 (about 18 months later) had saved approximately 6.3 million bags from landfill. Reif credits SYSTEMology for professionalizing processes—nominating a systemologist, building marketing and customer-service systems, freeing capacity, and enabling planning for future growth while retaining a family-company culture.
Questions this video answers
In less than three months.
2014.
2018.
About 6.3 million bags.
Chapters
My name is Henry Reif. I'm the chief operating officer at oh crap. And we do non plastic compostable dog poo bags that break down in landfill in less than three months. And we're changing the world one crap at a time. So in 2014, my business partner Bruce was out with his fairly new dog at that time and was in the park and just it did its business, it did its happy dance, let's say. And he went down with his plastic bag and picked up the poo and just thought, this is ridiculous. We're putting organic matter in a plastic bag that never breaks down and you put it in a landfill and it will stay there for thousands of years and nothing will ever happen to it. That's just ridiculous. It's so stupid. So that was back in 2014, had some friends in sourcing and materials. So gave a friend a phone and you know, phone a friend and phone a friend came back that day with, hey, I actually think we can do this. So 2018 came around and we really worked on the marketing, getting everything right and just a lot of trial and error and hit it sort of spot on. And now November 2019, about 18 months later, we're at 6.3 million bags saved from landfill. What would make the difference is backing up sort of my marketing knowledge with the systems. And, and I think that's where through a colleague, I sort of came into systemology. And it's amazing that I did the first couple of systems and then we nominated a systemologist and she every day now just is honest every day, come on, what did we learn? What have we done right? What have we done wrong? What can we learn and how can we put it into a system? And yes, someone else in the business now just pushes that and is the champion for it and even scares me. I used to email and say, hey, as we're doing this, let's be really conscious what we're doing. And now she jumps in before I've emailed and says, hey, okay guys and girls, what are we going to do through this system? And before I've even got there, she's now pulling everyone into line and saying, you know, okay, what did you just do? And if you're about to do that, can I record it with you? And so, yeah, the mindset has grown so much more than just me and the business. It's everyone. And it's not only the systemologists, it's everyone is buying into it now because it's almost given people back the job that they actually love as much as made us all have more time in the business. And it's funny that over the last sort of six months, as we've really matured and got lots of customer service systems in place, lots of marketing systems, the more early stages of the back end of the sales system, we've almost got too many resources within the company. That's been amazing. Having been completely overwhelmed with everything, we're now actually planning for the future and what we can do along with now being in a position where we can actually go about doubling sales every day. As a company, we're a family company. There's two halves of a family come together and we work with that sort of family love and spirit. And what we actually love doing is changing the world. But it makes me smile every day when we start doing stuff that the big companies do. Yeah, we're a family business, changing the world like a big company.
