#51 I can see my house from here Richie! That's cos it's vvast!

Hey.

And so, yeah, welcome to the latest episode of the Be Better podcast. And with me today I have got Richie Jones from vast. Hello, Richie. How's it going?

Yeah, good. How's it going, Tim? You alright?

I'm doing really good, yeah. And so obviously we were just trying to work out whether we are related on, on some level, possibly. Although your family, you were saying for people who know nothing about Wales, we'll give them a quick introduction. So your family would obviously be called Gogs in, in Welsh because people from North Wales speak differently to people in South Wales. So yeah.

That'S. Yeah. And to make it even worse, I'm sort of, I'm half Welsh and the other half of me is English. So when it goes on it causes some challenges, you know. Yes, just go with whoever's winning, you know.

Yeah, I'm exactly the same. I went to university in Cardiff as well, which probably made it even worse. And so I was always called a plastic Taff because you, you know, you're not quite the real thing. But yes, yeah, but there we go. But yeah, so you, you are from vast. So yeah, give us, who are you? What does VAST do? Why are we talking?

Yeah, sure, yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, so for Vast. Vast was founded by myself five years ago and we're basically an E commerce direct to consumer consultancy, but we in effect run brands in the European or a wider media territory these days.

Yeah.

So if we talk to a brand or purchase usually a US based brand looking to establish themselves in the European market using digital and E commerce and we do the whole thing all the way from the marketing side of things to the website design and build, but also all the things to do with stock control, customer services, anything you need you can imagine associated with E commerce and actually extends to Amazon as well. And actually saying the word Amazon and B Corp in the same word is always interesting. Touching some of that because we've got a really interesting angle on it which could be hopefully of interest to you guys for sure.

Excellent. Yeah, there's, we, we do with, with all the clients that we work with, we do a kickoff session. So we, we basically get their whole team in the room and take them through a bit of a backstory, like where did B Corp come from? What is it? Why are you as a company doing it? Da da, da. And one of the stats we always bring up in it to sort of demonstrate how B Corps are doing some good. So the average pay ratio in a B Corp is 7 to 1 compared to a global average of 140 41. So that's highest to lowest ratio of, you know, pay. Highest paid person, typically the CEO to lowest. Jeff Bezos's highest to low ratio for him is 6,000 to 1 to his lowest worker. So that's always a good stat to bring.

Okay.

If you want to get yourself a vast rocket, you know that you got.

To be heavy for that.

No plans yet. We'll just stick with. Yeah, going over the seven bridge in a car. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

So that sounds kind of like D to C in a box by the sounds of it. It's kind of like, hey, we want to get into the European market. You guys just help us do that. So how did you end up doing this? Like where. Where did you tell us? Like, where did the journey start? Way back yonder.

Yeah, it was way back, you know, and I should say I'm really fortunate in that the brands we work with, they're all, they all have really strong brand stories and they're. They from the kind of. They're basically from the lifestyle sector, which aligns very closely with what a lot of us do in the team. So a lot of us are surfers, we're mountain bikers, we have that inherent built in love of the planet and just want to look after it and so on. So it's a real privilege to work with those brands. So that links into my wider story. So I, yeah, came out of uni, started designing websites as a thing on the side while I was at uni. Actually made quite a lot of cash out in that final year of uni. I think my actual degree probably suffered a little bit as a result, but I was really lucky that I found something that I could do. So I did. I did just geography at uni, which was more. I loved it, but it was never going to be a kind of a vocational application of it. So I was really lucky that I was able to find something that I could do on the last year of uni and then went into it and actually founded my first company back then which was an agency called Yucca and did that for 11 years, which is a long time. And that was more of a pure play dis agency like that, classic design and build, but also have a sort of a digital marketing side to it as well. Yeah, we sold that to a large AIM listed marketing group and I actually got headhunted by their biggest brand about six months into after the acquisition had happened. So I did this whole thing of mixing it, being going agency side and going client side, which is brilliant. Had experience Where I went was actually on a private equity board. So to be able to witness firsthand as a CMO the mechanics of how private equity works and how you raise money and all those kind of things in London was really, really great. I then moved on to a surfer brand called Salt Rock and went on the whole, very much on the kind of brand side of things. And it really observed that there was a challenge, both agency side and brand side of disparate data systems. Systems don't necessarily kind of talking to each other so people weren't actually making the right decisions with the right data. And also, you know, kind of a lot of missed opportunities as a result of that really. So I had this idea while I was surfing, funny enough, in Wales, in West Wales. I was actually paddling out a couple of duck dives and I just looked out to the ocean and literally sounds so cliche, but I just thought to myself, wow, it's vast out there. And literally that's where it came from. The opportunity, the idea that.

The kind of digital and E commerce marketplace and landscape for brands literally is a vast opportunity if it's tacked correctly. And there's some big players out there like the Amazons, the Assos of this world who are having it away at the moment in terms of the use of big data blending, really advanced data sets together to get to basically optimize things like product margin and actually make the consumer experience better. And what we're all about is bringing the same kind of really sophisticated platforms that we've developed ourselves to the brands so they can not only keep up with Amazon and Assos and all those kind of guys, Zalando is all those kind of big marketplaces but. But leapfrog them and actually make the consumer experience better. And as I talk about very shortly, the kind of concept around delivering to the consumer the kind of B Corp promise and the idea that you can do good consumption, you don't necessarily have to just buy stuff. That's the key. Yeah, that's the kind how I've ended up where we are now. So. Yeah, yeah. Based in Bristol uk but we service. We've got. We've actually got brands as far as New Zealand and Australia now. So we're running YETI Australia and New Zealand down your way, which is really great.

Nice. As. As in the. Is that the mountain bike Yeti brand?

No, it's the. As in the cooler Texan cooler company Drinkware and all that kind of stuff.

Right, right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. Well, it's good to Hear that Wales had a significant part in, you know, in, in the journey.

Yeah, I mean it's so true. You know, in the, you know, in the winter here, I love my skiing and for me it's just that it's that space where you get to go and think and you know, go with a couple of mates and talk, talk crap and talk big ideas and, and get that fresh air and. Yeah, I think it's a, it's a vital part of, of everything. Yeah. If you thought, if you thought your degree was, was a bit average and useless, try Medieval history, which is what I chose. So.

Wow.

Probably equally as kind of like, what the hell are you going to do with that, Ma? Mate, I don't know. Yes, but we're here now, hey. So.

Yeah, definitely, yeah.

We've got other similar backgrounds. So yeah, after uni, my dad and I and a mate of mine from school we started a dot com business but ours wasn't as successful as yours and we, we were trying to ride that wave of that sort of.com boom. 98, 99. You know, put a dot com on the end, find some private equity guys, sell it for, you know, billions seemingly. But yeah, we never, we never quite cracked that. So yeah, go you for doing that.

Yeah, no thanks.

So, yeah, okay. So I guess. Or the big elephant in the room is, you know, D2C sell stuff in a world of increasing people kind of questioning that and fast fashion and do we even need to buy anything? So yeah, how are you tackling that? You know, and obviously this is a good bit.

Right. So yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a good bit. Right. So this is what really excites me and it's yeah, being really open. Right. So we, like I mentioned, we're obviously a team of outdoor enthusiasts. A lot of us obviously bike and surf and so on and we've always had this kind of like feeling of like slightly uncomfortable just by selling, selling stuff when perhaps people didn't always need to do it. So B Corp is an idea that we've had for a few years now and it's been amazing to actually implement it and it's given us framework for us to actually address some of those kind of challenges. So what I should explain. So the idea of Vast as well is that we've got this ready made playbook that we can apply so when a, when a new brand launches in territory, we've already got all of the processes and assistance to be able to implement and then cruise sheet continue to trade that brand in territory and mention it because what we're going to be doing, what we are starting to do is pepper that playbook with initiatives and those initiatives we have to get. Opting for the brands to do it. Yeah, but those initiatives actually start to make a difference when you actually start to apply them. So we've got three pillars to our kind of B Corp approach. The first one is the kind of really stereotypical kind of application of sustainability in retail. And that's your bog standard. Switching out single use plastic packaging with compostable bags. Looking at the optimization of last mile in terms of are you using couriers that are using electric vehicles and all those kind of things. Those, those are the kind of like really obvious things that a lot of the brands are kind of starting to address because it's very, it's a very literal example to the consumer. So that's the big one we're doing. That's a real. I'd actually think that's quite straightforward. Just big tick a lot of the brands already on that journey. But you'd be surprised, some of the US brands especially, there's less of a kind of disgust about the use of single use in that culture in the US at the moment. So when they come over to the, to Europe, they're actually quite shocked when they see how obsessed we are with recycling and single use reduction. So that's our first pillar. That's the kind of easy one if you ask me. The next one is ethical advertising. So because we run Instagram, Facebook, all the meta platform stuff, Google, all those kind of things, we are basically drafting an ethical advertising policy. And the concept here is because meta and alike are kind of quite a long way behind the curve in terms of getting things like verification of age on accounts nailed, they're still, still kind of in testing with that. We're having a whole element where, look, we can identify when it's a bit marginal, whether that person you're targeting is actually of age. So we've got a whole sort of ethical policy piece that is, look, if you, if you want to opt into high brand, if you want to opt in to say 5 to 10% of your advertising next year to be within the realms of what we deem ethical. And that is basically no under age advertising, not showing a sales message to someone more than say three or four times or if the brand is really up for it, never showing them a sales message, for example. And those are kind of big things that are going to basically from A. Because this is the big thing about B Corp as well, is not Just an environmental piece. It's actually engagement of wider society and what, you know, and that's what we love the most about it in some senses because it's really challenged us because not only are we potentially making people buy things that they need, we're targeting in ways that isn't actually particularly ethical at times as well. So let's have, let's open that conversation up in the industry and actually have a chat about it. And we're saying to our brands that because when safer brand opts into say 10% of their advertising being ethical, there's a danger that potentially their top line revenue could come down slightly year on year. But if you forecast that and that then leads to actually in terms of our brand having purpose, this is what we're all about. This is us saying we're not going to be talking to people who shouldn't be targeted with this product. And I think that's a big, a big kind of play for us. So that's something we're rolling out literally as of, as of next calendar, so next month. So that's a thing where we can go to all of our brands saying what percentage of ethical advertising would you like to be opted into and kind of go from there? And I think for us, you know, we're not claiming we've got all the answers, but we are saying at the same time let's work with the brands to work out a framework. And what excites us about B Corp as well is that once we're fully certified, we just love this idea that we'll be able to collaborate closer and closer with more and more B corps as well because there's a bunch of brands out there who are B Corp. But their B Corp mission doesn't necessarily align with what say the E Commerce team's mission is. So E Commerce mission often is sell, just sell as much shit as you can literally. And you do unethical things like use advertising in the best way you can to target people who perhaps can't afford the product or send a basket abandonment email that the pats they didn't need after the third time, all those kind of things, you know. So let's have the debate and actually join up disconnect between the B Corp, which is usually the marketing team from the E Commerce team or the wider kind of revenue commercial team. So these are really healthy debates. And then the third column of our third pillar, sorry of our B Corp is basically data in retail. And this because we, because we sit on these platforms we can see Things like, obviously a customer who comes back in, we can see how much they spent. We can model when they're likely to repeat again with a brand. So it's called recency and frequency. And there's a whole piece there where we're sort of going to say to the brands, it, does it align with your brand mission to retarget this, this consumer this many times within say three months? And again, all these things have implications on top line revenue. And we want to, you know, our business model is we actually work on a percentage of the revenue we gain for the brands. So this, this concept of reducing volume and revenue actually hits our model as well. But if it's going to mean it's the start of something much bigger, that's going to affect the fundamental kind of operating system of retail, that's really compelling for us. So the last bit of data as well is that we look at full price markdown mix as well. And what that means is like the markdown side of things is the consumer is most at risk of buying something when it's marked down. So when it's on the discount, if they see a jacket, it's certainly 50% off the they've been holding back buying, they suddenly see it at that percentage off and they just buy it without even thinking. And it's. Yeah, you just do it. It's Apple pay, click, you're gone. You know, and it's, it's that sort of behavior, it's that behavioral fundamental change. It's gonna make a lot more difference than just changing the type of plastic you're using. So that's, that's the kind of bit that interests us the most because it's that kind of whole behavioral piece. Wow.

Yeah, that's super cool. Super. Yeah.

And as you said that the sun rose here in Brazil.

Yeah. Coming up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So obviously.

Yeah.

Richie's in Bristol or Brazil in the uk. Y. Yeah. I'm obviously in New Zealand. So. Yeah, the sun's. I've closed my curtains. Is the sun.

Where's the sun?

No, it's pretty much gone down now here. Yeah.

Yeah. You literally are on the other side of the world.

Literally the other side of the planet. Yeah. Welcome to technology. Yeah, that, that's super cool.

So many questions and thoughts bubbling around.

Yeah.

Because I mean, have you, have you work or did you become a student of marketing? Obviously beyond geography, you've obviously learned a lot of, you know this because, because my background's in sales and yeah. You know, some of the big things that you're taught in sales are I guess more of the tactical tools of influence. So there's like Robert Cialdini with his six tools of influence which is, you know, scarcity and you know, liking and all these. I'll put a link to videos on him.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And then there's also as part of my sort of journey of unbundling, how I got to be who I was which turned out to be not who I thought I should be. If that kind of makes sense within the purpose realm of stuff I got into learning, excuse me, about. What's his name? Bernays. Who Remember his first name, Edward Bernays. There we go. Who was Sigmund Freud's nephew. And he basically created modern marketing in its current sort of guise of understanding fundamentally that humans are driven by either fear or desire. And if you know that you can market to them. So that's where the whole scarcity is like well, if you're scared that you're not going to get it, buy it now. There's only five left at this price. They're going to be gone by tomorrow. And I don't think most people know, I think people kind of know that they probably are being played but I don't think most people know actually the depth to which they are being played. And how many tools, both digital, emotional, psychological, you know, just even looking at how a supermarket is set up and how it's designed and how they use the music in a positive frame of mind and you know. Yeah, I always say to people, look at, you know, look at how supermarkets run their offers because they have spent over the years possibly billions of dollars making you buy that three for two pack of Ramen that you don't actually need but you end up buying because it just looks too good to be true. Yeah. So it's really interesting that you're unbundling that because I think. Because that is the most powerful thing.

Absolutely.

Yeah. No, 100%. And I think it's a really, it's a really great example you've made there of, of the tactics that are happening. And I think we're almost going to look, I'm convinced we're going to look back on this particular time. We're looking in the dominance of social media, the addiction to smartphone, the addiction to screen time linked to the E commerce world and consumption as a time of like when you know, literally they were, they were still putting class A drugs in Coca Cola, you know, is that, it's like I can't believe they fundamental.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's you can't believe they did it. You know, and it. And because it's the activation of dopamine, it's this. Yeah, it's this feeling better about things. And I think there's obviously the code side of things accelerated so many things. And I think E commerce adoption happened even quicker. But the dominance of social media more than ever, especially on the younger generation is the thing we're so kind of cognizant of. The power of that tick tock algorithm and Instagrams as well is it's just phenomenal. But I think having an open debate, I think the brands leaving it on the B corp side of things, the ones with purpose obviously get about purpose if you're on beak off anyway. But they want to actually open that debate and go, look, you know what, we haven't talked to you on Instagram today. You already bought that jacket four weeks ago. You don't need it. Yeah, it's actually having an open discussion and you could actually turn it on its head. And people everybody talks about, if you want, you know, the high yield from. By being A, you're going to hold on to your, your teams longer, you're going to encourage people to buy from you quickly. I think the openness and honesty of a brand that talks that way is far more compelling than just. And yeah, that's it. And goes without saying, Tim, we don't work with fast fashion, so there you go.

Yeah, nice. Excellent.

Yeah, we're only about that high yield kind of piece. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well. And because you're wearing your Patagonia jacket there and and mate of mine, Tim Loftus, he did his, he's. I think he's got two MBAs because he's really greedy and I'm pretty sure he's got two. And one of them he did in the US and he was.

Pretty close to the Patagonia team. And like when they were going through there, I think it was either just around their B corp certification, which I think was like 20.

I want to say 2011, I think was when they got their B corp anyway.

And it was really interesting his research on them and seen them and I think we've all seen this like their whole, you know, Black Friday, don't buy our stuff, go into the wilderness. You know, actually has led to them being more successful over time than if they were, you know, just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. And I guess there's an interesting. Yeah. Side to that. So, so there's a, a B corp based in this region called Kathmandu. They, they do sell into the UK Chrys based with Melbourne in, in Australia as their sort of other regional hub. And they used to be that kind of stack it high, sell it cheap. Everything's half price. Like every weekend it's a sale and you know, and you kind of just, you buy into it and you think oh yeah, it's good stuff and you give it a week, it'll be on sale. And they've completely. Tim was instrumental in their journey to recognizing that actually that's just not cool, you know, for the planet long term. And actually if you transition to, you know, buy it once and keep it for as long as you can, that's better for everyone.

Totally. Yeah it is. Fundamentally because one of our big tenants is the concept of selling, of building being brand equity for a brand. And the way you, the way you truly do that is, is when a consumer's buying the products at full price with a view to keeping it for as long as you can, it's better for the brand because you're not discounting they're bought, they're buying it for the reason of the brand exists, not because it's discounted. I think that's the thing, that's the big disconnect. And I think yeah that for us it's, we're already kind of pre bcorp. We already were used to selling in full price brands anyway. You're using the brand equity, the brand promise as a way of getting a consumer to go, I see the value of why I should spend an extra 100 pounds on this cooler versus this one over here. That's a lower branding theory. But then when you add in all the tenants of B Corp and you go actually this is amazing because it's like putting fuel on it, it's giving it genuine purpose. So I think it's. Yeah, I think it's a really exciting time for sure. As long as the brands are addressing it. That's the key.

Yeah. And I think, I think increasingly it feels like fashion is, you know, and, and even consumer in general, you know, out of our client base. Currently I haven't done the numbers for a while but I get a sense that the vast majority are consumer brands. Their health and beauty, food and beverage, you know, clothing, you know. Yeah, stuff consumer brands rather than B2B service based companies per se. And I think in most of those sectors and of course obviously in the UK you've just hit the thousand B Corp mark.

Yeah.

And I know the last time I looked at some the global stats, the Vast majority by volume. The highest number of B corps are in that consumer brands. So, yeah, health and beauty, food, clothing.

I think that, you know, they're at the pointy end of the wedge where consumers are all things being equal in the shop, kind of going, well, hang on a minute, yeah, this one is better for the planet. Or I know that this one hasn't been made by six year olds in Bangladesh and that's probably a good thing that I'm supporting that one rather than that one. So, yeah, I think it's, I think your timing is probably bang on. I think, you know, if you, if you'd launched this five years ago, people probably be looking at you going, you want us to sell less and you're going to get paid less for helping us sell less. Yeah, mate.

It would be genuinely. You are a crazy hippie. And that's. That's exactly it. And I think you're right.

We've got. And I think it. The way I often talk about it is like each, if you imagine, like each consumer, I'm convinced everybody's got their own mini personal B Corp. We're all trying to do right. It's like, do I need to buy that jacket this year? Do I need another bike? Do I need a new surfboard? That's, that's my particular problem is turf boards. But anyway, it's, it's that. And yeah, and I think if you can find brands that will talk to you in that way, you're then. And it's something about the UK market. It seemed to happen through Covid. There's a couple of brands over here in particular that really emerged through Covid that have just nailed it with their comms. A couple of gone Be Corp at that point. They've gone since as well. They just really kind of talk to the consumer that this is how we're going to roll out. It's still got a few things as they grow and stuff, but I think, yeah, I mean, it goes without saying one of our bigger brands we work with, they're part of the vf. We have, obviously the guys that own North Face vans, all those kind of guys. And we went through their very protracted procurement process, which is what you'd expect. Yeah, I like to think we were probably one of the last ones that got in before the more stricter kind of, you know, you've got to have a modern slavery policy, you've got to have all these kind of things that came in. And all the great things about B Corp is you just literally just Go, hey, we've done this already. They can see it, completely transparent and off you go. We've, we've also done it on our business with ISO certifications as well. Just a way, a way of demonstrating we can benchmark our level of data security. We've got all those kind of things. But I think you're right. I mean, I think it could have been, yeah, maybe, yeah. Three to five years ago people would have thought, he's mad, what are they thinking? But. But now it's, it really, really resonates with the brands when we talk about it and I think it's this. Yeah, I just, I just have the concept of purpose. It's not just about the bottom line. And literally going to think we could leave some kind of a small legacy that would be, that would influence packaging changes or how data is used or how we engage with the likes of Meta is really exciting.

Have you.

I don't know whether you would have come across it. So I did some work a few years ago with this. It was a Kiwi startup called Conscious Consumers, but they've now rebranded as cogo.

And what they're doing now is helping consumers track their carbon footprint through their spending. So they, they've created like a piece of tech that connects to banking software so that you can easily track your carbon footprint through what you've bought. Excuse me, but where they started, and this might be a. I might see if I can introduce you to Ben, their CEO or their UK team, because they've got a UK team now. They started off doing consumer insights for brands to understand what the customers cared about. And I wonder if that's something that you could almost layer onto your. So the idea was, as a consumer, I would link my credit and debit cards to the app securely and then on their app I would say I care about companies paying a living wage, I care about if it's a food brand. I want animal cruelty free products. So I want, you know, free range chicken or free range eggs, what have you. I'm interested in reducing plastic usage. I think in the end there's 15 or 20 things that you could sort of say, this is what I care about. And so the retailer would get insights as to who cares about what buying stuff in their store. And then the consumer would get insights to say, hey, did you know there's this shop that's 400 meters down from where you live who sells stuff that you care about? So the whole idea, which is why they initially called it Conscious Consumers, was like, let's link People who know what they care about to the brands that can, you know, prove that they care about that and sort of create a bit of a, I guess like a positive arms race of conscious consumerism. But yeah, I wonder if that's something whether Ben's still got. I don't know. I don't think it's in his playbook plan. Like I say, he's gone all in on the carbon tracking through banking data.

Yeah.

But that could be a really interesting thing for you to then as an extra layer on the, for the. Because I think you sort of mentioned it yourself, people, I think the brands, companies increasingly want to do more good but people don't always know what good to do. And yep. Feeling, you know, we've talked about it on a couple of recent episodes of the podcast. You know, there's green washing but there's also green hushing where people are fearful to talk about stuff that they are doing or they want to do for fear that people go, yeah, but it's not perfect or you know, you're doing it slightly wrong. And so I wonder. I think you've got a really interesting. Because clearly you're connecting and I presume you get, you've got consumer data that you're, you're holding at some level.

Yeah, you got huge amounts. Yeah.

You've got a really powerful tool there to sort of get that feedback to the brands and go actually do you know what this is? What this group of consumers who are already buying your stuff, this is what they want to go make it.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah. We already, with the brands that we've been working with for longer, we kind of infer their, some of the product strategy because the European market is so, so different. And quite early on, one of our brands about two years ago.

The packaging had to.

So yeah. Did you know?

Yeah, we lost. Yeah, lost you just for a second. Yeah, sorry.

No worries. So, yeah, one of our brands about two years ago they, we had some feedback from our European consumer that there's too much plastic in the packaging. So in their hook in particular on their purging.

Yep.

Fed that back to them, they reduced it by. It's about 80% reduction in plastic which is huge when you, when you scale up and so on. So that kind of loop is really powerful and being able to influence the, the US brands in this way then as the knock on effect that they're, they actually adopted the same packaging change in the US territory where there's obviously a heck of a lot more volume.

Yep.

So that, that's a great example. But yeah, your, yeah, your connection there, that sounds really good. And using what we want to do because again, using this, the KPI metrics that kind of benchmarking that B Corp is going to make us do, feeding that back to our brands and saying, look, we, we've hit this KPI, if you do this this next quarter, we think we're going to get this bit closer. We actually think that's a really kind of compelling thing to be able to talk to brands about because we obviously talk about our normal KPIs are linked to revenue. Obviously. Yeah, but, and often revenue. But the efficiency of the margin on that revenue as well. So adding all the other metrics as well, that to do with purpose and ethical advertising, all that kind of stuff is going to make a real big difference.

Nice. You can, you can be a tail wagging quite a few dogs in that regard.

Totally. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And hopefully it might change their mindset because I think you said it. I mean, I've never had a green hushing before, which is really interesting because I think that happens a lot and I think.

I think people are scared. They are, they are concerned sometimes to go, oh, this is our initiative. Just because it's going well. What about all the other things you're doing that aren't quite right? You know, And I know there's been a lot of hoo ha with the Nespressos in this world, for example, joining B Corp, you know.

Yeah, don't mention the N word. No, not the N word.

Well, is that. I know, but hey, but at least they've joined it. At least I know what they're now doing, you know, so let's start that journey. And I think for me, what I've enjoyed about it is, yeah, I've enjoyed this feeling about going, cool, we're doing something, we started something. It's not, we're not just going, hey, let's offset our air travel. It's way more than that.

You know, that's the thing. And yeah, I agree. I wrote a pretty long blog post about the Nespresso stuff. I've even spoken to, I think it's Stefan, the New Zealand CEO. I kind of. After the dust, after the Duster saddle, I sent him an email like, are you all right?

Like, it's yes.

Results on the news.

And I'm hoping to get him as a guest on the podcast to sort of, you know, let's, let's talk about it. But you know, when I, when I met with it. Yeah, again, it's really interesting, you know, that they're, you know, being a Swiss based company, what they say is actually their, you know, their pod has a perfect amount of coffee which uses the minimum amount of water possible to make the coffee. So overall it's potentially less emissions, less waste, less, you know, product use in terms of input materials than a barista made coffee. So all of a sudden, you know, you get into the nitty gritty of, well, which is better than which and who's better than. It's like, yeah, you know.

I think there are very few black and white answers when it comes to doing more good. And as I say frequently, you know, there is no 200 point B corp. No one has won B Corp and gone. We've done it, we've created the world's perfect business. There is nothing more for anyone to do. Like, we've won it. So it is a journey and I'd much rather people are authentically talking about what they're trying to do and going through that rather than, you know, yeah, we've got some recycle bins and yeah, we've, we pay to offset our carbon when we fly all around the world all the time. That's, yeah, you know, be, be authentic. Go on the journey.

Yes, yeah, yeah, much more than that. No, definitely, yeah.

So how did you hear about B.

Corp and I. Oh, sorry, there you go. So I became aware of it, yeah, I became aware of it mostly through, but actually through my, through the brand, the brands that I buy from and because we're heavily into the kind of outdoor lifestyle, kind of retail area. Anyway, I became more and more aware of it. I think, I'm trying to think, because it's quite, there's quite a B Corp community here in Bristol as well, so there's quite a lot of business leaders that are always talking about it as well. And I think it also came up via some of the HR channels as well. Because what's not talked about as much is that it actually the engagement, the internal engagement you can get from your own teams when they realize they can seize some initiatives and propose initiatives on having you thought about doing this, that's when you really start to get that exciting innovation and traction. So I think it kind of came in through the HR channels as a way of going, hey, look, you can hold on to, you can retain people as well. You're not just.

Putting stuff in bags and selling stuff to things people don't need. You're actually going, yeah, there's an ethical angle to what we're doing, dare I say, ethical E commerce and start all that kind of thinking. Really?

Yeah. And that's why, you know, we were talking before we sort of went live. We're really big. The clients we work with on running. We call it the kickoff session. We get all your employees to come and sit in on an interactive workshop where we explain to everyone, where did BCOP come from? What is it? Why do you want to do it as a company? What are some B corps doing? Some cool stuff? What's driving the rise of B Corp? Because that's, you know, frequently. Well, people who are regular listeners might know and if you hang out with me enough, you might know that CFOs and accountants, I do give them the odd little bit of, you know, it's mainly because I hate numbers and I really hate Xero and any kind of accounting tool and trying to understand numbers. Yeah, not my, not my bag.

But I forgot what I was going. Now see, this is what accountants do. They send me on a rampage and then I forget what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Oh, that was it yesterday.

Talk about B Corp. Yeah, yeah.

Quite often when some people kind of go, yeah, but how much is this? How much is the certification going to cost us every year? And my reply to that is spread that cost over your HR budget, your marketing budget and your operations budget. And if you don't get at least your money back from each of those channels in terms of the investment and bearing in mind that the highest fee you'll pay is about 60 grand, I think. And that's if you're almost like a billion dollar plus business. So if you can't as exactly said, you know, save that one employee that is actually the one that you really need to save from walking by getting them engaged on this process or if you can't hire the next best talent because you're a B corp and there's data and evidence that shows that and if you want to that just click on the link to download the e book and all the links that are around the universe that we place wherever this podcast goes, you know, there's just data up to wazoo that shows that employees want to come and work for B Corp and then you haven't even engaged your customers yet or any of your other stakeholders. So yeah, I just think if you, if you don't leverage the B Corp journey internally to begin with, it's like you've wasted your time.

Yeah, no, no, definitely. I'm sort of excited to see where we are in like a year's time when, when the team really kind of got their hit because we have this value, our core company value is relentless R and D. So everybody contributes to our roadmap because we've got our own platforms. We're really lucky. We can go, okay, this is, this is knock out this idea and see how it works, test and learn from it. We could easily do that sort of stuff with, you know, to do with our B core pillars. And I think seeing the team engaging with it and going forward with it and getting. Once they understand fully that they can go, wow, we can start to make a difference, especially the volumes that we're shifting, that's going to be really exciting. And that's the bit for me is that's going to be. Yeah, this is next level. Should I talk about Amazon really quickly? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the smallest small elephant in the room. So yeah, yeah. So we do engage with Amazon and we run the marketplace channel for Amazon. We also run, run it on some smaller marketplaces as well because Amazon is very big in UK but it's not so big in places like France. It's actually frowned upon even more in France probably because of the tax situation. But anyway and we engage with Amazon because we employ or deploy a concept of product segmentation. So you'll go to some of these marketplaces. This is what all the brands do. You won't always see the latest new in product on the marketplaces. It's usually you have to go to the direct GTC E commerce site to see the latest new in season product. And for us we actually think we can constrain potential top line volume via the Amazon channel by having a direct channel that's got the latest assortment on it. So that if that makes sense, we're actually going to be reducing. It's a vital new to brand channel for all our brands but in theory once we've got them on the, on the. Into the brand they're more likely to repeat via the direct channel anyway. So if you imagine we're actually going to be taking product sales and volume away from those marketplaces into ones that are more. The direct, the direct channel itself. And if it's. Yeah, that, that's quite an interesting one because it's potentially getting people out of the Amazon ecosystem who only shop in the app are actually going to go onto the direct channel instead for the first time at times. So there's a bit of an angle there as well. Even though to be fair to Amazon they are doing a huge amount. Yeah.

So you're basically creating like a storefront on your platform but it, it looks like the brands. Would that be how I would interact with it if I was to get something?

Yes. If you bought from any of our brands, if you bought from an Amazon, from the Amazon side of things you could then go to the once if you wanted to buy it again you could go to just the normal direct brand site and buy it that way and there's a higher chance they're gonna. That's what they're gonna suppose to going back to Amazon.

Yeah.

So that's, that's our kind of. Our kind of hook that demonstrates that we're going to be reducing volumes on those marketplaces as a result. Because they're going back to the direct side of the brand. Yeah. That's the kind of thinking that's involved in that. That's all about not making sure. Yeah. It's all about make sure you're not stocking the latest. The new in stuff that's on the Amazon channel. That's the key.

Yeah. Yes. To keep that kind of powder dry on your own store.

Yes. Yeah.

And bringing people there.

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Because I mean it is interesting just thinking about.

Thinking about some of the brands here I guess do you know the brand etique? So they're like solid buy health and beauty product. They're right. They're not D2C so much in the UK but that was their. So Brienne founder that was her. Her initial play was D2C online store. Built up credibility, built up a huge fan base and then was kind of like hey, supermarkets, hey pharmacies, hey. I think they stopped in Holland and Barrett in the uk places like that. You know she had that credibility, had the sales to say look actually people want this, you know now you should perhaps consider stocking it.

Yeah.

And there's definitely a lot of the brands that we're helping with B Corp at the minute, like the consumer brands, they are pretty much predominantly D2C which is interesting the, the whole. Because, because I mean D2C. How long has D2C even been a thing in terms of E commerce? I mean it's, it can't have been that long.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's not. It's a relatively new thing because there's always been this nervousness from the brands about we need to need to not potentially undercut the direct retail channel. Yeah. Because that there's a real traditional thing that's formed on long term relationships and stuff and I think the lifestyle sector where you're primarily operating as well, has almost been one of the last kind of verticals to adopt that other. Other areas. D2C happened really quickly and everybody just went, yeah, cool. That's just what we do, we buy direct. But yeah, I think, yeah, there's been. There's been a sort of lull probably. Probably led by the generational sort of reflection of the fact that some of the people in management might have been a bit older and not so familiar with direct channel, you know, techniques.

Yes. Yeah.

So I think, yeah, but it feels like the flood. The floodgates are definitely open now, I think increasingly and I think a lot, A lot of the brands we bring to market now, they go, we're gonna go DTC first. That's what they say. Whereas, yeah, five years ago it was, let's open wholesale first, then direct consumer. Yeah, yeah, just definitely turn around.

So you use the stores and the retail reach to get access and then try and get better margin by getting people going direct.

Yeah, I mean, there's always, yeah, there's always going to be a place for the. Those retailers because the theater have been able to check out and go to actually fill the product. Yeah. See, the sizing, all that kind of stuff is always going to be something they're going to need to do for a brand. But I think the. There's a whole swathe that you can definitely just get to the diet brand now. Definitely.

And I definitely, you know, one of our other recent clients, Genora, so they, they're like a skincare health brand, basically built D2C. And I think what they were really smart about, I guess this is what the D2C angle gives you. It's possibly the same with a teak, but possibly less so. Genora really big on community, you know, so around their Instagram channel, they've created community. And, you know, if you've got that D2C and they rely so much on that community feedback, you know, they, they like, hey, we, we're going to test this thing, you know, who wants to try it? And literally they launched some new. It's like a. Like a. How do you call it? One of those health supplements. It's in a. I think it was in a hot chocolate drink that's got, you know, like extracts to help you go to sleep at night. And I think that, you know, they had like 150 units and they sold within like 10 minutes or something, you know, as a tester range. And then they did sort of another 150 and they'd sold straight away as having that conversation direct with the, with the consumer for purpose driven brands I think is really critical because you get that direct feedback and you can test. And again, I think what, you know, Genora and Atique have done exceptionally well as examples of purpose driven brands is just having that authentic conversation and say, look, we're not perfect but we're trying our best and we want to know what, how you want to do it. Yeah. Are you finding also that the D2C Avenue. Because one thing you hear, and obviously I've got no, no direct experience of selling in retail but you know, you often hear suppliers get pretty screwed by the big box retailers. You know, it's all about margin and you know if you're not selling units you're going to be dropped as a skew next week. So you know, and then you hear stories about them having to pay the retailer for, you know, for being on the, the aisle or the height of the aisle that they should be on to get the most sales in it. Yeah, it all sounds a little bit, I'm not sure I'd want to be involved in that kind of stuff. It seems complicated.

So presumably there's a bit more transparency in terms of what you can offer a brand as well.

Oh, hugely, yeah. I mean, and, and if you ever get to the point, I think that's almost like a worst case scenario for a brand to get to the point where you're being pushed around in that way by, by your, by your sort of retail channel especially. Yeah, because that's, that's volume versus margin piece. And if you're openly having to have that debate with your biggest supplier, that's not a good sign. So yeah, we, I think the level of control that a brand gets by having a kind of DTC LED or DC first kind of approach is what the big attraction is. And one of the big brands that really pioneered a lot of this stuff is Nike. And Nike were very, very reliant on those big box, those big kind of top echelon kind of shoe retailers and they took a risk like probably they started to debate really openly probably seven, eight years ago saying, you know what guys, our latest designs, our latest new in, we're not actually going to give them to you anymore. We're going to put them straight on our direct site. You can stock them after say three or four months. But we want our direct site to be the place you go to experience Nike and to buy the latest product. And that's, and that's the form of segmentation that was the early stages of segmentation that we're now seeing across the industry as a whole. But I think that was a real bold move and they knew they were going to lose sales in those first few months or first few years because those big box will be dialing back Nike and almost make them pay for it. And actually I wouldn't be. The Adidases of this world then muscled in and kind of stole some of that volume. But now the effectiveness of that Nike direct channel is so, so good. They now control the margin and they control the consumer in the sense that they own that get the consumer to opt in, which is the other big challenge we've all got in Europe with our GDPR legislation.

As soon as they opt in, you've got that, you're then in the driving seat to be able to get that consumer to repeat and like you say, have that direct dialogue, I mean we call it direct for consumer, that dialogue piece. There is this kind of centricity towards the consumer that the Amazons of this world, for example, in their more commoditized approach and even a supermarket, they don't have that relationship. Whereas using digital channels, email and the response back and stuff, you can create these really great, great, these like value adding a relationship, which is what we're looking to do.

Totally. Yeah. I heard a story, a mate of mine, he runs a pretty large, well, decent sized research company here in New Zealand and he was talking about how one of their clients, you know, flew to the uk. You know, brand, you know, I'm not sure whether it's food or beverage or what the exact product was, but they flew to the UK to have a meeting with one of the big supermarkets who they were stocked in to try and negotiate terms and you know, get better margin, I guess. And the, the classic big corporate customer, you know, he, he walks into the room on his own, slightly jet lagged, having just got in from New Zealand and there's kind of like five people, you know, around the table from, from the, from the supermarket chain. And the opening gambit from the CFO was, you know, oh, hey Richie, so it's, it's, it's great that you're here. I was actually just looking at the numbers and you account for 0.0001% of our revenue. I just thought that was an interesting number. Anyway, what is it you'd like to talk about?

Wow.

Yeah, well, I think we're done here.

Yeah, and that's the problem. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where it's like if, if that 1% is 100 yours.

It's good.

I can have a conversation with my customers and away we go. So yeah, I mean, like I said.

We definitely and a few of our.

Brands who are, they're negotiating that D2C and we will need to try and get into the, into the supermarket or other retailers so that we can, you know, get some exposure. It's tough, man.

Yeah, it's really tough. And I think, I think the most important thing is before you even engage with say a supermarket is having that direct channel nailed already understanding the exact, the customer profile of who you're targeting. And we have to say don't even. Sometimes you might not even need to engage with a supermarket because that's not your target audience anyway. Yeah, if you want to find loads of other people over here, like if you want to grow this pot of people, you might be able to invest in, you know, a podcast for example, that will get you many more listeners or viewers than say, just, just, you know, hemorrhaging margin and being shown up in the wrong place. Because I think that's the other thing as well is the big thing. We, we've got as well as we've got a really strong handle on the wholesale channel and retail about whether it's actually driving brand equity for a brand as well. So that's a particularly powerful tool as well because we often ironically will compete with people that stock the same product and if they're bidding on say Google brand terms, they're wasting money to protect their brand terms. So we've got a whole model that also gives that insight to the brand as well. And you only get that if you've got a direct consumer play live. Some brands, most do now, but some do, but they're very under optimized as we all know, which is why VAST exists back to the beginning.

Yeah, yeah, nice, nice. And so I guess just sort of finishing up, think, going, going back to your, you know, like I say, you're on, on the journey, you're almost, you know, at the point of getting into the submission stage for your B corp. But any, anything that jumped out of you or jumped out at you in terms of like, okay, wasn't expecting that, you know, wasn't expecting a question around that.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think one of the surprises has been the sheer number of policies we've had to generate, which is understandable. Yeah, there's a lot of policies we didn't have and we thought we're doing pretty rare policies because we've gone through ISO 27001 in particular doing another ISO environmental management as part of the B Corp as well that's going to improve those areas. I think the. Yeah, some of the questions. Because we've actually got a higher than normal industry average female payment of our development team. That's just kind of happened. Just kind of. It's brilliant. And I think for us, the one that jumped out of us is we're really keen to now maintain that and put that, put that as a thing. We drive forward and we're looking to overflow some of our development to Pakistan. I was actually in Pakistan earlier this year.

And meeting with our existing developers and so on about how we can scale up and increase our volume out there. But extending our kind of B Corp methodology around making sure that we got a decent gender of representation with our suppliers as well and that's, that's, you know, challenging in a place like Pakistan where I think they've only got one female member of the Air Force, for example, you know. So it's. That's going to be cool. And I think those sort of questions that come up as well where we can change and leverage it as well, I think that's probably the biggest one. What's the other one? Obviously the modern slavery side of things. Making sure we all sorted on that one. That was, that was good to have it all ticked off And I think transparently talking to our team about where we're at and what we're doing has been. Has been one of the big benefits as well.

Nice. And plans for the future. What is. Obviously the future is vast. Just like that. Looking west.

Yes.

Past the island to, To North America.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean I, I think it's. We carry on. We're going to carry on driving. We've got a big push in mainland Europe at the moment. Having some great success with the brands on the mainland at the moment. So we're going to carry on driving that forward. But I think what's interesting is increasingly we're being asked to run our model in the US So I think going back the other way, either with European brands into the US or just running U S brands, that's going to be a kind of likely next step over there in Q1 next year. Starting to kind of kick off some of those discussions as well. So.

Nice.

We might as well do it because the great is the more brands we do the more, more application of kind of the B Corp pillars and methodology we can get going there. It's going to help the planet which is what happen Nice.

Super cool. And you're looking for any brands. Like I said, there's a few people that we're working with who I know they've got an eye on getting over to the other side of the planet. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll hook you up. Yeah. The traditional, the traditional barriers of why people think they can't enter territory. We get over because of our model because we've already got like a ready made way of working. It's this perception. You need usually about a million GBP to set up a local team. So we've already got that local team. It's nothing like that to set up with us. And you can just test and learn and this is the great thing, you know, you might get like a sweet vein that works really well. Consumers that go. Yeah, I mean I, because I used to buy my mountain bike kit from a brand down in New Zealand. Right. Because of the, the. Yeah. Which one was that? I can't remember. Oh, I'm trying to remember who they are now.

NZO or ground. Ground effect.

Ground effect, yes.

So they're, they're in Christchurch. Yeah, yeah. Just around the corner from where I am.

Amazing. So such good products and they, they can fly in this territory. So because they've got, they used to put fleece on the kneecaps.

Yeah, yeah.

The only, only licking leggings I had with fleece on the kneecaps and that's great for this country. That's absolutely freezing, especially right now. Yeah. Oh, minus two outside.

I'll drop them a note and say hey, because I'm on there. I'm on their email list.

Amazing.

I've said to them like you guys should be a B corp because I think you'll smash it. Because there's not really that many mountain bike brands that are B corp and yeah, the whole ethos is buy it once, buy good quality, we'll kind of fix it if it goes wrong. Which there's quite an ethos of that, you know, because there was a brand here, Mac Pack, we're still here. Back in the day, you know, it was, it was run by, it was almost like a bit of a mini Patagonia owned by a guy who was into the outdoors and their whole policy was if it breaks, doesn't matter if it's 25 years old, we'll fix it. And now it's being bought out by private equity and then it's been bought out by some big Aussie based commercial assets and it's kind of like, yeah, can just see the Quality is going, you know, down and down and down. So. But yeah, pack and.

Yeah, ground effect. They. They kind of used to be like what ground effect still is.

Yeah.

Oh, I'll drop them note. We'll see if we can connect to you.

And dude, amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you. That's awesome. You. You out for a surf this morning or is it a bit, bit too cold?

So I'll be going. I'll go on Friday because we were really lucky. We've got one of the wave pools here in Bristol. Yeah. Yeah, it's called the Wave. It's using the waveguard and code technology. So it's great. It's. They've just got signed off on solar power as well. So you can get there, plug, plug your eevee in and then have a carbon neutral surf as well. So. Because it's all power because it's gonna be powered out. So that, that's why I go every Friday, which is amazing here in Bristol. But I was in the ocean last week. That was good.

Cold yet. But it's colder in the wave 4 than it is in the ocean still. It's done. No ice cream headaches yet, which is nice.

He's gonna put 50p in the, in the meter of the wave machine to get the temperature up.

Totally.

I'd be so good if they heated it. Oh my God.

Nice. Yeah, there's plans for one here actually, just north of Christchurch. A whole bunch. Yeah. Sort of aquatic center. I'm not sure whether my mate of mine, Scott, he was on the board of it. I don't know what's happened to. Haven't seen him for a while. Yeah. But yeah, me and surfing tried it a couple of times. I'm 6 foot 4, 120 kilos. I call it BMS Big Man Syndrome. Anything that involves like heaps of balance. I mean, I like skiing but you know, you just point them down the mountain and kind of go for it. But yeah, anything that's sort of a bit delicate and needs a bit of balance. Although, I don't know, maybe I should give. Give surfing another go. I'm doing better at my skiing.

Yeah.

Over the last.

Just get. Get a huge board.

Well, that's what I need.

I need like go.

You know those original, like Hawaiian, like 18 or 1600s, like half a tree.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well, I'm likewise. I've always wanted to come down your way and surf The. The lights are raggling and it's on the bucket list. So it's gonna happen at some point.

Well, yeah, let us know, mate, we'd be more than happy to, you know, to host you and you could go and stay with the Raglan Coconut Company team based in Raglan, who are a B corp. Undoubtedly amazing.

Okay, cool.

Raglan is a town of not that many people and there's two B corps there that per capita, I think they must be just be smashing it on a global level. Like.

Hi. Yeah, they will.

So amazing.

And yeah, and proximity to world class point breaks. So that's amazing. Yeah.

Here we go. There we go.

Cool.

Well, mate, it's been really good to. To meet you, catch up and learn more about what you're doing. We will definitely, yeah, be introducing you to some of our. Our clients, I think. And yeah, I'd be really keen. Let us know what B Corp score you get. We'll keep a lookout. But yeah, as soon as you know, let us know. And yeah, when you come, when you come to New Zealand, shout out. We'll get a.

Sure, definitely.

Cheeky beer.

Definitely. No, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you and yeah, thanks for logging in the middle of your night or whenever it is at your time. And 10 o'?

Clock? Yeah, it's coming up to 10.

Okay, good. All right. But yeah, no, definitely I'll give you a shout for sure once we've got our score. That'd be great.

Awesome. All right, mate, appreciate it.

Thanks. Tim.

Hey, it's Tim here, that B Corp bloke from Grow Good. If you want more content on purpose, B Corp, how to do more good in the world as an individual or a business, then you know the drill. Hit the like and subscribe. Check out some other videos. They're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.