#78 Fashion has power says Peri Drysdale of Untouched World

Hey, Kia ora shimai. Welcome back to the latest episode of the Beat Better podcast. Thank you as always to all our regular listeners. If this is your first time listening, thank you so much. Hopefully you like this one and you stay around to listen to a few more. With me today, I have got Perry Drysdale from Untouched World. Perry, good morning. How are you?

Good morning. Very good, thank you.

And you are also based in good old Otatahi, Christchurch, just around the. Not too far away. I'm in Holswell. You guys are based. Your office is based. What's the suburb you'd call your.

You can choose.

It depends if you're buying or selling between us.

So the. So the head office here is really generally said to be in Russley.

Russley. That's it. It's not too far from the airport by the golf course.

Really convenient. Yeah.

So for those of you outside of New Zealand, that means nothing. For those of you with some knowledge of projects you now know. So, Perry, for people who don't know you and don't know Untouched World. Yeah. Could you tell us just who you are? What do you do?

Okay, so I'm the founder and CEO of Untouch World Limited, which started out in 1981, over 40 years ago with the name of Snowy Peak Limited, which was the name of the family farm, high country property that I grew up on. And we've been building a.

I call it sustainable, but that word's not great anymore, is it? But you know what I mean. Yep.

A brand that actually models a completely new way of doing business. And that came about not only because of the beautiful, pristine place that I grew up in, but I was traveling overseas exporting knitwear, which was our main product line. And I was just really, really concerned about the environmental degradation that I was seeing from visit to visit. So I was visiting most places once a year because the buyers would buy. We were selling a winter product, so they would buy that once a year. And I think when you're visiting once a year, you see things that you don't see when you live in a place. When you step outside the door every day, you don't notice.

And because I was traveling long haul, and because we didn't have digital in those days, I was reading newspapers from COVID to cover. You know, you'd hop on a plane and there would be newspapers from Africa lined up at the door. And I just realized that with that and some other things that we were lording business, but also economies for growth. So the biggest GDP growth in those days I think was Japan. Everybody thought Japan was amazing.

But also companies was all about growth. And I just realized that no one had to realize now, especially for someone like you running your business, but no one mentioned the impact on the planet or the people. And that just really worried me. And I, I come back to New Zealand and I think, well, what can I do? And I thought, well, nothing, because I'm from this little country, bottom of the world.

But then in the end we decided that.

I would either have to wrap things up and put it to bed or do something. So we decided to change the Untouched world, which was a label in those days. We were selling under the Snowy Peak brand. We were selling.

Certified biogrown undyed warm garments here and overseas. And so I decided to make that into a lifestyle brand and really model a new way of doing business. That's how that came about.

So, and that was really early on the piece. You sort of made that decision that the business had to be built around impact and sort of minimizing negative impact. So, yeah, I mean, that is, you were clearly so way ahead of the curve. It's not even, not even funny. I mean, like I say, that's 40 years ago.

It wasn't easy. I remember getting a PR person in to do some PR for us and it's very late 90s. And she just looked at me and she said, perry, aren't you ahead of your time? And I said to her, yes, I am, but if someone isn't ahead of their time, then there won't be a time someone had to do that.

Wow. Yeah, it feels, you know, I was clearly way late to the party. You're way smarter than me. But yeah, it felt pretty old actually.

So I've got time to catch up. Yeah. But yeah, it feels very, very reminiscent of my journey. It's of, you know. Yeah, business is just focusing on making as much money as possible and no consideration for people planet or anything else. And it just didn't, it didn't feel right. And I remember the SEC when I started my business. What can I do? I'm one person in New Zealand. But you know, eight years later, you know, we've now got a community of 100 and almost maybe 130 ish B Corps in New Zealand. And know the idea of business for good and purpose and meaning and impact is. I wouldn't say it's business as usual, but I'd say most CEOs of most companies have an awareness of, of that as a topic. Whereas 40 years ago, like, literally what, what Are you talking about, like, I don't, I don't understand.

Exactly. And I remember being on a.

Trade minister's group, there was a panel of a bunch of us that used to be invited to meet to talk to this trade man. It was everyone from kind of IWI to head of Agriculture, head of Fishery, you know, all of these sorts of people. And the very first meeting, we went around the table and asked people what they saw.

Was the future for New Zealand trade. And I think I was the second to last person on that group. And I said, well, we need a vision for the country and we need to sort out our.

Our environmental issues. And he just looked at me and said, we don't have any environmental issues in New Zealand, period.

Yeah, nice. The, the whole clean green, 100% pure clean green rhetoric has been strong for, for many years then, because I remember when I had my. One of my first jobs after university, I started a business with my dad and a mate of mine from school and we were working in the tourism sector. So we built a website called Where Will We Go? And so the idea was to sort of help people find adventure cultural tourism.

You know, I guess travel guides, adventure. Yeah, companies with a searchable database. And we would go to all the travel shows in London and talking to, yeah, outdoor, you know, activity providers and tourism boards. And I remember we've got this beautiful picture of New Zealand, possibly top of the South Island. I wouldn't be surprised if it's somewhere around April Tasman with, you know, these two people kayaking on this pristine blue sea, you know, and, you know, that that was the image that was always. Yeah, yeah. Of sort of, you know, pushed off New Zealand. And then you get here and, yeah, there's, you know, I've been here since 2004. Yeah. There's undoubtedly a lot of beautiful landscapes and scenery, but you scratch beneath the surface and it's not as clean, green and pristine as the tourism board. Yeah. So it's, again, it's just interesting to see that that's been a conversation that's. It's not new. It's perhaps disappointing that they haven't picked up on that still, perhaps to. To a certain depth.

So, I mean, how did you get into, you know, launching a clothing brand, fashion brand? Where did that come from? You just sort of walking down the street one day and thought, I know I want to make the world's most sustainable clothing.

Interestingly, when I first started, I wasn't even thinking of the. I'd never heard of the word sustainability. And you know, we didn't, it wasn't framed in that way, but I grew up on a, a beautiful sheep farm, absolutely pristine. Outside the back door of our house, Mount Cook Rose, not Mount Cook, Mount Hutt. You know, beautiful white snow rose up, you could go and drink water out of any of the streams and waterways around the property.

And I remember sitting around the table, we had a big kitchen table in our.

In our house and the farm workers and shearers and so on used to come and have their meals there when it was sharing time. And after the, after that people used to linger around and.

Chat and there was always a coal range going in there. It was nice and warm, rest of the house was always freezing. And my father, the conversation often went to the fact that our economy was based on.

Very, very narrow platform of.

Primary product. And so in those days we were shipping our wool offshore in bales, unprocessed and we were shipping our meat offshore in full carcasses. It was even before the days of Vortex. We didn't even cut the carcasses out and, and then we had butter and, and cheese, butter and milk, milk powder and.

So, and most of that was going through to the uk. And my father was quite a forward thinking man and he just used to worry about if that door closed, what then happens to the economy. And that was pressing thought, obviously. But so I thought, well, what I'll do to help in your 20s when you can do anything, is add some value to New Zealand's primary product. So I thought, what do I know? I know wool. What else do I know? I know little people, kids.

Because I just had two babies and I'd had the most amazing career in the cardiology space which I'd had to give up to have children. Those were the days when there was no.

Maternity leave and no part time work in that field. And so that coupled with an experience when I was 6 years old that curiously I still remembered and I still remember now, around that same kitchen table.

As a six year old, I was sitting there when my mother was emptying out the padlocked mailbag that used to come three times a week. And this day, out of the mailbag tumbled this little.

Brown wrapped, brown paper wrapped.

Parcel and she opened it up and inside it was a box of, with a pair of little red shiny shoes and for me to wear to the first wedding I was going to be going to. And I remembered her taking these shoes or one of the shoes out of the box and turning it over and there were three little words printed on the back of that shoe and it was made in England and she said, made in England, that means it'll be good quality. And that power of country brand stuck with me. Now I don't think any of us today would probably make that connection between made in England necessarily being good quality.

But that's where it was in those days. And so I figured that if I made some product out of our primary product, wool and then wrapped the country values around it that I saw at that stage, which was, you know, friendly people, beautiful blue skies and clean water and so on, that that would be something that I could export. So that's kind of how that started. And I didn't really know how to knit. I asked a neighbor to teach me how to write patterns and I started with 10 out workers. I made up a little pattern for 1, 2 and 3 year olds for a little hooded jacket and little mittens. I didn't have the skills to put thumbs in the mittens so I just made, you know, something put a tie around it so they'd stay on and.

Little booty things that I some sheepskin in the bottom of and I took those to what was called trade and industry then and said I wanted to export these. So that's how it started. Total naivety which I think sometimes is.

Is the only way to approach starting your own business because if you actually knew how horrendous the journey is about to be, you would.

I would not. I would not have started. I keep saying, yeah, my next business will be something like, I don't know what, but something that doesn't change every season.

Yeah, it's, it's a tough industry. Yeah. In that regards.

But yeah, I think, yeah, I think the naivety is. Is what I think because I think it's the only thing that gets people into business. Possibly also the only thing that gets people into parenting still. Because I can't be fine. I can be great. It'll sleep, it'll be perfect. It'll. Yeah, yeah, of course it will. Because I think, yeah, the analogies between business and having a family are pretty similar.

And so you went straight for the idea of export. You didn't sort of go, I might try the local market in, you know, the farm.

Must have been the big. The big skies of the Mount Vision of go big.

We were about. So I think at that stage I had. Our youngest was under 2 and our oldest was 3 and my husband was going to be going to the Midwest of USA on sabbatical for a year and I thought how on Earth will I cope with being in a 700 square foot university house with snow up to windowsills three months of the year? I will need something to keep the brain engaged. So I had a conversation with the people.

That we were going to be over there with. Some Americans that had been here and.

The wife of the professor that was there, she thought that the idea was a good one. And so we thought we would go and sell these things in America.

Just.

Straight into the big leagues. I love it. So your husband works at a university? Well, he was working at a university.

He was at university, yeah. Right.

So hence the link over there. And so it sounds like there was a. I mean, the entrepreneurial spirit. A little bit of that from your dad, maybe, or at least that. Just the thinking differently.

I think so.

I still smile a bit when, when he was trying to figure out what to do with farm when he retired. And I said, I'll take it on, I'll turn it into a tourism venture. But I didn't even get a grant or an answer or an acknowledgment that I'd spoken.

Because girls don't do those sorts of things.

Right.

Was.

Was there a. Do you. I mean, do you feel there was a bit of that. That you've had to. You've had to push through the kind of, you know, I mean, getting into nursing was. Was that partly a kind of, you know. Well, that's what girls, you know, girls just go nursing. Was that an element?

I was educated to marry a farmer and to have a fullback career in case the farmer died. There was no, in those days, no thought that the marriage might fall apart or anything like that.

Yeah.

And. But I, I knew I didn't want to go nursing. I knew it wasn't kind of going to be enough. But a friend of mine was going down, she had a bike and she was going down to register with the matron. And that was a Vespa. And I said, I'll jump on the back, come with you. And the matron turned to me after she registered my friend and said, shall I put your name down too? And I said, oh, oh, yeah, okay. So that's kind of how I drifted.

Into Nissan.

I think. I mean, it's interesting, I was saying before we started, I've just recorded a podcast this morning with a couple of mates of mine, Laszlo and Bea. They've just started their own podcast all about purpose. And, you know, what, what is it? How do people find it? And that was one thing we were reflecting on, you know, the Vast majority of people get sent on a path in life that's not really their choosing. It's because mum and dad or society or whatever say well no, you will just go and do this and because that's just how it's always been. And so again, it's interesting, I think you have been clearly being a trailblazer all the way through because I mean, I imagine, yeah, must have been some interesting conversations. Or were you sort of out of the family, set up at that point to say, well no, I am going to start this business. Or was it because, well, you're kind of, you're a stay at home mum. So if you've got like a little side gig, you know, we're not too fussed about that.

Yeah, no, the starting point was the start home mum and it'd be a little side gig. But I think I was about, I don't know, seven years into it, might not be that far, when I was rushing out the door at 3 o' clock to go and pick my daughter up from school and it was quite stressful, quite a short day and.

Someone said to me, for goodness sake, get a nanny. And I thought, oh nanny, that's a good idea. And anyway, I was asking around, I think we went to a dinner or a party and I said, does anybody know of a great nanny? And then I think the next night I was at another dinner and the beautiful hostess of that dinner, she's a great friend, she said to me, what are your priorities? She said, my priority is my husband and then my children. And then the next day she took me for a walk to see if I'd actually thought about what she'd said. That was kind of the environment that I grew up in or started the business.

I think it's different now. I think women, if they don't have a, have a career, they get.

Yeah, I'd say it's, yeah, it's, it's almost flip, the opposite of, you know, oh, you want to be a stay at home mom or you know, don't you want more out of life? And I think, you know, I guess there's no right or wrong answer. It's, you know, and again it comes back to that purpose base, you know, what is it that you most want to do in your life if you want to be, you know, I think it's fair to say that there is a predisposition that the mum has more of that maternal instinct that means that it's better perhaps that they are at home than a dad, if possible. But either can work. But yeah, I think it's like, well, if you want to be a stay at home mom, go you. I mean there's nothing wrong with that. It's, you know. Yes, I think it's definitely flip now where, yeah. If you haven't got a side hustle or a business or you're not trying to be, I don't know, something as well as a mum, which I think, yeah, there's, I guess we're living in a pretty good time in terms of, you know, humanity's existence over the, the arc of history. But there's, there's always some pressure societally for you to conform one way or the other. And I think, yeah, it's slightly different right now.

So. Yes. How did you go in the us? Did you, were you tripping over your first sales or was it.

I'm pretty good for mittens actually. Now, Perry, I've already bought 10 pairs of you.

That's pretty embarrassing really. So we set up, we were really early into this brand new business.

In the second year I set off the US and I had a whole bunch of meetings with this beautiful American woman. And I remember sitting in a meeting in Lincoln, Nebraska, and the buyer saying, yes, I'll buy these, I'll have 2, 4, 4, 1. And I remember thinking, what the hell is 2441? You know, I had no idea. And that was like in their language, 234s, 236s, 238s and 140. But you know, I was just so naive. And I remember asking another customer, what's the difference between margin and markup? You know, I genuinely didn't know.

Yeah.

So it, I came back from that trip thinking, okay, you're not quite ready to export yet. But I had walked out of the. When I got to Trade and industry saying I wanted to export the items, they had said to me, look, you need a local market.

First. And so I had walked out of that meeting which was behind the cathedral in Christchurch.

And crossed the square. And in those days there were three only retailers selling to visitors. And I walked into the biggest one and asked to see the manager and said to him, would you like to buy these? And he said, yes, I'll buy those. I'll have three dozen of those and one dozen each of those. And we said, you better put a label on them because I didn't even have a label at that stage. I don't think we even had a name for the company at that stage. I don't think we were even a company at that stage. And he said, I'll just put handcrafted in New Zealand on them. Which is, which is what I did. And then I walked into the next shop and got an order. And so it started really quickly with 10 out workers, became 500 within four years. And that's huge.

Wow.

A testament though, to obviously the quality of the product, the provenance, the story, all the rest of it.

Yeah, I think I just love, you know, I suppose in the modern parlance it would be the hustle, I think, you know, because like I said, I come from. Well, I come from a background in sales and we do do some sales training as well as B Corp stuff for other B Corps. And the one thing that I always try and impress on people is you need to have more conversations with more people than you think. And the fact that you were just willing to door knock and just go, I've got these. I think that's a skill that most people haven't, you know, haven't got this day, this day and age or, or whether it's a mixture of the naivety, but clearly there's some courage as well. Just go and knock on a door and say, would you like to buy my products? But I think this is the thing, if you go and knock on some doors, typically you get it. You're going to get a response and either you'll know that you've got something that nobody wants, well, okay, I've learned something. Or you get some sales.

Well, actually, this second retailer I went to see, she was amazing. She was on the phone when I turned up at the door, you know, in the shop. And so I had to sort of hang about and wait for her to get off the phone. Her assistant was there and I helped someone to, to buy something while they were, while I was waiting and I thought, ah, the sales stuff's not for me. And I put the lid on my box on my way out the door and she ran after me and said, wait, wait, wait, she, she could see me through the office door. She said, I do want to buy these. And she was amazing. In terms of your comment about talking to different people, she said to me, I think you could get more money for these, and I think these are a bit high. And then I remember.

With all of those outworkers, we had hideous problems trying to get the quality consistent. And she was amazing. She said, just bring me everything, I'll be able to sell it. So, you know, you try the people like that who make a huge difference. Yeah, yeah, you just.

It's. I often equate to. When I was selling hips and knees as a medical rep, the guy who invented the modern hip replacement is a guy called Sir John Charlie. This is in Writington in the northwest of England. And he. He said, you know, back in the. In the 50s and 60s when he was doing his thing, he said, you know, orthopedics is a race between the patient and the implant. And at the minute, you know, the patient is lasting longer than the implant. So I want to invent a medical prosthesis that will outlast the patient so that we don't have to, you know, to perform, you know, more and more surgeries on people. And I sometimes feel that it's the same analogy with business. It's a race between getting enough business in getting enough customers and how much money you've got to keep you going. And sometimes it is just that almost turn of fate, you know, if she wasn't there that day, if it was just the assistant, you know, she might have gone, yeah, they look all right, but I'm not going to bother my boss because she's busy or whatever, you know. And so, yeah, sometimes I think it's being open to those moments, but also recognizing those. The offer that is being extended from people and. And being, you know, humble and gracious enough to get to recognize. Well, I. I don't know what I. What I don't know. And this person clearly knows more. So. Yeah, again, sort of kudos to you for recognizing that and. And, you know, sure. You know, thanks.

I think there are some advantages of starting when you're very, very young, because at that stage, you know, you don't know.

Yeah.

When you get to this ripe old age, people expect you to know. It's less easy to own up to not knowing.

But. Well, I mean, I firmly admit that, you know, I don't know anything. And I look back on the people that are, you know, teachers, parents, other adults, and you go, oh, wow, they know everything. But then you get to being that age and you go, nope. It's all just. We're all just, yeah, winging it, giving it. Giving it the best go that we can. So, yeah, absolutely. No, no pressure for you to be knowing everything.

And so the outworker so that you just. This was sort of like contracted, outsourced manufacturing, basically. Yeah. So what was. How was that working?

So I got to year four and realized that every second garment that came in from those outworkers was what I called a second. I've always had ridiculously high quality standards. Would have been much easier if they weren't as high. So my mother and I used to traipse around this area, actually to the. To the, you know, the businesses and sell the seconds off at ridiculous prices. But I then started looking for an industrial, a computerized human that I could program to knit these things and they wouldn't make mistakes. And long story short, we brought in a knitting machine from Japan. It was number one off the production line. On its chassis is number one of a new generation. But I didn't know it was number one when we ordered it and tried to get out of it when I found that it was number one. So I knew enough about machinery to know you shouldn't get number one. Yeah. Anyway, I couldn't get out of it. The thing was delivered. It was a nightmare. But fortunately, my husband is a really clever guy and was able to work across.

Physical computer and electronics.

And we had mortgaged our house. We'd got a loan from Development Finance Corporation for 27% interest.

And they had popped our house in as collateral just for good measure. So we were in it up to our eyebrows and we had to make it work. It was a really tough three months when that thing first arrived, but it was a good buy. It was the first of it, as I said, the first of its generation. And it stood us in really good stead once we'd got sorted out it going and. And we just went from strength to strength after that.

Nice. And so how did these sort of the. So, you know, you said initially you're just selling unlabeled mittens without funds. How. How does that morph into Untouched World that we know today? Like what was the. How did you build the brand? Yeah, how. You know, obviously you started with the New Zealand made or handcrafted in New Zealand. But yet how did that sort of.

I figured out pretty damn early that we needed a name and we needed a lab. So I think by the time we actually got to market, I had solved that bit.

And so initially we had that brand, Snowy Peak. And then underneath that brand we had Untouched World, which was, as I said, certified organic biogrow organic undyed.

Product. But then we had other little sub stories under that.

And I guess I think it's just that hunger to learn. And I would talk to anyone. I went to conferences overseas. I.

Contacted Walls of International War Secretariat, went to see them head office in Delft. They put me in touch with some amazing designers. So we had designers in Germany and Japan and Italy because we didn't have, we didn't even have design here in New Zealand at that stage.

So it was just one foot after the other really. The whole, the whole brand building thing. But the Untouched World logo, the Maori kite that interestingly that was actually presented to us as an idea by a beautiful Italian designer that we got in touch with and they had seen a spread in the, I think International Geographic magazine about the Mori kite and how for Mori's see it on the wall behind me.

That they would. How. How it flew in the air currents. They would prophesy the future. So for them it was like a link between them and their spirit world. So we figured that that was a really great metaphor for what we were trying to do. It was an outcome of man and natural materials. And.

So that's, that's been amazing because that's resonated worldwide that, that logo.

Yeah, and yeah, that's super cool. When did the logo come about?

About 1998.

Yeah so a fair while down the download and did you see. Was there, you know, was that like a bit of an inception point for the business? Did you did that sort of feel like it, like galvanized it and pulled it all together?

Yeah, totally. So in 19.

I lose track of the, of the years but I think it was about 1999 we opened our first concept store with Untouched World. And then in 2001 we completely revised the whole positioning of the brand because when you're, as you will well know when you're in this sustainability game, you can't. You, you know, everything has to be perfect, the quality has to be perfect and it's not cheap.

So we changed what we were producing and.

And then opened two more retail stores in 2001. So it got going quite quickly initially.

That's super cool.

And then I know, well, people might not know this but you've also, you've got some pretty big connections with some former world leaders sort of. Well, are they not. Not necessarily brand ambassadors but they wear your kit. How did that come about? And yeah, what part of the journey was that?

That's. That that's. I think one of the advantages we've got here in New Zealand is that we talk to anyone and.

We pitched for doing the clothing for APEC 1999, which was here and the brand was only a year old at that stage. But we were given.

The ability that we were given the project to make clothes to the brief that we had put together for the leaders. They stand, stand in a big long line and y. They're usually wearing the national dress. And also we were asked to make something for Avec, the business part of apec. And then Bert and Shipley got in touch with us and said, could, could we make something out of the other brand we've got, which is Marino? Because we developed the whole concept of blending Possum with Merino. And so that was going on at the same time. So we had really scooped the pool, really in terms of the exposure for APEC and for the investment that we'd put into it. I was invited to the dinner, the gala dinner at the Auckland.

What is it, Town hall. And.

When I sat down, the guy that was sitting next to me, what turned out to be two, I see in the Peruvian government. And he said, oh, Perry Drysdale, Fujim wants to meet with you. So he carted me right up the red carpet to talk with the President of Peru, who turned out to be a naughty boy. But.

That doesn't, that doesn't shock me in some ways.

And so I was chatting to him for quite a while because he was trying, they were trying to figure out how to deal with their vicuna. And so he had heard about what we were doing with Possum. And Bill Clinton was sitting at a table sort of facing this. And I could see that he was listening, that we were the only people in the room standing up. And I know that he's usually the only one that was the only one that was being spoken to. When I went all the way back down the red carpet to our table, this new friend of mine said, well, have you met Bill Clinton? And I just had the split second to decide whether going up, all the way up the front again was just too much because I was so close to the back door that if I'd been any further down the guest list, I wouldn't have been there. And I didn't want to, you know, offend then Prime Minister Jenny Shipley by this lowly person helping herself to the, to all the high profile people. Anyway, I said I would. And so away we went up to see Bill Clinton and he jumped to his feet and I told him he was going to be wearing our shirt the next day. But I said, you've got somebody else's coat over the top, so could you please get a photo of yourself with just the shirt on? And that was in Reno shirt. And then when he came back down the red carpet, we were doing a lot of business in those days with Japan and they used to say to me, look, if you meet anyone, for goodness sake, get the Photo. We don't want to just hear about it. We need the photo. So I got back to the table. There were no photos allowed in the room. But I said to the people that I was sitting with, has anyone got a camera in those days? There was. It wasn't fast, but somebody had a disposable cabinet with him. It was the president of Motorola. And I said, I'm going to stop the President on the way out. Can you please get a photograph of me and the president together? These things as a Kiwi, I hated doing, but I did it for the business. And.

Anyway.

We did that, and I asked Bill to come to our retail store, and he said he would. So that's kind of how that relationship started.

That is such a cool story. And I think it just. It just highlights your, you know, like, you say the ability or just. Just ask, you know, like, it seems to be something that you've done, you know, so if you don't ask, it's a no.

Yeah. It is a case of just asking. I remember Dame Sylvia Cartwright invited me to dinner at Government House once with the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan.

And. Well, then crown prince and princess. And as per usual, I asked if I could get a photo. So I thought that would be an amazing coup for us back in Japan. And they said no. The Japanese part of it said no. She must have heard me asking, because I thought, oh, well, I've asked the question now. Enjoy the dinner and forget about it. After the dinner, she came up to me and she said, kerry, did you want to get a photo? And I said, yes, but they don't want me to. And she said, no, this is my house. You go ahead and take the photo. So we got photos of us with the Crown Prince and princess then, which was just huge.

For the market, but it would have been so easy to have. Not ask that question.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. Anyone listening in who's a budding entrepreneur? It's like, just ask, you know? Yeah, yeah, you're gonna feel worse.

Yeah, yeah, you're gonna feel worse never knowing that you could have got the yes. Then the brief moment of a little bit of not. Not even shame, but disappointment you might feel of a no. But, yeah, no, I love it. I love love. I love your style. Who else is. Who's next on your list to ask for? I mean, you've had Bill Clinton. You've got. You've Also in store, you've had the photos of Barack Obama as well, wearing the kit. So who next are you going to try and get all the presidents post Clinton.

Well, I just wish, I wish America could give us a nice president.

What one worth giving a jumper to? Yeah, yeah, maybe that, maybe that could be a new advertising campaign for you untouched world. We're waiting for a president worthy enough of our jumper.

Yeah. But we do have garments on a lot of leaders. And that was part of my plan, was that down here in New Zealand we can't make much of a dent in this whole concept of, you know, whatever you call it, sustainable business or doing better. And so I figured we have to figure out how we can get that message out and get that influence out. So when those leaders get our garments gifted to them by our government leaders, which is how quite a lot of it's happened. John Key gave Obama his gun. It goes with a whole lot of information, not just about the company, but about the whole. We have a foundation which we've developed which provides leadership for sustainable future programs for young adults. And that's an amazing program we've had 3,000 students go through now. So all of that information and all of the information about sustainability that we've been doing and the things that we think about and the actions that we take, that goes in quite a pheasant pictorial information with the government. And that I think has been really helpful to get to get that measure out there. And then the other side of that, apart from going with targeting these really high profile.

People, is that we figured that if we could get a whole bunch of young people growing up with the same drive that I had.

And.

We could get their eyes opened to what's going on and why they need to make a difference and open up some leadership tools within them, then that was the way that we thought we could actually maybe make a little dent.

Yeah, that's super cool. And so what age group does that foundation target?

17, but we prefer them 18. So 17.

Up to 30. We're now exploring doing some young corporate level ones as well because we've had that, had that request. But it is amazing that these programs, they do change the trajectory of people's lives. Just. It's phenomenal.

Yeah. And yeah, I think we need more of that. So yeah, that's, that's super cool. I think it just shows the depth to the, to the impact that you're having. You know, you're not. Because I guess the fashion sector in general in the modern, you know, how it's operating in the modern world is, you know, fast fashion, you know, exploitative, child labor, you know, you name it, we all Know what it's about the plastics, petrochemical materials and you're the complete antithesis of that and have been since day one. So it feels like yeah, you clearly are like the original leader in a lot of, a lot of the stuff that, I mean it's interesting how far ahead you are of almost every other fashion brand. But it's, it's sad that no others have maybe come and knocked on your door and said, Perry, can you just give us the template? How do we do more of this? Maybe hopefully some of those young leaders that you've got will be permeating into some of those companies.

Now we do occasionally get someone knocking on our door saying can you come and help us?

But yeah, I think if we can get those leaders into organizations, it may make a difference. I mean it's heartbreaking how much work needs to be done in this industry.

Really is a lot of work to be done. A lot of work to be done. And it, it's interesting because I think we, some days I feel like the battle, you know, has been won. You know, we've got great companies like yours is, there's, you know, it's quite, there's a handful of B court fashion brands, I guess like Cowtow Clothing, you know, some really good brands, little yellow bird companies doing, you know, I'd say at a similar level to yourself. But then at the same time, you know, I see my 11 year old daughter being bombarded by adverts for Sheen and Temu and you know, just buy, buy, buy this crap, buy this crap. And so, and it, it typically feels like those companies have got way more marketing budget and are way more, you know, penetrating than you know, the brands for good. So yeah, maybe the battle hasn't been, well, I don't think it has been won yet clearly. But, but we hope maybe in the imminent future we will turn the tide.

Yeah, I think Snapchat and some of the digital tools that young people are using now are actually making it worse because they are feeling that they need something new in each picture.

So I'm pretty confident that there will be a swing the other way. I think it's in progress where the concept of wearing something twice is respected. Being led I think by Catherine, for example, Williams. Catherine.

And.

We won't survive. It's traumatic, but we won't survive unless it changes. I was just reading in the last week that I think over 90% of the water samples, samples taken out of the grass Great Lakes in the US have got microfibers in them, plastic, microfibers and now there's a linkage between microfiber and dementia. So, you know, it won't take much of that kind of research to start to get some change happening.

Yeah, I mean, in terms of environmental challenges, the microplastics and plastic pollution more broadly is the one that I'm personally the most worried about because it's affecting us. Like you say, that level of endocrine disruption. There's a guy, I can't remember his name now, he's a professor at University of Canterbury. I've seen him give a talk, he's a, he's a professor of toxicology, I think, and he talks about how polystyrene basically mimics estrogen in the body, so the body can't tell the difference between polystyrene and estrogen. And polystyrene is now basically endemic in food and water and the environment. And so you're seeing the, you know, increasing female hormones in the male body as well as overloading of estrogen in the female body, which is leading to all sorts of endocrine. And he gave this talk at a, at a really cool conference, shout out to Ewen Wong. It was a conference run by Youth for Youth. And you know, in the questions, there was some great questions from the room. But I had a question, I said, so this, this is polystyrene. What about all the other plastics? And then what does polystyrene do when it's also with Teflon and it's with this and this and this and this? And he said, well, this is the thing, like we don't know. We, we, we can do the study on kind of the individual, but we haven't even done the study on all of the individuals. But we don't know what happens in this sort of chimera mix of all these things and what are they doing to us? And.

Oh no, I'm, I'm totally with you. You know, I've been talking to some scientists who think the whole micro fiber plastic issue is bigger than climate change.

Bigger.

It's, I think for me, like climate change, we can adapt.

Disrupting the, you know, almost cellular structure makeup of your human, of your human body, of your body and all the bodies and the planet around us. Yeah, yeah, I don't think, I think the speed of which, which that's happening and we, we don't even know what the first order effects are, let alone the second, third, fourth.

And can we ever know? I think it's such a complicated thing. Yeah.

In our industry, like way back we used to use recycled nylon, you know, from fishing nets or whatever, and we thought that was okay. But now with all the research that we've done into the contamination of microfibers, we said, nah, we can't even do that. So it frustrates me that on the way through to trying to do a better job, so many apparel companies are lauding recycled nylon, recycled PT bottles. I believe some of them are even made so that they can be recycled, you know, for marketing. So that, that is a really big concern because some quite reputable companies haven't sort of twigged onto that yet.

Yeah, I think having interviewed quite a few people on this podcast now I'm, you know, doing good is not black and white. It is massively great because, you know, like you say, seemingly it's really obvious, okay, well we'll recycle plastic because that's going to save, you know, save the planet. But then you go, hang on a minute, actually if that means we then make more plastic because we can recycle it. But there's this other impact over here. Okay, back to the drawing board. And I think, I don't know, unpopular opinion maybe, but I, I almost feel the same about electric vehicles. We go, yep, that's great. You know, they're saving emissions, but they're being made, you know, the, the materials are being dug out by child slaves in the Congo and we don't actually have a recycling end of life solution for them. And, and we don't, we don't have enough power to power everyone in New Zealand in an ev. So it's like, it's not the solution.

I think I read of a, a quote that was 20% of the power was coming from coal to supplement what we could do.

So yeah, and in some European countries now, like in Germany, they're, they're importing coal to subs, you know, to, to keep the grid going because they've transitioned to too much. So it's, it's not clear cut. And, and I think, but I think as humans we want easy, clear cut answers and particularly people in power, in the government want to go, I've got the solution. It just looks like this and it's going to all be fine. But it's not as simple as that. And so again, you know, kudos to you for, I think it's the bravery to go because the obvious brand PR marketing angle would be say, oh, look at us, we're taking recycled plastic and mixing it with our natural fibers and it's all amazing. But yeah, so I think for me that the big sort of take home here is actually do, you know, do the mahi do the work. To understand the impact of, of the work that you're doing has to the best that you can to know actually, you know, are we going in the right direction or are we actually going in reverse in sixth gear? And again, you know, kudos to you for actually doing that and being brave enough to go, no, actually this is not.

This is not there.

We got so much flack for continuing to use poly bags for our, for our clothing.

And we know from the work that we've done that the very best thing you can do, which sounds.

Counter business but is useless, so buy stuff that's going to last because even if it's in our industry, Even if it's 100% certified organic, natural diet, whatever, it's still impacted the, you know, the planet getting it, getting it to you. And we hate with a vengeance the plastic courier bags that you have to use. And our staff was saying, can't we go with black compostable bags? You know, there were other brands having a lot of great PR about these compostable bags that they were using, but they're awful.

They break down into micro plastics and you can't then deal with them. At least with the plastic that we're using, you can recycle it into more plastic bags and you can reuse it. So some of those things we've had to just.

Box on with when it hasn't made common sense because the other person on the street who's maybe a surgeon or a, you know, doing any other manner of work, they haven't got time to do that research. We have to do it for them.

Yeah, 100%. And yeah, I think that's the thing. The consumer gets informed by the brand that wants it to hear the message that they want it to hear. And I remember talking to Kelly Hannifan when she was head of sustainability at Countdown. So again, for international listeners, it's kind of like one of the supermarket chains here in New Zealand. And, and she was being bombarded with these brands saying, hey, our packaging is now biodegradable. And she wasn't convinced. And she said, well, no, you need to go away and you don't just send your salesperson to me to tell me that it's biodegradable. I want to see like five studies, white papers, clinical studies, I want to know what actually happens. And she said after that, the number of companies that were coming to her saying ours is biodegradable, dropped off quite significantly. Yeah. And again, it's the thing you go, oh, that's great, it's biodegradable. But then. Yeah, but is it. Is it biodegradable in this country or is it home biodegradable? But like I say, actually it's just going to typically go down to microplastics, which it's still. I think the packaging is. Is the, Is the next frontier, I think. I think, yeah, someone is going to solve that. I don't think it's been solved yet. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So within all of this journey of doing good and all the amazing stuff you're doing, when did B Corp pop up on your radar as a. As a thing?

I think it was, when did you get B Corp going here? Would it be 2016?

2016? I think. I think I vaguely remember coming to have a coffee with you, just going, you're doing some really good stuff. Have you heard of the Speed Corp thing?

Yeah, yeah. So I think we looked at it at that stage and, you know, obviously B Corp has evolved a lot and we were concerned that the way that the questions were framed weren't going to allow us to tell this bigger, wider story that we wanted to. So we.

So we didn't engage at that stage. And I think we re looked at it again just before COVID I think, from memory and thought, yep, it's good. B Corp's progressed, you know, a nice.

Long way. And what we like about B Corp is.

It'S a process, isn't it? Getting certified. There's a lot to it. And I hope that you guys stick with it and don't take the easy option of, you know, making it easier for companies to get certified. Because that person on the street wants to know when they see that B Corp Mark, that that work's been done for them, that investigation's been done for them. So.

We appreciate the fact that people. We find that people around the world say, oh, be Corp, you'll be Corp. You know, it immediately gives them a sense of confidence that what we're saying might be true. And that's when our sort of way back, our UN.

Acknowledgement and UN let us put their logo on our garments. It had the same effect, you know, where people would say, oh.

You know, they didn't need to do that work themselves for verifying what we were doing. So I think it's really, really, really important. The B Corp. I think B Corp's amazing.

Nice. Yeah, I think that. And that's what we're seeing Particularly consumer facing brands like yourselves is. It's that third party independent verification. We're making lots of claims. So what, is it true? Because, yeah, increasingly people are seeing through. I always feel like on this podcast I'm picking on the marketing people. But you know, historically it is the marketing teams that make the claims that get put into the, into the eco, you know, into the, into the world that then get found out that maybe they weren't as, as true as they perhaps could have been. And so, yeah, any sort of highlights, good, bad, indifferent from the journey itself.

I think the process of going through the B Corp certification has made us aware that.

We hadn't.

Documented our policies as much as would be beneficial. So what that means is internally, I think everyone in this organization knows what they need to be doing and why they need to be doing it. The dots that I hadn't drawn was that unless we have a formal policy that we can publish, then how do other people know that? So that was something that we set about doing as a result of the B Corp certification process.

I think was the biggest thing.

Yeah, yeah. And that's a common, a common refrain, particularly from CEO founders because it's all in your head. You know, you've built a business. I, I know that that's how we've done it. We've done that since I started it 40 years ago. Why don't you all know that? Because, yeah, yeah, I'm going through the same process as the business here is scaled. And it's like you forget that it's most of the business is in your head. And so to actually communicate to the team, it's like in some ways, you know, Elon Musk has talked about that neural link to be able to like basically plug the Internet into it. Some days I think actually that would be really good, so I can just download. But then other days I go, actually, I don't think most people want to know the stupid thoughts that I have about random things in my head. So it's probably a bit mixed bag. There probably needs to be some sort of Babel fish translator thing that siphons out the quality stuff that people need to. Yeah, no, I think that that formalization of stuff that you're already doing is a very common.

Yeah. Sort of reflection on people having gone through the B Corp journey.

Yeah. I mean it's interesting for us around your questions around diversity and organization and this might change, but at the moment diversity is about having women employed, but for us, diversity is having the odd token man employees.

So that I think that needs to be constantly worked on. I think we've got. We've got a United nations of people here.

And that's just because we actually just choose the best person for the job.

And.

It doesn't matter where they come from, who they are, what they are, so long as they're going to fit in with our values.

I tend to agree. I think hiring the best person with, with no discrimination is, Is the best way to do it. Yeah, don't care, like I say, I don't care who you are, what you do in your spare time, all the rest of it. Can. Can you do the job that we need you to do? And do you fit in? Yeah, with the people that we've got? Yeah, I think that's a smart approach. And so in terms of, like that, that the values and the mission, the vision and the purpose. So, yeah, one of the tensions we, we see and I think for people who don't have the depth of experience of what, what you've achieved, the tension between take the money or do the right thing.

How do you manage that? Is that, is that a constant struggle or do you feel like you've got it absolutely nailed these days?

We'll never have it nailed. It's a constant struggle and it's evolving. You've constantly got to be. You've got to be learning and.

All the way through because things are changing. There's more knowledge.

Coming out. But I, I tell the story of years ago. I think we'd not long been open, had our store open in High street in Auckland. I think we opened that in 2001, and we were discussing a jacket that we were making out of a lovely wool fabric. And in those days there was no. Now there's linings that are much more.

Beautiful in terms of natural fibers. But our choice then was either a silk lining or synthetic lining. And the silk lining in those days was a hideous price. And we had this discussion about do we put a silk lining in or do we put a synthetic lining in? And we decided in the end that we would put the synthetic lining in because we thought that if we put the silk lining, and virtually no one would afford to pay that for that jacket, so they wouldn't buy it. They'd go somewhere else and buy another jacket that was nowhere near as, you know, delivering as much good through the value chain. So, I mean, that particular example doesn't exist now, but it's just an odd ongoing thing and it, you know, these costs mount up. You know, in our marino, we use ZQ RX certified Marino, you know, regenerative Marino. There's a premium for that. You know, our spinner also buys Marino.

That'S just at auction and it's got, you know, it could be from mules. Do you know what mulesing is? You know, when they.

You know, chop the tails off lambs, they, it could be, you know, quite bad environment that these animals have grown up in. And so it's cheaper.

So all of that costing makes, makes a difference and we've got to balance it. One thing I learned is that we need to tell that story. Sometimes we get so busy doing it that we forget to actually tell the customer what they're buying and how much benefit is and how much benefit it is to them.

In terms of longevity of the product or the impact. We have a beautiful project.

In India where we make T shirts with a cooperative which was developed and they, it came about because.

They, this, this family were absolutely devastated because they had had one daughter.

Who had got married and the father had borrowed money to pay for her dowry and then he had been made redundant. He had no income coming in. So he was put in prison. And every day he was in prison his family was beaten. And it would be so until he paid the money back. But of course he didn't have a job, so he couldn't pay the money back. So it was, do they put the second daughter out for sexual slavery or sell her sexual things?

Know what were the alternatives? So, so this was, was started, this organization was started by a Christchurch guy.

And it's amazing. They've taught these young people to sew and they make these T shirts. They do a really good job, but they cost more. You know, they're not the T shirts that you buy for $6. And our customers really, really, really happily buy these shirts when they know the benefit that has gone in behind the making of them. But you've got to tell that story. That takes time and effort as well.

Yeah. And I think the thing we commonly hear is people are almost. Because, you know, there's, there's greenwashing, which I think most people know what that is. You know, the marketing people making the claims. But there's green hushing where people. And I think it's typically, I think in the New Zealand context, I think most key was pretty humble and kiwis that are doing good are pretty humble. And so it's like. Well, actually, I don't want to talk about it because I'm. And I think there's, there's something in you Know, we're not talking about it, we're just doing it. But increasingly I think it's finding the middle ground of telling the story authentically in a humble brag way that takes the spotlight off you, but, but, but kind of puts it on the thing. Yeah, it's, I think it's a very hard line, you know, or hard path to, to get perfectly right. But yeah, I think increasingly people are looking for those good news stories and I think, yeah, people, you know, they connect to that and that's how you, you deepen that brand relationship. I guess so, yeah, it's, yeah, it's balancing purpose and profit is. It's not easy, but I think that's the new role for the modern business leader. CEO.

Yeah. Thinking about it, do like to think as time goes on, that balance will get a little bit easier because the bulk of people or an increasing number of people are going to be looking for the meaning behind.

Those purchases.

Yeah, no 100%. And I think as more people, more customers, more employees, more other stakeholders are demanding that each business does more good. It's going to become, I think, part of the governance conversation, part of the senior leadership conversation, instead of just, you know, what are the numbers? Okay, well, what are the numbers? Plus what's our social impact being this month? What's our environment? Which, you know, which is why we're seeing this big rise in people doing big, because they're realizing, okay, we need a framework. We need to know what other things should we even be looking at? And now that we know, okay, well, let's choose five of those as key metrics that we now measure, report against and we know how we're doing. So.

What do you think to the future of B Corp? Where do you think B Corp's off to?

I would just like to see B Corp be tough on itself to continue to.

You know, do what you're doing and get more and more companies on board. But please, please, please don't be bought. Don't be bought by the big guys.

You know, make sure that they.

Are walking the talk or it'll become valueless and it'll disappear.

Yeah.

If that makes sense.

Yep. No, totally. Yeah, I know there was a little bit of wailing and gnashing of teeth when Nespresso were, you know, allowed to certify as a B Corp. But I, I kind of think, I would hope, I would imagine that they probably had more scrutiny than the average company. I think some of these bigger companies, I know it took them three years to get the certification so it wasn't just, hey, we've turned up, you know, pass the exam. They, they had to implement a bunch of changes over three years. So, yeah, whether you fundamentally agree with Nespresso, whether they should exist or not as a company, you know, a lot of people don't like them because of the pods, but, you know, at the end of the day, it is a recyclable products. And are they any better or worse than like you say, any company that's making clothing out of recycled, you know, fishing, you know, you can get into the semantics of that. You know, they're here. I'd rather that they're here and that they're a B corp and they now have immense amounts of pressure and accountability put on them by the B corp community and the wider planet than them being off on their own, maybe like a Cadbury with their own. What have they got their own fair trade certification that they've done in house? Like. Sure. You policing that as much as an external accreditation? Don't know for sure. Yeah. So, no, I agree. It needs, you know, we're still based on the number of limited companies globally. We're only at 0.01% of companies globally are currently a certified B corp. So it's not the gold rush yet. It's not. You know, clearly this is not a mass. You know, we're not even at 1%, so. Yeah, but I agree. I, I think and having talking, spoken to some people like Steve Arda from Eagle Protect, New Zealand's first big. Or Pete, he, He genuinely feels it's got harder. I think they're on their maybe fourth or fifth certification, possibly even sixth. And he said each time we don't just turn back up and resubmit, you know, it gets harder to, to get across the line as far as he's concerned.

That's good to hear. We're just, we're getting ready for our second round.

Nice.

It's harder or not.

Yeah, you can. We'll report back, we'll do an update to the podcast. Yeah. And then what does the future hold for Untouched World? Hoping for a better president to give a jumper to, but yeah, other than that.

Yeah. Oh, no, we're quite excited. We're always excited because you never stop growing and developing really, do you? But we've got a wonderful guy that came to us as an intern from Callahan Innovation and.

He'S set up a business called Kiwi Fibers and he's blending wool with harikiki and making really strong, strong fiber with it. I think he's away off to Las Vegas next week and he's talking to a company that makes pipes. You know, like, it's really strong. He showed me yesterday a snowboard that made without plastic.

And anyway, we've. We've just in the process of starting a refit for our head office store here. And we've got the change rooms done and we've got stools in the change rooms with this fabric on the top of the stools. So it's really lovely seeing young people like that. He's. He's. I feel like he's. He's me back in the. He's the same age. He's 23.

You know, you're in that can do phase, aren't you? And when you're in that can do phase, you can do. You can make different. So, yeah, we. We're opening another store in Auckland next year. Well, actually, it's 2024. It's taken us a while to find it and we've got more markets coming on stream. There's a lot going on. Yeah.

Nice. It. I don't see you resting on your laurels, that's for sure.

No, no, I think that's. That's called boring, isn't it?

There's a phrase. The first job I had in New Zealand was working for this Australian guy, John Meek, and he. He had the phrase constructive discontent. It's like.

Right.

Just. Just not happy with the status quo because it can always be better. And I think that sums up you. It's just. I can squeeze this lemon. I know that there's a better way to do this. And it's so cool to see you, like, giving back to. To the. You 40 years ago, someone walking in you, like, hey, I see this in you. And maybe who knows, that lady who, who gave you that opportunity, maybe she'd had that opportunity before. You kind of like to think maybe, yes. In some. Some other world or some. Yeah. There's like this unbroken chain of mentorship that's been passed down. I think that's so cool. Yeah. Look, I'm just super inspired with what you've done. You know, we just need. We just need to copy and paste Perry into as many other businesses as possible. Yeah. And just, Just love it. Keep doing what you're doing. I think the ripples of change that. That you. You have made and will make, you know, particularly with your. Your young leaders coming through and. Yeah. Who knows, hopefully the influence that you can have at that global level still when we get a better. A better president with a jumper. Yeah, no, thank you so much. And thanks for being here today.

No, it's a pleasure. Absolute pleasure. Yeah, cheers. Perry.

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 of our other videos. They're probably floating around here somewhere. You know how it works. Thank you so much. See you next time.