Shifting Paradigms: How Ecoternatives is Changing Consumer Habits

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, an author of the Conscious Design book. And today I have Aidan Reilly. He's the founder of Eco-Turnatives, a web store, eco store for consumers. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, so everybody loves a good origin story. Let's start with yours. What made you decide you wanted to launch Eco Alternatives?

Yeah, great. Okay, so I'm from Oahu, Hawaii. You know, the environment and plastic pollution are things that have never been out of sight and out of mind for me. It's always been a part of my life. And I went into college, I wanted to do something that, well, originally I actually wanted to trade stocks. It's pretty funny. I got really into investing and learning about that side of the world for a little while in high school. That's where I actually made money to invest into my startup Eco Alternatives. I've realized, you know, studying economics and I realized the path I was going down, you can do a lot of good in it if you choose how you want to invest wisely. But I think I wanted to be a little bit more creative in what I was doing and have more of an impact I could see and be a part of. I was like, hmm, I wanted to start a business. I want to be more creative. Economics, like super analytical. I wanted to be able to express my creativity in some way. And then I was like, I'm going to start a business. What problem should I try to solve? Because I knew every business, that's what I was told as a 19-year-old, every business tries to solve a problem, right? And, you know, there's kind of obvious path for me. It was just, you know, plastic pollution and something along the environment that had a good social environmental impact. It actually, the idea spurred when my little brother, he said something along the lines of, asked me, and why are sustainable, like, why are, I'm paraphrasing, why are sustainable products so expensive if they're better for the planet? You know, young kid. I was like, you know what? You, you're making sense, Jude. So yeah, I, I wanted to build an eco store. I didn't want it to just be like another eco store out there. I wanted to have, I wanted to solve people's problem. And I thought the biggest problem people had in sustainability was the prices for sustainable products. So I started, it's pretty funny. I like, I literally just, I went ahead, I went ahead with it and I called up, you know, a first, a local supplier from Maui. They made bamboo toothbrushes. I was like, hey, how do I like sell your toothbrushes on my store? And they sent me out, you know, all, all the suppliers I work with are usually very nice and bought some bamboo toothbrushes shoved into my dressers in my home, bought a bunch of Craigslist dressers, started ordering inventory and just got into it. And yeah, then obviously I had to figure out how to sell, sell all the products. But in my head I was like, I was just starting this. In my head I was like, if I just get all my aunties and uncles to buy this and have a community in Hawaii purchasing these products, I'll be set. Obviously it didn't turn out that way. There's a lot of hardships, a lot of struggles. And now I just graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and it's been like years. Obviously I was a full-time student, so it's, there's so many times where it's like I have classes, I can't work on it. It's been very like time intensive over the summers and breaks and things like that, and less so in other parts of the years. But that's the origin story. I actually got a, when I started, you know, everyone was telling me marketplace is so hard to start. And especially when you're competing on price, I was told a lot that you couldn't compete on price and that makes the That makes total sense. I think that makes total sense. And like, uh, when you're selling diamonds and watches and a lot of goods, but in the eco industry, when the main frustration people are having is that, uh, sustainable products are, you know, 20 to 80% more, um, that's what I wanted to focus on.

Awesome. Something I wanted to touch on in order to find these products, right? I think you, you, you have your own process, how you're able to evaluate Sustainability, and then obviously you're of course looking at cost, right? Because you're trying to actually make it achievable for the average consumer to actually have these. Could you dive into kind of your thinking process of how do you go about determining whether a product is really sustainable? Price, one, we all know how that works. Is it above or below a certain price? But how do you think about things sustainably and how do you go through that process?

Yeah, obviously that's a huge concern of mine because there's no use making sustainable products affordable and cheap if you're greenwashing, if you're telling everyone it's sustainable, but it's not. So honestly, I'd say like 70% of my job is just backend research, figuring out if a product is sustainable or if it's not. I get this question asked so much, so many times, because like the number one email comment inquiry I get is, How, like, I don't trust you. Like, I just got a comment the other day. It's like, has anyone else purchased from this site? Like, this seems kind of sketchy. I actually saw a Reddit post. I looked up EcoTernity because a Reddit post came up and it was like, it said pretty much said the same thing. Like, this site has the whole shebang, but like, I don't trust it, which I totally share. Like, there is growing distrust amongst consumers for, you know, American institutions and companies. Right now, 38% of consumers, and it's only growing, right? 38% of consumers today say that they trust a company or they mostly trust companies when they make an eco-friendly claim, which is just crazy. So I got to battle with that and I got to battle with bringing down prices. But yeah, we get that question asked a lot, which led me to create a blog post. It's 12, and I link every time someone asks me that, I just link to that. But it's a 12-step process we use to Figure out if a company's really greenwashing or not. It all, like, I think the biggest way is to see obviously just what a company is doing behind the scenes. And that's my job because consumers are so busy with their normal day-to-day things. They just like, you want, you want to be able to put the burden onto the consumers. That's what all the corporations are doing, but they're too busy. They're, they're going to Target, they're going into Walmart, whatever. They're trying to get a couple things. They're not going to be doing the research. So I'd see that as kind of my main job. And you gotta be good at it or else consumers, your people, people aren't gonna trust you. But yeah, we mainly see what companies they're doing behind the curtain. We, a lot of times we like Zoom and meet with the actual, our actual suppliers and we have great relationships with them. But it's, yeah, it's about what other products are they selling? Do they have like one zero waistline, but a lot of their other products are plastic? Do they, where do they make their products? Obviously.

Yeah.

It's made in the US. I'd probably trust them more if they're made somewhere in Asia, unless it's like a bamboo product, because that's where all the bamboo in the world grows, right? We have our own team that, uh, it's their only job because it's so important.

It's a huge issue. I was, I spoke with some people at the National Retailers Association, and I've talked to bigger retail buyers, and there's kind of this consensus of It's really hard to find out which products are actually sustainable and which ones are greenwashed. Even if you're doing it full-time, it's a job to be able to figure it out. And it's caused so many issues trust-wise, right? So it feels like consumers really want sustainable products. They want them to be affordable. But there's also this huge trust barrier that you You've run into. We've been lied to too many times. We don't know, we don't know what actually sustainable products are like. So it's hard. So it's great that you're doing that work because it is, like you said, it's— nobody goes into Walmart and stands there with looking up a product and trying to like zoom the company and try to tell you. You're not going to do that while you're trying to grab something from the store and go use it. You just need the product to work. And for it to be, tell you the right information. So it's a process.

Yeah.

And there's little incentive. It's hard because when a company gets so big, it kind of changes and they can't always make their decisions based off the founder's initial interest, why they started the company, because there's a board of directors and there's shareholders and investors. And it's so funny, like if it really isn't going to make a company money, they're not going to try to do it. So that's why we need more people to shop sustainably because it's going to shift the demand for our products and It literally forced corporations to have to change their products and principles.

Right. So when you find these products, right, how do you— there's a lot of ways to make products more cost-effective, cheaper, right? How do you get involved in how to reduce costs, or are you mostly just finding Brands that maybe are a little bit less known and getting them out there that are figuring out how to be cheaper on their own?

Yeah, good question. It's usually the second question we get after the first question you asked. Yeah, again, it's like, it's a couple things. One, we're not selling the most popular product. Usually that's— there's a lot of zero waste stores that are all selling the same product because it's already been vetted and they know it works. And so we have to do, you know, a lot of testing, a lot of We have to find those like underdogs, and that takes a lot of time, like a ridiculous amount of time. Sometimes if we can't find one, we'll try to work with a co-manufacturer that can or that will. And then again, we charge less for our products, and there's something to be said about that because who knows if this is going to be a viable long-term business. Like, if right now we're advertising differently, and so we're advertising over like pretty organically over social media. And that's been able to, like one of the biggest expenses companies have, which I don't know if many consumers realize, is marketing and advertising. Anytime you click on a Google ad link, like, you know, when you type in Google into a website to sponsored, that company on average has to pay $2.26 to Google. So it's doing a lot of backend research, marketing in more unorthodox, unconventional ways, viral marketing, I'm obsessed with trying to figure out how to be able to put as little capital into advertising and make back the most money. Um, and that usually just goes, that goes hand in hand with viral social media. And it's so easy now with TikTok and Reels and things like that.

And that could be like 30% of your whole price easily.

It's crazy. I didn't realize that. I've tried everything in terms of marketing, like That was the first year of business. I was like, okay, how do I grow this company? I tried partnering with nonprofits. I tried, I emailed hundreds of bloggers and hundreds of eco-influencers. But yeah, no, if any companies out there listen to this and they haven't tried social media for marketing, like in terms of like TikTok and viral guerrilla campaigns, I would highly recommend it because I don't know where we would be without it right now. And then also just a lot of our suppliers, like I just, Talk to Clean Canary or toothpaste, great toothpaste company. They literally, they're a smaller company and they literally just give us better pricing because they believe in our mission. And so it's a lot of like creating good relationships. And also we kind of, I read this book, I got to read a lot of books in order to figure out how to start a business.

Always.

But I read this book from the guy who made Zappos. It's called Delivering Happiness. And he, his entire marketing budget Starting out was like nonexistent. He put it all into great customer service, delivering happiness, if you will. And so I like to think about it as maybe we don't give 30% of our money to advertising, but instead we reduce our prices and create a viral factor, word of mouth. People email me all the time, be like, I'm trying to, I'm going to annoy all my friends because this was shocking. This left me like jaw dropped. And so I think just word of mouth is really important. And instead of putting money towards Facebook ads, maybe we're dropping our prices and that is going towards word of mouth and customer retention too.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on conscious design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share.

Yeah, there's so many things that you can change, and that is— I love that you bring up that point because it is the marketing budget. Adver— well, not even marketing, just, just ad budget alone is such a huge drain on and cost increase, right, uh, to the average, average company. So You being able to avoid that as much as possible, that is a huge, huge leg up on the cost side of things. So that's impressive. That's awesome.

Thanks. Yeah, I didn't realize like entrepreneurship is literally just marketing a lot of times. This is bootstrapped and stuff. It's literally just about like, you can't be successful if you don't have a— you got to think about marketing before you think of the idea, honestly. Like it all goes back to To how are you going to market your company before you even ideate and iterate and all those things? That's the most important.

It's the marketing part. People, as— and it's— I feel like it's a lot of in the sustainability product world too, is kind of a weird thing because there's so many. And I have friends in PR and things like that where they— you come up with an eco-friendly product idea and you're like, oh, this is great. And a lot of people kind of feel that it's going to just sell itself just because it's eco-friendly and has kind of worked for the last 5, 10 years. But like what you— what we talked about earlier, right, is there's too many greenwashing. There's not just— just being eco isn't the answer. You can't just— you can't just be eco and have a business anymore. You gotta have— a real business case. You have to really be solving a problem for someone and you got to afford it. It's got to actually be on par, you know, price-wise. It's not just, you know, eco is good, but it's not the end-all be-all of your business case.

Yeah, no, I agree. It's really tough. I mean, especially because there are so many good companies creating like such good products, but they're just out of reach for so many people. You know, consumers right now think, yeah, 66% of Americans want, are willing to pay more for sustainable products. That number goes to 80% for people ranged 18 to 34. When they say how much more they're willing to spend is usually like 15%, right? It's, and sustainable products, they can be like zero waste products are like 80% more.

So Not, no alignment there. That's a lot higher jump.

Yeah, it's increasing. So like, I'm glad that this is a rising tide, right? But there's a total discrepancy. And I mean, Bill Gates talks about this. I was just reading some of his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. He says the number one takeaway he wants people to take away from this book is the green premium, Which, if people aren't aware of what that is, it's how much more you'd have to spend for a sustainable product rather than it's a non-sustainable alternative. He says the green premium is the number one thing we need to reduce in order to stop the climate crisis, which is kind of crazy. And we can do that in one, two ways. We can do that by increasing the cost of non-sustainable products, maybe giving less subsidies to companies doing unsustainable practices, or by putting a lot of R&D into sustainable companies and giving grants out to companies working on reducing that green premium.

Yeah, maybe both.

Should do both.

Yeah, it'll work faster. Kind of jumping over to the product side, what kind of products do you find you have the most ability I know you do. You have a few different areas, right, that you guys have products in. What's been the, I guess, the easiest to get into? And what kind of, or are they all the same amount of work? Like, is there kind of, how's that been on the product side for you and customers? Which ones do customers really, really like more or gravitate towards as being worth getting?

Yeah, in terms of products, our expansion's been pretty slow just because it takes a lot of time and this is bootstrapped. So we have about 120 products on our site right now. It's pretty easy because we're selling the essentials. We're not selling anything crazy, right? I even like, I don't like to sell reusable cutlery. This is a good message for your audience. I don't like to sell reusable cutlery, tote bags, like food containers because water bottles, 'cause they're ubiquitous and you can get them in secondhand shops. Well, and like, if I did, then I would also just get a lot of backlash from like those big zero wasters who are like, why are you selling cotton tote bags when it's the worst? Cotton is like the worst crop in the world in terms of like pesticide use, water intensity. We're selling toothpaste, toothbrush, toothbrushes, basic things like that. It's been a lot harder for some products than other products. Like, One, with the sustainability, and 2, affordability. Like, for example, no matter what I do, I can't find an affordable deodorant. I can't find that affordable of a deodorant, right? And so that's kind of more the loss leader, right? We don't need to— what something else we do is we don't sign minimum advertised price policies, or we try not to, to the best of our abilities, which legally obliges us maintain a certain price for our products. But yeah, for our deodorant, we get it and we sell it for like pretty similar prices, not a very healthy profit margin. But for other products, it's made up because we do work with a supplier that has some competitive unique advantage to creating toothbrushes, and we are able to get our higher profit margin from that. And it's, I mean, it's actually how diapers.com was founded. Before diapers.com was founded, everyone, I think everyone was telling the founder like, you're going to lose so much money. Like you can't ship this big of a product around the world. And he lost so much money. He was a total loss leader, but he garnered so much attention and he made up for it with all the other new products he added to the site for babies. So yeah, did that kind of answer your question?

Yeah, that's funny that deodorant is hard to— I wouldn't have guessed that if you're like, guess what's the hardest one to get priced down on? Deodorant. So random that that's the one that's the sticking one. But it's good that you're able to, you know, If you can even get that tiny bit of profit, but then be able to have something that makes more financial sense work, right? There's still— it's an overall win for the customer. They're still going to get a good deal and you get to stay in business.

Yeah. And as volume increases and demand increases, economies of play starts enacting, right? The more Cocoa Botanics or deodorant suppliers able to produce that deodorant, the cheaper they're going to be able to get their So I feel like all of the, you know, these environmental products are going to be like a total thing one day. It's just going to take time and it's going to take time for products to decrease. I always tell people, I think that, you know, because so much America is living in concrete buildings and stuff, until they like really start seeing their buildings fall down and like these environmental crises for their own eyes, it's going to be really hard for them to make shifts, especially because most of these politicians aren't living in Hawaii near the beach, sitting, literally seeing the shorelines rise above their Their eyes, right?

Wanted to ask you, with your vendor, your suppliers, do you find— and you touched on this just a tiny bit before— do you find that you usually end up taking on the entire product line of a brand? Like, are you— how is it you find a good company and usually it's their entire line? Or do you find that there's split where you'll Hey, you're, you know, you have these 3 products, those are great, but the rest isn't sustainable. Kind of how, where do you see that split between those kinds of companies for you guys?

Yeah, I'm like super picky because I need to be. So usually we don't take a whole company's product line just because they make an affordable deodorant, but their lip balm is 5% more expensive. Than Little Otter, our lip balm supplier. So yeah, we have to be really picky. And it's great if we, if we have a supplier that is able to be affordable and super sustainable, because that's less work for me. But usually that's not always the case. Honestly, too, if they have a super big product line, unless they're a big company, then I've usually found that it means that their quality is lower. Because it's the same thing, like, It's funny how much my economics brain comes into play in all this, but like if a company is only specializing in deodorant, good chances that they're probably gonna have a really good deodorant. You know what I mean? So crazy how much I know about like deodorant and like menstrual pads and like shampoo and laundry detergent as a 22-year-old now. I never thought that'd be my future.

And the things we learn, right? That makes a lot of sense though, right? Because you're being really picky. And so yeah, the more Specialized. It's always harder to manage 10 products rather than one. So you finally— the really finding the best one, probably, they probably don't make a whole bunch of other things.

It's— we're always getting better.

Yeah, it's a process, right? And there's no— the end— we're in process. There's not like a— you can start and then I don't know where the end actually is. It's ongoing. Before we wrap up, I just want to make sure we can cover anything else you want to talk about. If there's something you want to mention, product you really love, anything you want to say.

Just something that pops out to me is I always try to support my uncle's nonprofit, PMDP, Papa Hanamo Kukea Marine Debris Project. We try to donate as much as we can to them, even though it's like not much because all our movie budgets are reducing prices. You should check them out. They're cleaning up the Western Hawaiian marine debris. You know, like most of our plastic in our ocean stuff is from the fishing industry, fishing nets, like 40% of all plastic in the ocean is fishing nets. So they go over and they clean up marine debris over there and they help us with, you know, marketing. We help them with money when we can. And yeah, they might be on your podcast one day.

That would be great. That would be great to have them. Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about what you're doing and be able to showcase your business.

Great job.

I think it's great that you're able to find and be able to put these products out there that are, that are more affordable. And for everyone listening or watching, we will have links for everything we talked about in the show notes. And yeah, really appreciate it, Aiden.

Yeah, thank you guys for listening and thanks for having me.

Hey there, thanks for joining us for this episode. I hope that you're enjoying the content we're putting out. If you're looking for more ways to learn about this, to get involved, create your own consciously designed products, there's a couple of ways that you can do that. First is our book Conscious Design, which you'll find a link to in the description of this episode. Please check that out. Go over Quite a bit of information, what the process is, how I've applied it to product design, and some really great examples of companies out there that are doing really great work, some of whom you have seen on this podcast. The other way is our course, 4 Weeks to Launch, where I peel back the curtain on how to develop a product start to finish in a way that can create positive impact. Rather than any negative ones.

So please check that out.

That is a great resource that will also be linked in the description as well. And see you in the next one.