Sustainability Simplified and Dignified with Kerri Leslie of Verity

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper countins counting beans Contador Quentan frijoles found us trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy beer and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco stand in pesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Hoya shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who you believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SDTechOS with your host, Neil Bloom. Startups get the party, startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neil Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador and together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. This segment is brought to you by Cox Edge. Our longtime partnership with Cox Business has helped their engineering teams develop new tech products for small businesses and startups. Cox is investing in Edge capabilities and working with developers and engineers across the ecosystem to deliver ultra low latency compute solutions, helping customers to improve application performance and to reduce cloud transport and on premise infrastructure costs. Interested in hearing more about Cox Edge? Please visit coxedge.com and mention Neil Bloom or freshbroodtech.com for our partner discount.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I am your host Neil Blum and I am thrilled to have on friend and CEO and founder Kerry Leslie Averdi. Hey Kerry.

Hey Neil. Thanks so much for having me.

Thanks for being on the podcast. This is going to be great. I'm looking forward to it. We met through, I believe Tex Sangster at San Marcos, but man, do we have so many connections in the community. So it was bound to happen and it did like two, three years ago now.

Yeah, past two years have been a time warp, so it might have been three.

Yeah, it was kind of the beginning stages, I think of Verity which we're going to talk about. Do you want to quickly give us a little one minute overview of what Verity is?

Yeah, sure. So at Verity, we design, manufacture and distribute metal alternatives to single use plastic containers. So we focus on refillable, reusable containers. And we are always trying to work with materials that will actually get recycled at the end of the product's life cycle because we learned that plastic is often not getting recycled. So replacing those options in the market. And we focus primarily in the personal care industry.

Awesome. We're going to do a deep dive into that. We love renewables, recyclables, and sustainability here in San Diego. It's an amazing community of people focused on that space. And we're going to talk about the leadership that you've had in building naturally San Diego too. But first we gotta get to know your backstory a little bit. Where are you from? I know you're an East Coaster.

I am. I grew up in Baltimore, right?

Maryland.

Yeah, grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. And I ended up going to school in North Carolina, UNC Wilmington. Fell in love with living at the beach and had to find another city in the country where I could feel like I lived in Wilmington. But there were jobs as well. So that's how I found San Diego. Came by here after school.

Oh, cool. So right after school and you found your way to the biomedical industry right away or how'd you end up in that world?

Yeah, so. Well, when I was in school, I wanted to be a doctor, so I was doing like pre med studies and I ended up being a biology major with a minor in chemistry. And then I got to my senior year and kind of freaked out and realized that I wasn't ready to go to medical school. And I didn't know what the heck I was going to do with a science degree. But I wanted to move to San Diego. So I came to San Diego and I was fortunate because I ended up interviewing with a startup spinal implant company and they just needed somebody to help. I was employee number two. So it was just somebody to do all of the random things other people did not want to do. And it helps that I had a degree in science so that I had the aptitude to understand their products. So I finally, I felt validated that I didn't go through all of those studies for nothing. But yeah, so I started working there and I started in customer service and just got to really understand the product and listening to the customers. And our customers were surgeons and figuring out how we can make their customer experience better. And then I ended up kind of floating into technical marketing because I ended up being the liaison between the surgeon and the engineering department and understanding what does the customer want and telling our engineering team how they could build it so that we could bridge the gap. And I love that. So I just. I love being a part of product development, getting into the technical piece of building the product and making sure we were making what the customer needed.

Was this the product, I believe you've told me, where it's like a set of tools during surgery that have to be returned back after every use to be cleaned and reset and then sent back to the hospital. Okay, got it.

Yep, Exactly. So we would make the so for spine surgery. So if you have to have a spine surgery, there's typically an implant that stays within the patient, but there are all of these surgical instruments that are custom to be able to put those implants into place. So we would design both the implants and the surgical instruments to place them so those instruments would come back to be cleaned and sanitized in between use. And one of my many projects early on in the business was to figure out how to clean and sanitize those instruments so they were just as clean as new to go back into surgery the next day.

Ooh, foreshadowing. Okay, got it. Cool. What happened to that startup?

So they're actually doing really well. And I was really fortunate to have some great mentorship in that company and incredible visibility at all levels of the business and all operational areas of the business. But when I was about five years in and I really enjoyed the technical marketing piece, but being in a startup, you end up doing a lot of different things. And I picked up a lot of responsibilities in regulatory, quality, all things. I'm very grateful today that I have the experience in. But at the time I wanted to focus in marketing and to grow. So I ended up leaving and going to a global medical device company, and they were a manufacturer and distributor and was able to work my way into marketing there. Started off in product management and then ended up leading a marketing division for all the surgical products for the company. And again was able to find some really incredible mentors that helped me to navigate that whole new space of working from a tiny startup to a giant organization. And yeah, so ended up just really, at that point, understanding more of the financial side and how to manage P and L and run a team. And then it was when I was there at that company's called Henry Schein. I had started a little natural deodorant company as A side project. I went through what every, I think, young mother goes through. You have your first kid and you start looking at everything in your house. And is all of this stuff poison? Like, what am I putting on my body? I want to make sure it's safe for my kid. And I got on this mission to find a natural deodorant that actually worked and I could not find one. So I ended up, I think I probably bought. I'm not even exaggerating. I think I bought like over 100 natural deodorants. We would buy like five at a time on Etsy and nothing would work. And then I actually came across this one product that worked really well. And it was in a local boutique in Encinitas. And I couldn't believe that it was so effective. And I looked on the label and it was made in Encinitas. So I called the company to thank them for making this awesome product. And this woman answered the phone and she was like, lived in my neighborhood in Encinitas and she was making it for this one shop. So she was this incredible. She's an esthetician and was incredible at formulating these products, but wasn't really in a position to commercialize it and was really, she was such an artist in creating the product. So we partnered up and started this natural deodorant company called Nonico. And then from there we had this really great product that was effective and safe for our bodies and the planet. But we couldn't find sustainable packaging for it. We looked at all those paper tubes. Paper tubes are really the only sustainable option at the time. It was before bioplastics and plant plastics were widely available. Our product just would melt right through it. All the oils would come out. It wasn't a good user experience. So we looked for years in trying to find sustainable packaging, but we just couldn't find anything. So we ended up going into plastic, thinking that we picked a plastic that was highly recyclable. And then we actually, I believe it was an intern that told me that only 9% of plastic was getting recycled. And I thought, no way. Like this container is definitely getting recycled. Like the sales rep told us it's mono material, which means it gets recycled every time. So then we started doing a little bit more research and we actually went to Enco here in Escondido and asked the local recycling sorting facility if this particular container would get recycled. And they essentially laughed at me and said, there's not a chance that thing will ever get recycled. It's pretty eye opening. And heartbreaking at the same time.

Yeah. I mean, great that you went and sourced it. Right. And actually walked in and saw and talked to them about that. Because it sounds like I think you made a good eventual partner and customer there. But what else did you learn about, I don't know, just overall packaged goods and just the state of them.

It didn't make any sense, right? Like, how are you making all of these things out of plastic and they're not getting recycled? And why do we all think that they are? Like, what? What's driving this? So then we started to dig deeper to understand the motivations and why things do or don't get recycled. And the problem with plastics is it's not that they're not recyclable. It's just that it costs too much money to recycle them. And virgin plastic is really cheap. So, like, why would you spend all this money recycling plastic when you can get virgin plastic cheaper? And virgin plastic has better material characteristics. So a lot of times, even when you're using some recycled plastic, you typically have to blend it with virgin just so that you can get the right material characteristics and get it to behave the way it needs to. So we thought, well, is this whole system broken or does anything get recycled? And that's when we went down the path of metals. And the folks at this recycling center, and then we called other recycling centers all over the country, just reinforced what they said and that said, hey, we make our money largely from scrap metal. So aluminum and stainless. In some regions, they do really well with glass. But it depends regionally where you are and if there's a demand for glass. So in California, glass is actually really highly recycled. Cause we have such a large craft beer and wine industry, so that glass is in high demand. So then we started to be thinking, well, why don't we just create containers that would be built for the existing infrastructure that's in place? So when our blue bins are getting rolled to the curb, they're full of things that the recycling facility wants because they can sell. And then we went down the path of metals. So we initially we designed a stainless steel reusable deodorant container for our product. And the goal was to just make it once rather than making it over and over. And it's essentially the milk bottle model. Right. We weren't completely inventing this concept, but we just thought, okay, we're going to give people deodorant and then we'll take back the container and we'll clean and sanitize it we had that experience from the medical device space and understood that if we could get surgical instruments clean enough to go into surgery, we can certainly make deodorant containers clean enough to be good as new to put more deodorant in them. And we launched that and got some prototypes going in 2018 to some trade shows. And when we went to the trade shows, we got some. We finally got some interest from some bigger retailers, which were this tiny deodorant company. They got some interest and then we got swarmed by the other brands, by all of the other deodorant brands, because they'd been on the same journey that we had been on where they could not find a sustainable container. So, yeah, so that kind of led to, okay, after having 10, 15, 20 conversations, thinking, I think we could help a lot of people get out of single use plastic and find some other alternatives. And that's how the RD got started.

Very cool. So by looking for a solution for yourself, you found a whole new business?

Yeah, yeah.

Pretty cool. So at some point, you know, you're running your own business, Nonico, it's your own startup, and you got to find a time and right way to pull the band aid off to start your own startup off of a startup. How did you do both? How'd you make the leap?

Well, I was always kind of working two jobs because I was typically working a medical device and doing Nonico on the side. And so I think that it was a really great learning opportunity because I saw that I wasn't ever to take Nonico to where I wanted to take it by working two jobs. Right. It just, it wasn't going to work. So as soon as we decided to start Verity, I knew that I had to step away from Nonico. And I have an amazing partner. And there's a woman named Piper who's worked with us really early on in Nonico and she actually stepped in and took over that business so that I could step away and start Verity. So Noni Ko is a customer to Verity, so we make containers for Nonico, but I knew that that was not going to be our path to success. I had to fully focus on this.

Yeah, got it. So what was the early days like? And I feel like this is kind of where I came in and met you. Right, where you were transitioning into proving out and validating a few different models with Verity. Right. The recyclable part, but also the return part. Like, how did you. What were the first few steps to take this idea and start to validate like, you know, what's the focus to do first?

So we just started talking to customers, right. So we were lucky that we had so many people coming to us and asking us if we could help them with their, their problems. So we just had all of these great like mini focus groups, right. Of understanding, well, what is it that you need and what, like how much are you willing to spend and how can we solve this problem for you? And, and we learned really early that not many brands were ready for the take back model. Like what we were doing with Nonico was maybe a little bit too ahead of the time for the mass market. I still believe there's a real opportunity for washing these containers instead of recycling them every time. But right now it's a major shift in consumer behavior. So we needed to make those inserts. So we have all of our products come in like a two piece design. So there's a case where we put most of the material and the customer keeps that for life. And then the insert is going to minimize the material that you need that actually carries the deodorant or the lotion, whatever the product is. So we learned those inserts probably needed to be made out of aluminum so that you could recycle them curbside and that would be a much more approachable solution to most of the brands we were talking to. So we quickly shifted to that. So most of our designs are really focused on having that aluminum, highly recyclable insert other than the one that you.

Would wash. Got it. And then the aluminum is so much easier for the average person who doesn't have to look at the bottom and be like, what number is this? Can this be recycled from the plastic world? Right?

Yes.

All aluminum.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, and the other cool thing is that these brands are so committed to being more sustainable and that's such a big part of their story and their communication to their consumers that they're really helping to educate. Right. So we don't have to necessarily do all of that. People are buying the containers and buying the product because it's recyclable.

Totally. Take us through a little bit of the brands. Not to say that we're going to talk about them individually, but like the things you heard because you had to educate, Right? Like yeah, people have been plastics only for sure. They want a sustainable solution. And like you said they wanted, maybe they thought they're recycling plastics. It's got to be a big leap to change your entire line to metals or something like that. Or is it, is that not the case? Like what's, what have been the conversations been like around that, Neil?

Even from that first trade show, when we had people coming to approach us, they were like, we have been looking for this for a decade or more. Like, so it's not, I didn't have to convince any of these brands that this is something that they wanted. They've been looking for it and there just were not options. And I think because the only other options on the market were either compromising the user experience or the aesthetics of the brand. Right. So that's why everyone stayed in plastic because they felt like, well, I'm not going to be able to change the way my customer applies the product and I don't want to not look professional on the shelf. So that's what we focus on at Verity is giving them authentically sustainable options without compromising user experience or the aesthetics of the brand. So we didn't have a whole lot of convincing. The big questions came in from packaging departments that had been down the path of bioplastics or plant plastics and not fully understanding the process until after they had launched and some of those materials. And they're such great steps forward. But what they didn't understand is that a lot of those compostable products are only going to compost at commercial composting facilities. So it requires a change in the consumer behavior pattern. Right. Not everybody has commercial compost pickups. So it was more not understanding the full depth of what they, how they needed to educate their consumers to make it authentically sustainable. So for us, they just wanted us to really educate them. They wanted to hear, how did you guys learn everything that you've learned? Take us through your entire learning journey and share peer reviewed articles that you've discovered so that we can feel really good about the decision. So that's, I think where we've been able to really excel is we're really in addition to being a supplier or an education partner to these companies.

Yeah. And you're also not just in deodorants, which is maybe where you started. Where is the line expanded to like what's the grand vision of the product suite that you're rolling out?

Yeah, so we started with the solid stick containers, which they can be used for deodorant or sunscreen or people are doing body lotion and CBD sticks as well. But we've expanded. We now have a jar system. So for creams, balms, we also have a line of aluminum bottles. So for shampoo and conditioner. But what we don't have yet are the Dispensing mechanisms that are reusable. Our team is working on a full line of products and by 2023, we should be able to replace all the plastic in your vanity. So that's the goal.

That's awesome.

No bathroom. Get the plastic out of there.

So makeup too, I know, is a big area as well.

Yeah. So right now we're focused on personal care, but that next market for us is cosmetics. We have a lot of customers who are in both categories, so it's helpful. They can do half of their product line in personal care, but then they also need to be able to move over to the cosmetic side.

That's awesome. I know something, and I'm maybe going to ask this wrong, but you're going to be the expert here. Something that obviously changed changes through like a seismic shift is, you know, early adopters to mass adopters. And I know there was this whole line of clean beauty who, you know, were specific to people who were looking for products because of that to now mass market saying it's an imperative. Did you watch that happen? Like, I'm curious what that was like because you're so ingrained in it. Take us through kind of the adoption phase of just the sustainability in from the buyer perspective.

So I think it's still happening. I think so. Our, our target market when we launched the company was to go to these natural product brands because you can call them the green beauty brands because they already cared so much about the ingredients that they're using and how they impact the environment and their body and your bodies. So it was just a natural next progression to say like, we're really thinking about what our products sitting in and is it going to get recycled and what happens at the end of life. But what was surprising to us is how quickly larger companies are adopting this. I think it's still in process right now, but we imagine that we wouldn't be talking to the bigger brands till three or four more years before they would come around and see this market maturing. But the market's maturing a lot faster than we thought. And I think everyone's really aware of the need to reduce single use plastic waste, especially after going through the pandemic and seeing how much additional single use plastic has been produced.

Yep. Just to call it one brand, Dove kind of signaled over the summer. Right. This move to this as well. That's a great validation. That's such a major brand. It's not just a marketing tactic. It's an imperative to sustainability. Right.

100%. Yep. And I Think you'll see some of the so P and G moved some of its key deodorants into paper tubes for that same reason. So you're seeing it in retailers that apply to all different consumers. You're seeing it for from all different levels of brands and from the big guys all the way down to the boutique brands. It's becoming really important quickly.

Awesome. We'd love to see it.

Yeah.

And us as early investors from Interlock Capital, we obviously are thrilled for everything you've been able to do in such a short time period. So congrats.

Thanks, Neil.

Another thing you've always done besides wearing multiple hats at the same time and multiple companies is community involvement. You have been out there helping other entrepreneurs even while you're learning, you know, to be an entrepreneur yourself as well. Tell us a little about the story of Naturally San Diego and how you got involved.

Yeah, so I actually I got involved in Naturally San Diego right around the time that Verity was starting. And it was mostly because. So I talked to a few friends and I had a lot of other female entrepreneurs that started their businesses around the same time I started Nonico. A lot of them didn't make it. They decided and it wasn't that their product wasn't successful. They actually had really great products. They're super smart women who absolutely could be running and building a company. But we ran into so many challenges and we didn't know what we were doing and we didn't have mentorship in the startup community and we didn't have mentorship in the natural product community. And I think there's actually a really amazing close knit natural product community in San Diego. But I wasn't a part of it. I was in the medical device community and I had such a strong network in the medical device space through the folks at Biocom and Athena. And I could always go to an event and find somebody who could help me navigate a new challenge I was facing. But I didn't have that at all with Nonico. And it took me a long time to build a business. I didn't know where to find ingredients, I didn't know where to find containers. I didn't know. I didn't understand D to C marketing at all. It was hard and I saw a lot of folks give up because they just didn't have the resources or the network to support them. So I had a friend call me who was forming. So Ari Ross was getting Naturally San Diego up and running. Here we got connected through a mutual friend. I don't even remember who did? But he called and he. We had this mutual connection. He said, oh, Kerry, I heard you started this natural deodorant company and that you care about supporting women professionals in general. Would you be interested? And I thought, what a great way to help create that community. So for other women who are starting these companies don't have to be lost and they can have a support system so they don't give up. We got started just a few years ago, but, wow, that community has blossomed, and it's a really vibrant group of amazing people.

We love seeing it, man. And to have another friend, Kirsten Reilly, running it as well, it's awesome to see it have its own leadership and stewardship from some awesome entrepreneurs. We love entrepreneurs supporting entrepreneurs. It's not often that you actually. That you get that as much as you think. It happens informally with kind of, like you said, one or two friends. But to build an organization kind of grassroots like that is incredible to see. So congrats on doing that.

Oh, thank you. Well, hey, Ari and Jess did most of the work, and now Kirsten's running the ship. But we've got a really involved board, so it's been fun. And it's a great group. Not just for natural food products, and I think that's where it all started, but really anything that's involved with having a more natural lifestyle and being more connected to the planet and just running responsible businesses. So there's a lot of content that I think can apply to broader audiences outside of just the natural food space.

Yeah. Great. Well, it sounds like we need a whole nother episode just about that as well, too, about naturally.

San Diego can get a whole crew of the board on. It'll be a fun. It's a fun crew.

We'll have to do it in person so we can try each other's foods and products, because especially Ari's new coconut yogurt everything, which, yes, obsessing over their ice cream right now lately.

It's really good stuff.

Well, speaking of other good things, in San Diego, our taco scene is pretty great. I don't know if we have a natural taco food scene. Actually. We should think about that. But do you have a few favorite taco spots?

Oh, my gosh, this is the hardest decision. So actually, I'm a big fan of Lourdes. So I lived in Cartiff for a long time, and now our business is in San Marcos, which is the only other location. So anytime you're stuck at work late, it's just a few steps away. But, yeah, I think that's. I think that's my favorite spot. There's so many, though. There's so many good ones.

There's so many. There's no wrong answer. And Lourdes has not been mentioned. So nice. We love it.

Their chicken, Their chicken soup is really nice.

Okay, shout out to Lourdes. Going in the taco database as we speak.

Perfect.

Well, Carrie, thanks so much for being on the show. Being able to tell your story so succinctly and really in general, largely having such a great impact in building a great business and saving the world. That's what we're doing.

Thanks, Neil.

Appreciate that.

Kerry, thanks so much.

Oh, thanks for everything you do in this community. You're part of this encouragement for all the entrepreneurs around here. We appreciate you.

Absolutely. No, it's all about all of us together building bridges so that we all succeed. Rising Tide. But thanks, Kerry. Appreciate it.

Awesome. Thanks, Neil. It's been fun.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neal Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem.

Big shout out to School of Rap.

For our rad intro music. And this podcast is edited and mixed by Patrick Norton at citizenrecording.com youm can find Neil Blume on Twitter neilbloom and on LinkedIn in as well as well as fresh brewed tech and tacos and tech pod on Twitter too.

Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party. Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos. Tacos in tech. You know we got it.

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