Episode 330: The Impact Journey: Fairware's Sarah White and Denise Taschereau

Back in 2005, a small distributor started in Vancouver with a mission to change the world through the simple act of buying. And in the intervening years, Fair Wear has had an outsized impact on our entire industry to produce more sustainably. After all, when they first began their business nearly 20 years ago, they were the first ones pushing suppliers gently but firmly to report, change, or advance their sustainable practices. And they were the first distributor to become B Corp certified. Since then, they've earned an Ecovadas Silver and have become Climate Smart certified. And though Fareware has been tracking their social and environmental impact for over 10 years, in 2024 they produced their first impact report. On today's show, we're exploring why that matters and how you can begin your own journey toward change and impact. Welcome to the Skewcast, a podcast for innovators and maverick thinkers in the promotional product space. My name is Bobby LeHew. I'm glad you're here. Now, normally impact reports are dry, multi-page docs that, despite their accomplishments, often leave you feeling less inspired than when you started reading them. Not Farewears. It's a beautifully designed, compelling message that unpacks their responsible sourcing mission, supply chain overview, their justice, equity, diversion, and inclusion commitment, company culture, hiring approach, and their community impact. So why is something like this even important? Because many distributors will lean toward a commitment to source better, source responsibly. But it's another matter entirely to put a stake in the ground and publicly declare your commitment and progress to all partners, clients, and future stakeholders. Fareware states, quote, "We believe that if done right, merchandise can amplify movements, uplift communities, and showcase a more sustainable way of doing business," end quote. And their impact report codifies that belief and reveals actionable change. Today we're chatting with CEO Denise Tashrow and COO Sarah White, who as always share from their experience in order to help make us all better. One quick note, if you are going to the PPAI Expo, we've got a host of activities we'd like to invite you to, and we've made it very simple for you to find them all at commonskew.com/expo. We're hosting a breakfast club, happy hours, and members of our team are leading sessions. I'll be leading a session on how to map bold merch trends to a killer sales strategy. Charlie Musco and Aaron Couture are leading a session on connecting your workflow, and you can even find a handy list of all the CommsCue suppliers and their expo booth numbers in a convenient doc. For our breakfast club and happy hours, you'll need to RSVP, so hop on over to commonscue.com/expo to check it all out, and we will see you in Las Vegas. Today's episode is courtesy of us at CommsCue. We are the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com. Now, here's my chat with Sarah and Denise. Hi Sarah. Hi Denise.

Hi.

I, you know, I have to sort of temper my fanboy enthusiasm for this interview because—

You say that to all of your like—

No, I, no, I don't. The impact report, the impact report is so stunning. And I know this is something you, you know, you launched earlier in the year and we're just now getting around to recording this, but thank you for talking with me about this because it's truly one one of the most impressive things that I have seen come from a distributor since I have been in the industry. Now, so I can— we can help everyone else understand what we're talking about, we'll put links in the show notes. But in 2021, you developed sort of this more formal onboarding process for new suppliers and to train your sales team. There's been a whole lot behind this report, but starting with that, what did that process look like?

Well, I think, you know, for us, we're known as the go-to for sustainable merchandise, right? Impact merchandise. If you want to align your values with your merch, you call us. And so we have to have a supplier base that can deliver that promise. And there's a lot of core suppliers within our industry that are great, have strong sustainability attributes, and even are bringing in brands that are high impact. But our mojo has really been finding cool, unique, out-of-industry suppliers. And we've done it from like day one, in part because, you know, like we couldn't find what we wanted in the supply chain of promo, so we had to do it. And now we kind of choose to do it. And it was ad hoc and we would find folks. There was a lot of great— it's not like qualifying for sales. We'd find a supplier, they were cool, we'd fall in love with them, we'd have our crushes on them, we'd bring them in, everybody would be enamored with the product. And then either we wouldn't set them up in the system so nobody could easily pitch them. There was like a lot of friction in the process, or we'd pitch them and then find out because we forgot to qualify that they could only make 4 a week. And so that order of 400 we just got is going to take a and a half. So, right, you know what I mean? So we, so we started to recognize we needed a formal process to qualify that, but then also bring them into the industry and show them the industry. And so that for years was all me. I was staying really busy, like, we're running a business. So we nurtured a sales leader to have that as a formal part of her portfolio, and she built a lot of the systems. So a workflow that is find them, qualify them, get them in front of our sales reps, get them excited, get them in common SKU, get the products loaded in our, in our, you know, Fareware catalog so that there's no friction in pitching them, and then get them to the marketing team to market it. And just that like development of a super simple workflow, like check, check, check, check, check. Yeah. Means that they're in, we can sell them, we can market them. Whereas before, like, we'd always be missing one of those pieces and we weren't able to go to market as much. So that's really what that is about. She's not here anymore. She actually just started a role leading DEI procurement for Lululemon. But the systems are built and now it's kind of embedded in our process for onboarding suppliers. So the framework is there to make sure that we find them, nurture them, and actually sell their product.

Got it. Sarah, you wanna add anything to that?

No, just it's also interesting to see that a lot of the original impact suppliers that we found outside of the industry. Some of them have found their way into the industry. Yeah, right. You know, like the herbs and the mirrors and the— Yeah, the clean canteens and the Chico bags. And I used to, you know, tease some of our suppliers. I'm like, did you just look at our Insta and then go find this and bring it here? Anyways. So, yeah, anyways, so, yeah, it's a lot easier to get them. And it's actually made us sell more of their products because they're burgeoning as businesses, right? And so it's kind of counterintuitive to keep them just to us. They need to see too. So there's always this weird tension around sharing and giving away your mojo, but we've learned that you have to. And in fact, I was talking to a competitor yesterday and we were exchanging impact suppliers that we both use because we need to lift them up so they can succeed so we can still work with them next year. You know, that's astounding.

That's a very generous attitude. That's very astounding. And, and, and I don't mean to sound grandiose, but it is. It's a fairly generous attitude. There's that— you could have chosen a closed path where you're not going to reveal any of that kind of stuff. But you also created this like questionnaire assessment. Like, you've done so much that you've built upon, sometimes it's hard to unpack and unravel everything that you've done. But one of the things is like the supplier assessment questionnaire. And this is what I love, is just a baseline for distributors, is you've actually created a questionnaire based on your values. What kinds of questions are involved in that?

So, you know, supplier Koticonic surveys have been the bread and butter of retail for decades, right? Like, most supply chain professionals that are making products are pretty used to having these or receiving them or filling them out or whatever the case is. It's been a little slower going for that uptake in promo. We found a supplier Koticonic survey since 2006, which is when we started. So we started with a survey. It's been peer reviewed maybe 3 or 4 times at this point. The last peer review was Specter, Sandmore, the head of ethical sourcing for UCLA Trademark and Licensing, and the director of procurement sustainability for Salesforce. So 2 clients, 2 suppliers. Here's our survey. Are we capturing the information that's important to you as buyers or that you think is relevant as suppliers? So it's always useful because they'll come back and my favorite is, you know, Chris from Spectre is like, did you mean not to include any Canadian certifications? And I'm like, no, I did not. Good catch. You know, sometimes it's really simple. And sometimes it's quite substantive, right? And, you know, I credit UCLA for saying, I think it's time for you to have a question around the Uyghur region in Xinjiang. And is your supply chain exposed to that issue in China? So it can sometimes it's like a typo and sometimes it's a substantive question. So the kind of questions that are in there are quite simple. Some of them are quite simple, like, do you have a recycling target or recycling program? Are you diverse-owned according to these North American certification definitions? Do you have any certifications for your organization, maybe Ecovadis or B Corp? And some of them are more nuanced, and, or we're digging into, are you starting to do supply chain mapping to understand not just where you're making stuff, but where the stuff that, you know, is used in the componentry of what you're making, where's that coming from? Where are the zippers coming from? Like, are you starting to do that next level supply chain mapping. So it really gives us a taste. And what we've learned over the years is to always— there's sort of two questions right now that I feel like are, you know, unexpected sometimes and deliver great results. One is just simply, do you have a full-time employee doing any work around product sustainability, social compliance, environmental responsibility? And it's like, yes, no, like you do or you don't. But if people say yes, it's a little bit like, Okay, we're good here, right? Like, if you are in this industry and you've dedicated an employee, an FTE, to this work, you're the kind of people we want to work with. Like, that just tells us we almost don't need to read the rest of the thing. You know what I mean? And then the other one that we learned was that having an open-ended question, these like, and there's survey fatigue and that's a whole other podcast, but a lot of people are doing incredible things that don't fit in a checkbox.. And that has been hard to capture. So we now have a question. It's been in there for probably 10 years that just says, is there anything else you're proud of? And, you know, those are where you get the stories, right? And, and, you know, while I don't think it came through a survey, we did a walkthrough of Snugs, you know, a supplier visit. And I remember Brandon telling a story of they do something called a, it's like a PTO roundup, right? So if you've run out of time off. And if someone's in a crisis, and they talk about someone who had just lost their wife to cancer and had run out of their vacation and their sick time and everything, taking care of their wife. And I get, like, goosebumps talking about it, but the people on the shop floor could donate an hour of PTO or half an hour or half a day, and they were able to, like, bundle up holiday for this, like, you know, factory floor worker to take more time off to grieve or to take care of what he needed to take care of. And, like, those are the things that aren't easy when when you have a survey that says yes or no, are you certified, yes or no, like that's the magic that makes someone like, yeah, something like Snugs, right? So, so it's trying to get at those stories can be tough, but it's an important part of a survey like that as well.

We're going to get to Jedi in a minute, but Sarah, I kind of want to ask this about— I think people pigeonhole you and Fair Wear into sustainability only, and the lens on your impact report has gotten the apertures pretty wide in terms of impact, in terms of employees, and engagement, obviously justice, equity, diversity, inclusion. But how, how important has it been to you, Sarah, for you to open that lens? And when did that process sort of begin, or has it always been a part of your DNA? Because I think sometimes we pigeonhole you as the sustainability folks, but you've also really worked hard. Like that very last question you mentioned, Denise, that's an impactful that was an impactful point for you to do business with them. So, Sarah, how, how has that happened through your journey?

I think it's, it's definitely evolved. And I think personally, I've always had that lens of, you know, social justice and activism. And, you know, I think we, we did things like in the way that Denise is talking about suppliers, you know, doing great things, but they don't don't write them down or record them. I think that was happening for us. I think we have always worked to, you know, have an inclusive culture, which, you know, I can talk more about in a minute. But I think that— and then as, you know, the world essentially woke up, especially in the last few years, I think that's like Black Lives Matter. And I think that just really started to for me to solidify and, and to put a fire underneath it, to realize how we needed to be more vocal about it. We needed to have it written down. We needed to have a policy and a strategy and not just kind of like do good things, but, but it had to be more formal. And that's what was so great about doing this report for me is it made me really dig into this in a big way and to make sure that we you know, hold all of it together. Yeah, it really helped us codify what we've been doing for 20 years. Yeah, I mean, right, right, kind of like a genie here. And, and, you know, it made us get a little more formal, a little more disciplined.

Yeah, I could read that through your impact report, realizing this is a ratification of what you've always believed. You're just putting this out there informally. One, one real tactical thing that the, the longtime distributor in me notices about your impact report is that you had 200 active suppliers in your roster, but the majority of your business is with 30, and they constitute 80% of your business. That's phenomenal. Like, I, I don't, I don't know, maybe I'm just blown away by it because I know how difficult it is to work with so many different suppliers. How has that affected your ability to work with your clients, help your sales team train on product? I mean, that's— is it— to me, my mind's blown by that. Was that a hard hard to get to that number.

So when your entire brand ethos is built on trust, you can't let your sales reps pick whatever the heck they want out of, say, your ESP. Like, you can't. Yeah, like, the brand risk inherent in that would crush our, like, our go-to-market strategy. So, so we'll start with that. Also, I'm kind of surprised by that question because the thought that you would just have a random assortment of suppliers from a basic business 101 perspective is kind of bananas, right? Like, you know, it seems very unstrategic to me. So I think it's a marriage of both intention around ethical supply chains. And, you know, when we would send the code of conduct or call the people to then send the code of conduct in 2006, 2007, like, we're in Sarah's garage, people would hang up on us. Like, I kid you not. Like, I'm not just like metaphorically hanging up on this. People would be like, that's none of your business. Click. And like, now people are sending us their sustainability reports. It's sort of incredible. But I think for us, when you're so invested in knowing your supply chain, like, you have to pick your people. And it's just, I think for us, what it's meant is it kind of nailed it. It's more efficient to train our team. It's better, stronger relationships if we need better terms, if we need a favor, if we need, like, when you've been doing business with someone for a long time and they know that they're your people and they're your go-to. They're your primary drinkware supplier or the primary bag supplier. Yeah, they're there for you. It's like old friends, right? So, so I think for us it hasn't been hard and we leverage common SKU in a really strategic way to actually throttle the ability of our sales reps in the assortment they can pull, right? So we have like training, we have guardrails, and we actually have like kind of hack the system so that when our reps, especially new ones, are going in to make a presentation, you know, we use preferred supplier ranking and they can only pull products from certain rankings and the rankings reflect different, like, criteria of suppliers. And then I can sleep at night because I know they're not sending, like, a super random product full of, you know, carcinogens.

Right. You have a list of responsible sourcing goals on your impact report. What met goal or even partially met goal are you most proud of?

Oh, for us, for sure, it's the, like, kind of that overarching impact category. I think we're over 20%. We're just doing our numbers right now. I'm pretty sure we'll be over 25%, you know. So that's going to be folks that are like us, like maybe they're B Corps, or maybe they're just like a sustainable brand, like their whole business is wrapped around good. They might be a small, like, diverse-owned, maybe certified, maybe not, but just those like scrappy impact vendors that we love to support. That's what I'm most excited about. The most sobering and disappointing is the diverse zone. So, we are in around 1%, 2%. Our goal is 5%. You know, and that's always a hard one. And we get challenged sometimes by our suppliers on that. Like, why can't you find us more diverse zone, you know, manufacturing partners and suppliers? And, you know, depending on who's in the room, you know, I'll often answer institutionalized racism because that's why, right? Like, to be a supplier, you need capital. Like you need capital to buy equipment, you need to buy inventory, you need to buy printers. And to access capital historically has been a difficult thing for parts of our communities, right? So like, that's it. That's real. I want to have that conversation. That's why I think there's less suppliers than distributors where there's less capital needed to start, you know. And so you look at these sort of historical barriers to getting, you know, $50 grand to buy the equipment or buy your first inventory load. Like, not everybody can get that $50 grand, especially historically. So, so I do think there's work to be done there. And, and I think our impact report, to me, that's what it reflects, is, is sort of this historical barriers to, to getting the kind of capital you need to be a supplier in this industry.

Sarah, you've adapted DEI to JEDI. I don't know if you're calling it Jedi there, but can you explain, can you explain that expansion?

Sure. The justice, the first word in it, we added as it appeared to be becoming kind of best practice, although that's ever-changing. And the reason why is that the justice, the word justice appeared in the context of Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. And it was to really bring attention to the fact that we have to look at the bigger picture and we have to look at systemic and institutional injustices that lead to discrimination. So that's really why that's added in there, is to acknowledge that and that, you know, we have to change ourselves, but we also have to change systems. You know, there's other ones too, like justice, equity, belonging. Like, there's many different variations and For me, the most important thing is to have one and then to do things, like to do it. So, you know, I don't— like, it may not be— I mean, I've heard from other folks that I know in the anti-racism movement that don't use that terminology anymore. It just worked for us. But like I said, it's just important to have a, you know, have a commitment and have a plan and do it.

And how do those values become actionable in your business? I know, for example, you have your own internal training for anti-discrimination. Very inclusive form of hiring. I was blown away by the fact that in 2022, your team spoke 13 languages fluently.

Yeah, 24 people.

That's pretty impressive.

That's amazing. We have a few people who are like, yeah, that's— and speak 4 languages.

So that's amazing. So speak to the— speak to a distributor about how you sort of action that in your business.

Sure. But I just— I actually want to add one thing to that last bit. Which is, I just want to, you know, make note of the anti-DEI movement that's been gaining a lot of ground in the last while, and that a lot of educational institutions and corporations and businesses are shying away from this work. And sometimes it's by law, as we know from banned books and closed LGBTQ centers, etc., etc. Or because of the fear of the organized boycotts. You know, Ford just today announced that they're kind of dropping, shying away from the, the DEI work. And yeah, so it's, it's a big concern for me.

And how does that— that's obviously very disheartening, and, and I'm minimizing that by saying that, but I, but I, but we are seeing this wave of, of of an anti-response to this. And here you are as a small business actioning this in your business. And how, how does that sort of play out in your day-to-day, week-to-week?

Yeah, I think, you know, for me, I've always come from this, you know, in what I see is how I operate in activism, that it's kind of relationships and one person at a time. And even though we're a small business, the impact we have on our employees and each other, that can be exponential because they go out to their families and their friends. And if they take this work with them, then we're having wider impact. But it has to start at that very individual place. Yeah.

What was the most rewarding— talking about impact, let's talk about community impact. What was the most rewarding experience you've both had in regards to community impact over the past year?

Well, you know, it's, it's interesting. We, you know, community isn't like— it's not kind of our number one priority in the, in that sense of traditional volunteering, philanthropic. You know, we focus on the impact that our business can have. You know, there's— we've done great things, but I think it's, you know, important to kind of clarify that between what we do on a day-to-day basis seeing that as having greater, you know, greater impact and addressing those kind of systemic problems. But we, you know, we, we do, one was an employee-led, we have an employee-led community impact committee and they, we did a partnership with and Reef Consulting. Oh yeah, right. Reef Consulting, who's like the top Canadian consultant in procurement and Was it like, I say, sort of ethical sourcing? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, we do a beach cleanup and it was really a staff-driven initiative, which has been great. And I think sometimes Sarah and I are a bit too serious about like driving the change in the business and we forget about like having fun with it. And so our impact committee has created, co-created with Reef Consulting a beach cleanup and it's been great. Like we had, we picked up like 1,200 pieces of trash on the beach. It's a really fun way to get out and sort of see the impact. But yeah, you know, to build on, on, on Sarah's point, we're deeply integrated created in the community in terms of our own personal volunteerism, in terms of like social hiring. But I think community impact is often a place where people start, and philanthropy is often the easiest place. Like, we will give some of our money away to a community partner, and, and a lot of people stop there. And I think what we've focused on really from day one is we want to show you how to fundamentally change business. Like, how do you build and run a purpose-driven enterprise? Costs money. It's a different focus than writing a check or a giveback program with the product. Like, it is about kind of fundamentally transforming sort of the operational side of the business. And there's fewer examples of that in the world. And I think that's what we want to be because there's a lot of examples of great philanthropy and great community.

Yeah. And then that way it's woven into the fabric of the ecosystem of the entire business, as opposed to— you're right— of the one-time or two-time or three-time-a-year kind of thing. Even though you have these really great initiatives that help the kelp— in 2023 you partnered with Veritree to plant 10 kelp for every order made with Faro.

That's pretty cool. Yeah. So Veritree, for those who don't know, is a sister company of Tentree. And Tentree Apparel, you know, in our industry, Vancouver-based, so we know those folks pretty well. And Veritree was launched as a way to authenticate the trees that TenTree plants. That's how that was the origin story is some of their investors are like, yeah, you say 10 trees and yeah, you're showing us a receipt of a tree planting company that says they planted 1,000 trees, but really they built a blockchain-enabled platform for full traceability to actually authenticate trees and now kelp and other natural-based carbon mitigation tools.. And it's, I mean, it's an amazing platform. So we took it to the team. We had a choice between trees and kelp and it was an obvious win. Like everyone was so psyched about kelp and we have the help the kelp hashtag and the program is just like a few, like, you know, a few dozen kilometers up the coast. So it's very close to home, very regional.

Yeah. It's cool.

It's a super important climate resilient solution and yeah, so every like invoiced order We plant 10 kelp. Love it. And if you go to our site, you can click and like, you can see like how many we've planted and where it is.

And, and that's fun.

It's kind of nice. It's a, it's a collaborative program with Ocean Wise and the local First Nations. So there's just, it hits a lot of, lot of important points for us and for our brand.

Yeah, that's cool. I wanna get back to impact report. Let me, let me ask a question real quick just as, as a, an addition that I threw in here. You have been a longtime Commenscue customer. How has Commenscue helped impact and sort of change the way you and your team work together lately over the past couple of years? How have you seen it really impact your team? And you mentioned, I think, Denise, one thing you mentioned was the, the new policy you have and how that, that has really made an impact.

Because obviously it's in the cloud, it, it allows people to work hybrid. And these are all kind of embedded in our policies. So we have a policy for hybrid work and also for short-term remote. So we have a lot of folks who come from other countries or want to travel. They want to go home and visit their family or they want to travel. And this allows them to work seamlessly. So it's amazing and allows a lot of some of the policies we have to actually come to life. Yeah. You remember we rolled it out. It's like twice a year up to a month and we rolled it out. I feel like it's been the best received kind of interesting employee policy we've rolled out in our lives. People love it. And, but I remember the first two, one woman went to Dublin to go home and work from home. She was from Dublin and one somebody went to Mumbai for his wedding and his brother's wedding and worked in between, you know, like just figured it out and it just like, we just enable this joy for our employees to kind of go home but still work. And because when you're traveling to like Dubai or Dublin, like, you don't want to go for a week, right? Yeah. Because people will tag on holidays and, you know, take care of parents, see new babies. All of a sudden, they leave for Brazil on Monday.

Yeah. That's cool.

I love it. Our finance team. Yeah.

I'm really curious. You have both been in the business and really, really made an impact in this industry. And can you comment on this journey from entering the industry at first? You're now in a position where you're educating suppliers and actually mentoring suppliers. Like, how does that— I, I've always been impressed at how you both have decided to step into the industry to change from within, as opposed to stand on the outside and sort of point at it. Or what I have seen many folks do is use it as a contrasting mechanism to the point where it almost creates this division, whereas you've kind of— Yeah, that's exactly right. So it's a market position, right, for some folks that might want to take it that way. But you've chosen the other path. What does it feel like now to— to— and what does that mean to you to suddenly be on a position where you're mentoring other suppliers?

I don't know. I, I think for us, I mean, it's, it's mentoring suppliers, it's mentoring distributors. Like, I think we're, you know, we're pretty open to just sharing that, sharing the wealth. I think the impact report gives people a playbook, right, for how they might move. But, you know, I would say we started in 2006, and our initial mission was like to change the world through the simple act of buying. And, and we started, we didn't fall into promo. We chose promo and we chose promo because it was off the back in this area and it was going to be an easy place to succeed as a new fresh brand with a different perspective. And I would say we had the perspective from day one that we wanted to change the industry. And I know when I was getting, you know, we're having a conversation around do I want to run for the PPI board? And I was a little bit like, oh, I don't know. And I remember you saying really clearly, We're probably sitting in this room. You're like, this is why we started Fair Wear. We started Fair Wear to change the industry. And I think, you know, your point about, you know, the kind of activists on the outside that are maybe agitating like it's a terrible industry or it's full of, you know, throwaway disposable stuff or whatever it might be. Like, there is a really critical role for activists. A lot of them are clients. And it's important It's important for the agitators because they make the rest of the world see the issue, right? Yeah. My personal theory of change is what is the biggest lever of power I can pull? If you're an agitator, you don't get invited to the table like your lever is potent but small. I think for me, now that I'm about to face being the chair of the industry, Like, I know that we will move as a collective forward, not if I throw rocks and diss the industry, but if I share our insight and our learning and codify it like we've done for us, for the industry to move the dial. Like, my goal here isn't for Faroer to be awesome and only Faroer. My goal is that we have a climate-friendly future. My goal, you know, and I'd say our goal is that we have a socially just world. Like, that's kind of why we get up in the morning. So like, to move a $26 billion industry and to feel like we have had an influence on that is like a pretty incredible feeling. And I think we've been pretty strategic about how we do it, right? And it almost says like, we're 20, we're 20 as a brand next year. And I'll be coming into the chair of PPAI. Sarah's working with some really interesting CEO circles here in BC on like accessible workplaces. Like, we're kind of at that place where the hand's on a pretty big lever and we are hoping we're pulling it in the right direction to a better future. Like, it's really as simple as that. I know it sounds a bit naive and Canadian, I'm sure, but it's kind of what we're passionate about.

No, I love it. Sarah, do you want to respond?

Yeah, I mean, I agree, but I also think that rocks are necessary and the rocks and the protesters have actually started social change movements and that have forced people to then pick up that ball. And I think that's what you're saying. Yeah, that's exactly like it's just like you need both, right?

Both.

Yeah. Yeah. —like, yeah, basic political process, right? Like, change happens where you have, like, you know, the folks on the margin screaming. People are like, what are they on about? Oh yeah, that's a really good point. Okay. And then it starts to work through the systems of traditional decision-making and governance and power, right? That's how change happens. And people should be yelling at our industry, you know? Like, it's not— it's still— there's still work to do. Yeah, it's a great point.

That's a great point. Like, rather than be defensive, go recognize it as a correction, right? Yeah.

And it's like, I mean, I know I've used this language so, so often, but I mean, it's the sort of platform I ran on to get on the board is how do we future-proof our industry? And I think you could take everything we've said today about sustainability, about social justice, about anything, and replace it with digital transformation. And like, if you're not looking forward and thinking about how to evolve and innovate and like leverage technology, whether it's AI or just like systems integration, whatever it might be, you will be off the back in this industry. You will lose. Like, I literally think like if you're not thinking about sustainability, impact, social justice, you're not thinking about technology every day in your business strategically, like you lose. Like they're synonymous to me in terms of like how important they are to future-proof our industry.

It's a really, really good point. Now, last question.

I know I should—

I knew I should have scheduled like an hour, hour and a half for this because I have so many more questions. But last question here I have for both of you. I know it's a stretch for some of us, and I realize your impact report is a ratification of years of work. It wasn't just like you turned the switch on in January and decided you were going to do this. But how would you encourage distributors to work toward their own impact initiatives, however they define impact? How would you encourage them now that you've been through this process?

Sarah, we'll start with you. Well, I think the most important thing is what we did is we started to write things down and codify them. It sounds so simple, but it's so important. It's so true. But also, you know, some of my learning in this is how the things that we were already doing that I just kind of took for granted are actually fit into the umbrella of Jedi, like having extended health plan, having short-term remote policies, having, you know, paid time off. All those things fit into the category of financial wellness and wealth building. You know, you allow dogs in the office. It sounds silly, but like all those ways, you know, celebrating diverse holidays, like what are those things that you're just doing already? Yeah. You know, that And then, you know, copy ours, like get the categories that make sense to you. I mean, all like when you look at the PAC report, there's like these 4 pillars, but they intertwine and overlap. You know, the foundation is kind of this communication frameworks, but really it's, you know, starting there. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, too, looking at Promocare is great industry association sharing frameworks. PPAI is coming out with some incredible work around all of these categories. But yeah, like like our report is kind of a roadmap. I'd say that there was a 5th chapter and it's advocacy. And I'd say that one's probably not for the faint of heart. So, so pick it if you want, but get ready for what it's like to be an activist brand. But, but I think the other ones are like, you're going to see them everywhere. Read, read any report, like, you know, Halo or Sandmar or, you know, Bamco or whomever has them, right? Just go and read theirs, right? See what they're doing. And my guess is maybe 20% of it you're doing or 40%, you might surprise yourself. But I can't overemphasize documentation and document management. And it is so easy to do things and forget to measure them or to forget to get that benchmark or to know whether you've improved or to know what you did. Like, we have for 2 decades given away a lot of things every year to the street soccer team we support or to local youth homeless shelters. Like, like, like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars in merch. We never once documented what we sent out to the store. Yeah. And in the last few years, you were like, you know what? Like, maybe we should write that down. Like, that's something we're doing. And, and so those are the things, right? Like, you're just doing stuff and you're not even thinking about it.

So, yeah, write it down. Yeah. I love it. Great advice to end on. Sarah and Denise, thank you so much for doing this. I, I, again, I know I should have done an hour, hour and a half, but thank you so much as always for stepping in to share this with us. We'll have links to the impact report Farroar site and everything that everyone can tap into.

So thank you guys. Welcome.