E002 - Adam Huttly from Red-Inc

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Welcome to the Green Element Podcast, where business and sustainability come together.

Hi Adam, thank you very much for joining us on this Green Element podcast. How you doing today?

Yeah, good thanks, Will. Good to be here.

Good, I'm looking forward to hearing how you can incite our listeners and what pieces of information you're going to be able to give them today.

So starting off, tell me a bit about your business and what your purpose and who you Okay, so I suppose Red Ink is just an office supplies reseller in its kind of raw state. I founded the company in 2008, and it was based on just 3 basic principles that I think we needed addressing in more detail. So obviously one was cost. That's really important. You know, we have to be competitive. There's sort of no getting away from the price conversation anymore.

Yeah.

But it was how we dealt with that. We had to be transparent and look at cost in an intelligent way rather than more of a sort of cloak and dagger style traditional with our industry. So that was really important. There was sort of these 3 basic principles that we just thought, if we can look at this and apply common sense to it, We can probably do a lot better. So impact was our second point. And by impact, I meant really environmental impact. We're in a logistics industry, although we sell office supplies and print. We have a lot, a lot to do with impact. And we wanted to add value to our customers. And we felt that having more knowledge and being experts in the environmental sort of processes we could actually assist customers. So not just being a sort of, you know, we sell stationery, end of. We became more consultative around that area as well. So our goal is to reduce our environmental impact and also to reduce that of our customers in this tiny sector that we deal with. And finally, it was to reduce human effort. So, you know, we get people are busy, we get office supplies is full far from heady or top of the list of anyone's agenda. So we had to make a business model that worked for the customer, which meant that they had to— they could get in, get it done, and get out. You know, it's about 100% fulfillment logistics being spot on and as many things as we could just to make this really, really easy for them. So they were the 3 basic principles that the company was founded on, really.

That's really good to hear because you do You come— I mean, in our line of work, we listen to companies and organisations talk about their stationery companies and the fact that it's a necessary evil, as it were. But you're almost taking out that evil side, I guess, without sounding too dramatic. You're— because it's still necessary, but you're making it a nice and easy way of buying you know, stationery and your office supplies.

Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, I just think there just needed to be some really basic common sense applied to how we do things. And, you know, some of those things are just so straightforward. Like, you know, in our industry, the sort of unique selling point for the last 20 years I've been in the industry is, you know, free next-day delivery. And it just doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't make any sense to the costs that are involved in that or the clients having a tradesman and a van on the road every day going into their building. So it wasn't straightforward to suddenly sort of change a culture of how stationery has been bought because obviously people think they need stationery next day, but they actually don't in real terms. So I suppose to summarize Red Ink, we're a conscious business. So we look at aligning our profit with purpose, which is key to us. And in line with that, we are a certified B Corp, which I'd like to talk more about if we've got time to.

Yeah, of course. I'll be asking about that at the end. So what would you say your business superpower was going on from that?

There's no doubt about it. It was, I suppose, the privilege of being able to start a company from scratch. We didn't have any assets. We didn't have any clients. Actually, that's a silly statement, but, you know, we didn't have any staff. We had no baggage basically. And I founded the company in 2008 when the world fell into global recession.

Right.

Finance industry sort of collapsed in it and people were just looking at raw cost. So we had to come up with a solution at the time that was cost-effective and that meant building a lean business, as lean as we could get, have as few people in the business as possible, but the most talented people that really carried their weight. And in hand with that, put together a solution for customers that was still green, because I cared enough to do that, but also tick the boxes of, you know, can this work in a really tough time when staff levels are dropping, budgets are being cut, and everyone's just searching around online for a cheap price? So there's no doubt about it. I mean, our business superpower, as you call it, from day one has been to be lean and efficient. But we couldn't have done that without the staff. You know, our staff are amazing. They're wholly ingrained in our purposeful mission to do what we do as best as we can do it. And those 2 things combined, you know, they make us what we are today, really.

Brilliant. Okay, so leading nicely on, can you tell us a bit about how you engage your staff, suppliers, and customers with your mission and purpose?

Well, I think internally it's really easy. We're still a relatively small company by choice. We don't want to be a huge company that has loads of costs that we have to pass on to the customer. The key in our industry, which is absolutely saturated, is to be lean. There's no two ways about that. Having the right staff, and because our staff are so sort of built into or sort of on our mission with us, it's really easy to engage the staff. Having also touching on the B Corp certification, anyone that goes through the B Corp certification, you know, will just know it's such a rigorous process that no one that's actually, you know, active in our business could avoid it. You know, everyone has to be involved in it.

Hmm.

So it's really easy to engage the staff with that. There's no— there's just no two ways about it, really.

We will put some information about B Corp on the website for those that don't understand what B Corp and what the Benefit Corporation certification is. Maybe you could tell us a tiny bit about B Corp and what drove you towards it, and in a very short nutshell.

Yeah, so I mean, we were searching for authentication. We needed a way to converse with clients, potential clients, stakeholders about what we do in the day-to-day, and the B Corp certification helped us do that as a small company. You know, there's just no two ways about that. It wrapped up our story in a really succinct, tidy parcel. It gave us credible evidence about what we do, which anyone that knows me will tell you, you know, my bugbear is people that claim to be a green company and aren't. You know, clever marketing is great, But where's the verification? You know, if you're saying you're going to plant trees for every £100 spent, you know, where are those trees going? You know, who gave you the permission to plant the trees? It's a lot deeper than just saying that. And for us, B Corps was absolutely essential, and it's put us to task to be better. It's looked at areas where we were weak, and, you know, we are just humans trying to run a good company, but we've got better things to work towards. And every year we would produce produce an impact report as a result of being a B Corp. And going back to your previous question, this is something we share. We share it online, we share it with potential customers, and we share it with our existing customers. And they can really read and see, you know, what we've done over the year, what we've achieved, and how that's been verified.

Okay, brilliant. That's great. So when it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what has been your biggest struggle so far, and can you tell us a bit about how you've overcome it?

Okay, so for a small company, I suppose the biggest problem is upscaling. I think anyone in our position having a small business in tough times will testify that upscaling is a big problem. Finding people when we're so committed to doing things right in an industry, in a sector that's price motivated, it's a race to the bottom, is not always that straightforward. So when you look at procurement, office managers, the people we want to talk to, You know, we just get that they're busy people and a conversation around stationery just isn't riveting. And they've had 1,000 that week already, you know, from another stationery company and another stationery company. So one of the biggest problems we've got is to kind of get people to take us seriously enough to look beneath the surface and not just count us as another stationery company. Because once they do, they see that what we're doing is probably, you know, standalone in our industry from an accreditation point of view and a service point of view and fulfillment point of view. And it's getting through those— it's getting to those people, getting that conversation going, and getting them to take us seriously, really.

Okay, and so if you could offer one piece of advice to our listeners which could help them with their purpose, what would that be?

Well, I suppose really doing the impact assessment on a B Corp, because, you know, that opens up a whole new world of information that perhaps we didn't know existed before we did it. And I would imagine there's a lot of businesses, certainly SMEs, that have no idea about how they should do policies, you know, equality and diversity, and how you look at your carbon footprint. You know, it's so in-depth, and I think if nothing else, even, even if they don't become a B Corp, if they look through that assessment, it will open their eyes to see really what more they need to be doing and how much really needs to be done as running a small business.

Okay, just— I'm just working— I work in a shared office and someone just walked past the pod and opened the door. So we'd start hearing absolutely everything that was going on around us. That's really interesting. At least we know we're live and this isn't prefabricated. So what would be the best way to be able to connect with you and learn more about what it is that you're doing?

Well, obviously we're on— we've got a website which is www.red-ink.com. That's just being redone at the moment because it's a couple of years out of date and everything moves so quickly. We've done so much, we've achieved so much. So within the next month, we'll have a new website. We're on the social feeds, Twitter, which is @redinksussex, and obviously I'm on LinkedIn and people can connect with me directly. I love engaging with people. I love telling our story. I love talking over a coffee about what we do. I'm deeply passionate about doing it right. And yeah, I'd be happy to talk to anyone for hours and hours on end about having a good solution.

So can we put your— I would imagine not your personal contact details, but your contact details for the company up on the podcast notes?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no problem at all. Yeah.

We started talking about the paper industry and the troubles and turmoils that it's going through at the moment. And you've You've come up with some ideas of how to change that, I guess, and make it better. Tell us more, please.

Well, I don't know whether single-handedly I can change the pay-for industry, but I'd like to think that we can influence it a little bit. And it takes responsibility from everyone, so our whole industry needs to be responsible for it. That would be the kind of ideal position to find ourselves in, lead by example, get other people to see what we can achieve. One of the biggest problems is that there's continually paper prices. The market is in a really strange place. Paper is, in the UK, it's sold too cheap. It's a heavy product. An average box of 80-gram paper weighs about 12 kilos or something. People want it for nothing, and it has to be shipped around. Okay, so it's a big, it's a big problem. It's a low margin product. It's almost like one of those, how much is your paper before anything else happens, because it's high usage.

Hmm.

So what's happening generally is that we're just seeing, you know, continual paper prices from the mills. And the reason that is, is that the leading pulp suppliers are finding that the paper market is shrinking, there's less interest in paper. And that's generally the trend over probably the last 10 years, slowly but surely. And secondly, what's happening is the development of third world products, toiletries and facilities are becoming a really big growing business for them. And it's worth more, the pulp is worth more in that sector than it is as plain paper for the UK markets. So the price is being driven up. We've We've had this problem, you know, this has been in the back of our mind for ages. You know, we claim to be a really ethical company. We still sell paper. You know, people still need paper. We help customers reduce their paper usage, but ultimately we do still sell paper.

Hmm.

Any paper we sell, we make sure it's FSC or PEFC accredited. But we also felt that there had to be a better solution. And the problem with that is that it's introducing recycled paper. And the UK generally isn't very good at having paper that's not bright white.

Right.

This is one of the biggest problems you have is that, yes, people like the idea of recycled, perhaps it's a premium in cost, but it's not bright white. So if you deal with legal firms in particular, they like this really high bright white paper. So we've been working on a solution for a long time and now we're really lucky. We've got a mill in Germany who will supply us direct with paper. It's recycled. It's a good color. It's, you know, it's not too bad at all in respect of the brightness of it. But when you look at statistics behind it, it uses 72% less electricity, uses 83% less water, and has a 53% reduction in emissions in its production. Surely as a culture and as buyers, we have to think that that's the priority. The fact it's not quite as bright as anything else, these are the— these are the key issues. So we've got to look behind, you know, just this bright white paper really.

This is brilliant. So I mean, yeah, I'm gonna go straight to the chase. Cost. Yeah. Is it—

well, the great thing is, is that it's not being— this particular paper we're going to be selling is 68% post-consumer waste, which means it's not affected by the price of pulp paper, which means it's in line with pulp paper. So There's no premium for it. It's going to sound pretty bad, but it's a win-win scenario for everyone involved. And ultimately, there's no deforestation. And we understand that deforestation is done in a correct fashion nowadays. But 2 weeks ago, Greenpeace cut their ties with APP. APP are Asian Pulp and Paper. Because they've sort of befriended them. They needed Greenpeace on side. And then Greenpeace found out that subsidiaries of them were still doing illegal logging. And it's, you know, that's pretty poor really, because I think the paper market makes up about 37% of deforestation in the world.

Great.

So yeah, we're optimistic this is a good solution, but we still have a long way to go because we've got to change people's mindsets from having bright white paper to something that's not quite so white. And a really good thing to do is, and we've been speaking to our clients about it, we go in and have this open discussion with them. We want their feedback. We want to know why they're bothered about it. And when, you know, when it really comes to it, most of them can sort of get past it, I think. And a really easy question is to say to them, you know, every time you load a ream of paper into your printer, just think about it. Think about the origins, think about the source, and think about the logistics involved to get that to you. You know, it's really mind— it's really sort of thought-provoking. And it's helped us give us some of the answers, you know.

Okay, so being recycled paper, how many times is it able to be recycled? Because to those that don't understand the whole process of paper, one of the last parts of the chain are your egg boxes, which is why they look the way they are. It's not to make them look pretty because they literally are the last part Last way of recycling paper. So this recycled paper, I mean, how many times can it be recycled and reused, etc.?

Well, usually recycled paper has, I think it's 7, it can be 7 times. I'm pretty sure that's the sort of the given average stats, which is good, you know, it's really good. But we do still need to be selling pulp, but we just need to change the dynamic of the pulp versus recycled. It's like anything in life, we need to make sure the price is competitive. But actually the values of the paper are looked upon much more seriously than just, oh, it's just a box of paper, it's got to be cheap, cheap, cheap. You know, it has a massive impact on everything, paper. We've got a duty of care, haven't we, of selling products and selling the right products and getting them from the right sources. So this is definitely an answer.

We're just putting a proposal for a company and they They have something to do with plastic drums. I don't want to go into any more detail than that. But one of the things that I am looking at, or we as a team, which we're looking at the cost of cleaning the drums versus cost of new drums. But we're also going to look at environmental cost as well and bring that into their equation in order for them to be able to educate their customers and say, Yeah. There are 2 different types of costs. There's the environmental cost, but there's also the actual cost.

Right.

And which one do you hold more dear to you? And can one outweigh the other? Because it is cost prohibitive to go down the reusing, but it may not be if you bring in another different type of cost. And what that cost will be in the future and how we determine that will be market-driven, but I do think it's a conversation that is absolutely needed to be had at this moment. So that's brilliant that you're going through that. That's awesome.

Yeah, I think, you know, you have to treat your customers with the intelligence that they deserve, and the problem is that I don't think we're engaging intimately enough with our customers. You know, this is a conversation you have to go in and see them and sit down with and say, these are the facts. Facts are Facts are power, aren't they? Once you've empowered someone with all the raw facts, they can make a much better decision. And yes, I do get that, you know, the priority isn't always environmental, but if we can get that lovely mix of we've considered the environmental impact and we've considered the cost, you're going to come out much better off, I think.

Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much for that. That's really, really insightful, and we will put some notes up on our website. On the back of this, thank you. I mean, have you got anything on your website that we can point people towards on this particular subject?

Well, on the current website we've got a paper converter, a paper calculator. So what it does, it tells you that if you put in— it's a real-time calculator— put information in there, it tells you if you buy X amount of, you know, reams of pulp paper, what that means in the way of changing it to recycled. That will move on to our new website. It's not ready yet, but it will move on there as well. So that's a really good thing. But I'm happy to provide any information to people directly if they want to learn more about it. So it's a big topic. I haven't got all the answers. I definitely realize that. But I think we're trying to take, you know, trying to take the right steps.

Brilliant.

It sounds like you are. So that's great. Thank you so much, Adam. Thank you.

That's all right. Thanks, Will.

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