E062 - Tara Button from Buy Me Once

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Welcome back to the Green Element Podcast. Where we feature business leaders and innovators transforming their operations to be more environmentally and socially sustainable. I'm your host, Will Richardson, and I can't wait to meet our guest today and help you on your journey of sustainability. Hi, Tara. Welcome to the Green Element Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm really excited to learn more about Buy Me Once. You are a company that promotes buying products once.

Yes.

And they have to be long-lasting. I'm looking forward to finding out how this works and how this fits in and what rigor you have to go through in order to find out whether, say, a laptop comes onto your list. You've got a full range of products from kitchen to electronics to— I can't remember. So lots of things.

Pots to pans to teddy bears to t-shirts to teaspoons. It's all there and growing every week. So we hope to become the one-stop for durability and sustainability. That is our aim.

Brilliant.

The idea of Buy Me Once is that people haven't really made this connection yet, but the best thing you can really do for the environment is to buy a product that lasts as long as possible. People in the past, or are still doing now, they have been focusing a lot on recycling, which in a way is the kind of second to last best thing you can do short of throwing something away. You can recycle it, but actually if you make your way up the circular economy to reuse and repair, right at the very top of the circular economy is just having something carry on doing what it's doing for as long as possible. Because when a product can do that, obviously no more energy needs to go into it. No more products need to be made. No more products need to be transported or put into shops or harvested. So it's really the easiest thing we can do for the planet is to buy stuff that are built to last. So for example, if you get a t-shirt, an average t-shirt to last just 9 months longer, you save 20 to 30% on your carbon emissions. And that's just a t-shirt lasting a bit longer. So if you can imagine over all of our products, if we got all of our products to last longer, then what a huge impact that could have. And that's the opposite of how people are buying right now. People are buying the equivalent of a wheelie suitcase of clothes a year. At the moment, kind of 67 items.

Wow.

This is the average person, which is extraordinary. And, you know, within a year, half of fast fashion is in landfill. So we've really gone so far down the path of disposability. I've heard about people who would prefer to buy new clothing rather than to wash them because they're so cheap. And this is the opposite of what we should be doing. And the zero waste movement, the minimalist movement, is all beginning to converge. But what we really need is a longevity movement and to make things last as long as possible. And that is why Buy Me Once exists.

And how do you— what sort of— what do you go through in order to get onto your website, say, I don't know, say you're a piece of clothing, a jumper. What makes that jumper stand out and will last longer than a— I'm not going to mention any fast fashion names, that's not fair, you know, but it probably is fair, but I'm not trying to call people out. You know, what makes the difference?

Absolutely. Well, I think I should go through our 5-question process, which is whenever we're looking for a new product on Buy Me Once, We look at the product category and then we start comparing the brands against each other. And we look at— first we look at the materials and we go, well, if this product is going to be made out of any material, what's the best material for both longevity and sustainability? So if it's made out of steel, is it the best steel? If it's made out of leather, is it made out of the best leather? If it's made out of wood, is it made out of a wood that's particularly suited to the task that that product has to perform? Then we ask questions about the construction. Is it constructed in a way that will make it either longer lasting or more fixable? So if it's a shoe, can it be reheeled? If it's a frying pan, some of the weakest links in a frying pan are the handle gets wobbly. and the nonstick goes. So those are the 2 things that might reduce the longevity of a frying pan. So we would look for a pan that's made out of all one piece of metal, so there's no rivets to come loose, and it might have a nonstick surface that's constantly replenishable. So we have one of those pans. And the 3rd thing is to look at the independent reviews to make sure that any claims that the company is making bear out in the customer experience and in the pendant experience. Then we look at the aftercare. The aftercare is a key component for us. We're looking for companies who are willing to stand behind their products for the foreseeable future. So when it comes to clothing, while we would look for ethical and sustainably manufactured clothes with, you know, that wonderful transparent supply lines and that kind of thing, and that would kind of COVID off the sustainability side for us. The longevity is about the construction of the garment itself. So is it triple stitched or is it woven in a way that will mean it washes better than other garments? And then the next component is a fixing warranty. So a lot of the clothing that we have on Buy Me Once has a fixing warranty or a repair warranty. And often that's exclusive to buy me once. I think about 20% of our clothing has exclusive warranties.

Wow.

We've managed to persuade the company to say, we will fix this for life. And then it's about changing the customer's mindset so that when they've bought that clothing and it comes with that warranty, they will send it back rather than going, oh, well, there's a hole in it. It's broken. We want people thinking about longevity. from the start when they're purchasing. And that is our mission. That sits at the top of everything we do. It's to change consumer behavior from short-term to long-term buying.

My experience is that the Americans are quite good at that, aren't they? They, you know, you could name so many different American brands that have got lifetime warranties. Oakley comes to mind straight away.

I'm not sure they still have a warranty. I think we looked into Oakleys recently. I'm not sure they still have that.

Oh, do they not?

Brands recently, and I seem to remember that Oakleys might have had in the past.

Yeah, they definitely had in the past because my— I think the lenses— no, the thingy broke around it, and I sent them back and said, would you mind if you fixed it? Yeah, of course we will. And then the next time it happens, I said, is there any chance you could change the lenses as well? And you know what they came back and said was, for an extra 40 quid, we will. So basically 40 quid for a pair of sunglasses. And I was blown away, just thinking, that is customer service. You really can't get much better than that.

That is brilliant. So what's great is through Buy Me Once, we can be both a consumer champion— they get a really great product which then gets taken care of over time. It means that they save money over time. But we can be an earth champion at the same time because By getting people to buy things that they then feel are worthy of taking care of and that they know that they want to keep into the future, we're saving carbon emissions, we're saving material resources as well, and obviously waste to landfill.

Brilliant, brilliant. And so how do you end up working on your— I can see why you are crowdfunding now without wanting to put words in your mouth, but I can imagine it's quite an arduous and long task to do all of this research and put everything together to make sure that— am I right in saying that it is?

Well, the research is, yeah, it's interesting. It's a little bit like panning for gold. Whenever we look at a particular product category and we start delving into which brands are active in those product categories and what they're doing and what they're, you know, what they're making their products out of and what their terms and conditions are. Sometimes you get a couple of brands that bubble to the top super quickly. And other times it's a real slog. There are just some product categories that are just rubbish. To name, like electric kettles, still really haven't found an electric kettle brand that I'm happy with. The longest warranty I think we've found is 5 years, which for what's essentially quite a simple product, I would expect better. We're talking about putting people on Mars. Why can't we get something that boils water for a considerable length of time without packing it in. I don't think that that is very good. But what's great is that as well as finding these products, we're then putting pressure on brands to do better and try to create a market in its own right. And you're completely right that, you know, one of the reasons why we chose crowdfunding is because we want to change consumer behavior. We want to be looking to all of these people, talking about what we're trying to do, and these investors, whether they've put in £10 or £10,000, then become brand advocates. They become people who talk about us to their friends, might want to engage in research. Obviously, we're doing research in-house, but we're also doing research with academics in terms of trying to do big surveys and product testing so that we can get really clear data on how long a product should last, as well as how long the average product lasts. So the key that I think in the end is going to really help us is to get on every product page a sense of this product lasts this long, and the average product lasts this long, and therefore over time, you'll save this much money and this much carbon emissions. And I think that will be a massive unlock for us because we know that when consumers have the data, they make better purchasing decisions. You see that in, you know, when they started to put those energy efficiency labeling on appliances. So when they did that, there was this shift towards more efficient appliances. The inefficient appliances just started to fade out and not to be made anymore because people could see the value over time of a more efficient appliance. And so what I want to bring in is longevity labeling, essentially saying this should last you this long and therefore this costs you this much per year. And then you know the true value of a product rather than just the upfront price and just having to guess.

From what I know of now the old Environment Minister Michael Gove, I think he was on very much that same bandwagon as well and wanting the same as what you're wanting, from knowing people who have worked— we're working with them on the new Environment Act.

Yes.

Is that your experience, or?

I know that people in this world are keen for life cycle labeling. I think people haven't figured out yet how they're going to do it, and I think that that's because they kind of think that they're going to need huge labs where they're testing everything to destruction and testing everything that comes through Alibaba or, you know, which would be impossible, you know, to test every product that's kind of coming into the country. However, my idea is that manufacturers should just have to say a number. It doesn't matter what number that is, but they have a choice between looking bad on the shelves because their number isn't as long as other people's lifespans or putting a longer number. But the key is that they have to take care of that product within that lifespan. So if they say that it's going to be 10 years, then they have to have all the replacement parts and they have to take care of that product for that next 10 years. And then hopefully So long as it's clear and standardized and on the shelves, people then can make a value judgment over whether they're willing to pay a little bit more upfront to have a product that lasts longer for sure, or whether they want to continue to buy, you know, cheap things that will potentially break year after year.

I can't imagine why you wouldn't want to go down the cheap thing that you buy once a year. It wouldn't make sense.

Exactly. It wouldn't make sense. Also, it's a hassle when something breaks as well. So, you know, it's not just a waste of money because you end up spending more, but it's the trip to the shops. It's the time when you don't have that product working in your house as well that needs to be taken into consideration and the kind of slight stress that that brings into your life. Products break all the time and they're actually when it comes to appliances breaking at double the rate that they used to. And people get angry about this, but unfortunately they're all getting angry separately at separate times and they're not channeling this anger in one kind of direction, one meaningful direction. So I kind of see it as my job to kind of take on board all that anger from anyone who's ever had a washing machine break, you know, 18 months in, or, you know, a kettle or a toaster or microwave oven break in a ridiculously short amount of time, to take on board that frustration and to try and make the industry better.

Brilliant. And so how did you get into this? What's your background? Is it in product development?

Absolutely not. Completely by accident, to be honest. I was working in advertising, which is potentially the opposite of what I'm doing now. But I was essentially trying to persuade people to buy things again and again. One of my clients was DFS, and I think we were trying to persuade people constantly to, you know, switch it up for spring, turn your room around, chuck out the old sofa, buy a new sofa. So I was kind of in this world which wasn't making me happy at all. And I enjoyed being creative, but I didn't enjoy the message that I was putting out there into the world. And I just kept on being told, well, if you worry about— if you're worried about that, then you're in the wrong industry. And I actually object to that, and I'll tell you why later. But what happened was one of our brands was Le Creuset. And I don't know if you've come across Le Creuset.

No, I haven't.

It's heirloom pieces of cookware that your grandmother passes down to you. And I was given a piece of Le Creuset cookware for my birthday. And it was actually the experience of owning it that made me realize that almost everything I'd bought up until that point was throwaway crap. And why wasn't, you know, everything I was buying more like this? In fact, I went looking for a shop that would find me the Le Creuset of everything because I simply wanted to go shopping there. And back then, so that's 2012, 2013, it didn't exist. And that's when the idea of Buy Me Once came, because I was like, well, this should exist. This should just exist. The idea that this wouldn't exist seemed impossible to me because it felt like such a no-brainer. But it was one of those ideas where you just expect someone else to do it. Not you, because you work in advertising and you don't know how to start a business and you don't know how to build a website. And to be honest, you didn't really know that much about products at that point in time. So I just thought it was going to be one of those ideas where someone else would do it and then I would feel very smug about it and say that I came up with the idea ages ago. But it was actually finding out those stats that I told you about earlier, the idea that when you have a product that lasts a really long time, that you save a huge amount of carbon emissions, that really got the passion for the project kind of boiling in my belly. I started to get that awful kind of, you know, kick in the stomach feeling whenever I read about the environment, because I just couldn't help but feel like I have a potential solution and nobody else is talking about it. Like literally no one is talking about product longevity when it comes to the environment, or certainly not talking about it to consumers. They might be talking about it in academic papers, but no one's telling People buy things for life, apart from maybe a shopping bag. So I started in my spare time to build this site. I spent a long time on the kind of Squarespace helplines as I tried to figure out how to build a website. I think they got slightly bored of me, but slowly but surely kind of pieced together a semblance of a site. I think I had about 100 products, so I had 8 categories, toys and clothing and kitchenware, but I had about 5 things in each when the site went crazy viral back in 2016. And it was that moment that made me realize that the world was quite keen on this idea and that actually it could be viable, this project. And so I quit my job the next morning and started working on it full-time.

Brilliant. Here you are today in 2019. Having successfully crowdfunded.

Indeed. So both crowdfunded and also got the Green Angels to invest in us as well. So they're a group, a syndicate group who were the first syndicate actually to focus exclusively on green tech funding. So we're very, very happy to have them on board because not only are they bringing capital, they're also putting someone on the board and they just have a wonderful network as well. So that's wonderful. And also What's absolutely the most important thing for me is that they're completely aligned with the vision that we have. And that was part of the reason why we did go for crowdfunding as well, because the only people who would put in money are the people who believe in what we're trying to do. Whereas I kind of feel with venture capitalists, there's often a lot more of the thinking is just around the return, not around the mission of this. So I'm really proud that You know, all kind of 480 investors or however many there are, it's around that, are really engaged with what we're trying to do. So that's brilliant.

Brilliant. How do you engage your suppliers? I mean, how do you promote what it is that you're doing? And what are the kind of core messages that you are talking about?

We do our research, we find the brands that we believe are the best in each product category. And even if we don't think a brand is perfect, We will try and find the best option so that people can at least know that, you know, someone's done the research so they don't have to. So they can feel like it has been looked into and they can buy something with a reasonably clear conscience. Because I think there's a lot of guilt around eco-buying in general. We are of the opinion that humans do need things. to live, and there's no point denying that. However, only buy the things that you need. And if you are going to buy something, buy something that is sustainable and long-lasting as possible. And we're doing the research so that you don't have to. So once we've found the brands that we want to engage, reach out to them, either we'll call them or we'll email them. We'll explain who we are and what our mission is, first of all. And then we'll try our best to create a relationship with them. In the past, this was an affiliate relationship where we simply linked through to their website. And now we have more of a dropship or wholesale relationship with our brands. So the customer buys on our site, but the brand itself sends the product directly to the customer. And this is great for 2 reasons. It means that we don't have to have a whole warehouse full of Very expensive Le Creuset pots and Miele washing machines. It could be very expensive very quickly, but it also means that you're cutting out another journey in the product footprint. So from an eco point of view, it works out well from that point of view.

When it comes to running an ethical and sustainable business, what would you say your biggest struggle so far has been, and can you tell us how you've overcome it?

I think our biggest struggle, if I'm honest, is pricing. It is really unfortunate that a lot of the time high-quality, ethical, eco-friendly products are more expensive than your average product. That's just a given. It's not always the case, but it is in the majority of cases. And I think that makes me sad for a few reasons. It means that it's not as accessible a lifestyle as I would like to make it. I want to make this type of buying mainstream. I think it has to become mainstream for the planet to benefit. And so getting across that message that buying an eco-friendly, sustainable sustainable and long-lasting products are worth it to the consumer is probably our biggest challenge. And I think that the way we're going to be able to overcome that, and I don't think we've overcome it properly yet, I think it's beginning to hit home for a few people, but not enough, is that piece around if you buy this product, it's going to last you this long. That means that over, you know, over 10 years, it's this, it's £10 a year rather than £15 a year if you buy the shoddy product, if that makes sense. So I think having that hit home, but also just compelling more mainstream brands to think about designing for longevity and putting in proper aftercare. And that is what we're going to be aiming for as well, because we don't want it to be an exclusive club where only a few rich people can afford to buy long-lasting products. We want it to be a mainstream thing. And actually, we're going to be offering kind of credit solutions so people can spread out payments over time, because often people might not have an extra £200 a month. to spend on quite a big product, but they might be able to spend that £300 over 6 months. And that means they then have a product that will last them a lifetime, rather than a cheaper product that would fail at an earlier stage. So— It's unfortunate, but I think that actually a lot of people get trapped into a cycle of poverty because they can only afford the cheaper item upfront. and then it fails on them. And this is especially true when it comes to white goods. So you actually get this kind of— get people on lower incomes trapped into a cycle of poverty because they can't afford the Bosch's and the Miele's of this world that do have, you know, up to 10 years of warranties. And so they are buying a new washing machine every 2 years, which then means that they're depleted every time. So It's a really important challenge for us and one that we're trying to overcome, but I don't think we're quite there yet.

And will you be speaking to politicians and will you be lobbying what it is that you're doing as well in the future, or are you now?

Absolutely. I mean, we've already started petitions, but I don't think that we're quite there yet with our proper proposition. I think that What we need now is the real scientific data. And that's why we're putting together groups of data analysts and academics that can come together with us to really get the data to sit behind this proposition that long-lasting products will help with the environment. There's some data there, but I think we need more. And I think, you know, policy is all about data. So, for so many politicians, if you can show them the numbers, then they'll be moved. And so that's our next piece on that, is to get the data together, and then we can go to the politicians with some robust numbers to show them the benefits.

Brilliant. If you want our listeners to do something more, then what would you like them to do on the back of listening to you talking about what it is that you're doing at Buy Me Once?

Well, if you know of any brands that you think we should know about, then please contact us. If you are a brand and you think that you might meet our criteria, then please contact us as well. Apart from that, I would just say, you know, please buy mindfully. Think about what you need. And I wrote a whole book about this, so I kind of can talk ad nauseam about it. But there are so many messages out there. And unfortunately, I was one of those people creating those messages for quite a long time, trying to persuade people to buy things that they didn't need and manipulate them into ways of thinking to make them feel that their value as humans is somehow linked to the objects that they own. And I think that this is not only damaging to the planet and to our bank balances, but actually incredibly damaging to our psyches and for our mental health as well. So That is why I ended up writing a book as well as creating the business. So this is the kind of the philosophy of Buy Me Once. It's called A Life Less Throwaway, and it's about how we got to where we are in terms of our consumer behavior and how we as individuals can get out of the habits that have been formed by all the messages that we have around us. And how that creates the kind of clearer, decluttered homes and kind of wardrobes that we like looking at rather than feeling we have nothing to wear and being able to prioritize and buy with purpose, I think, and to overcome impulse buying, which 50% of our purchases are impulse purchases. So to be able to cut that out, you can imagine you save quite a lot.

Absolutely. And where— how can we find out more about you and about your organization and where to buy the book as well.

Absolutely. Well, the book is called A Life Less Throwaway. You can find that on any bookshop site— Waterstones, Amazon, all the usual ones. And if you want to get in touch with Buy Me Once, then we are in the UK, we're uk.buymeonce.com, or just come to buymeonce.com and you'll be redirected anyway. And you can find us on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook. All the usual social media outlets. And if you have any stories about products that last a long time, then we'd love to hear them.

Brilliant, brilliant. Thank you so much for today, Tara. Thank you so much for listening to the end of this episode of the Green Element Podcast. Do take a moment and share this with your friends and colleagues and rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I'd love to know what has been your What's your biggest takeaway from this conversation? What are you going to do differently? Please share your thoughts across social media and tag us so we can see them too, @GE_podcast. For links and show notes for this episode, visit our website, greenelement.co.uk/podcast. Thank you again. I hope you will join me on the next episode, and together we can help create a better world.