The Saga of Socially Responsible Sourcing – Chapter Two. The Blenders.

Turns out that when a person wants to make a whey protein product for human consumption, there are only  handful of companies in the US that can help.  Unless you want to purchase expensive precise blending and packaging equipment, it’s difficult to make these products yourself.  Also, a typical nutritional supplement product contains many different ingredients, all of which can be difficult to source, have minimum order quantities, etc.

As a result, we all work with companies who  source ingredients, blend, and package products.  These companies are wonderfully helpful, but there’s a problem.  They consider the source of their ingredients (and by extension, my ingredients) to be proprietary information.   Their suppliers, ingredient companies, consider their sources to be proprietary, the importers who supply them consider their sources to be proprietary.  The result of all of this is that it is completely impossible for a company like mine, which works with suppliers who all know their farmers personally, to know the other farmers who grow or gather the wonderful fruits and stevia we use unless we source everything literally ourselves, import it ourselves, and force the blenders to blend our own proprietary ingredients.

The Saga of Socially Responsible Sourcing – Chapter One. The Problem.

I work with small specialty and artisan cheese plants that are nestled in the rolling hills of southwestern Wisconsin.  They get their milk from small family farms.  One of my plants even takes milk in metal cans that the Amish deliver on horse-drawn wagons. 

So when it came time for me to develop our whey products, I really wanted to make sure that we knew where all of our ingredients came from.  One way people suggest that I do this is to source everything locally.  Nice idea, but I live in Wisconsin; it’s hard to get things like chocolate and vanilla locally.  These are the two most popular flavors for whey products, by far. Also, as someone who lives with indigenous people in the Amazon for fun, I know what a huge positive impact we can have when we responsibly source products from indigenous and other at risk communities around the world.  To me, the whole local food thing is really just another form of American myopia; I don’t believe that an apple grown within 10 miles of home that was drenched in pesticides and herbicides is better than an organic apple from Mexico because it didn’t travel as far.  It may actually use more petroleum based products than an organic apple from Mexico because apples are shipped in truckload quantities.  For me, knowing that I can make a huge positive impact in this world when I purchase things from people who are environmental and social stewards is far more important than distance.

After some effort, I still don’t know where all of my ingredients come from.  I am, however, a very persistent person, so I am determined to find a way to source with total transparency.  It may take me years to achieve this, so this is likely to be the first of a long series of stories  that will take me from the typical intentionally obfuscated way that food and supplement products get assembled in this world to an alternative that offers global transparency. 

Wow.  After so many months of legwork, groundwork, and every other kind of work you can imagine, things are now moving at a furious pace.  The first bag of powder out of our dryer landed on my desk Friday afternoon.  We're adding another half time staff person this week, which will put us at 7 1.2 fte employees.  By the end of the month we will be up to 11; by the end of April we'll be up to 14. We have our first signed contract for a significant volume of bulk organic whey and our first letter of intent to purchase goat whey.  So, things are moving full steam ahead.  Like most startups, we're in a race to get cash flow moving and we're doing it in the worst economy in living memory. What could possibly be stressful about this???

Canoecopia was a great success! We have the first 100 qualified customers in our sales database and a ton of feedback from real customers.  Interesting thing number one: at least 75% of the people we talked to who were seriously interested were women.  Another group was men who currently take whey protein with creatine and other additives in it who thought their wives would like this product better.  Most saw it as something convenient for camping and canoe trips and as a permanent change for their diet.  We now have customers from throughout Wisconsin, Chicago, and even NYC.  A number were planning to share our story and products with members of their family.  Lots of people had questions about the health benefits of whey. While only some of the potential customers envisioned using the whey powder on trips, there is clearly overlap between our target market and the paddlesport crowd.  And it really is amazing.  We talked about developing products and targeting them toward women, without customizing them to the point where they wouldn't work for men.  The result is just as we anticipated. That is certainly gratifying.  That and being able to work with people on something as important as their health and the health of the planet.  

teraswhey's maiden voyage

We're loading in for our first tradeshow and the first public display of our brand.  Wow.  It’s a great place to do it.  Right in Madison.  Canoecopia, the biggest paddlesport show in the country.  It’s open to the public so we’ll get the chance to trial our products with 22,000 people in our target market.  Our booth is my kayak, which now has teraswhey bumper stickers on it.  We actually have a backdrop sign with a huge teraswhey on it and mocked up packaging.  Our own products wont be available for about another month but we have R & D trial samples for some of our flavors.  

All a grand experiment.  It feels like its time for this brand to finally come out of the closet, albeit a bit before its time.  We’ll get  a lot of great tasting and pricing feedback, start developing a mailing list, and learn more about opportunities to work with outfitters, outdoor events, publications to get the word out about our brand. 

Of course, this means we need to have web ordering capability up and running asap.  This startup thing is unreal.  No matter what we manage to accomplish, there always seems to be something else that needs to happen next.

There is another way (whey..??)

Next week four new people will be joining our company. We advertised for entry level production people, team leads, and a Maintenance Manager.  We’re a small start up company, which means that we may not be paying the highest salaries or able to promise the most job security (although these days, it may be that a start up is actually less risky than working at an old company that’s been doing the same thing in the same way for years…).  We are providing a good benefits packaging including health insurance, 401k match, and a pristine and healthy work environment.  We are now pushing 400 applications for 20 jobs.

As we interviewed for our first crew, it occurred to me that the leaders of our country ought to be feeling a moral obligation to create businesses that can provide employment to people like these.  These were all hard working people.  Many said that it was driving them crazy to not be working, that all they wanted was a job of any kind, that their businesses had failed and now they needed any kind of job to survive, that their kids were sick and they couldn’t take them to the doctor because they had no health insurance.

I wonder about the stimulus package; it helps keep teachers and local government employees employed, which is a good thing, but doesn’t appear to do much to make it easier for businesses like mine to hire people.  Similarly, I still hear local policymakers talk about providing tax incentives for investors in early stage high tech companies, companies that the hundreds of people who applied for my jobs will never hire because they don’t remotely have the right skills.  Apparently these supposedly progressive policy makers buy into the same trickle down theory of economic policy that got us into this mess in the first place.  What are we thinking?  We may be experiencing the worst economic downturn of the past 50 years, but we are still the richest country in the world.  We can do better than this!

I founded my business in part to demonstrate that sustainability and stewardship, in terms of the environment, culture, ethics, can be woven into the very fabric of a business without compromising results. Little did I know how timely that message would be.  In a time where people fear for their future, my company is a great example of the kind of business we need to create to ensure prosperity in our future and our childrens’ futures.  It creates high tech manufacturing jobs, is rooted in the local economy and can’t be off-shored, all while being an environmental steward that is committed to improving the lives of the people who buy its products.  

 Maybe its time that we started talking about what we’re going to create instead of mourning what we’ve lost.  What would happen if we all used this time to take a stand for the earth and said we didn’t really need all of that stuff we were buying anyhow?  What if we all bought compact florescent light bulbs, drove less, planted gardens, got exercise, ate healthy foods, started sustainable businesses?  There is another way and we get to stop waiting for someone else to give it to us and start doing the hard work of creating it ourselves.

Blue is the New Green

Last month I decided right before the end of the year that it was time for me to buy a Ford Escape Hybrid.  We had 40 plus inches of snow in December, I am driving back and forth in the country a lot these days to get to my whey plant, and doing this with two wheel drive was just not working.  I wanted to buy a domestic hybrid so I can be the change I want to see in the world.  The trouble was, midwest dealers didn't get many of the hybrids and I had three days left in December to get a car if I wanted to get the tax credit in 2008.  I ended up buying one in Raleigh, NC and driving it back to Wisconsin with my daughter Lex.  I had no choice what color or what features would be in the car.  It was blue.  At the time I was disappointed because I  thought I wanted a green car (green company - green car, right?) or white (whey is white - white car, right?).  

Fast forward a month and I'm in the final throes of developing our brand and product logo.  We were working with a comp that had a blueberry on it and the logo was blue.  Not just any blue but the same silvery grey blue of my car.  I thought we were going to switch out the colors with the flavors, then learned that it was in fact going to remain the same blue as my car. So I've got a blue car, a blue brand and a blue logo, and I realized last night that its only a matter of time before blue becomes the next green.  Millions of people on the planet already no longer have access to clean water.  The situation is deteriorating on every continent on the planet.  

When the world realizes that we're running out of clean water, we're going to be talking about businesses going 'blue' instead of just 'green'. My business is already a blue business, in the sense that we are implementing a tremendous amount of water recovery and reuse in our process.  So blue, it's already the new green, at least in my life and business.

Slumdog Millionaire Birthday

Yesterday was my birthday.  I spent the day with my daughter working on Sacha Yaku, the non profit she and I started together, then we went to see Slumdog Millionaire.  I'm at a point in my life where actually having any of my kids home is a treat, so having Kendra here on my birthday was amazing.  Kendra is in between trips to the Amazon and Cuba, always working to make the world a better place for those most vulnerable.  Kendra starting including Gandhi's quote, "We must be the change we want to see in this world" at the bottom of all of her emails when she was 16.  Since then she has gone on to create more positive change in the world than many people do in a lifetime.  

Four years ago, Kendra took her personal journey to the next level by spending a semester in the Himalaya's.  She worked in an orphanage for severely malnourished children in Darjeeling, did a two week silent retreat in a monestary outside of Katmandu, trekked in the mountains with sherpas and visited Llasa in Tibet.  So seeing Slumdog Millionaire with her meant we could go to dinner afterward - Indian food of course - and reflect on the depth and the art of that movie with the benefit of her direct experience.  Nestled safely within the lame pretense of a game show and with all of the colors of india, the film powerfully addressed religious, caste, class, economic, and social dynamics that are India.  It also dove into the wellspring of fate that is so much a part of the belief system of many people in that part of the world and bundled up love with it.  

I used to be a complete pragmatist who believed that we achieve great things in the world by working hard and making sound decisions.  Now I believe that how we show up in the world for others may be even more important than all of the pragmatism in the world. When Kendra was a freshman at MIT she started work on the improbable and seemingly impossible task of making a World-bank funded, then orphaned, water project work in an indigenous community in the Amazon.  Over the years her hard work with the people has certainly been a component of her success in getting the system working and extending it to other communities.  What has clearly been more important is her unswerving faith that the community would get clean water and her clear intention to keep supporting the community until that happened.  I now believe that, like in Slumdog Millionaire, seemingly miraculous things happen when we're clear about what we want and show up as a source of positive energy and compassion for the people around us.