Not Playing it Safe: Business as Activist

By Rona Fried

In a business world where all eyes are on profits, values take a back seat. Small companies are too concerned with survival to pay more than lip service to social and environmental bottom lines; large companies are afraid they will face criticism if they take too much of a stand on issues.

But successful companies are built on brands and brands are built on emotional connections. Companies that aren’t afraid to make strong values the very basis for their business – and then back them up with action – separate themselves from the crowd. Values, in fact, can be the path to survival and prosperity for a company.

The three small companies profiled in this article use business as their tool to bring about societal change. Each of them is breaking the mold in their industry – and in doing so, is raising the bar for the industry as a whole.

“Conscientious stewardship is the foundation of our day-to-day operations and our long-term vision and goals. We are personally ‘charged’ with the responsibility to look at every impact we create and generate solutions that promote a sustainable and wholesome way of doing business,” says Mitchell May, CEO and founder of The Synergy Company”, a superfood supplement manufacturer.

“There are so many opportunities to compromise to make a little more money,” divulges Jayne Dillon, Synergy’s Director of Marketing. “Because we are so steadfast on quality and insist on purity, there is no room for compromise. There is no other way to do it for us, it’s who we are.”

Dov Charney, the outspoken co-founder and CEO of American Apparel, a T-shirt manufacturer and distributor, puts his personal spin on values: “Our goal is to seek profits through innovation not exploitation. We are advancing a hyper capitalist-socialist business fusion. By relentlessly pursuing efficiencies in management and production, we aim to demonstrate the use of exploitive labor tactics is not only unnecessary but counterproductive.”

“This is history in horticulture,” states Gerald Prolman, Organic Bouquet founder and CEO, the first company to market organic flowers. “This is all about the earth and the farm workers. We believe it is our responsibility to demonstrate that business, social, and environmental interests can be successfully aligned.”

Organic Bouquet
Organic Bouquet was formed in January 2001 with the goal of establishing a national market for organic flowers – from scratch. Although organic foods are now being embraced enthusiastically by the marketplace, there was no awareness that the same sustainable approach could be – or should be – used to grow flowers.

Like any other conventionally grown crop, flowers are grown with a host of toxic pesticides and fungicides. Organic Bouquet’s goal is to protect the environment and improve farm worker safety by eliminating millions of pounds of toxic pesticides from agricultural use.

“Talk about challenges,” says Gerald Prolman, “I don’t think anyone could have imagined up something harder to do. Nonetheless, the job needed to get done and I just happened to have the very specific experience to do it. Without trying to sound holy, it felt like a calling.”

In just a few years, and almost single-handedly, his passion and vision has created an entirely new category in the American fresh-cut flower trade: organic floral. To do so, Prolman needed to address the twin challenges of raising the consciousness of growers about the benefits of farming organically and the public for the need of organic flowers.

To persuade conventional growers to grow organically, Prolman made several hundred presentations beginning in California and extending to over 5 countries. Eventually, he developed a small core group of 30 willing growers, primarily in California and Oregon. For example, Sun Valley Floral in Humboldt County, California, is the largest bulb flower grower in the U.S. and now grows organic tulips for Organic Bouquet.

The company works with growers outside the U.S. to assure year-round supplies of flowers, while helping them convert to organic agriculture. Roses are an economic engine for Ecuador creating $50,000 jobs and $240 million annually for this once-impoverished region. But doctors there report that many of the industry’s workers experience health problems because of exposure to toxic chemicals used in conventional flower growing. [1]

Now Organic Bouquet buys organic flowers from growers in Ecuador, Colombia, Holland and Africa.

The next challenge was to get the retail trade to purchase the flowers. Whole Foods Markets, Wild Oats Markets and Trader Joe’s were among the first to carry the products. In 2003, Organic Bouquet branched out to sell socially and environmentally responsible gifts through its website. They sell organic rose and sunflower bouquets, biodynamically-grown lavender and tulips, organic fruit boxes and gourmet gift baskets, and handcrafted vases from around the world.

The biggest challenge, Prolman says, has been securing sufficient capital to adequately fund the company’s start up phase. “Although the past three and a half years have been extremely arduous, with the support of a few very devoted angel investors and an unwavering
commitment to achieve the goals of the company, we established a new market for organic flowers. I am quite proud of this accomplishment and it makes all the work worthwhile.”

And now that the company has made significant headway in the market, the financial community is showing interest and the future looks rosy.

“Our flowers have a deeper layer of beauty that comes from the comfort in knowing that the people who grow our products and the land they grow it on are treated with respect,” he says.

American Apparel
Treating people with respect is the backbone of American Apparel (AA), a company also in an industry known for poor labor practices. In fact, CEO Dov Charney believes that placing values upfront and central is central to the company’s success.

This blank T-shirt manufacturer and distributor employs 1200 people in a 365,000 square foot factory in downtown Los Angeles and has been aggressively marketing its products as sweatshop-free since it was founded in 1977.

In the garment industry where low wages and abysmal conditions are the norm, AA pays employees $12-18 an hour and provides benefits that include healthcare, English lessons, massages and the free use of telephones.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, over 50% of Los Angeles sewing operations violate minimum wage and overtime laws, and 75% ignore health and safety laws. A typical factory has poor lighting and ventilation, and crowded conditions.

American Apparel, on the other hand, pays a living wage and benefits from low turnover, employee loyalty and high productivity. AA reached $40 million in sales in 2002, $80 million in 2003, and projects hitting $140 million this year.

Most clothing companies cut costs by outsourcing garment assembly to the lowest bidder thereby giving up control of product quality and how workers are treated. American Apparel does the opposite – they do it all in-house. Also, AA pays employees based on the output as a team rather than the traditional garment production method where workers do only one simple task, such as attaching collars to shirts.

“I make more money than my competition who pays 50 cents an hour because of the efficiencies of dealing with someone face to face and paying them a fair wage,” Charney says. I
think it’s really lowbrow to take advantage of labor cost inequalities to sustain your business. I know how to use communications, technology, and distribution systems to deliver t-shirts to the public without damaging the lives of my workers.”

AA launched their first environmental product line last year, a T-shirt line dubbed the “Sustainable Edition” which is made from 100% grown-in-the-USA certified organic cotton. In addition to the environmental and health benefits of growing cotton without pesticides, farmers get a premium price. “We don’t have to be part of a system that dumps 80 million pounds of pesticides cotton fields each year, contaminating ground water, poisoning bird and insect populations, drifting into neighboring communities and leading to illness and deaths among farm workers,” exhorts Charney.

Sustainably-grown cotton will be incorporated throughout their product lines, starting with a minimum of 20% this year to over 80% in the next four years. Other environmental priorities include recycling about a million pounds of fabric scraps a year, purchasing recycled products such as paper, and resource and energy conservation.

“My vision is to build new economic models and new kinds of businesses that redesign the entire production, supply and distribution process in a way that makes more people happier,” reflects Charney.

“Commerce is the key driver toward societal change,” he says. “If everyone that produces the goods the world consumes starts concerning themselves with sustainable, low-impact practices, the world will change.”

The Synergy Company
Like American Apparel, The Synergy Company considers its high standards inextricably tied to its success. It too departed from the standard industry practice of outsourcing and built its own facility to be able to control the entire manufacturing process in-house.

Synergy makes “superfoods,” which are a blend of certified organic ingredients, whole-food vitamins and minerals designed to greatly enhance an individual’s health. To truly make a difference in one’s health and well-being, and equally important ~ the health of the planet, the company insists on using only natural and certified organic ingredients that come exclusively from whole foods.

Whole food constituents change based on growing conditions, weather and other variables, making it challenging and costly to ensure consistent potency and quality. It would be much easier and less expensive to use synthetic ingredients. Instead, Synergy perfected many 100% natural growing, concentrating, processing and packaging technologies to overcome these challenges.

The company goes to such great lengths because of the healing experience of its founder, Mitchell May. After a near-fatal car accident in 1972, he awoke to 40 broken bones, incurable infections and a hopeless prognosis. A team of 70 medical doctors insisted on amputating his legs. He faced a life in a wheel chair plagued by on-going infections and other complications. Mitchell refused amputation and, against all odds, became one of the first medically documented cases of non-conventional healing. He regained full use of his legs and entire body by successfully regenerating destroyed nerves, bones, muscles and organ tissue, in a manner that the medical community said would be impossible.

While he was healing himself he realized the need for very high-quality nutritional support. No supplements on the market provided what he needed, so he formulated them himself. 25 years later, the research continues, but the fruits of his extraordinary efforts are contained in the exceptional nutritional products Synergy offers.

That’s why The Synergy Company passionately believes in the power of individual choice. And that extends to business as a whole. On the website it says, “Our belief is that businesses are responsible for developing solutions, not exacerbating problems. The need for a deeply conscientious stewardship of our ecosystem must become the foundation upon which today’s businesses are built.”

“This is trailblazing work,” says Jayne Dillon, Marketing Director. “Our farmers check the algae daily to make sure they harvest it at the point of greatest nutritional value, when the color reaches a certain point. They use linseed-oiled wooden rowboats instead of motorboats to avoid creating pollution. We test every ingredient multiple times to ensure its purity and potency and no synthetic compounds or GMO materials are ever allowed. There is no cafeteria style harvesting or manufacturing process for the way we do business.”

The company thinks through every single decision to this degree. They vacuum package their products in amber glass, the only proven way to protect the contents. And glass is more easily recycled than plastic bottles. Even the cotton inside the bottle is organic! From the seed to the farms, from harvesting to processing and to the final packaging, they treat each of their 120-plus ingredients uniquely. “This level of attention to detail creates the highest energetic product on the market,” says Dillon.

Before Synergy could afford to build their own production facility, they outsourced manufacturing as most of the supplement industry does. But commonly accepted practices didn’t make the grade. Among the many standards they implemented in their own building are temperature-controlled environments, purified air, water and oxygen-free induction sealed bottles, paper trails for all ingredients, energy and water conservation, biodegradable cleaning products, and the use of 100% wind power to run the building.

They truly leave no stone unturned, using recycled products of all kinds, recycling everything – even expired ingredients go to compost piles for the garden – and choosing packaging that customers can easily recycle. And, of course, the company and all its farmers are certified organic.

May says, “I believe we’ve set a tone in the industry for a level of product quality and a level of thoughtfulness that our products do no harm to the planet, or to the many people involved in making them. This creates the highest quality products and also reflects how we want to be in the world. Because of this, people trust our integrity. They know when they open a bottle it is the purist thing they can put in their bodies and their children’s’ bodies.”

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www.organicbouquet.com
www.americanapparel.net
www.thesynergycompany.com

1. Behind Roses’ Beauty, Poor and Ill Workers, NY Times: [sorry this link is no longer available]

This article first appeared in the GreenMoney Journal