Impact Report is Overdue

When cash is flowing, it’s easy to spend on surcharges for preferred materials and invest in certifications to be able to advertise things that are most likely true regardless. It’s easy to spend the time putting together an elaborate impact report, reporting right down to internal operational impact, knowing that it only accounts for about 3% of overall impact, just because it feels like the fair thing to do. When cash is tight, time is tighter, and everyone wears a million hats, no matter your good intentions, the bottom line comes first.

Don’t get me wrong. The bottom line doesn’t come before everything. We’ve had hard discussions answering questions like “If we had to choose between doing the right thing and not existing anymore, what would we choose?” I’m proud of the side we’ve landed on and proud to be a Certified B Corp and Public Benefit Corporation, which allows us to have these conversations at all. Regardless, we have a fiscal responsibility to our shareholders to protect the business, which sometimes comes at the cost of the “nice-to-haves” like pretty reports.

The last couple years have shown us the importance of aligning mission with profit. When the two are at odds, as often they are in conventional business models, you must compromise. If the two can align, you’re able to pursue both at full speed, without compromise.
I can’t quantify the most significant impact work from 2025 and 2026. We didn’t drastically reduce emissions per product (though we did produce less and refine our buying for greater efficiency). Our operational impact fluctuated as we moved offices. We didn’t attain new certifications (though we defined the paths for future certifications).

However, we laid the foundation to transform our business into one that aligns mission with profit. We set a 10 year target to “Be a brand that helped redefine ownership from disposable to durable by aligning business model with product stewardship from design to production to post-purchase systems.” This target opens up questions like:

How might we create a business model that incentivizes product stewardship?How might we turn long-lasting products into a profit center rather than a business risk?How might we decouple profit from production?How might we move from balancing people, planet, and profit to aligning them, making it impossible to maximize for one without the others?

Transparently, we don’t have answers to these questions yet, but we’re taking steps to find them. Last year, we began hosting in-house repair events that bring people together over product stewardship. This year, we closed a crowdfunding round and built a financial model that will bridge our cash flow to profitability, allowing us to grow according to our own ethos, without the pressure of new VC backing. We’re working to refine our accounting processes related to circular business models, allowing us to model and track growth of these revenue streams.

This isn’t the work that’s easy to put in a pretty chart on a report showing we’re doing less bad stuff than before. However, it is the work that makes space for a paradigm change. It’s the work that will allow our business to be a force for good, rather than our eventual profit being a mere subsidy for good. It’s the work that allows us to create new systems and reject broken ones.

Thank you for reading and for going on this journey with us.