← Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Success Story with Scott D. Clary
Lessons - What Global Supply Chains Don't Want You to Know | Paul Rice - Fair Trade USA CEO
00:14:11
Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:00]
A
HubSpot is a success Story Partner now if you're an entrepreneur, listen up because HubSpot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers. If you are building a business, you need to get HubSpot. Why? Here's the perfect example. Morehouse College needed to reach new students with fresh, engaging content, a problem that every single business in the world has. But with a 900 page website, even the tiniest update took 30 minutes to publish. Now Breeze, which is HubSpot's collection of AI tools, helped them write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time. And the results? 30% more page views and visitors now spend 27% more time on their site. If you are ready for impossible growth like this, Visit HubSpot.com Indeed as a success story Partner. Now say you just realized your business needed to hire someone fast. How can you find amazing candidates fast? It's easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed Sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. And with Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster and it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Plus with Indeed sponsored Jobs, there's no monthly subscription, no long term contracts. You only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@indoubtedly.com Clary just go to indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed. On this podcast. Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need in this Lessons episode. Discover the dark reality behind most chocolate production and why child labor remains widespread in West Africa. Learn how fair trade practices can build schools and lift entire communities. Learn why everyday consumer choices have a global impact. And learn how ethical sourcing isn't charity, but simply doing business right outside of the pitch for the company. What would be one of the most jarring facts? That if somebody knew about non fair trade products, they would never buy them ever again? Because I think that's part of it as well. The company. Yes, they're focused on the bottom line, but who represents the bottom line? The consumer. And if the consumer knew X about non fair trade product, they would never get it. What would that thing be?
- [02:55]
B
Well, you know There, there's been a lot of research and, and media coverage of child labor.
- [03:05]
A
Yeah.
- [03:06]
B
In the cocoa industry in West Africa. So about 60% of the global production of cocoa, which is the key ingredient for chocolate, comes from Ivory coast and Ghana. 60% of the world, of the world's production comes from those two countries. And sadly, child labor is rampant. And it's not because, you know, it's not because parents are evil, it's because they're poor. Right. The poverty levels are so great there that people feel compelled in some cases to bring their kids to the fields. In other cases there aren't local schools. And so if you're headed to the fields, what are you going to do with your 6 year old? There's no local school. You're going to leave your 6 year old at home alone all day? No. You bring them to the field and then they end up helping out. So child labor is a real problem and it's rooted in poverty, it's rooted in lack of schools. And so, you know, one of the areas where we've focused a lot of time and attention and other certification labels have as well is in how do we lift those farmers in West Africa out of poverty and how do we help them get access to education for their kids so that we can overcome the child labor issue. And so, you know, one of the things we started working with Hershey a number of years ago and they source from that region of Africa, Hershey has a small fair trade program. They're not 100% fair trade. They do other things as well. They work with other certifiers and they're trying to do the right thing. But with the Hershey fair trade program, the first thing that the farmers did with the extra income they got was they started building their own schools. In the first.
- [04:58]
A
In these countries.
- [04:59]
B
Yeah. In Ivory coast, in the first year, the communities where Hershey was sourcing built 13 schools. Now I'm talking about simple, small, two room schoolhouses, but still better than what they had before.
- [05:13]
A
Which is nothing, I'm assuming.
- [05:15]
B
Which is nothing. Yes, exactly, exactly. And so then, and the community negotiated with the government and basically said, we'll build the school, you provide the teachers. And the government said, okay, we can do that.
- [05:25]
A
Wow.
- [05:25]
B
And so we ended up putting hundreds and hundreds of kids into schools just in the first couple of years. And so, you know, it was a real impact in terms of eliminating the incidence of child labor in those communities. I'm so proud of that and I'm so proud of the consumer because at the end of the day, the consumer, by buying those products, was making that possible. I don't know. Have you seen. Have you seen a chocolate product called Bark Fins?
- [05:54]
A
I think so.
- [05:57]
B
Yeah. Bark Fins is one of Hershey's brands. That was. That. That's the. The brand that we worked with. And, you know, everyone I knew, I mean, that brand was on fire. Everyone I knew was buying Bark Fins. This was like, you know, 10 years ago. And it really made a difference. It made a difference. It kept kids. It kept kids in school.
- [06:15]
A
It's so crazy to me. I've had this conversation I had Scott Harrison from the show, and obviously, very different business, but same idea. Like, the amount of money required to make such an insanely an insane difference in someone's life overseas is so small. Like, it's such a small amount of money. You incorporate this program, all of a sudden, getting rid of child labor. Now you have access to education. Like. Like overnight, like, the whole community is. Is lifted up. And it's not actually like you're like. To your point, it's not. It's not even charity. It's just doing business ethically.
- [06:59]
B
That's. That's the. That's.
- [07:00]
A
That's what's.
- [07:01]
B
It's.
- [07:02]
A
It's not funny. It's actually quite sad that if you just did business the way business was supposed to be done, they'd have all these opportunities, too. So you're not even fundraising. You're not asking anybody for money just to do business the way that you do business here.
- [07:14]
B
Exactly. Yeah. That's exactly right.
- [07:17]
A
Yeah.
- [07:17]
B
And if you think about it, if you think about it from the perspective of a consumer, you know, there's so much going on in the world right now that has people worried. You know, when we think about the problems that we face as a. As a human species right now in terms of climate change and global poverty and deforestation and the immigration issue and all these issues, I think a lot of us feel like we're powerless. These problems are too big and we're too small. And what are we going to do? How can we help? And, you know, a lot of people are really unhappy with politics. You know, whatever side they're on, they're unhappy with politics. And so for me, the story of Bark Thins and the schools that it helped build in West Africa to keep kids out of the fields, that's like the most powerful story of your power in mind as a. And mine as a consumer to make every purchase matter. Right. Every time we go to the store, we have A chance. Think of it this way. We have a chance to vote with our dollars for a better world, right? By choosing sustainable products, by choosing Fair trade products, by choosing Rainforest alliance certified products. There's so many products out there that have some kind of environmental impact or social impact on the people. And so we really do have a chance to, to make a difference in the world in small ways, right? But every time we go to the store and listen, companies, they're listening. That's one of the beauties of capitalism. Companies listen to their customers and they respond quickly. And so we go to the store and we buy a certain kind of product because it makes us feel good, because we're having an impact on the world. Companies start doing more of that. And we've seen it, we've seen it over the last now 26 years since I've been, you know, leading Fair Trade USA, we've seen companies that previously didn't really get it or didn't really believe in it, look at this phenomenon of, you know, what you might call conscious consumerism and go, wow, we don't want to get left behind. We need to get in on that.
- [09:45]
A
Netsuite is a success story partner now, what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. Bull market, bear market. Rates will rise, rates will fall. Honestly, I just wish somebody could invent a crystal ball. But until then, over 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle. The number one Cloud ERP. Bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, number, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. If I had needed this product, this is what I'd use. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com ScottClary. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com Scottclary netsuite.com Scott Clary the HubSpot Podcast Network is a success story partner. Now, if you like Success Story, you're going to love other podcasts in the HubSpot Podcast Network. One of my personal favorites is I Digress, hosted by my boy Troy Sandich, which shows under 30 minutes. I digress helps eliminate complexity complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies to to achieve true scalable and sustainable success. If you are an entrepreneur building anything you need to listen to. I Digress. This is one of the most useful business podcasts you're ever gonna subscribe to. Listen to I Digress. Wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing thing.
- [11:42]
B
Mint Mobile unlimited premium wireless 30, 30.
- [11:45]
A
Better get 30, better get 20, 2020.
- [11:46]
B
Better get 20, 20 everybody get 15, 15, 15, 15.
- [11:49]
A
Just 15 bucks a month. So give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront.
- [11:55]
B
Payment of 45 for 3 month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new.
- [11:57]
A
Customer offer for first 3 months only.
- [11:59]
B
Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of network's.
- [12:00]
A
Busy taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com the one thing that I think, feel free to go into this as much as you want. Um, but I think it's an interesting idea. When a company only incorporates fair trade or any of these certifications for like a fraction of their total product line, do people get upset? Do people consider that greenwashing? Like you're trying to ride the wave but you're not fully committing. What are your thoughts on that?
- [12:30]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. And you know, the reality is perfect is the enemy of the good. I would love to see every company implement some form of ethical sourcing in a hundred percent of their supply chain. Without a doubt. Right. Whether it's fair trade or something like it, I would love to see every company embrace that approach and go deep, go all the way. And you know, in the case of fair trade, we are blessed to get to work with amazing companies. You know, we started with Ben and Jerry's ice cream. They went 100% Fair Trade. In our apparel certification program, we, you know, we work with Patagonia. Patagonia is almost 100% fair trade.
- [13:17]
A
I didn't even realize. Every time I think fair trade, I think food, I think food production.
- [13:24]
B
Yeah, we're working with apparel, we're working with furniture. We just started certifying a company called Veja for tennis shoes. Yeah. So yeah, we've started to expand beyond food and that's really exciting. But you know, my point is there are definitely what we think of as lighthouse brands like Ben and Jerry's, like Patagonia and so on that decide they want to go all the way. And really make fair trade like the foundation of how they do business, the foundation of how they source products for us. And that obviously is the gold standard, in my view and what we aspire for all the companies we work with. However, back to your question about what's the business case if a large company, especially a publicly traded company, that's kind of beholden to Wall street, if they want to dip their toe in the water with fair trade and experiment and see if it works, of course we want them to try it, right? Of course we want to give them a chance to prove to themselves that fair trade is going to be good not just for the farmers and workers, but also for their business. And so that does in some sense raise the risk that we might be perceived as somehow greenwashing those companies. I'll tell you what, though. We sign certification agreements with every company that we work with. And today we work with about 2,000 companies in the US from everyone from Whole Foods and Walmart to Costco and Safeway and Trader Joe's and Kroger, all the major retailers.
- [15:13]
A
Who's who.
- [15:13]
B
Yeah, everyone's in there. And then great brands again, like Patagonia and PepsiCo and General Mills and all these cool brands. So in our certification agreement, they agree to run all advertising copy and packaging copy by us before it's, it's approved, right? We get the right to approval. So if a company submitted something to us that looked like it was overrepresenting, like saying, hey, we're a fair trade company, when in fact they're only doing a little bit, then, you know, we obviously wouldn't accept that. And so for me, greenwashing is about over claiming relative to what you're actually doing. Right. And we don't see examples of that. Actually, companies are pretty, pretty shy about, you know, over claiming precisely because they don't want to be accused of like, not walking the talk. And so, you know, in that sense, for me, the bigger issue is how do we galvanize consumer support to support companies that are launching fair trade products so that they can test it? And based on the results of the test, say, hey, this is good for the people, it's good for the planet, it's good for our company. Let's do more. Let me give you one example. We're working with Walmart right now, amazing on tomatoes. And Walmart initially launched its tomato program, I want to say, three years ago, and it was a pilot. And even though it was a small percentage of their total volume, immediately Walmart was the largest purchaser of fair trade tomatoes in the world. Right, of course. And the tomatoes were coming from farms in Mexico and you know, Walmart sourced these tomatoes, the farms got certified. Walmart sourced the tomatoes on fair trade terms. They paid the premium back back to those farm workers. The farm workers invested in really cool community outcomes, health and education. And the label went on the product. And here's the punchline, sales went up at Walmart. That's why you're talking about Whole Foods. I'm talking about Walmart. Sales of fair trade products went up over the non fair trade tomatoes. And so Walmart seeing the results in on both the farms in terms of the well being of the workers and then also in terms of the sales, Walmart said, well, this pilot is a success, we're going to do more. And now they're rolling out into other products, they're doing more fair trade products. And so, you know, you could come back with the greenwashing question and say, well, why did you let Walmart in with just a small volume? Well, the answer's obvious. You know, they deserved to test the model for themselves and see if it worked. And guess what? It worked. And now they're doing more.
- [18:05]
A
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.