[INTRODUCTION]
[Music, Winning! by EJ Cali, up and under]
Welcome back to Relentless, a podcast about the pursuit of farfetched ideas, unusual aspirations, or that perfect pair of sneakers. I’m the host, Maddy Russell-Shapiro. Relentless puts motivation under a microscope to investigate why certain people choose to spend their limited time and resources on a specific project.
This is the third episode in the series and I suggest you listen to these episodes in order, starting with Episode One.
[SCENE: BETTER PACKAGING]
[Music fades out]
0:40 Noah’s website archives a growing collection of blog posts, many written in the first person by founder Brendon Babenzien. These posts educate readers about the wide variety of concerns central to Noah: an entire section devoted to fabric descriptions, multiple posts about production details, celebrations of design inspirations, information about conservancy efforts to protect the ocean and marine life. It’s also the place where the Noah team acknowledges shortcomings.
Because despite its best intentions, despite its desire to produce and sell clothes in alignment with an ethical checklist, Noah does not yet have everything figured out. One pain-point for the team?
Jasmine: The packaging issue is one of biggest issues we’re still dealing with.
Packaging. This came up in nearly every interview I conducted with employees at Noah – those working in sales, design, operations.
Including Jasmine Young, who was the operations manager,
Jasmine: In general, we’re trying to limit the amount of packaging that we use. It’s just, honestly, it’s just waste. After you open the package up, it literally goes in the trash.
[Music, AbeTon by BSNYEA, up and under]
1:46 It’s a legit problem to be concerned about. Because in this internet era, the rise of online shopping means a lot more items being shipped individually. And shipping means packaging. Boxes. Often boxes within boxes. And foam and bubble wrap to protect the contents of the boxes. Used once, and then discarded. Mostly to landfill.
[Music fades out]
Corey Rubin was an early member of the Noah team,
Corey: I heard there was a popup happening, where there was a bowl to skate inside. That’s incredible! I show up there, Brendon’s got his like, Greek fisherman hat on, crazy practice stripe shirt, loafers. God, this dude is wild! I hadn’t seen Brendon in some time but we kind of knew each other. I’m skating the bowl, having a blast. There were all sorts of people at this popup event, it was nice to see a bunch of different people all together. At the end of the party, I went over at the end to thank him. He was like, yeah, roll through to the shop when it’s open in a couple months. And then the more I found out about it, I was like, oh, I want to work there.
When he started,
Corey: We were shipping everything in bubble mailers. The bubble mailers are petroleum based. They were nice and clean looking and did a good job of protecting the goods getting from one place to another. But there were alternatives to use paper. In this thinking, I was like, well, it’s a lesser evil.
A lesser evil because paper can be renewable, it’s not made from a finite resource that may eventually be fully depleted like the oil needed to make plastic mailers. And paper can be recycled. So Corey advocated for a switch to paper mailers. Customers were not thrilled with the undifferentiated presentation. And then there was a technical problem.
Corey: The problem with those mailers, in their formal appearance, is that they’re craft paper and to a lot of people that’s not the most appealing and the fact that we chose a padded mailer, to make sure things are safe, it’s filled with a bunch of recycled paper so if you open it incorrectly, you get little fuzz balls all over the place.
[Music, AbeTon by BSNYEA, back up and under]
4:07 The fuzz balls are the padding that is contained between an inner and outer layer of paper. In theory, by pulling the tab lengthwise, it rips through all three layers, revealing the contents of the package. But often only the top layer pulls open and the padding contents tumble out, making a mess.
So customers were complaining about the informal look of the paper mailer and they didn’t like the mess when the envelope wasn’t opened properly. These days, packaging is an integral part of online shopping. And Noah was not meeting expectations.
[Music fades out]
Here’s Jasmine again,
Jasmine: Have you ever seen those videos on Instagram of people unpackaging? We’ve had people write in and say we want an excellent unpackaging experience and send us examples. That is amazing for the 15 seconds that it’s on Instagram but what happens to those materials afterwards? But also, keeping in mind that people are buying a product, they’re buying into a brand, and it means something to them. They do deserve to have an enjoyable experience. Trying to figure out what that looks like in a way that still makes sense to us and still holds true to us and holds true to Noah’s values, but also the customer is part of our values. Trying to find that balance constantly.
5:25 To be clear, I’m not suggesting that everyone listening will find these kinds of complaints to be reasonable or relatable. And I’m pretty sure that even people who love unwrapping a beautiful box would acknowledge that lackluster packaging is not a truly meaningful problem, not on the same order as the exploitation of garment workers nor the degradation of oceans from plastic pollution. But in a world where social media and the Internet provide customers with an easy way to provide feedback, more and more of them are taking the opportunity to do so. Perhaps those of us who want to see better production standards should take note about how to get a company’s attention!
Chief Operating Officer, Beau Wollens, provides a broader operations perspective,
Beau: As it turns out, once you start to get into these higher price points, it’s not really all about quality. To the consumer, it’s about presentation, it’s about brand perception. We started to look into a bunch of different recycled paper and recycled plastic boxes, customized tissue papers. We ordered a bunch of different stuff online from different brands to see how they packed their stuff. I guess the general disposition that people were having when they opened these packages was, we don’t care that they just invested a large amount of money with us.
Despite researching the competition, Noah didn’t want to abandon its decision to use minimal packaging that could be recycled.
Beau: This just doesn’t make sense for us but at the same time we need to make sure customers know there’s intent here, so we started putting the mailer inside the packages,
[Music, from students at Bronx Charter School for the Arts, underneath]
6:50 “Thank you for becoming part of the Noah community! Please note that our lack of fancy packaging is intentional – it’s one of the ways we’re trying to minimize our environmental impact. We have absolute faith in the quality and details of what we make, [readingfades under] but are always thinking about how to operate in ways that consistently reflect our values.”
Beau: Yeah, that started out with an argument between Brendon and I. He just couldn’t wrap his head around it. I was like, we don’t just get to ignore this. People are writing in. One way or another this has to be addressed whether we do something or don’t do something.
A long discussion ensued between the two of them,
Beau: This long discussion I was having with Brendon about these $600 and $1000 suit jackets. They’re made of this amazing cashmere-wool blends, made in Italy at this amazing suit-maker, and are essentially the same quality as a lot of suits you’re seeing in retail stores for two or three thousand dollars. Ours are not that expensive. They’re between $568 up to $1200, depending. Essentially folding them up and putting them into craft mailer bags and shipping them out to people. Some of the responses that we got back from people was, is this a joke? I just spent $600 on this jacket and you’re sending it to me in a craft mailer?
8:11 The resolution? There’s the postcard included with orders to new customers. And in addition, as Jasmine explains,
Jasmine: We did a blog post talking about packaging, called Our Packaging Sucks.It really was trying to let the consumer know, hey, this is what we’re dealing with, we want to be environmentally conscious however, there are things that you expect as a customer which are perfectly fine. We’re trying to find a balance.
Dated May 22, 2017, the post clearly, concisely describes the conundrum, concluding,
[Music, from students at Bronx Charter School for the Arts, underneath, back up]
“The question becomes: how much more are we willing to contribute to the world’s throw-away culture to honor the fact that you’ve bought something we’ve made? It’s not easy for us. We are extremely grateful to anyone who supports what we do.”
[Music fades out]
9:00 Personally, I’m a fan of this resolution. I applaud Noah for sticking to its ideals. I wish more companies would prioritize environmental concerns with their packaging, both in store and online.
Did communicating directly to customers make a difference? Beau reports,
We got an overwhelming positive response. People connected with the transparency. That felt good.
The Noah team regularly posts detailed missives like that one, explaining their decisions and challenges, taking themselves to task for ways in which they still aspire to do better. And there is seemingly always more to do.
For example,
Corey: An ongoing issue is poly bags in which our garments are packed in and shipped in for protection. They’re kind of like the bane of my existence here. [laughs]
That’s designer Corey Rubin again,
Corey: Each individual garment wrapped up in a poly bag, it’s just an industry standard to protect goods from factory all the way to customer and all the stops it makes, be it store or warehouse, that sort of thing. It protects the goods. In that process, it creates an unseemly amount of plastic.
[Music, Brooklin from Bronx Charter School for the Arts, underneath]
10:13 Single-use plastic. There isn’t much you, the customer, can do with one of those clear protective bags to reuse it. And in many parts of the U.S. it isn’t easy or possible to recycle soft plastic. Shopping in-store doesn’t make a difference. When you buy something in the Noah shop, or any other store, you may not be given the item in a plastic bag. But rest assured, it was packaged in one before it was handed over to you.
[Music fades out]
Sometimes I interviewed members of the Noah team in the basement of the shop, surrounded by shelves of inventory, piles of colorful sweatshirts and rugby shirts and corduroy pants, each and every item in its own clear plastic bag.
So, what to do?
Corey is on the hunt for an alternative,
11:00 Corey: If I can find a plastic that comes from a renewable resource, in my mind that was a slight improvement. So, is there any bag that could be home compostable? Wouldn’t it be great if you bought a t-shirt from us and you were able to use that poly bag to maybe hold your vegetables that you’re discarding for compost or you could use it in your own backyard compost, if you have one. Worst-case scenario, if it does go to landfill, it decomposes.
Despite sustainability’s trendiness, finding a viable alternative has proven difficult. COO Beau again,
Beau: The fully recyclable plastic poly bags for our clothing, for example, we found one company that did it but the minimums were 50,000. Beyond that, we needed four different sizes. Beyond that, if we wanted to print on them, we could only print in one color. We found another one where we were going to do it but the operational component of getting all the bags to all our different suppliers, we manufacture with 20 different factories in six different countries, it just operationally seemed like a disaster. So right now, the majority of our manufacturers just pack it in whatever they have at their factories. So, getting our own custom poly bags to them required another step. Which, in the future, will be feasible but is not a realistic thing for us today with the size of the team we have. We found another company that does biodegradable poly bags but then we found out their shelf life is only three to six months so I’m not sure what happens to the bags after three to six months but that didn’t sound like a viable option.
[Music, Brooklin Streets from Bronx Charter School of the Arts, underneath]
12:45 The bag has to meet multiple criteria: It has to be translucent. It has to be durable. It has to be printable. It has to be cost-effective. And for Noah, it has to be available in quantities that are small enough. Recently, Beau found a promising sample that Corey showed me,
[Music fades out]
Maddy: What are these new bags made out of?
Corey: Corn.
Maddy: Ah!
Corey: Corn. It feels like a silky garbage bag [rustling]. At one point we were considering cellophane but it was so loud, like a Sun Chips bag. You know how they’re notorious for being wildly inappropriate loud? I ate a bag of Sun Chips at a movie theater once and somebody yelled at me. That’s why I’m saying that. [laughs] If I ever do that I have to make sure I’m in the right place [rustles]. But it feels like a silky garbage bag.
[SCENE: WE ARE NOT SUSTAINABLE]
13:51 The team at Noah is genuine in these environmental and social efforts. Nonetheless, Brendon pushes back against accolades,
Brendon: People put us in this sustainable fashion thing all the time and we’re definitely not that. We’re not even close, not even in the realm of sustainable. Ethical maybe, I could see ethical being applied, because we have some serious ethics and we stick to them and we try and do the right thing as often as possible. But sustainable, definitely not, that’s insane. The only reason we would even be considered in the conversation about sustainability is one, people don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about, they just throw the word around a lot now, or two, the idea that making a better product and educating consumers about keeping it longer and using it longer and buying less crap is fundamentally a sustainable idea.
Acting ethically and responsibly. Those are the goalposts Brendon set and that Noah declares publicly. Another blog post, this one from February 15, 2018, begins,
[Music, from Bronx Charter School for the Arts, underneath]
“We need to set the record straight: Noah is not a sustainable company.”
14:58 But that stance, that admission, that attitude, is a starting point, not a finish line. Behind that statement is all the very real work Noah is doing, every day, to behave ethically and responsibly towards people and towards the planet.
[Music fades]
Brendon: We’ve always said that we’ll be as big as we can be until we have to start making decisions we don’t believe in. When that happens, that’s the ceiling. We don’t grow. Until we find a way to grow and still be proud of our decisions. That simple, really.
Those standards apply to design, to manufacturing, to sales, and shipping. They apply to what we as customers can see and experience, as well as everything else that happens behind the scenes in the office, at the warehouse, and in factories across the country and around the world.
I asked Brendon,
Maddy: Are you the kind of consumer you want other people to be?
Brendon: When it comes to products, I am. So when it comes to clothing, I am definitely the type of consumer I wish others were. I don’t really buy that much stuff. I wear a lot of old stuff, I buy second hand, I wear our stuff. I try and buy better products and keep them a long time, keep it to the classics. Which makes me an outcast in our industry because I don’t wear any of the latest and greatest shit. If I go to a party, I’m— I don’t have on the latest sneaker or the latest brand. I have no idea how I’m viewed by the rest of the people in the industry. They might thing I’m a total dork. I don’t know.[laughs] I don’t care what the fashion world thinks. I care what other people think that are doing interesting things. Really creative people, whether it be artist, painter, writer, musician, biologist, runner. Where I fail miserably as a consumer is in food. I’m terrible with food. I don’t eat well. [laughs]I eat meat and meat is a disaster for the environment. I order a lot of food, I don’t make a lot of my own food. I didn’t grow up with a great education about healthy eating.
Terrible with food, but leading the way with clothes and clothing design,
Brendon: For better or worse this is all I know how to do [laughs]I’ve been in this in some form since I was 13 years old. I started in retail and then moved into clothing. I do love doing this. I do think there is a unique opportunity today, in the world we live in, because of the power and influence of style and lack of a better word, fashion, that you can get a lot of ideas into the conversations.
17:20 And there is plenty to discuss: consumerism, quality, cost, and numerous pressing social and environmental issues.
Noah participates in a growing retail trend of releasing new items in batches over the course of a season, rather than the entire new line all at once. I asked if that was an intentional way to grow demand, by limiting supply. COO Beau acknowledged it might be an outcome,
Beau: When you talk about being environmentally responsible, for us, we always prefer to undersell what we might potentially be able to sell in order to not be left with more product.
I’d argue that one thing weekly releases do, inadvertently perhaps, is slow down the pace of purchase. It gives you time to consider what you want, to weigh options, to budget.
Mindfulness over impulsiveness also happens to be a way to build brand loyalty,
Male Voice: I don’t really go shopping in the sense of just looking for things. I find these brands that make good products and have good values, and then seek pieces out from them.
[CLOSING]
[Music, Wonder by DJ Cali, up and under]
18:26 On the next episode of Relentless, Noah’s commitment to giving back,
Brendon: I wake up, I read the news, and there’s 15 things I want to do something about and I can’t, so I get really frustrated.
And the role of price in the conversation about sustainability,
Brendon: Take something as silly as our socks, they’re $24, that’s an expensive sock. But I will put our sock up against any fucking white sock in the world for that price.
18:53 Last week, we encouraged you to learn more about the working conditions in the countries where your clothes are made. Was the information easy to find? What did you learn?
This week, your assignment is to identify ways you can create less waste as a shopper. What were the last two things you had delivered by mail? What was the packaging? What did you do with it? Could the packaging have been less? Could it be re-used? Use social media to let the company know what you think. Did you have an alternative option to delivery? Delivery is convenient, but it requires a lot more packaging than picking something up in store.
On our website, The Relentless [dot] org, we’ve posted information about waste in the fabrication and sale of garments. And some tips for the most environmental ways to dispose of clothes.
Share your ideas with us on Instagram at The Relentless Podcast
[CREDITS]
19:40 Relentless is produced by me, Maddy Russell-Shapiro, and is recorded at Bryght Young Things with the help of Dan Navetta. Editors for this episode were Eve Austin and Sarah Holtz.
Music for Relentless is provided by Building Beats, an innovative nonprofit that teaches young people in New York City’s schools how to DJ and make music. Today’s music was produced by EJ Cali, BSNYEA, DJ Synchro, and students at the Bronx Charter School for the Arts. If you like the music, if you like this show, please consider supporting Building Beats!
Everything you need to know about the show and this series is available on our website, The Relentless [dot] org. Subscribe to the podcast through your listening app so you don’t miss the rest of the season.
And come back for the next episode!