A Call to Action

Fair warning. This blog is a little different from our normal blogs. This blog isn’t focusing on the best wellness gift boxes for your employees, friends, or family. This blog is a call to action.

Over the past year, several of our corporate gift suppliers have closed their doors. Businesses that have done good in the world, made exquisite products, and had a long track record of success disappeared from the landscape. And the world is worse off for it.

Lovoso made beautiful, handcrafted pens. Their colorful wooden pens were the best-selling item at our most recent trade show. They employed orphans who were aging out of state care. These men needed job skills, income, and role models. Lovoso beautifully incorporated all three of these to help these men get set up for an independent life as they transitioned into the real world.

Mitscoots made the snuggly blankets you see in our beRESTED gift box. They had a beautiful business concept – donate a like item for every one purchased. Then, they employed transitioning homeless to help fulfill orders. The founder’s heart for the homeless is deep. He often picked up the employees, since transportation can be challenging for this group. He even invited employees to his home for holiday dinners. Many had nowhere else to be. Unfortunately, Covid hit the homeless community especially hard, and Mitscoots was ultimately not able to recover.

We don’t tell you these stories as an FYI, or to make you feel bad. We share these stories to motivate you to evaluate your daily life and see if there are places where your dollars could be spent with businesses, like the ones above, doing social good. If you’re buying toilet paper, could you purchase from a company who donates a roll for every pack you purchase? Could you get your soap from a company who provides sanitation supplies around the globe? Every time you make a choice to spend your money in a way that lines up with your values, you are joining the conscious consumerism movement. And these choices add up.

It’s hard to make it as a social enterprise. When you are focusing on making conscientious choices at every step of the production journey, it affects your efficiency, your profitability and, sometimes, your sanity. Imagine taking all of the things you have to keep in mind when running a business, such as payroll, lead times, and marketing…and add a thousand more! Using beCAUSE minded as an example, our mission is to provide best in class gifts that have a lasting impact on people and the planet we inhabit. We keep this in mind at every turn.

For this reason, we don’t negotiate with suppliers. If they are doing the hard work of providing job training and employment to groups such as sex trafficking survivors and people with autism, and our goal is to shift corporate gifting dollars to help them grow their impact, we don’t want to stifle them by negotiating nickels and dimes.

We source from social enterprises, many of whom teach their employees how to craft products like candles and bath bombs. This means sometimes our lead times are crazytown. Our Pestemal towels, for example, are hand-loomed by Syrian refugees in Turkey. So, if we get a massive order for hundreds of towels, it can be months before the towels can be made and shipped. We opt in to these obstacles because we know the life-changing effect these employment-focused businesses have on the communities they serve.

When people purchase our personal or corporate gift boxes, it funds our mission. It tells us these customers not only love our products, but what we stand for. We call this empowered gifting. This is one way to be a conscious consumer, but certainly not the only way.

What purchasing decision could you make this week to become a more conscious consumer?