Reference no: EM132247633
When I started this company, I was less focused on social ventures. I'm Eric Hudson, founder and President of Recycline. I wanted to create a sort of an anti-common business environment. I wanted it to be casual, but I also had business training. I had an MBA. So it was about developing systems and running an efficient business. But letting go of the, sort of the basic stiff culture of what I saw in business at that time. That was a key element.
>> The Preserve brand is absolutely a reflection of what happens inside our company. I'm C.A. Webb, and I'm the Marketing Director here at Recycline. You know, when I first met with our design firm and talked about our sort of refreshed brand identity. And what our logo would look like. And our tag line would sound like. And our creative, you know, messaging would be. I talked about how we all get to work. You know, Eric drives his biodiesel car. I take the commuter rail. Alyssa bikes in. Justin, you know, runs in. I talk about who we really are as people and the way we work together. And down to, you know, if it's warm outside, you're not going to catch any of us with lace up shoes. You know, we're here in flip-flops and Birkenstocks. That's just who we are. You know, which we do on the weekends, most of us are outside, enjoying being outside. And that's really who we are as a company. And it's important to us that, you know, we work in recycled materials. We're rough around the edges. We're not a cool, sleek -- we're cool. But we're not sleek and smooth. You know, we're real, and we're grounded. And we're a little dirty sometimes. And, you know, we absolutely want to convey the reality of who we are as people coming together to make great products in the way we express our brand.
>> Yeah, I think the process at Recycline is quite different than, you know, where I worked previously with multinational corporate companies. I am John Turcotte [assumed spelling], and I am the Vice President of Sales at Recycline. First of all, we're very small. And we're quite collaborative. We need to be quite collaborative because of, because we are so small. Unlike the corporate world, I think that the entrepreneurial slant is to, hey, we have to get these things answered today. So our decision-making process is, I think, quicker. And we pull together the resources we need to solve a problem. And we get it done, and we move onto the next thing. We just don't have the luxury of being able to let it drag on anymore.
>> We're small enough that there's more things to get to than we're ever going to get to. My name is Ben Anderson, and I head up product development and product management at Recycline. It's a company where, you want to do something, you have the opportunity to get involved with it. You have to, still have to do your core job. But, if you're interested in advancing some new initiative, you can take it on and move it forward. And you don't necessarily have to have a background that maps to being a product manager at Gillette in order to come in and influence the product strategy here. What that brings is an ambitiousness and creativity that somebody who's come from a big company, that they may have the blinders on. And maybe sometimes more naive or overly ambitious, but we're going up against Gillette and Proctor & Gamble and other big brands that are incredibly well-resourced. So we need people who are adaptable and entrepreneurial.
>> What inspired me to develop the first product and start the company was a desire to start the company. I wanted to start a company on my own. And I had a concept of a new product, which was the toothbrush. And along with that I married that, with that an interest to develop products made from recycled materials. So there was a lot of recycling going on in the early 90's. But there wasn't necessarily products that were made from those materials that people were recycling. So I knew that the consumer or people in the world would have an interest in more products made from recycled materials.
>> I got another call from a big CPG company that wants to talk to us about potentially working with them to collect their products. Consumers don't want to throw them in landfills anymore. And they're looking at companies like ours that are taking recycled materials, turning them into something, you know, cool. And wondering if we can do that, you know, with their raw materials after their products are recycled. So, I mean, I think that the tricky thing about the space that we're doing business in is that there are a lot of people who still think this is fringe. That green products and, you know, mass interest in those products is, you know, I think there's a lot of skepticism still. And so what I have to do is parse which parts really are fringe and will stay. And which parts are going to have the ability to really transcend and become part of a reality. I do think that there are a lot of consumers in the world that are standing at the register, asking questions about products that they weren't asking a couple years ago. And that's only going to become a sort of fiercer and more interesting conversation in the years to come.
>> There's no question in the last two years the amount of press you read and the amount you hear about people seeking to be more environment friendly in their everyday lives is really blow away. And the biggest thing that I'm concerned about is whether it's going to, you know, kind of have a negative backlash. I liken that and take confidence in the fact that I think that we will have some backlash, if we're not having it already. I liken it to the dot-com world in the sense that I think there was a major bubble crash. Obviously, everyone knows. But after that, everyone had a laptop on their desk. So whatever people were all left standing, there was much more technology in everyone's lives. And I think this major backlash in the green market will come in the next year or two. I think after that we'll all realize that we've incorporated these green activities much more in our lives. It's going to be pervasive throughout the United States of America as well as the world.
1. Why is it important for Preserve Recycline to constantly monitor the external retail environment as they look to add new products?
2. How does Preserve Recycline's internal culture support its product line?