Just like we try to make better cleaning products, we're also trying to make our company better. 2015 was awesome, but it's time to look forward. We're getting ready for a great 2016, and setting goals in our focus areas of People, Planet, and Profit is a big part of planning for success this year.
Below are the goals we're setting for the year. Sharing our goals and accomplishments is part of our dedication to transparency. Please let us know what you think!
Focus Area: People
1. Talk with 10,000 people about Green Cleaning in 2016.
We meet and talk with people in lots of different ways: handing out samples during demos in our retail partner stores, hosting workshops on green cleaning, or chatting on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We love to talk about green cleaning and we are aiming to talk with ten thousand people about it this year.
2. Open a Tourable Manufacturing Facility
Too much of what happens in the cleaning products industry is secret, taking place behind the closed doors of a laboratory or production facility. To help people understand their cleaning products better, we want to show our processes to anyone that wants to visit us in Chicago.
We aim to create a space where people can see for themselves how our products are made, ask questions, and walk away having learned something worthwhile. Think Willy Wonka, but with higher safety standards and a little less chocolate*.
While we don't have this new space open yet, we're hard at work to make this a reality as soon as possible. Stay tuned to our newsletter and social media for more information!
*Don't worry, there will still be some chocolate.
Focus Area: Planet
3. Reduce Landfill & Recyclable Waste by 10% each compared to 2015
We aren't a perpetual motion machine, which means we create waste when we manufacture our products. We measure this waste as pounds of discarded landfill and recyclable materials, normalized to revenue. In case you forgot, our 2015 results were 3 lbs. of waste to the landfill and 14 lbs. of to the recycling center per thousand dollars in sales.
Our goal is to reduce the amount of waste that we generate by 10%. We'll do this by paying careful attention to our operations and implementing specific waste-cutting measures in 2016. Some activities might transition landfill waste to recyclable materials, and others may include finding alternate purposes for our waste. Although recycling is preferable to landfill waste, we would like to reduce all waste.
Focus Area: Profit
4. COGS <30% of sales
As a small manufacturer, keeping costs of our goods down is always tough. We can't buy train cars of washing soda, so we can't get the best prices on things. We also buy from as sustainable of a source as we can find that meets our quality requirements, adding additional costs. While this might hurt one of our bottom lines, it helps the other two, and that makes it a trade-off worth making
As we lower our costs, we get better budget flexibility to pay our staff and expand our sales and marketing activities. This lets us reach more people with our products, which starts the cycle all over again. Hooray!
Hopefully you've learned a little about us and are as excited as we are about 2016. There's a lot of really ambitious stuff we plan to do, and we can't wait to share it all with you. Stay tuned!