Stine Smith and Kirsty Hunter grew up in the sales and marketing world. Smith, hailing from Copenhagen, and Hunter, a New Zealander, met through mutual friends and shared a common passion and care for the planet and loathing for plastics.
The pair bonded over their mutual dislike of walking the aisles of supermarkets, where the sheer amount of plastic and infused products inspired both to make a change.
"The cleaning category hadn't been changed since the 90s and was overrun by bright-coloured cleaning cloths made from petroleum and plastics, which were also wrapped in soft plastics," said Smith.
Thus, Good Change was born with an ethos centred on creating functional products that were sustainable and aesthetically pleasing to look at.
Historically, the cleaning industry has been filled with plastic, synthetic microfibre cloths (based on petroleum) and harsh chemicals, which means that the industry and factories for manufacturing have optimised production of these types of products, which poses challenges as the trends have moved towards eco-friendly, sustainable solutions where consumers are demanding and more often choosing products aligned with their environmental and organics values.
Smith explained that sustainable products incur extra costs, as there are no options to cut corners regarding the health of products created and the environmental impact. These factors make it hard both for established brands and cleaning manufacturers and new players like Good Change. Good Change's ethos and sustainability priorities mean it's difficult for the brand to find facilities to partner with.
"Coming in as a new player with new demands to production, ingredients, and certifications to prove all claims made isn't well understood. It is possible to find production, but it's a lot more work to find the gold nuggets that will work with you and change how they work, too."
This has meant that for Good Change, the brand can't join the bandwagon of all the others that increase scale to the current production and enjoy collective cheaper pricing. Good change has to create at scale, which means it takes time to get the cost down, as it needs its volumes to increase first.
So, when times are tough and the cost of living increases, the desire to spend extra dollars to use sustainable products decreases.
"The new customers we get onboard are more prone to jumping the sustainable ship if the monthly household budget decreases."
However, Smith said Good Change was fortunate with its supportive customer base, which has allowed the brand to get to a level where it can build that desired scale with its factories.
"In our recent rounds of production, we've managed to get better pricing, and we immediately passed those savings on to our customers."
Read more from Good Change below, on page 35:
