Thriving in Business by Prioritizing People, Planet, and Profit - Part 2

Can businesses truly thrive while championing the planet and its people? Eric Henry of TS Designs joins us with a resounding "Yes!" as he shares how his company's unwavering commitment to the triple bottom line has not only been beneficial but also vital for success. We discuss the surprisingly robust advantages of fostering local connections and supply chains, with Eric's 17-year collaboration with a cotton farmer showcasing the stability and resilience that long-term partnerships can bring to a business, especially amidst the unpredictability of global markets.

In the apparel industry, making the switch from synthetic fibers to water-based inks isn't just about being eco-friendly—it's a testament to a company's dedication to quality and longevity. Eric walks us through the challenges and successes of TS Designs' sustainable manufacturing process, emphasizing the economic sense of investing in durable goods. With a pair of long-lasting boots serving as a metaphor for the intrinsic value of sustainability, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for consumers and businesses alike who prioritize more than the price tag. Join us as we unravel the power of community-centric entrepreneurship, where the true measure of success is found in the strength of our connections and the collective well-being of our world.

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Transcript

Joel: 0:33

What if investing in each other could change the world? I'm Joel Skeen with bizradious, and this is the Mindful Marketplace. All right, it's time to get back into it today with Eric Henry, who is a long time Sustainability and social entrepreneur here in North Carolina. His company, ts designs, make sustainable Apparel, including t-shirts, and we had a great first half of the discussion. If you didn't get a chance to listen to that Hip-Haws, go back, listen to the first part. It was really enlightening and honestly inspiring to see someone take something that was so detrimental to so many people and create something so beautiful, so sustainable and so long-lasting. Lee positive Out of it, and so make sure to go back and listen to Eric Henry's story In part one.

Joel: 1:27

What we're gonna get into here today I'm part two is a topic that I think is really important whenever we talk about something like social entrepreneurship, and that's this underlying assumption that I think exists in our business world and in our Economy that Kevin Jones, a recent guest, called to pocket thinking, where he said hey, the dominant thinking is that I've got one pocket where I need to make all my money and that's where my business goes and that's where my investments go, and Then in the other pocket. I'm gonna give a little bit of that back in charity and some other things like that. But he said that we can actually eliminate that kind of thinking and realize that our businesses, our investments and our the work that we do on the for-profit side of things Can actually be good for the world. We had on another sustainability entrepreneur, gilly Anderson, from where Asheville, where she said that to her the only reason nonprofits exist is because businesses and governments aren't doing their job, and Eric Henry's business is definitely, definitely doing its job. We talked a lot about transparency in their supply chain and what I want to get into with you, eric, on an air.

Joel: 2:38

Thanks, welcome back to the show. Appreciate having you on Well, I want to get me back.

Joel: 2:44

Yeah, what I want to get in with you here today is that, you know, I think a lot of times people think of a business that's dedicated to sustainability and Dedicated to you know, all the things that you talked about that are good for the earth, good for the people. But that's sort of triple bottom line business, where we're talking about not just profit a profit, people and planet. A lot of times people think it's just about being a do-gooder, it's just about kind of, you know, having some high-minded ideals and that it's not really practical and that it doesn't actually make good business sense to do that. But it seems like you've really proven that wrong. I don't know what. What are your thoughts on that idea? Do you think it's actually better business for you in the long run to have a triple bottom?

Eric: 3:28

line focus. Oh, very much so, because I said earlier, when we started our business back in 1978 and this is Pre-internet, pre-cell phone, pre-fax machine you know life and business was a lot simpler. We fast-far to. Today the world is a super complicated place and there's not one person has the answers. Answers lie within your community. So if you have a more connected, supportive community, then that makes you more resilient and able to Fight these challenges. I mean, you know, it's just amazing, the things were do, but it's not due to one person, it's due to the connection of all these people that again have this mindset of Not just personal financial benefit, but how's it impact the community? And another thing I like to say too, joel, that we're a big fan of, is that you know, every day we have a choice the clothes we wear, the energy we use, for we, the choices that we, you know, first of all, be aware of those choices and by those making those choices you will be more connected To the community, supports those values. So I mean the we should caught rolled that, so I'm calling it anymore but that those people that are, that are my, you know, people I've known for 20, 30 years, are so valuable In keeping our business moving forward. So I think it's more you know, and a good thing too.

Eric: 4:57

You know, in the world of a global economy, which is usually driven by who can give you the cheapest PO, there's no relationship. There's a relationship built on price, and price is a very fragile thing because it always going to be someone who's going to do it cheaper. But you know, when we have a relationship with a cotton farmer for over 17 years Dilling in the commodity market which right now it's horrible for them, for you know they get like 80 cents a pound, that's might even the cost, but we have a relationship of trust and bays that go back year. So we've not even turned what we're going to pay for our cotton issue. What kind of price?

Eric: 5:31

Because I feel like we can sit down at the end of the season, which you'll probably be next A couple weeks or so, and we'll hammer out what we need. You know I need them to stay in business, but they also need them for me to stay in business. But again, it's it's the relationships. I think that's what excites me for somebody that recently turned 66, been this industry for 44 years. It's those people that are in this community that share our values and because of that relationship we're able to build a company and actually move far with a lot of things that we want to do to continue to be a better company.

Joel: 6:08

Yeah, you, um. So you've made some really good points. I think that kind of question you know some of those underlying assumptions about how you know keeping your supply chain local isn't just about you know, feel good stuff, it's. It's about, you know, not being so dependent on the global markets. It's about not being so dependent on the ups and downs and the booms and busts that you can't really control. And it's also really about, like you said, having a reciprocal relationship with your suppliers, having a reciprocal relationship with your customers, and so I think we've done a really good job of hitting on how this affects you know how this, how that, that emphasis on transparency and local supply chains is actually good For business. I'm also curious to curious to what effect does all of this end up having on the quality of the product?

Eric: 6:59

Well, we realized again we're not going to be low-cost producer. So how do we bring a product that has higher quality, less impact? And now we're talking about with the peril, what happens to the end of life? I'll throw some scary facts out there. First of all, with the peril industry day, 30% of clothes manufactured never make it to retail. There's I use an image in one of my presentations of a pile of clothes, taking from a satellite that the pile of clothes is bigger than the town that sits beside in a desert in Chile. So this is where we've done with that race to make it cheaper. We just make it, hoping you'll buy it. If you don't, will dump it. So you've got that whole issue of fast fashion, which is not fast because it takes a long time to get it here.

Eric: 7:50

But again we want, we want to make and again we're realizing the things that we realize when, when NAFTA broke, this industry, the race to the bottom, the race to cheap, the race to disposable, that builds coming due. And you know we're focused on. You know how do we make a higher quality product that lasts longer? And then we want to make a product that is easier to, as you talked about again with what Molly's doing up there, industrial Commons. How do we make it easy to recycle? Because a lot of apparel we make that is very difficult because they mix synthetics. We're only natural fiber focused. We basically got out of synthetics seven or eight years ago and learned about microplastics. We didn't know anything about it. Now we know that. We don't do anything with it, so we're constantly learning.

Eric: 8:35

How do we make a product that has better quality and better impact?

Eric: 8:39

But it and I might have said it earlier is I believe sustainability is a journey, not a destination.

Eric: 8:44

So we're never going to get to 100% sustainable product, but I do believe every year we make a higher quality, more sustainable product. We just switch a little ink system that goes in the back of a shirt with the system the industry used in general is a solvent based system. A Germany company reached out to us due to our values, spent two days in our facility this year with a water based system that basically addresses those with volatile organic compounds and because of not because we're going to buy a lot of this ink, it's because our value set. And now we've taken that one little part of our business and we made it one step better without sacrificing quality, because we always again, I want to say, joe, is that when we look at new process, new technology and we look at the lens of people on planet, we're not going to take a step back in quality. So we're not going to say, okay, you get this greener product, but it won't last as long. It's got to last at least the same amount, or if not better, to move forward.

Joel: 9:51

And it would make sense that it would have to last longer, because then you're not wasting and rebuying all the time. Gilly, when she talked about this, she actually said that when you think about that. It was so fascinating to me. She talked about how, when you think about the lint trap in your dryer right, like you know a lot of us, it's more convenient to throw the clothes in the dryer than to hang outside or to put them in the sunshine or anything like that. But the lint in your dryer is actually your clothes. It's actually slowly just breaking apart and deteriorating your clothing, which means that you have to then buy more more often and you have to constantly be throwing more in the trash. Aside from the fact of what you just said, which blew my mind, which is that you said 30% of this apparel just ends up in a dump somewhere, doesn't even actually end up worn by anybody.

Joel: 10:43

And I remember when I first bought my first good pair of boots, you know I was like and it was a big price for me at that time. It was a couple hundred dollars to like buy some red wings, and I was like, but what I realized was I've had that same pair of boots for 15, 18 years now and I've never had to rebuy them. And if I bought the cheaper version over the long haul, I'm actually going to be spending more money because it's not something that's going to last. And so if you're making products that are more quality in general or you're buying products that are more quality in general, it actually makes financial sense to buy quality that's going to last and, as you said, it's going to be better for the planet and it's going to be better for our you know supply chains and ecosystems, because we're not going to be constantly having that turnover of low quality apparel in this case. I also am curious to like what effect this triple bottom line focus for you has had on your customers, specifically, you know, return customers.

Eric: 11:48

Well, again we decided to not go overseas and focus on the resources and the supply chain here in the US when they have to roll the end. You know a lot of people says you know that's they wrote the apparel industry off. They says you know you need to either go overseas or go out of business, which a lot of unfortunate companies. They go out of business. But we realized then that you know it was a hard sale because a lot of people you know you go to them, talk about the Carolina Cotton or US made and all they were seeing that it's more expensive. Fast-far to today is I like to say it's not that our product is more expensive, it's what you're buying is not priced properly. You know the the when you go global for price and you neglect people and planet. That bill's coming due now. So I would like to say you know I will compete with anybody in the world. You just can't bring price to the table. And so, fast-far to today, the topic of triple bottom line is a more, more people you know that's in conversation a lot more than it was 30 years ago. And so at the end of the day, we have hundreds and hundreds of customers, tsi's, the business to business. But I would say pretty much all of those customers see some value beyond price. It could be where it's made, how it's made, the quality, the community, whatever there's you know and again, there's still a lot of cheap t-shirts out there Go to your dollar general store and buy you know something made overseas, not going to last very long. That's not our market and it's kind of again I get going back to climate change is if I have a cut and that's my biggest part of job is to qualify the customer. If you come in, joe says I've got this big order, but I need the cheapest possible price, the lowest possible price, and that's all your folks. I said, joe, that's not us. You go see, you know this company here, this company, they'll be glad to help you If you come to that door and you care about and it could be one of those things where it's made, how it's made. Who made it? Any of those things, local, whatever, we can at least have a conversation and we have options and so it makes it a lot easier to have those conversations. And I did want to point out too, during COVID, back to TS signs being business to business. We launched a consumer brand called Solid State Clothing, and the reason we launched that is and I wish I would have did this 20 years ago is we wanted a platform as we continue to move forward with our building. The best off a triple bottom line is we need this R&D that we're able to go directly to the customer, get their support, start small scale. Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does, but we're able to get that support instead of going you know it'll be to be and I'm selling to you and then you market however you want to market and that's been very successful for us. Because one thing we did during COVID Getting all subject into is again we're addressing the third pillar, which is again we're natural fiber focused, mainly cotton, soon to be hemp.

Eric: 15:01

We're believing domestic manufacturing, much in North Carolina, but now we're looking at how our tech stars are died. Overwhelming 99.9% uses synthetic dies that are driven by drive from fossil fuels that are imported. So again, and that's probably 90% of our business, but we are starting to do a deep dive into commercializing natural dyes, focusing on natural dyes that we can source the agriculture product here in the US and not just bring the dye extract from overseas. It might be natural, but I don't want to ship a natural dye material from India to die here. I want to be able to grow it here, and so we're really doing a lot of work in that area. It's starting with code.

Joel: 15:48

That's that there's so many little things that you don't think of when it comes to all of these little tiny things in the supply chain. It reminds me of Matt Stoller's book Goliath, where he talks about how all these little tiny little pieces of the supply chains, not only are they often times you know like you're talking about unsustainable, but often they're monopolized, and so you know it's just crazy how much there is to it. I guess if you were to zoom back out and I want to dig in with you, I want to keep digging with you on some of the stuff that we were on here but what would you say? Is that the biggest thing that needs to change in the fashion and apparel industry?

Eric: 16:30

Oh, pretty simple. We got to stop making so much clothes. I mean, as I said earlier, 30% of the clothes and manufactured may make it retail. So while we support organic cotton, recycle polyester, natural, august it, we got to stop making so much stuff. But the reason we make so much stuff is the peril is got to make it overseas and it takes so long to get here.

Eric: 16:51

And fashion and peril, you know changes, you know colors change, looks change. So literally somebody sitting in office somewhere trying to figure what you're gonna wear a year from now and they go make a bunch of. And so our whole focus and what we've been working on for the last year so is I think it will radically change the industry where we want to make what you want when you want it, address speed of market, address transparency. But the number will stop making so much stuff. Because when you, you know, if you just all things equal, if you make 30% less, look at all the impact you'll have to energy, to water, to carbon, and again, we'll work on technology will make that even better. But our whole focus is In addressing that because, again, as I said earlier, those clothes are sitting out in that desert in Chile Right now the industry, other than dumping it, is not paying the price.

Eric: 17:49

And again go back to climate change. That cost of carbon Every day we wait only gets more expensive, doesn't go away. The same thing with dumping those clothes, and in Europe is a lot further ahead with addressing this waste than we are in the US and Regulation is kind of tough and up in Washington these days. But I can tell you the consumer, especially the younger consumer, starting to ask you those hard questions when it's made, how it's made, and I'm not interested in changing my wardrobe every week and so there's a growing pressure, but I do. As I said earlier, the brands are so enamored with making overseas. I think the opportunity of some new technologies that we're working on and aligning the supply chain differently Will have. And again, give the consumer yourself choice, but again give it choice when you want it. So if you want orange next week, you'll have orange next week and not try to guess orange six months in advance and then everybody's off the pink.

Joel: 18:50

So we want to probably come to your yes sorry I just, it sounds like what you're talking about is bringing all of the necessary elements to provide a Quality and a high level, a quality product and a high level of service to customers Back, closer, back more. Yes, is that what you mean when you because you wrote about this you said you called it reshoring. Is this what you mean, right?

Eric: 19:14

Yes, yes, but what we want to do and it did, I mean we never left, but we want the industry to reshor. But but, but the idea of reshoring it you know it's kind of the catchy and, you know, might be patriarch I want to say, but we're gonna be. We're being reshoring with impact, which means Making less, making what you want, making product. It's easy to back to the circular economy to recycle or to reuse. So there's a lot of bring other values. So it's just not and as I said earlier, it's not that our t-shirts cost too much, it's you're not paying for that t-shirt that's sitting out in that desert that let's start talking about that cost and reflect that back in the other t-shirts that company is selling. So and again, it's just bringing all those impacts to the tail. Back to the transparency you know we got to. I Won't embarrass the brand here, but that's part of the issue with the parallel industry too is I think there's over 100 certifications in the parallel industry.

Eric: 20:16

Things like, you know, recycle polyester, organic cotton. There was a, a International brand, that came out with a carbon negative hoodie. Good job, carbon negative, and there was nothing wrong with that. They gave on it. But what? They didn't tell you it was 100% Recycled polyester. So every time you wash that thing it sheds micro plastics like crazy, right?

Joel: 20:39

So how can I am sometimes use Wait, sorry, I was just gonna ask how can a consumer, let's say, how can they kind of suss out what's green washing and what's real? I?

Eric: 20:52

Think, joe, it goes about what I said earlier. You know, whatever brand you support nonki, tommy, gap, oh, there's the zm brands out there. I think the first step is to if a brand truly wants your business and true ones they need to make their supply chain transparent, give you the key to that supply chain so allows you, as a consumer, to Investigate as far as you want to investigate and you can ask those questions and not just get thrown up. You know marketing, greenwashing or these certifications, because I think once you get into a supply chain and again most of them will be global, have no problem with global economy. I just think the consumer needs to have access. At least they can do some investigating work themselves and not depend on the brand Pumping out this marketing to make them feel good about wearing it.

Joel: 21:43

Yeah, because there's a lot of stuff, like you said earlier, with you know certain large companies where they put those labels on it. That makes that makes you feel good, but when you actually dig into it it's like, yeah, that's, it's not really what it is. So lastly, here I just want to know how how can people connect with you and your business Moving forward, whether they can follow the things you write and talk about or they can start doing business with you in your apparel and in with TS designs.

Eric: 22:10

Probably the first step is our website TS designs T is a Tom s's Sam designs DESI gnscom. I'm Eric eric at TS designs calm. We're based in Burlington, north Carolina. Please stop by. We'd love to give you a tour show we do here. I'm very active on LinkedIn. You can find me there too. But again, says it takes a community and I appreciate people like you that are reaching out and and giving those deep dives, because we talked earlier. I mean, I think, a lot of the people that you had on your show or or friends or allies or associates, the Michael Schumanns of the world, and again, I would not be here without those people in the work that you do, because, at the end of the day, we like to say to it and an educated customers are best customer. So it's services like you do here to kind of connect those people and just please come visit us or check us out online or send me an email or whatever, and we would love to connect and and continue the conversation. Love it, love that community focus.

Joel: 23:12

As I often say, we are each other. So listen to this episode and all the others on my website mindful marketplace show calm, and also check out the YouTube, the Spotify, itunes, all that and please check out this radio dot US. We are all entrepreneurs all the time. We are the only independent business talk show that I know of honestly. So check out this radio dot US and, until next time, take care of yourself and take care of someone else.