Richard: I had spent 20 years working in my old business, until COVID hit. The business was “successful” but I was a failure: I was tired, overweight, unhappy, and completely out of alignment. I had spent my whole life selling people things they didn’t need. And I never thought about the impact of any of it, for me or the planet. So my new goal was to come alive again. To once again learn about food, farming, and sourcing. I never wanted to go back to my old life.

I had met Jane Goodall a few years earlier, and she encouraged me to take all that I had learned in my old business and do something good. So when my life fell apart, that’s what I wanted to do. But I did not really know how, and we were building the plane while it was flying.

After our first year we had cleared about $5M in revenue. It was a staggering number, and it continued to double year on year. It made us realize we had a proper business here. So we invested in an amazing team who began to look at how we spent all our money – who we purchased from, and what kind of farms we wanted to support. This meant traceable sourcing from small and heirloom farms, biodegradable ingredients for soil and watershed health, nutrient-dense formulas grown in nutrient-dense soil, recognizing the human and cultural aspect of agriculture, and never, ever using pesticides.

This might sound obvious, but for the beauty industry this is radical. No brand at scale had real traceability. And it’s impossible to build a brand with typical investor money and not be asked to cut corners to make higher margins. That’s why palm oil and other more inexpensive ingredients are in almost every product.

Richard: Our fresh produce program allows us to purchase consistently and regularly (weekly) within our local network of farms. We know this has a deep impact for the farms we are lucky enough to work with, as they now come to us. The large-scale, one-time purchases we make with local farms/producers for body and beauty products are important (raw materials for bulk production), but weekly purchasing, with a number of farms, balances that out and really allows us to support in a very consistent way, 51 weeks of the year.

One of our main local partners for fresh produce is Windrose Farm. Our partnership has meant a recurring revenue that they wouldn’t otherwise see during certain growing seasons. Half of our fresh produce customers are on weekly subscription, which means hundreds of boxes of produce, and a somewhat predictable revenue stream for the farm, and others.

One of my favorites is Ojai Valley Olive Oil, who harvests all of our Flamingo Estate Olive Oil and blends a custom peppery and bright oil for us. We’ve grown steadily together, both of our volumes increasing at a similar pace. Olive Oil is our #1 item after bath and body products.

Another interesting piece of our local business is a flower subscription business. In the fall of 2021, we changed how we were sourcing our flowers, essentially we took everything in-house. At first this was incredibly challenging, especially as we headed into winter. But as we grew our network, the farms started coming to us and we were even able to crop-plan with one of our partners, which allowed them to depend on us for a consistent order (with a lot of flexibility on timing). We NEVER fly flowers in, and now have a large weekly customer base all on subscription. So it’s consistent business for the farms.

In terms of the body and beauty side of the business, honestly, it’s about communication, increasing scale, and providing projections. Being a new business that has tested new products and iterated along the way, has made it somewhat unpredictable in the past to understand volumes. Now, we are looking forward to being able to more accurately forecast and make an impact with how we purchase and get in contracts with farms to help purchase seeds and provide a sustainable and predictable income. My hope is that we are working with 1,000 farms in 10 years. My dream is that we wrap our arms around as many good growers as we can, and pay them well for what they do.

Richard: I’ve just come through a year of fundraising, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was bloody hell. I met over 100 potential investors, and each of them had a solution on how we could scale and grow. And as I said earlier, it’s ALWAYS been about better margins. At every turn a finance bro was telling me to source cheaper raw ingredients. This gets back to the palm oil and commodity ingredient conversation. It made me realize that it will be a miracle if a brand can get to scale – real scale – in America, and only use regenerative ingredients. The same argument happened regarding plastic bottles, which we don’t use, but would be cheaper than glass. It felt like death by a 1,000 paper cuts, and we have to stand firm. That’s why I am so determined to build this business in a different way. I look at a brand like Patagonia – and it can only make bold moves because they don’t have to answer to VC shareholders.

The other side of the coin is the consumer. Consumers are so conditioned to supermarket prices, especially for fresh food. Our fresh food program runs at a loss, sometimes breaking even. We don’t make any profit from that part of our business, but still people question the price. So that’s where we need to explain why it costs money to grow things properly. Good, regenerative food and ingredients are not inexpensive for everyone in our current food system, and when we use these ingredients in bath & body products, it can be 20x more expensive than a non-traceable ingredient from a distributor that gets that ingredient from overseas where the growers are paid bottom of the barrel prices and the material is getting passed through several different hands.

Richard: First, I should mention that we never lead with that message. We lead with a quality and ingredient message. If you look a bit closer you can discover the things we are doing. We also don’t deserve a pat on the back until we have done the work, and we have a lot more to do. I think a regenerative business looks at everything as one large, interconnected whole. It’s a collective approach that derives from a belief in lived reciprocity — trusting that Mother Earth will care for us, if we care for her, our communities, and our people. The work, from beginning to end, should protect the ecosystems at large and should support people doing the work. It looks at the process from the moment the seed is planted, to sourcing, formulation, packaging, shipping and distribution, to its full life cycle.

Richard: We wanted to put our dollars into an organization where we can see the impact.

We’ve met so many people in our network through Farmer’s Footprint, and it feels local and community based for us. I also encourage the conversation that goes with it, we have been conditioned to “at a glance” shopability led by icons. While I know these icons are ways for our consumers to navigate and make decisions, there’s also so much more nuance, conversation, and education to it. Does it have to be certified organic if the farm is using organic practices? Knowing the practices and the farm is more important than an icon.

Also, Glyphosate has a long history for me. When I was a little boy, I used to watch my mom put on her backpack and go to work. Inside her backpack were two small tanks, filled to the brim with RoundUp. Even as a small boy, I worried about her spraying Roundup. I saw the way it killed everything, and I did not want her to be next.

Richard: The more I have learned, the more impressed I have become. Real people doing real things with less red tape. It’s as simple as that.

Richard: In one sense it has damaged the bottom line. But this is the conversation that has to change.

It would be easy if we were making things cheaply at huge volumes, but we are only as good as our sourcing. We need to charge more so we can pay more for our raw ingredients. The main challenge is keeping the message really tangible for people – better ingredients are grown in better soil. That’s the sort of simple message we need to keep repeating to explain why our costs are high.

The other important thing for us is that this is not the ONLY message. We need to build trust and a transparent conversation with our consumers. Every hand-poured Candle, every drop of Douglas Fir & Vetiver Body Oil, and every bottle of locally-harvested Olive Oil – those are the precious fruits of our labor and our customers are able to directly impact our efforts with Farmer’s Footprint everytime they indulge in Pleasure from the Garden.

The bottom line will balance out — our focus is on making sure Mother Nature has no bottom line.

Richard: Progress not perfection. Start with something and let it grow from there. Otherwise it becomes so daunting and stressful.

Richard: How do we cut through the BS? We just saw a brand advertising that they use “natural fragrances” and filming their commercial on a farm with lots of nice flowers and baby animals. But the brand is also using phthalates, synthetic fragrances, and distributing in plastic bottles. It’s not about the soundbite or the logo. We need to understand the whole story.

We’re also so used to shopping from a negative perspective: “No Parabens”, or “non GMO” and scouring a no list to ensure the products we consume fit our guidelines, but it actually doesn’t bring us any closer or give us any other knowledge about the products or the ingredients themselves. The conversation about regenerative agriculture needs to be a true conversation and an understanding about where our products come from. These are time-honored practices that support people, animals, and our earth.

Recently the Flamingo team went to Expo West — the Natural Products Expo held in Anaheim, CA. There were THOUSANDS of people crammed into the Anaheim convention center for the “leading trade show in the natural, organic, and healthy products industry. Top-notch education, innovative & trending products, and community networking.” We walked the aisles looking at fake cheese, fake meat, fake chicken, and fake pasta.

There was a wagonload of “innovation” neatly packed behind bright, happy Millennial-looking branding. Many people are trying to disrupt Mother Nature in one way or another. “It tastes just like real cheese, doesn’t it?” said one guy as I sniffed at his blue cheese made from pea protein. I left the expo frustrated but clear. Please don’t come to us for innovation. I believe the future belongs to the time-honored, simple way of doing things. In a world drunk on “innovation”, I believe we must do the opposite — a return to how things should be made.

Richard: The industry gets so earnest. If we want people to think about nature in a different way, we need to show it in a different way. We need to make this exciting and dynamic.