🛒 🚀 The Check-Out: Following the Footprints!
+ 5 cool climate events + what's in our basket - depop, directories and more...
Happy Thursday! Welcome to The Check-Out - your weekly dose of climate x consumer goods inspiration, and your discovery box of products and events the Following the Footprints team are loving this week. It’s great to have you here.
No, the title isn’t a typo. This week’s a little different. We’re being SO unbelievably selfish and taking a quick second to re-introduce ourselves to you, our lovely lovely readers. In case you missed it on LinkedIn this week, we’ve done a BIG rebrand and launched our first website. Buckle in, today we’re catching you up to speed.
After that, it will be business as usual - we’ll share what the Following the Footprints team has loved and consumed this week and 5 climate x consumer goods events coming up. Let’s dig in…
> Brand Spotlight (just a different kind)
Hey you! Yes, you. We’d like to reintroduce ourselves.
3 years ago, we started on a mission to dig into how consumer goods brands were innovating to be more sustainable. Our mission hasn’t changed, but our methods have.
This week, we launched our new brand and new website.
Today, we’d love to tell you a little bit more about the platform that lands in your inbox each week.
Let’s wind it back a second...
‘Twas the night before launch day, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a (computer) mouse. Sat there alone, on a cold February night, was Leone and a Canva page…ideas were light...
Many small and medium sized brands are constrained by a lack of time, funds and/or in-house sustainability expertise. We know, because we’ve worked in them - TENZING, Butternut Box, Red Bull, Moving Mountains, Belazu, Wildfarmed, A Little Bit Food Co, Lucky Saint and more.
Now, our volunteer team of 10 is working to fill this gap.
You know the analogy of a swimming swan? Calm on top, paddling hard underneath? That’s been us. Actually, maybe the better analogy is a F1 engine (if we say so ourselves) in the body of the Corsa your gran owns that’s met with a few too many hedges.
Hundreds of newsletters, interviews, brands tracked, partners mapped, events shared, good news items summarised and a couple of our own events for good measure. It was time to do a better job at telling the world the impact we’re determined to have. Yup, our substack homepage and abstract gradient logo just wasn’t cutting it - if you search ‘blobs’ on Canva you’ll find it, and that’s exactly what Leone did that cold February night.
Let’s take a closer look…
For Following the Footprints 2.0, if you will, we want to show we’re three things:
🧠 Informative - we help you do your job better
💚 Friendly - we put the people we’re helping, within consumer brands, first
💥 Fresh - we are a new take on traditional and heavily corporate industry platforms
Our new website is your new one stop shop for all things FTF, sitting alongside our content but now showing that we’re so much more than just a newsletter.
Here’s what you can browse….
110+ measurement partners, mapped against 350+ consumer goods brands - that’s our MEASURE database.
13 Meet the Brands Interviews - with brands like Willicroft, Rubies In The Rubble, Ooni, allplants.
The only consumer goods x climate industry events calendar!
>160 newsletters - we now publish twice a week, on a Monday and Thursday.
Let’s say hi to the team…
3 years later, we’re still the ONLY platform focused on consumer goods and sustainability that is actually written by the people it’s trying to help. Therefore, it’s important you also know who is behind it - Rosalin, Ruby, Emma, Lexi, Laura, Indira, Leone, Jenny, Ellie and Katherine. We know how it feels to be in your shoes, and we’re here to help.
Want to join us? Reach out! In particular, we’d love to hear from people obsessed with climate policy, or crazy about doing research and writing it up, or wielding some super cool graphic design / visual design / social media skills.
Finally - a big thank you!
If this is the first time you’ve read our work, or if you come back every week (we see you!) - we’re forever grateful for your support. Yup, wet weather warning, we’re getting mushy. In particular, we’re forever grateful for the folks that reach out and tell us what they think (good or bad). Publishing online is a little like shouting into a void. Anytime you hear a voice back it’s hugely reassuring.
Some kind words our community have shared with us, and others:
💪 “Following the Footprints is my go-to resource to find out what mission driven FMCG businesses are doing. Brilliantly researched and written, it's always at the vanguard of trends and new developments in the world of “good” business” - Jason Gibb, Bread & Jam
💪 “It's the first, and sometimes only, newsletter I read every week” - Lawrence Mason, No Name Drinks + Bermondsey Mixer Co.
💪 “Following the Footprints is an incredible resource for any modern consumer brand. They unpack the complexity and industry jargon with traceable steps for others to follow” - Brad Vanstone, Willicroft
That’s it from us today! Thanks for making it this far, and allowing us to re-introduce Following the Footprints. Our inbox is always open for questions, feedback, climate memes and more - leone@followingthefootprints.com. Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for another SUPER exciting announcement next week - MEASURE is getting a sibling and we can’t wait. Just like the England football team at the Euros, we’re not stopping here.
> In Our Basket
🔎 What we loved and consumed this week:
From Leone in London: If you want a taste of heaven, take a browse through Pop-Up Grocer’s directory. It’s well and truly new brand nirvana and I’ve lost more time than I’d like to admin surfing their site.
From Lexi in San Diego: You don’t understand - I’m obsessed with my cold brew maker. I’m the type that drinks iced coffee even in the depths of Canadian winter, so in summer easy access is a non-negotiable. A batch for the week takes three minutes to make: I’ll just get my fave beans ground at a local shop, pop them in with some water, and shake. This has saved me an infinite amount of $ and plastic since I’m not buying to-go coffees nearly as much!
From Jenny in New York: I’m not the first gal to recommend a secondhand commerce platform in an FTF ‘sletter, but I've been a Depop fanatic for years. I hadn’t posted anything for sale in quite a while but this week finally buckled down to create some listings. Days later, I’ve made some sales and have been reminded of the ease of giving a beloved item a second life with someone who’s very excited to now carry the torch
> Monthly Events Roundup!
📆 5 Consumer Goods x Climate Events:
Browse 20+ upcoming consumer x climate events, and submit yours.
16th July - Bread & Jam 2024: The UK's Biggest Challenger Brand Festival
Organisers: Bread & Jam
Location: Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street London N1 0QH
17th July - Net zero: How to pivot from a reactive to a strategic approach
Organisers: WTW
Location: Virtual
23rd July - AAFA - Traceability & Sustainability Conference
Organisers: American Apparel & Footwear Association
Location: Dearborn, MI, USA
23rd July - Energy Garden's Summer Party 2024
Organisers: Energy Garden
Location: 43 Ebury Bridge Road London SW1W 8DX
25th July - Introduction to B Corp
Organisers: The Good Crowd
Location: Virtual
That’s it for today!
Know a brand we should spotlight next? Let Leone know!
Have links that can make the team learn or laugh? Share them with us, we might just share them in The Check-Out next week.
Hungry for more? You’ll see us on Monday! That’s when we suit up and get serious, digging into a topic that is guaranteed to make you look smart at standup.
Much love,
Team FTF