Bags of impact: BEEN founder Genia will inspire you to start your own Fashion Revolution

Who: Genia Mineeva

Brand launched: 2018

Product: Bags and accessories made from materials destined to end up in landfill.

Impact: Rescuing materials from landfill and using innovative, zero-waste design methods keeps BEEN London’s carbon footprint to an absolute minimum.  

The brand also plants a tree with every purchase and has recently been donating 50% of profits from sales of their popular blue and yellow East totes to Room for Refugees in support of people in Ukraine and other refugees in the UK and Europe.

 

SSM: Can you talk us through where the idea for BEEN London came from? Was it product-led or impact first? 

Genia: I went from journalism to comms searching for more impact. Like the entire journey before starting BEEN was working to have an impact as an individual, as a professional. I went from doing a conference for an NGO working on the global goals campaign for the UN, to Director of Comms for Europe at Change.org. So it’s kind of impact communications, because I knew how to do comms and I wanted to do it for the good guys. 

Then one day, I watched a film about waste and it changed my career entirely. It was a combination of this film about waste and learning that a lot of the stuff that we put in our recycling bins doesn’t actually get recycled. A lot of it is incinerated, a lot of it is just landfill. And we don’t know about that. So a campaign made me think ‘people need to know!’

At around the same time, I was volunteering in Calais at a refugee camp on the donations line, sorting out clothes donations. There was a pile that was large and extra large, which was too big for the refugees. And then there was a pile that was unwearable. People do donate things that are torn or beyond repair. And I thought — where’s that going?. I followed the waste. Could anything be done about diverting from landfill and circling it back into a product? 

So there are two things: there’s the waste itself and then the second thing was changing attitudes to products made from waste. Like, can we make something so awesome from waste, that it shifts perception of circular, recycled products. 

I just started playing with those recycled materials. Everything from plastics, metals, fabrics, following the story is trying to figure out what things are made from and where’s that going when you throw things away. And it led me to a bunch of blatant greenwashing brands that we all know. But I really needed to understand how this works. I wanted some scientific framework behind materials and sustainability in general. So I enrolled at Cambridge to do a degree in sustainable value chains. 

At the same time as I was like okay, what can I make out of all of these hundreds of pieces of materials that I’ve got in my living room now? Can you make a bag from this pile? Let’s try. Then you knock on lots of people’s doors, do courses in this and that. When I had a bag, I put it on Kickstarter. And then we had funding in one day. Like almost 300 orders that I shipped from my living room. 

I had a full-time job at the time. So I never planned to start a product business. But it was like okay, it’s happening and people seem to like it.

 

SSM: How did you know that bags would work? Did you explore any other routes or did you do any market research?

Genia: I knew for a fact that using recycled materials has a way lower carbon footprint than virgin materials, which we proved two years later.

The idea was really just ‘would friends, would I wear this bag’ and to ask people ‘would you buy it and how much would you pay’. I saw the Kickstarter as market research. I didn’t see it as a way of starting a company; it was more like, am I going crazy or would people actually buy a handbag made from waste?

It seemed like it was just the right time, the right product. And because it was co-designed with a lot of women, all the pockets were in the right places. It’s functional, it just fits everything. 

Then it was Christmas and all those people came back for more. So I quit my job.

 

SSM: So how did you finesse the communications that you put into the Kickstarter campaign? There’s quite a lot of information that they typically want before they let you run that fundraiser; were you going on gut feeling at that point?

Genia: Yeah, gut feel honestly! The day the campaign launched, because it hit the target so quickly, I got an email from the editorial team of Kickstarter to say I had been chosen as a product for that project. They then blasted an email to about half the people in the entire global subscription list. After that, we received orders from all over the world, like Singapore and Canada. I was shipping boxes to about 18 countries! So way beyond my circle of friends and friends of friends. That was really nice.

 

SSM: Wow! So, you had to figure out how to handle those large international shipments while doing it?

Genia: Well, I had a manufacturer, I had the materials, I had a supplier. So before I went into Kickstarter, I had most of it sorted out. I even had the shipping costs. The biggest fear for me was not delivering to the people that I promised something. 

So, I had all of that figured out. But I then had questions like, how do I run a company, is it even a company, should I register it to Companies House? So, it’s a lot of figuring out and the learning curve is never ending. There’s never a day that I think, ‘okay, I know everything about running a business’. I think a lot of entrepreneurs, and impact entrepreneurs perhaps even more so, share this belief that people running a company have all the answers to all the questions. It’s more about the learning and the approach to a problem and knowing that if you don’t know how to do something, you can sit down and figure it out. 

Because it’s okay to admit that you don’t know what you are doing. It’s just about being honest with everyone. Sure, I could play the super knowledgable CEO but what would I get from that?

 

SSM: And how did you go about finding that manufacturer, was that through existing contacts?

Genia: Well, my contacts were all journalists.

 

SSM: So, you didn’t know anyone in fashion…you were starting as an outsider?

Genia: I knew a lot of people in fashion, but people at the very top, who were not helpful and I wouldn’t even bother them with it, not even until now. So to give you an idea, I had worked with directors of communications of, say, Dior and Gucci. But I needed to find a small manufacturer.

I’d email people and they wouldn’t respond and it was such a shock. But it was a really nice experience and I appreciated it because if your email signature says global director or director, people respond to your emails, and I was very used to that. And all of a sudden, I was emailing people from my Gmail account as a nobody – I was trying to find someone to make my bags or even just one bag. And people just don’t take you seriously or perceive you as someone launching a bag company just for fun. But I knew I wasn’t one of them, and I knew why everyone didn’t get email responses. 

It was a lot of knocking on doors and picking up the phone. And it was with material supplies — because we’re too small and I couldn’t buy, for example, 5000 litres of anything — and the same with manufacturers. I wanted it to be a manufacturer in London and that was important to me. I wanted a transparent visibility of what’s going on, both in terms of human rights, but also in terms of pay. There aren’t very many of the traditional businesses around, it’s a dying art, and I’m proud that we are supporting the last few bag makers in London. 

There were some people that were really sweet and one person who was open to working with this crazy recycled materials company. But everyone else thought it would be too difficult to work with because we were so small. So there’s a lot of nos; a lot of people thought we were a nobody. Sure, we didn’t even have a company or a website. Fair enough. But it was fun and absolutely fascinating. It’s a world I hadn’t seen before, the craft and art of very slowly making a product. Until starting this whole thing I had no idea how much work went into making a bag, like looking at how many stitches went around every corner. But it’s certainly worth it, and we found an amazing studio.

 

SSM: Fast forwarding, you now have people that you source your materials from. How did you get those partners on board? You’ve worked with IKEA, for example.

Genia: The work we’ve done with IKEA was through another social enterprise who collect old IKEA uniforms in a small factory in the Netherlands, and then we buy that felt from them. So we don’t work directly with IKEA. But these guys are brilliant — they only employ people with a long history of unemployment. They are really thoughtful and a wonderful company.

I connected with the rest of our partners by attending innovation exhibitions and scanning innovation newspapers. I also subscribe to Recycling International newsletters, which are mostly heavy on recycling metals. I reach out and say “I love what you do. Let’s chat.” 

 

SSM: Sounds like you have to be a bit of a material innovation geek. Is there anything up and coming that you are excited about?

Genia: It is geeky but I love the storytelling aspect. It used to be bought — fishing nets and carpets and then turning them into gorgeous, regenerated nylon which is shiny and beautiful, like super premium quality.

But in terms of what I am excited about…we are working on the world’s first compostable bag. It’s incredible. You can wear it and wear it and wear it and throw it in your home compost at the end of its life cycle. So, we are running a project with the manufacturers of this material to be the first brand to actually develop this product. I’m also excited about Re-Pearls which are pearls made from discarded oyster shells in London restaurants. We are also working on a new [insert] made from apple leather. 

The list of things I am excited about goes on! It’s the stories behind materials. And then we also have the data to prove that it’s actually really sustainable.

 

SSM: Apart from the Kickstarter launch, have you had support from any organisations or funding or grants? Anything that you would want other people starting out to know about?

Genia: I do the Seedrs campaign, which is equity crowdfunding. The reason I went down this route was because at a certain point, venture capitalist (“VCs”) started circling but I quickly realised that the vast majority were profit driven first and foremost. The business was just a year old and so getting someone on board that might disrupt the foundations of the brand, the trust that we build with our customers, and the way we make decisions, namely, impact first and profit second, didn’t feel right. I had an offer on the table and walked away from it. 

I then thought, “Okay, how can we get funding without diluting our ethos and the values of the brand?” Crowdfunding, which I’d done before with Kickstarter, seemed like a really good way forward, because we could invite our customers to become shareholders in the company. Again, it got funded in one day, and then got over funded and funded a little bit more, and then the pandemic hit. So we closed the campaign while the country was shutting down. 

But we now have a few hundred of our customers, a couple of angel investors, plus the London Fashion Fund which has been incredibly supportive. The beauty of that is I know all of these people share the values. And even after the bad news of the pandemic, I knew the company was going to do well. It’s really nice waking up in the morning and knowing that hundreds of women are behind this company and co-own it.

There were some investors that very clearly saw potential. Pretty much every investor ended up investing in some shape or form in the Kickstarter campaign. But crowdfunding is a great route for a young business not wanting to dilute their ethos. It’s painful, a lot of work and takes longer than expected, but it’s worth it.

 

SSM: With the pandemic and potential stigma around products made from waste, has there been any backlash around where the materials have been recycled?

Genia: The pandemic has been incredible in this respect, because a lot of people started thinking about where products actually came from and what they were wearing, and questioning what they were buying, spending money on, and what they were voting for. In this respect, we saw a lot of interest.

On the other hand, the nature of the product is, if you don’t leave the house, you don’t buy a bag. So we had a massive hit to our forecasts — but that was okay. Because we didn’t have investors purely profit driven, instead of relentless marketing, which seemed out of place – like the world is shutting down, people in hospitals, people are dying – we focused on something much more meaningful that would benefit us later on. We decided to do a full lifecycle analysis and so found a pro bono partner who thoroughly analysed our supply chain and gathered six months of data collection. 

As a result we obtained proof in numbers in spreadsheets that our products are 87% less in carbon footprint compared to the high street. The pandemic also taught us that we didn’t have a tool to allow us to make design decisions based on how we can do better. So, the pandemic was great to showcase sustainable brands, fantastic for providing thinking time and impactful work but awful for sales.

 

SSM: Is going through the supply chain with a fine tooth comb something that you would advise every brand in this space to do ahead of starting out?

Genia: Well, gathering data is a very long-term project and usually very expensive. We’re very lucky to be picked as a case study. To explain, the company offered to audit our supply chain as a case study for free after we made contact. So I’m not the person to say that everyone should do it as I appreciate it’s a very expensive process. 

What I can say is that it provides a lot of clarity on your impact and we found it gave us much more credibility; we won quite a few awards this year simply because we were able to back up what we’re saying. And it’s a different level of credibility. We had the numbers to prove our efforts and show how we achieved it. Vogue wouldn’t have named us as one of the most innovative fashion brands in the world without having the data. The Guardian wouldn’t have called us a wonderful brand and Vanguard wouldn’t have called us an ethical innovation had we not actually measured what we do.

 

SSM: Do you think that’s because people are more aware of greenwashing and so want transparency?

Genia: Yeah. It also makes it easier to just understand your footprint. It doesn’t have to be a lifecycle analysis or a call for pre calculation. But it’s great in terms of measuring impact and answering questions such as, where’s your impact coming from? What damage is it causing? What resources are required to manufacture your product? What is your environmental profit and loss? I’m not saying this should be the framework, but I’m saying it really helps to understand the impact, both the positive and the negative. 

I would encourage everyone to do it but I know that it’s not possible for a lot of brands. For us, it was possible because we’re prepared to do the legwork and we had luck! 

 

SSM: Impact measurement is really interesting and something that the Social Supermarket team talk about a lot. To what extent can you quantify impact; in the mind of the customer do you think the stats or the story is more important?

Genia: We do measure everything. We measure the amount of waste diverted from landfill and processed – a combination of textile waste, plastic waste, some linings, fishing nets and carpet waste. We measure safety too and we’ve also been quietly planting a forest in the Amazon that’s being measured. It’s over an acre now. 

 

SSM: When you say we, does all that tracking happen in house? Or for example, with the trees, presumably you have a partner that you work with on that?

Genia: In truth, we’re dealing with the tree tracking. We use automated links on Shopify. We pick which trees we want planted for special collaborations. For our design collaboration with Amelia Winter, we shipped a tree that was the most impactful in terms of CO2 absorption. So we can pick and choose and also have all the data forecast of CO2 capture.

Browse the BEEN range on Social Supermarket here