Hollender: Why Seventh Generation killed its catalog to bet on wholesale retail
Jeffrey Hollender · Seventh Generation: Alan Newman and Jeffrey Hollender · Jan 25, 2021 · at 55:55
Jeffrey Hollender, co-founder of Seventh Generation, explains the strategic decision to shift the company away from direct-mail catalogs toward retail grocers.
0:00 / 0:34exact quote · 34.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We had raised about five million dollars of additional capital, and the board and I came to the conclusion that we had two very different businesses, and they both demanded lots of money, and we decided that we should do something that appeared highly risky and bet on the wholesale Retail business rather than the mail order catalog business because that was my intuition about where the biggest upside was in the future.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jeffrey Hollender
Hollender: Eco-friendly products are just "less bad," not actually good
“To be quite honest, it's often about being less bad rather than good, and I think we've gotten the two things confused. I think that when you're buying a seventh generation diaper, you're causing landfills to fill up, you're causing increased climate change. Y…”
Hollender: My board fired me by phone on a Saturday and locked me out
“Done in a somewhat brutal fashion because not only was I let go, but I was let go over the telephone on a Saturday morning and told that I wasn't even allowed to go back into the office ever again.”
Companies Now Practice 'Green Hushing' Around Sustainability and DEI Initiatives
“There is sort of this new language called green hushing, where people do sustainable things, and they don't talk about them, and part of it is the sort of political environment we live in, and we have many aspects of responsible business, like diversity and in…”
Purpose-Driven Businesses Generate Better Profits and Financial Results
“And there is abundant research, much of which NYU has done itself, that demonstrates that people that run businesses in a responsible, purpose-driven fashion generate better results, more profits, better growth, and as young students, they have to be very fami…”
Founder Obsession With Rapid Hyper-Growth Is Dangerous and Causes Burnout
“The bigger, the faster, the better, and I think that that is a dangerous thing. I think that, that we need to monitor how obsessed we are with how fast we grow, because it's a dangerous thing to be moving so quickly, and it's stressful, and it challenges your …”