Sustainable Business With Social And Environmental Impact - Amelia Gammon of Bide

Bide is a sustainable company founded by Amelia Gammon that produces eco-cleaning products. Created at the start of the pandemic, Bide uniquely combines the social, environmental, and economical impact all into one. Interested in how they managed to achieve that? Listen to this episode to find out more.

Bide addresses the issue of underutilization of unskilled labor by providing jobs to a heavily marginalized sector of women. Not only that, these women get to work from the comfort of their own homes as they create sustainable and environmentally friendly cleaning products that are crafted to a high standard. Through Bide, these women are able to earn money by making these products and by selling them as well to their friends and family. This then helps people invest money into their local communities. 

Amelia believes that sustainability shouldn’t be a privilege afforded to only those with money, so another good thing is that Bide products are reasonably priced. She also talks about how she bootstrapped the business, started a crowdfunding campaign, and exceeded their target, and how she eventually found investors. Being a first-time founder and having to initially do everything herself was no easy feat, but she managed to get Bide to where it is today, and she shares the lessons she learned from her experiences.

Amelia’s key lessons and quotes from this episode were:

• “How much energy is going into and how many carbon emissions are being produced in the production of something that we are then telling consumers is good for the planet?” (6:42)
• “The vision for Bide is actually to be the future of work for unskilled labor.” (10:06)
• (16:50)
• “Having multiple roles was definitely a challenge, and I think you just need to remember that actually, everybody's in the same boat.” (20:00)
• “Not only are we helping from an environmental footprint, because we're keeping the production and consumption in a really tight circle, from an economical point of view, we're helping to reinvest money into local communities.” (31:58)
• “In 10 years' time, look for Bide on the back of packaging, and you'll know that it's been made in the best possible way.” (33:40)

In this episode, we also talked about:

• How Bide came to be (3:28)
• The Bide business model and the women behind Bide (10:00)
• Crowdfunding and finding investors (20:39) 
• How Bide is doing today and exciting future plans for the business (28:41)
• How their home manufacturers make and sell their own goods (31:13)
• What the world looks like in 10 years if Bide succeeds (33:19)

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