Creating an Engaging and Equitable Workplace with Earth Rated's Abby Gnanendran

Abby Gnanendran is the CEO and co-founder of Earth Rated, a B Corp-certified company that provides dog lovers with eco-friendly poop bags. In this Snippets episode, Abby tells us how Earth Rated grew from a direct-to-consumer ‘pet project’ to serving 4.5 million people daily worldwide.

Earth Rated stands out with its dedication to a supportive, performance-driven work environment. Abby and Leon discuss leading with integrity and why creating a workplace that feels more comfortable than the home is a smart and equitable business investment.

If you’re interested in our Snippets podcasts or The Way Forward live webcasts, please take a moment and visit us at peo-leadership.com. Guests have included Morgan Housel, Professor Janice Stein,and Harvard’s Rosabeth Kantor. We’ve covered such topics as growth, uncertainty, mental health, leadership, the new world, and a host of others. 

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Transcript

Special thanks to Focus Asset Management for helping us bring you today's PEO Leadership Snippets Podcast.

Welcome to our Snippets Podcast. I'm Leon Goren, CEO and president of PEO Leadership: North America's premier peer-to-peer network and leadership advisory firm. Today, I'm very excited to have Abby Gnanendran, the CEO of Earth Rated. If you own a dog, you know who Earth Rated is. In fact, four and a half million people use Earth Rated poop bags every day in 40-plus countries. The company's a certified B Corporation and employs 72 People with his head office located in Montreal. Abby recently joined PEO Leadership and as part of an entrepreneur group led by Miguel Gonsalves, been an awesome addition to the group and the greater PEO Leadership community. Abby, it's great to have you with us today. 

Thank you, Leon. It's my pleasure. 

So I thought we'd just kick it off. You have the company founded in 2009. Give us a little bit of background and what inspired you to co-found it back then. 

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a strange business. Everybody asks me this question. So the company started in 2009. But the idea came about, I would say, a couple of years before that. Not really an idea, but the need for it came about a couple of years before that. So my wife and I, we've been living together since we were in our 20s. And we were living downtown at that time. And then at one point, we had a wiener dog and my wife comes to me with this cute little bag to pick up poop. And I said, what do you do in that time, you'd go to a grocery store, and you'd grab as many bags as you want, and nobody questioned anything, right? So she's like, Yeah, but it's cute. It's convenient. And I asked her how much she paid. And, you know, it came, I feel like almost 50 cents a bag. So this is absurd. Like, you can't take free bags and pay 50 cents, because it's cute, then, you know, I didn't think much of it, because she still kept doing it here and there. And, you know, fast forward a couple years later, my original partner at that time was a fantastic graphic design that I used. And he was heavily involved in, you know, the shelters and the pet space, by our excellent at my dog at that time. And I said, Listen, you know, there was this time my wife kept buying these bags, I found some suppliers that could potentially make it for us significantly better. They've got this compostable bags that they're doing for traditional bags, and I think we can make it for poop bags. And you know, they've got this other stuff with biodegradability. Do you want to do something with me, so we kind of started off as like, it was really literally a pet project, you know, we put it maybe seven and a half thousand dollars each. We set it up, we called it poopbags.ca. It was a direct-to-consumer business, believe it or not, 2009 direct to consumer, not retail, no distribution, nothing. So we launched this website. And we have this little nifty thing, you know, just to get people hooked into it, it says free samples, if you want to take a look at our bags or touch our bags, we give you a free sample. So you know, we expect either one or two of these to come through. But we ended up on one of those coupon websites, you know, like people that just free stuff. We've got 1000s and 1000s overnight, and I'm like, you know, and I made that call at that time. They're like, You know what, we're gonna send everybody sample. And you don't have my parents, my sisters, everybody helping me, you know, we unroll the bags, because we don't want to ship them in, in a box that we unrolled the bags, put them in an envelope, put them a little gift card, like, you know, coupon. And that's literally how we launched the business. And then a couple of months later, we had retailers, because we you know, at that time with Google AdWords, we would only go after cities that we can ship relatively easy, right? We didn't want to ship from Montreal all the way to Vancouver. So we're really targeted Ontario, Quebec. So we had stores in Ontario, Quebec, calling and saying, Hey, I've got customers coming in with this product. I'd like to carry you. And I said, Well, I don't know how to sell to you, you know, we're a direct to consumer business. Our products are quite bulky, they're made for like a year's worth, no one's gonna buy a year's worth of retail. So as more of these conversations started coming on, I said, Look, I think we've got to pivot this business and stop with a direct to consumer, it's very time consuming. And let's, let's see what retail is like. In September of that year, there was a tradeshow in Mississauga. At that time, it was like the biggest thing for us. And now I look at it, it's probably one of the smallest trade shows that we do now. So we we put this booth together scrappy, you know, like, we didn't have a lot of money, put it together, we go out there, and we start talking to people, and we signed up about 150 retailers that day, which was a big thing. So that was pretty much the end of our direct to consumer business. We focus really retail and distribution. And then three years later, we kind of did the same thing. We did our first tradeshow in the US. And then ever since then, we've just been gobbling up kind of market share and where we go. So now we're close to 40 countries. And you know, last I checked, we were probably got six, seven more countries to add to that, that the team was really working on like they just signed on Australia. In a nutshell. That's the story predominantly now up to 80% of our business is the poop bags and 20% of the businesses the wipes, which we launched two years ago. So we've literally been a single SKU company for a better part of 10 years.

It's an amazing story. Like I mean, you think about how many single-use item companies can survive, they get the lift, and then that's it. And you guys, I mean, it's 13, 14 years already. 

Yeah.

Are most of your sales south of the border now? Or? 

Yeah, absolutely. I would say 60% of our business is the US actually started 50% of our business in the US. 10% in Canada, and then the rest in the UK is a big market for us. And then it just starts spreading out towards the rest of the countries. And as you've grown, you know, one thing that hits me, do you ever think about expanding your skew? I know you have a couple of you have the way. So yeah, so we we've probably hit a plateau or so it's not a plateau. But we've kind of we're everywhere we need to be right where I target were at Walmart with Petco and PetSmart. So we've hit that plateau. And we we have a strong, you know, high market share concentration. So we started really building up a team to work on the innovation pipeline. So prior to this, probably about a year ago, there was nobody else working on innovation. And next up for myself by the book, he has an idea. Let's test it out, let's put it through whether or not there was data to back it or not. That's we just went with it. So I hired an amazing Director of Innovation last year, and we put together a team of six people, now we've got an innovation center, we opened up as well. So we've got an exciting pipeline coming out. So we want to stay mostly consumable, because that's, that's what we're good at. We were good at getting people into our brand. And we get to we make great products that people didn't think they really needed. And we put a lot of innovation into the simplest of things. And once people are in there, they're stuck with us for like literally, no, I believe I'm one of those customers, right? You can't you can't give it up. And you're always like, where do I get it? All right, so brings me back to you talk about the innovation person. So I go into Glassdoor and I want to hear about your culture. And I hear about your people. I start reading things there. And it's absolutely fantastic. I hear where it's like exceptional team incredible energy products that can be we can be proud of oh my god, yes. Amazing place to work. And I read also something as part of your starter kit, you get airpods. Is that right? 

Yeah. That made it on glass door? 

Yeah. And I know you got airpods on now. I'm like, I've never heard of that. No company does that.

So I think it's very unique. I think there's two things about the culture, I think, you know, I'll go back and talk about the people side first. And, you know, like, I was talking to you earlier, and I said, I, I was born in Sri Lanka, I came here when I was five, we weren't really that well off in Sri Lanka by any means. But, you know, by Sri Lankan standards, we were okay. You know, but with the the Civil War, we moved out, and my parents worked factory jobs, all their lives, you know, my dad washed dishes as second jobs. And I would always hear, you know, money was always a thing that was talked about, and you could tell that was one of those things that people struggled about. But outside of that is I didn't understand how people can be treated badly. Right, I think somebody that works for you can be treated so badly. And I would say, you know, later part of my lives, and I, you know, my dad stuck around at this one warehouse for 15 years, and, and the owner of that company wasn't rich by any means was a Jewish man. But I still remember he, you know, you barely knew me, he sent me an envelope with, you know, 100 bucks for my wedding. He was there at my grandmother's funeral. And people like that, I kind of had an influence in me. And I said, Well, that's how business should be. Right. Right. And so I, you know, in the earlier part of the days, I would put this lens of, how would I How would I want my parents treated? So I think when you kind of look at it that way, it's really easy to make decisions. Obviously, I you know, profitability matters. But I think if you have to sacrifice how you treat people for profitability, then maybe their business shouldn't be sustaining whatsoever, right. So I would say the early parts, that's how I built the core of how we treat people. And obviously, as you grow, you got to, you know, performance comes into play, and you've got all those other things. So we've been, we've been able to scale that successfully, but also implementing, you know, some of the more important rigors that we need as a company. And the other part about the perks and stuff. So I'm very much a, an experienced person. And, and I think it's more fun to share experience with people than it is to do it alone. So I mean, my friends will tell you, I'll take them to the best restaurants, I'll take them to other cool things, because I want them to experience some of the things that I experienced in life. Part of the airpods is whatever, you know, like we have an open concept office. It's a beautiful office. And we've got tons of awards for this office, because part of creating the office was how, you know, when you spend eight hours a day you want this place to be more comfortable than your home. And that's what we adapted to. Right. So one of the things that comes with it is with no concept is there's noise right so how do you Make sure people are comfortable. So everybody gets AirPods when they start. And part of also, having the best tools is also you understand the value of great things. And then you're like, well we put out could be great because all we touch is great things every day. Right? So, so it you know, people kind of, you know, people go out and they're like, man, it's kind of freaky, everything's organized, everything looks good. And I said, well, that's kind of how I want it to be. That's the essence. Because, you know, that's how we put out stuff. It's, it's an extension of how we're living here.

So it's funny, I got to ask you this question, because I sit in all these groups. So he never was talking about people coming back to work coming back to the office, the hybrid, what's your office? Like? Do you have even these issues?

No, we don't have these issues. So early on, during the pandemic, when we were like five people, you know, I started catering lunches, and we started catering lunches, and now it's a full time thing. So we've got full time catered lunch every day. It's a taxable benefit, yes, but we pay out of pocket. And everybody gets, you know, from whatever dietary restrictions to you know, everybody gets catered lunch, that's fresh fruits, there's desserts, there's everything. During the pandemic, I work out every day, and I couldn't work out. So there was this gym that closed down during the pandemic. And I said, Listen, can I pay half the rent, and I just want the gym for myself. So I kind of did that. And I loved it. And I said, Well, how can I? How can I offer this to my employees? Again, it's an experiencing, I'm like, Hey, IV likes this, I think other people would like it. So you know, with that comes a struggle, you know, talking to my partners, hey, I want to build a gym. So I built the gym, I built this incredible gym, well done basketball courts, it's five minute walking distance from here, we've got twice a week yoga, we have five days functional training, and we have three other days of like high intensity training. So it's, it's all part of the culture. And I think it's, you know, when people are happy people are energized. And, you know, exercise is really fundamental for I think, a clear head, right, I think you can be going through a lot of stuff. But just that physical exercise gives you that that endorphin kick to really get you through your day. So I see people, you know, they they're at the gym at noon, or you know, grabbing lunch, and they get back to work, some people work out at night. So it's part of the whole experience. And when you have all of that, and then you give people the flexibility, you know, we've got, we've got mothers, we've got people with kids, sick family members, whatever. And you give those people the opportunity to work work around their schedule, for the most part, you get everybody's here. And the only hard exception to that we make is like today, the office is empty, as we call it, focus Fridays. So focus Fridays is work. Don't schedule any meetings, and let people really wrap up their week. You know, like, you know, when you're annoying, especially in a young organization like us, we've got slack, we've got emails, we've had, you know, Google meats, and everything going on. So we kind of wanted to say, Look, don't make any of those meetings, don't do any of that. Fridays work from wherever you want. And you know, clock out whenever you want. So that's been something that's been really successful, then that's how I found my middle ground.

It sounds fantastic. Like I was just listening to you talk. And I just think about young people, I think of anybody actually working in your environment, and it'd be an unbelievable environment. So kudos for you for that. My last question, because I know we're so tight on time. And I can keep going here. But you're certified B Corp.  Motivation, and what was involved? And was it worthwhile at the end of the day?

Absolutely. So again, I think up until deep core, and us talking about those things. So again, I've been you know, humble beginnings, right? What, when you do something good, you don't want to brag, but you know, when when I have a team joining in, you know, my CMO, and all these people, they're like, what you do all these great things, but nobody knows about it. I said, Yeah, but why should people know about I do it, because that's the right thing to do. So part of B Corp is to really showcase the great work we're doing. So we're like, Hey, we're doing all these things. And it's an organization that will hold us accountable, and actually help us find ways to improve. So it was a lot of work. And then it's not like you do it once and you start it's every two years, you've got to, you've got to make sure that you know, when the new standards come in, you got to be able to say, Okay, what have we achieved this? Or are we not, and there's definitely been gaps that we found, we were able to improve. So my partner Monica really spearheaded that and she put a lot of work in and then it becomes a really a cross functional thing. So we've got team members from every department that are part of the B Corp. Program. 

Well, Abby, thanks so much for taking the time to join us and sharing some of those insights. I mean, they're extremely valuable. And I'm sure some of the members are actually going to grab a couple of your thoughts here.

I think it's great. And if I can influence some people, you know, like I've been influenced, you know, like I said, with some of the bosses my parents have, I think that's where capitali sm should ultimately go to right if you have to find that middle ground. You know, it's not it's not profit at all expense, and-

It's finding purpose, right, and meaning and making a difference to people who are working with you. No, it's awesome. If you're interested in our live webcasts, the Way Forward live and or any of our Snippets, please take a moment and visit us at peo-leadership.com. You'll see some highlights on our live web taken from the conferences. You'll also see Morgan Housel, Professor Janice Stein, we have Harvard's Rosabeth Kanter. The list goes on as we cover topics such as growth, uncertainty, mental health, leadership, the new world and a host of others. Thank you for joining us today and we look forward to seeing you again shortly.

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