Amelia Gammon

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 how they managed to achieve that? Listen to this episode to find out more.

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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. 

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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.

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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)

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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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Transcript of the episode

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Maiko Schaffrath  00:02

You are listening to Impact Hustlers, and I am your host, Maiko Schaffrath. I have made it my mission to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to solve some of the world's biggest social and environmental problems. And for this reason, I am speaking to some of the best entrepreneurs out there who are solving problems such as food waste, climate change, poverty, and homelessness. My goal is that Impact Hustlers will inspire you, either by starting an impact business yourself, by joining the team of one, or by taking a small step, whatever that may be, towards being part of the solution to the world's biggest problems. On today's episode, I speak to Amelia Gammon, the founder of Bide, a sustainable cleaning products brand. While there's a number of companies in that space, Bide has found a model that increases the company's impact in a very unique way. As opposed to other companies in the space, Bide doesn't run factory-scale production lines. Instead, it's leveraging a network of home manufacturers who make Bide products in the comfort of their homes and are able to make a living. This opens up a range of opportunities to people that have previously often been unable to work due to health conditions or their personal circumstances, and it's great to have Amelia on the show to talk about this. Thanks for joining.

Amelia Gammon  01:29

Thank you very much for having me.

Maiko Schaffrath  01:31

Thank you so much. I'd like to start with your personal story. Tell us a bit more about yourself and the values that drive what you do and how that got you to Bide.

Amelia Gammon  01:46

Yeah, sure. So, I'll take you back to probably my early roots. So, as a small child, I always had an interest in my local community and people in the area. And when I was going through school, I actually worked in residential care homes to fund my education. But somehow, I forgot that social part of my being as I started my career. So, I spent the last 20 years in media building out direct consumer subscription services, flying all over the world, making lots of money for people who perhaps don't really deserve to have lots of money made for them. Monday to Friday, consummate businesswoman, come the weekend, closet hippie and lover of people. And I came of an age, I guess, when I was just thinking, "Okay, I need these two worlds to collide." It really was the climate and the pandemic that changed everything for me, because it's something, Bide has been at the back of my mind, something that I've really thought about and planned for some time, but it was the pandemic that gave me that boot and that kick to say, "Come on, now's the time. Just get on with it." So, it's something that has been part of me for some time and finally, it's come to this fruition. For me, Bide answers two passion points for me, which is the planet and the people that inhabit it.

Maiko Schaffrath  03:03

Got it. Amazing. Well, let's go to that moment. I think you started Bide officially around early 2020, just when the pandemic was starting. You just said that idea was already in your head for a while. Talk us through that moment. What was it about the pandemic that got you to start this company, and how did you start initially?

Amelia Gammon  03:28

Yeah, I've really enjoyed a career. It's been very successful for me. And as a result, I was trapped in this rat race. When the pandemic hit, I actually lost the job that I had at the time, and I saw that the world had stood still and wasn't moving anymore. I thought, "Okay, I could try something, and I could fail it, and no one would really notice, so now's the time to do it, because with everybody in lockdown, I could really use this as an experiment to see if this really had legs." And it was very surprising to me the speed at which it picked up. I incorporated in March 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic, and by the time we got to July 2020, we had an entire product range. And then, we went to market in August. So, it was a very steep and fast process to get from incorporation to live market, and I wasn't expecting it to go at that speed. But for me, the starting point was originally, I wanted Bide to be a subscription service that curated other people's goods that they made. But when I looked into the heritage of those goods, I realized that not only they weren't as environmentally sound as they portrayed, but they had no social impact, and that's really the two value systems that I'm really trying to espouse. And so, we started forming our home manufacturing network. The home manufacturing network started with me at my kitchen table. I formulated all the products that we currently offer. And then, I started training women in my community in how to make these goods in their own home. Eventually, the home manufacturing network grew and grew and grew. Currently, we have 31 women actively making our eco cleaning products, but we have 142 women waiting to join our system. And if you look at all the media headlines at the moment, they're saying there's a shortage of workers, yet we're oversubscribed with workers, and the reason for that is that our home manufacturing network removes the barriers for historically marginalized women to get work.

Maiko Schaffrath  05:31

We'll get into that home manufacturers network, which I love the concept of. We'll get into that in a second. But also focusing a little bit more on those early days, you said initially, you wanted to actually do a subscription box with sustainable products, and you couldn't just find enough products that were matching your standards. That was the first thing and then I think, is it right that as a second step, you actually tried to manufacture yourself but go the traditional route of finding a manufacturing partner and had a similar experience there, again, that you struggled to really find a partner with the same standards as yourself?

Amelia Gammon  06:15

I mean, I probably put a pretty lofty set of expectations as to what I expected a manufacturer to adhere to. What was really important to me is that I could find a manufacturing partner that would have renewable energy supply, that treated their workers in a really fair and equitable way, that didn't encourage the production of toxic chemicals or non-biodegradable ingredients, and there isn't a manufacturer that exists in that way. The big question for me is, 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? And so, that's why I decided to move away from conventional manufacturing. Instead of making our products in factories as you rightly said, we brought factories into people's homes.

Maiko Schaffrath  07:02

I watched a previous interview of yours to prepare for this, and I think one thing that struck me is that you seem very principled. Even on Impact Hustlers, I talk to founders of social impact companies all the time, and they tend to be very principled in what they do. That's why I'm focused on these topics. You seem very strict with these things in a good way of making sure that the highest standards are met, especially if you're branding your products as sustainable, that you want to make sure that actually... I can imagine, though, that this can be very challenging, especially in the early days.  You want to have these high standards, and everybody that can help you out there is not necessarily following the same standards. How was that at the time and how did you then navigate that?

Amelia Gammon  07:58

Yeah, it's a real challenge. I think one of the things that's helped me is the fact that I've walked the walk before I talked the talk. I left London three years ago and bought an old chapel in the countryside, and I've converted it into an eco-home, and we live a plastic-free existence like grow our own food and I've gone through that process. I knew that what Bide had to do was produce goods that enable consumers to live sustainably in very, very simple steps, but those very high standards that you've described meant that I was always setting myself a challenge when I thought about strategic partnerships, investment, the type of companies that we use as suppliers, but I'm really driven by my conviction that better business is the way forward for business, and it actually has to be very revolutionary in the way that it's being better business. And so, I was challenged from some advisors and some early stage angels saying, "At some point, you're going to have to compromise, Amelia, with some of these standards," and I said, "No, if anyone asks me to compromise, then they're not the right partner for this business." It takes a lot of guts and confidence, and you have to keep reminding yourself why you're doing this to be able to stand up and say no, but it's something that I absolutely uphold and will stick to for the rest of the journey for Bide.

Maiko Schaffrath  09:14

Love it. Alright, let's talk a little bit about how you arrived at a home manufacturing network and how it actually works in detail. I assume lots of conventional investors and angels will probably also advise you not to do that, what you did. Obviously, you're dealing with a lot of individuals. They all have to stick to certain standards. "How do you ensure quality? How's that even financially possible? That doesn't make sense. You should just build your own manufacturing." I'm sure that type of advice has come your way before. So, how did you start initially and then how is your view on those points since you've been working with this model for quite a while now?

Amelia Gammon  10:00

Well, actually, do you know what? Let me ask that question in reverse. The vision for Bide is actually to be the future of work for unskilled labor. What we've been talking about so far, our eco cleaning range, is really just the tip of the iceberg of what we're trying to do. There is a huge available workforce that's underutilized on a worldwide scale. 45% of jobs globally are unskilled, yet when we think about innovation, and particularly when you look at the amount of investments at the moment and future of work, it's all related to HR applications, the creative economy, and all of these things are really expecting that the individual they're catering for is highly educated or has the wherewithal or the money to be a self-starter, and that completely forgets about a really significant proportion of our communities. And so, Bide is tapping into that. On a bigger vision, Bide is going to answer that problem of unskilled labor. How that then started was, as I described me at the kitchen table making cleaning products, teaching a few other women how to do it, and then creating a formulation that is almost foolproof. All of our recipes are made with a bowl and a whisk or a spoon. There's no complex machinery, so they can be done with normal kitchen essential tools that you would have in your household. That means from an accuracy and quality of control process, we're not asking for a huge amount of complexity. Therefore, there's less margin for error. We also spot check all of the batches that our home manufacturers make so that we can check what's going through. But yes, you're right. Investors do ask me, "Wouldn't it be much easier for you to go into factories?," but the whole point of what we're doing is not only are we creating an answer to a massive social problem, which is the growing space between the wealthy and those on the poverty line, we're also removing barriers that have stopped normally women or women with convictions, women who are disabled, single mothers from getting work. We're also creating a value system for our customers, because the people that buy Bide products are buying our products, one, because of their environmental kudos, but secondly, because they have real impact on the people that are making those products for our end users.

Maiko Schaffrath  12:17

Amazing. Let's talk about some of those people in your manufacturing network. Who are these people typically? Does that even exist as a typical home manufacturer? What type of people are in your network and do this?

Amelia Gammon  12:35

Yeah, sure. We actually have grown our home manufacturing network organically, and a lot of it is driven by word of mouth. 100% of our home manufacturers are women. We don't stipulate that, but I think it's just a reflection of the pain point that we answer. These are women, 80% of them are single mothers, 90% of them on universal credit. There are women with convictions. There are women with disabilities. We have some women who are refugees. We have some that live in refuges. The joy of our Bide model is the fact that we bring everything to them. They don't even need to leave their homes. In the height of pandemic, when everyone else was saying they've got supply chain issues, we were celebrating because there was no issue for us whatsoever. Everybody went in lockdown, but that didn't affect our manufacturing process, because everything happens in their home. We supply them with the raw ingredients and the packaging and the training for them to make the goods, and then we collect them from their houses when they're completed.

Maiko Schaffrath  13:35

Oh, wow. And then, do you still have some sort of central, let's say, warehouse or something or some sort of central supply chain, I guess, for the ingredients? How does that work?

Amelia Gammon  13:49

Yes, we actually have different modes of at home manufacturers. They achieve different stages depending on the longevity or the number of batches they've produced. The more batches someone produces and the more proficient they are, we can highlight they're somebody that could supply directly to our retail partners, for example, and they receive raw ingredients directly to their homes. For some home manufacturers that we're onboarding and they're going through their first couple of batches, then everything that gets sent to them comes from our central fulfillment center, and all of the goods collected from them come back to that fulfillment center for spot-checking. As we grow, we're going to launch more regional hubs around the whole of the UK, so that that distribution of fulfillment is happening within a 30- to 40-square mile radius of production and consumption.

Maiko Schaffrath  14:35

Got it. Amazing. I think it's rare to come across founders that have a true triple bottom line business with a very clear environmental mission, with a clear social mission, and also with a clear mission to make this economically sustainable as a business. I'm wondering, has this been your intention from day one or has it evolved over time? How did you evolve the business over time in terms of having the social impact mission, but also the environmental focus on your product?

Amelia Gammon  15:15

Yeah, I mean, the environmental mission was definitely the first driver and then the social impact came soon after when I was looking into the heritage of the production of other goods. My background is developing subscription services, and I have a very sound understanding of what good consumer ecommerce models look like, and I knew that although we have this wonderful value system, it needed to be in a very successful and easy to implement, end-to-consumer business offering, because the only way we can truly have impact as if we are financially successful, and that's really what's driven the business model. I would say, although the environmental value came first followed quickly by the social impact, the idea of what the business model was going to encapsulate, and the success of the company has always been there from the outset.

Maiko Schaffrath  16:04

Got it. And do you ever feel there was some sort of challenge of bringing all those three factors to gather or making sure that they are not a trade-off against each other if you're optimizing for one that you'll have to neglect another one, or has that always been relatively straightforward for you to implement that?

Amelia Gammon  16:27

It's been relatively straightforward to implement. I think the only real challenge that I've had is on prices. The other part just to add extra challenge to myself was that I wanted our goods to be affordable, and more often than not, green consumer goods have this hefty price tag attached to them. How on earth are we expected to address the climate crisis if sustainable goods are only affordable to the wealthy or the middle class? It shouldn't be a middle-class privilege to be able to act sustainably, and that actually has created the biggest challenge for us, is making sure that we're always maintaining a healthy margin, keeping our costs down on the raw ingredients sourcing in order that we can have this affordable pricing for the consumer, and I think that's probably the biggest challenge that we've met so far.

Maiko Schaffrath  17:12

And then, in terms of selling those products, how are you mainly selling that? Is it a purely direct-to-consumer through your website? How are your channels at the moment?

Amelia Gammon  17:23

Yeah, so the main driver is through our own website on a B2C basis. We have subscription as well as Mailcart transactions, and we're pushing more towards subscription as we grow our foundation of user reviews and user experience. We also sell on a B2B basis to refill stores and to other ecommerce sites. And we were selected by eBay to be part of that eBay for Change Program, which is the social impact initiative, which means that we've got an anchor store on eBay, and they support us through advertising.

Maiko Schaffrath  17:55

Amazing. Yeah, I think I came across one of the videos that was produced as part of that as well, which is great and amazing storytelling as well to hear about your journey, how you talk about it as well. That's great. Yeah, I think I'd love to move towards some of the lessons learned and the challenges that you faced. We have entrepreneurs listening to this podcast that may be at the point that you were at the beginning in March 2020. The first interesting point was that you really took the leap to do this being faced with the difficulties of lockdown starting and losing your job. I think that's probably a whole theme that we can talk about. But from that day, I assume it was the first company that you actually started. You're a first-time founder with Bide. What has been the biggest challenge since that day that you lost your job and you started focusing on Bide? Is there anything that jumps out or one of the big themes that has been challenging since then?

Amelia Gammon  19:12

Yeah, I mean, I think although I am a first-time founder, I've been fortunate I have worked in startups before. So, I've had a bit of a sneak preview of what the experience might be. People have warned me, "This is an uphill battle. You're going to constantly feel like you're in a marathon and every time you think you've got to the peak, you realize the mountain top's even higher in the next stage," and that's completely true. Having lost my job, it was also very hard to go from being paid well, having a specialism that I had to look after to suddenly being a generalist and having to just hustle and bootstrap everything, and everything is constantly all hands to deck. You have so many different roles when you start a company. You are the marketer, and you're the chief financier, and you are the product designer, and you're the website creator. Having multiple roles was definitely a challenge, and I think you just need to remember that actually, everybody's in the same boat. From an outside point of view, it might look like everything's going smoothly and swimmingly, but all entrepreneurs go through this experience of bootstrapping, and hustling, and juggling lots of many things at once.

Maiko Schaffrath  20:23

In the early days, how did you actually go about it? Did you look for people to support you or even co-found the business with you? Did you look for investment? Or did you just bootstrap and start selling product? How did you tackle this?

Amelia Gammon  20:39

Well, the way that I saw it is that what I'm expecting people to understand and invest in is a very new and quite complex venture, and I wanted to make sure that I could get something out to market to demonstrate there was a consumer appetite for this, and also that there was a good supply chain for the type of manufacturing that we're doing. I always knew from the outset that I wanted to get something going before I sought for investment. I had the support. I found some other people to join me. I certainly founded it on my own. And within about six months, I found some friends to come and support me in different operational roles all working for sweat equity. But we did a crowdfunding campaign at the beginning of last year, and that really was the traction driver that we needed to be able to demonstrate to some first-time investors in Bide that we had what consumers were looking for. And so, we raised £22,000 over a three-week period using an IndieGoGo crowdfunding initiative. And on the back of that, we got our first wave of angel investors.

Maiko Schaffrath  21:44

Got it. So, the crowdfunding campaign was the first investment that you got into the business and on the back of that, you managed to convince a few angels to put some money on top of that. Is that right? Yeah. I think with every founder I've spoken with that has run crowdfunding campaigns, I think if somebody hasn't done it yet, people sometimes think, "Okay, I'll just launch on the platform, and they have a lot of people that then they guide my way, and then suddenly, we'll have investment." It's a lot of hassle on your part. I assume that was the case for you, from people I've spoken with, to actually convince people one by one to run marketing campaigns, make sure that people invest. Did you have to do that and how did you approach that when you didn't really have that much yet, you were just starting out and you were trying to raise funding?

Amelia Gammon  22:40

Yeah, so I actually contacted other companies that I'd seen on IndieGoGo and some of the other crowdfunding campaigns and had chats with them saying, "How did it go for you? What planning did you wish you had done in advance?," and conducted a lot of research. The planning for the crowdfunding campaign happened in January, and we launched in April. So, there was a lot of time in advance for planning every single thing through to updates and alerts and Instagram Live stunts, and we had a pop-up shop in in Oxford Street in London. Everything was planned down to the tee. But it's the most nerve wracking moment when you first make it live and you say, "Okay, is the hard work that we've done paying off?" But what was exhausting about the process is that you had to keep on keeping on every single day. And every single day, you have to keep jumping on to Instagram Live and saying, "This is how much we've done. Keep going. Time's running out." And so, at the end of the period, when we closed the crowdfunding campaign and we exceeded our target, I was probably in a bed for about a week afterwards, because it's a relentless and exhausting process to go through but very worthwhile. Not only does it show how consumers respond to what you're building, but for any potential investors to know that a founder has the ability to not only plan, execute, and over-succeed on their goals, it's a really great way in a very short timeframe of demonstrating you're the type of founder to back.

Maiko Schaffrath  24:12

Got it. And you said you ran it on IndieGoGo, so I assume it was basically a rewards-based crowdfunding where people could almost preorder a product or get products as a reward for their pledge. Is that right?

Amelia Gammon  24:26

That's right. That's absolutely right. Yeah, they could either buy individual boxes or they could subscribe for up to five years. We've got a number of subscribers off the back of that who will be with us for some time to come.

Maiko Schaffrath  24:38

Got it. And then on the back of that, you started looking for angel investors. Did you already have some people in your network, or did you start from scratch with that? How did you approach that at the time?

Amelia Gammon  24:50

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. Often, when you talk to VCs in particular and they ask you about your friends and family around, there is a real assumption that you have friends and family with money, which isn't actually the case in my personal situation. I didn't have an immediate network of people that had cash available to them. Actually, it's the crowdfunding campaign that drew a lot of attention, especially through LinkedIn. People who've been connected to my network professionally in the past saw what I was doing, saw the success that we had had with the crowdfunding campaign and actually came forward and said, "Look, we want to be a part of this journey." So, I was very fortunate that those events happened and generated that interest, because there wasn't that immediate availability of capital from my friends and families as people like to think [there] is.

Maiko Schaffrath  25:33

Got it. So, out of that whole journey from starting by yourself, developing the product in your kitchen yourself to running this crowdfunding campaign, getting outside investment, what would your advice be to founders in a similar space at a similar stage in terms of either, should they be following a similar approach where crowdfunding is a really good route to take, or do you wish you would have spoken to investors earlier, or just focused on selling products? Are there any lessons you took away from that process?

Amelia Gammon  26:20

I think it really depends on what it is that you're developing. For me within the consumer product space, having previously launched, I guess, my first initial launch which you could call a soft beta, because although our products were available it publicly through our ecommerce sites, we didn't push them. We had no paid media marketing, so it was all organic growth. That period of time, which was approximately six months before we did the crowdfunding campaign, allowed us to iterate our product offering based on consumer feedback. So, when we went out with the crowdfunding campaign, it wasn't the first time that we had exposed ourselves to consumers. We'd already had a relationship with them, and I think that really helps, because it means that you've already have feedback, you understand what it is they dislike or like about the product that you're offering, and you can tweak your crowdfunding campaign in that way. For me, doing the crowdfunding campaign before approaching investors gave me the ammunition to say, "Look, we know that if we expose our brand to a large number of customers, they will transact with us." I feel that if I had gone and talked to investors before doing that, there was very little traction for me to demonstrate why they should put their money into backing our business.

Maiko Schaffrath  27:31

Really good advice. I think I see a lot of first-time founders trying to raise investment too early and wasting a lot of time, frankly. Obviously, yeah, again, like as you say, not everybody has the friends and family that can wire you a couple hundred thousand pounds, which is yeah, one of the structural issues in the whole startup space, I think, because basically, if you don't have that, it means either you're pressured to seek investment too early which will mostly lose you a lot of time, or you have to bootstrap, start selling presales, run a crowd fund like you did. So, yeah, but really good advice to also know that investors are looking for some sort of validation already and some sort of traction that they can use to justify investing in you. Yeah, got it. So, you've grown quite a bit since then. Maybe talk me through where you're at today with the business and what your plans are, let's say, for the next couple of years.

Amelia Gammon  28:41

Absolutely. We bootstrapped. We've only been running for a year and a half. Ethical Consumer Magazine rated us the highest rating for eco and ethical credentials for each of our cleaning products. We are number one in the UK now for all of our cleaning products, which is incredible. We've had fantastic PR support. Journalists love writing about us because of the story, particularly the social impact part of our business. We have over 2,000 customers. We have a very high return rate. People keep coming back. Our subscriber growth is growing month on month. We still don't have paid media. We're not spending any money on marketing right now. We can't compete with the big boys in this time period, particularly in the run up to Black Friday and Christmas, but what we are seeing is that our organic growth is having significant impact not only on our brand awareness, but also in our product ratings that you can see on Trustpilot. But as I described earlier, this really is just the beginning of a much bigger journey for buyers. We are not just going to stay within cleaning products. We're going to have new product verticals that are going to start seeding next year, as we start to offer more sustainable options around the home. We're also going to expand into new markets, and we're building out a big tech infrastructure next year that will enable us to onboard home manufacturers at scale, in order for us to be able to grow our proposition internationally. But also, in the future, it's probable that we'll onboard third-party products and become a decentralized environmentally-sound manufacturing solution for other brands.

Maiko Schaffrath  30:17

Got it. Love it. I'd love to see what products you will come up with in the future. In terms of your model, one of the thoughts I had when preparing for this was that there's been a bunch of companies out there that have, let's say, how would you call it, maybe more crowdsourced sales models. There's a bunch of companies like Tupperware where they provide a product, and then they have a lot of people basically working for them to sell the products or basically independent people that can do that, and I haven't seen that much on the production side, which you're doing. Do you think the people producing products could also become the ones selling it for you in the future? Is that something you've thought about? Or at the moment, do you think your model works quite well?

Amelia Gammon  31:13

They already are. There are two revenue stream relationships that we have with our home manufacturers. The first is that we pay them for the goods produced, which backs into a minimum of £10 an hour, but on average, they're earning between £11, and some of them as much as £18-£19 an hour. It means that there's no cap on their earnings. So, the more proficient and speedy they become at producing their goods, the more they earn. And then, the second revenue stream is that we have an affiliate scheme. Every home manufacturer that becomes part of our network has their own affiliate link, so they can sell our goods to their friends and community members. And the beauty of that is that we can become hyperlocal in our approach, because these home manufacturers are effectively producing the goods that their neighbors then buy and consume. So, it means that 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.

Maiko Schaffrath  32:09

Love it. I love that, and I'd love to see how that grows. It's almost a really accessible way of being a franchisee in some way. It's just that you don't have to invest loads of money to get started.

Amelia Gammon  32:25

On that note, it's a really, really important point because there are so many MLM schemes and pyramid schemes that are targeting disadvantaged people, and they are putting them in awful financial situations, which is the complete antithesis of everything that Bide stands for. So, nobody buys into our system. In fact, we pay them to be part of our system, and not only does that mean we engender a huge amount of loyalty and passion from this whole manufacturing network, they're also the best possible people to sell our products on to their friends and family and local communities, because they've made it, so they're proud to be able to represent what they're doing.

Maiko Schaffrath  33:03

Amazing. One last question to you. How do you think the world will look like in 10 years if Bide succeeds? If you continue to succeed, how does the world look like?

Amelia Gammon  33:14

The world according to Bide?

Maiko Schaffrath  33:16

Yes.

Amelia Gammon  33:19

Well, I mean what I would love for us to see is that Bide becomes a kitemark on the back of consumer goods to demonstrate that something has been made in the most environmentally and ethically sound way. For us, Bide represents a brand that is always thinking about our impact on the planet and always thinking about how we can further change for people around the world. And so, 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.

Maiko Schaffrath  33:48

Love it. Amelia, thank you so much for sharing your story and your journey. It's great to see you make this massive social and environmental impact at the same time and building a strong company at the same time. Thank you so much for joining and for taking the time today.

Amelia Gammon  34:07

Thank you for your time.