Timberland And Stonyfield Farms--Two Little Guys Showing The Big Guys How It's Done
I was very pleasantly surprised.
Rather than the usual canned answers one often gets from CEOs at these events, both these Red Sox fans proved to be deeply committed, not to selling less shoes or yogurt, but to sustainable consumption and enlightened consumerism as a potential way out of the ecological and societal quicksand in which we find ourselves.
Gary explained that only about half of what we eat is real food, in terms of its nutritional value. For him, sustainable consumption starts with optimizing the food value chain, which will reduce waste and create value simultaneously. The resources we now waste to make Twinkies can actually feed lots of people.
Gary believes that we need enlightened consumers, i.e. a critical mass of organic yogurt eaters to really change the equation. Twenty years ago, when Gary realized this, he started Stonyfield.
Jeff represents the third generation of Swartzes to run Timberland, and has a harder case to make with boots. But he and Gary are on the same program. Timberland's mission is "to equip people to make a difference in their world," which includes showing consumers, employees, other companies, and his children how commerce and justice can go hand in hand.
Timberland works hard to sell boots on the basis of its environmental and social actions. This is "cause marketing," yes, but also a deeper attempt to change consumer preferences by helping people "to be the change they want to see in the world." And, yes, quoting Gandhi is apropos here--Jeff is deeply motivated by spiritual and inter-generational concerns.
I know when I am being sold a bill of goods, and this time I was not. Both of these guys have thought deeply about their actions, and they're not just walking the talk, they're running it. When we finished the panel later that morning, they deserved the prolonged standing ovation they received.
As for me, like some other unenlightened "experts" in sustainability, I had wrongly assumed that smaller companies like Timberland and Stonyfield were sideshows to the main event—that the GEs and GMs of the world would move us forward, not the little guyes. Now I see the role that deeply committed CEOs like Gary and Jeff are playing and I would not be surprised if they had more of an impact, in the long run, than companies that are hundred of times as big.
And that size gap may not last forever. Under Jeff, Timberland has grown from annual revenues of $159 million to $1.6 billion, and the company now competes directly with Nike and Adidas. And while organic foods represent only three percent of the food consumed in the United States, Stonyfield sells six times the amount of yogurt as Kraft foods and is growing every day.
Maybe the answer lies in one of my favorite lines from The West Wing: "They'll like us when we win."
Labels: C-Suite, Gary Hirshberg, Jeff Swartz, Stonyfield Farms, Sustainable Consumption, Timberland
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By 
, on
May 2, 2008 5:26 PM
Hi Andy:
Three questions. Are either Stonyfield's or Timberland'd operations sustainable? If so, what makes you think so, empirically? If not, what are they doing about it, empirically?
Like you, I respect both companies. My questions, however, stand.
Regards,
Mark
By Mark W. McElroy, on
May 3, 2008 11:09 PM
Mark,
I think so. Both companies have grown enormously and even though we can live without organic yogurt or premium hiking boots, as Swartz readily admits,we probably aren't going to. Hirshberg makes a compelling argument on behalf of organics and local farming- that the world is going to have to go there- and thus ties his enterprise to a larger phenomenon which I think is sustainable. Jeff, not so much, but I think as people get increasingly switched on to the need for companies that combine profit and principles, Timberland will thrive in the future.
Hope this is responsive to your question. Thanks for asking.
By , on
May 6, 2008 7:30 AM
Andy:
I guess I don't agree that either company's operations are sustainable -- or at least I have no way of knowing one way or the other from what they publish. And it's not clear to me that you or anyone else does, either. I've looked at both companies' non-financial reports, and I find their metrics lacking in both cases.
It is one thing to report performance, and it is another to report performance against standards of performance. Both companies do the former, to varying degerees, but not the latter. Thus, their sustainability performance is anybody's guess.
Of course, they could report their sustainability performance differently if they wanted to.
Regards,
Mark
By Mark W. McElroy, on
May 6, 2008 7:05 PM
Ok Mark, I'll bite. Tell me the name of a company you think is sustainable, and why
Andy
By , on
May 7, 2008 12:04 AM
Andy:
First, sustainablity is measured relative to impacts on social and ecological conditions in the world. Thus, it should be measured and reported as a function of a company's impacts on such conditions. Since there are arguably hundreds of such conditions of possible interest to us in a sustainability assessment, if not more, it is very unlikely that any company will be able to measure their impacts on all of them. In fact, I'd go so far as to say no company ever has. Strictly speaking, then, none of us has the data required to answer your question in any sort of comprehensive way.
That said, some companies' performance on individual dimensions of sustainability, such as impacts on climate change mitigation, have been measured. Here the standard of performance is to lower or manage emissions such that a company's proportionate impact on mitigating climate change is at least what it ought to be, given the company's prior emissions and size. Contrast this with eco-efficiency principles, which simply tell us to 'lower your emissions', absent any standards of performance, such as 'lower your emissions by at least X'.
By this standard, and for the climate change mitigation dimension of performance only, we've determined that between 2001 and 2005, companies such as BP, BT, Ford, J&J, Shell, and United Technologies all exhibited sustainable performance insofar as their impacts on climate change mitigation was concerned. Of course any company that achieves carbon neutrality will be sustainable on this front, as well, since carbon neutrality will arguably meet any standard of performance involving reductions.
So first you pick an area of impact for analysis; then you identify a standard of performance for it that is grounded in related conditions in the world; then you measure your performance against that standard. Then and only then can you draw conclusions about a company's sustainability performance. My point was to simply observe that neither Timberland nor Stonyfield does any of this. So the sustainability of their performance (along any dimension of analysis) is anybody's guess. They just don't express their performance in those terms. Thus, we have no way of knowing what their sustainability performance happens to be.
Incidentally, the problem I cite here is true of all GRI reports, as well. Call me a nut, but I think this may be the single most important issue in the field of CSR, and something we all ought to be calling attention to and trying to resolve. How can we expect businesses to function sustainably, when most of them have no idea (and no tools or methods) for measuring their actual sustainability performance at all -- past, present, or future?
Regards,
Mark
By Mark W. McElroy, on
May 7, 2008 1:08 PM
Interesting discussion, but pointless. How can any company be sustainable when it has to play according to rules that are unsustainable? No amount of measuring, no matter how precise, is going to change that.
The current state of reporting, while far from perfect, provides the market with a better overall picture of how companies are managed. Corporations should be encouraged to report by making the process EASIER rather than more complex. GRI is a hurdle high enough for most. Anything more anally retentive will be counter-productive.
By Peter T. Knight, on
May 13, 2008 5:43 PM
So is Peter basically saying let's not let the facts get in the way of our sustainability assessments? Moreover, to call something "anally retentive" is not to criticque it; rather, it is to merely engage in gratuitous labeling. You can do better than that, Peter, can't you?
Mark
By Mark W. McElroy, on
May 13, 2008 8:01 PM
This post has been removed by the author.
By 
Kate, on
May 16, 2008 3:01 PM
Thank you, Andy, for what has clearly been a thought-starting post and Mark, for the challenging questions / assertions. I agree with you that although there is a growing breed of well-intended companies out there, far fewer actually have the tools and information necessary to measure the impact of their well-intended efforts correctly and in a meaningful way. It’s something we admittedly struggle with at Timberland.
“Operate sustainably” is by itself a pretty overwhelming charge. We’ve tried to take a holistic approach to addressing our sustainability -- while at the same time making it less daunting -- by identifying material issues from life cycle assessment of our products and stakeholder dialogues, and then prioritizing those issues to get the largest environmental wins. For example, we’re actively working to reduce our carbon emissions by 50 percent. We’re growing our use of recycled materials and renewable resources in our product line, stores and packaging. And we’re looking beyond our own sustainability efforts to those of our consumers, equipping them with environmental impact ratings on our footwear so that they can better understand the power and impact of their purchasing choices. Is ours a perfectly sustainable operation? No – but that gives us a goal to strive for.
As for measuring sustainability performance in a better, more accurate, actionable way – we believe that’s the sort of innovation that comes from cross-brand collaboration, something we’re actively engaged in. Clearly no one has cornered this market, but by sharing best practices and learning from each other’s experiences, we think we can make collective progress.
Kate King
Timberland
By Kate King, Timberland, on
May 16, 2008 3:21 PM
Thanks for the info….I am trying to put together a list of what celebs are doing to help the environment. Ed Begley Jr. is having a sweepstakes where he flys you to Hollywood and gives you tips on how to go green ( http://www.earthlab.com/life/livingwithed/ ) Pretty crazy stuff. Obviously there are many others. Drop me a link if you have any on the top of your head. Thanks again for the info!