Sustainability has all the time been core to British eyewear specialist SunGod’s enterprise practices, and the model not too long ago turned B Corp Licensed to additional bolster its credentials as a sustainable model and dedication to a triple backside line of individuals, revenue and planet.

As an illustration, SunGod merchandise have a lifetime assure to maintain merchandise in circulation and out of landfill, and their Infinite frames are constituted of 100% recycled materials.

SunGod additionally companions with like-minded organisations comparable to Surfers In opposition to Sewage, The Bike Challenge and 1% for the Planet, which sees SunGod contribute 1% of their income to sustainability-focused non-profits.

I not too long ago had the chance to speak to Zoe Watkiss, co-founder and co-CEO of SunGod, the story of the companies’ journey from its humble starting as a start-up in 2013, to being ranked 687th on the FT1000 – an inventory of the highest 1,000 firms in Europe which have achieved the very best proportion development in revenues between 2018 and 2021. Learn beneath for an edited excerpt from our on-line dialog.

Christopher Marquis: Are you able to inform me about why you based SunGod and the way the enterprise has developed since its launch?

Zoe Watkiss: Ali and I met at Manchester College. After college, we had been each working in London, Ali in structure and me in advertising at L’Oreal. Ali was feeling uninspired (this was 2008 and nothing was getting inbuilt London!) and I used to be feeling overworked… between us we had been in actual want of a change!

We had been all the time searching for methods to spend extra time open air, whether or not that was within the mountains, on bikes or simply on two toes. We had began a Winter bobble hat firm known as Hats for the Hill on the facet of our day jobs, which was nice enjoyable however extremely seasonal! We started taking a look at methods we might make this year-round and our consideration turned to the summer season season and the eyewear business.

It turned very clear, in a short time, that the market was solely providing costly designer sun shades that got here with big mark-ups, or low cost £10 knock-offs that broke after a number of wears. We believed we might create one thing higher – a model that supplied extra – and so we took issues into our personal fingers and SunGod was born!

We needed to create a model with the shopper at its coronary heart. By means of reducing out the intermediary and going direct to shopper, we had been in a position to provide sturdy, lifetime guarantee-backed customized sun shades and ski goggles, all for a fairer value for our buyer, and with a decrease affect on the planet.

10 years later, we’re actually pleased with what SunGod has change into. One thing that began off as the two of us grads constructing sun shades in our lounge, has grown into a worldwide model constructed on local people, that’s fuelled by sustainable innovation. In the present day, we’re a licensed B Corp™ with a turnover of £8m final 12 months, and the recognition and efficiency of our merchandise are confirmed by world-class athletes on the worldwide stage daily.

Marquis: How did you fund the beginning and development of the enterprise?

Watkiss: We’ve been funded by our crowd since day one. In 2013, after 6 months of prototyping and product testing, we launched SunGod on product crowdfunding website Indiegogo. The response was unimaginable and exceeded all our expectations! With a goal to promote 400 pairs, we bought practically 4,000 pairs in only one month. It was the impetus we wanted to stop our jobs, it offered the cashflow to kickstart the enterprise and confirmed us that the urge for food for what we had been doing was there. Trying again, we most likely wouldn’t have been ready to enter manufacturing if we’d solely bought 400 pairs, however our marketing campaign turned out to be a report for the platform at a time the place crowdfunding was new and thrilling!

We ran a few Kickstarter campaigns over the subsequent few years to launch new merchandise, however remained utterly self-funded with reinvested income till 2020. Momentum was robust but we had been beginning to attain some extent the place we felt unable to decide to the larger alternatives and partnerships coming our method. So, in November 2020 we launched our first Crowdcube marketing campaign, giving our neighborhood the possibility to personal a chunk of SunGod’s future. It was an enormous success, and we raised £1.5m from our neighborhood (1,004 buyers) in simply 24 hours. This helped us triple our income and improve the corporate’s valuation by 166% in two years, placing us in a good stronger place for our subsequent Crowdcube, in November 2022. This went even higher; we welcomed one other 1000+ clients to our investor neighborhood, and reached our funding cap of £3m in simply 79 minutes!

I couldn’t advocate crowdfunding sufficient. Whenever you look to your personal neighborhood for funding, you flip your clients into model advocates and are in a position to convey them even nearer to your mission. These individuals inevitably wish to you succeed; they select to take a position as a result of they already love what we do and in flip assist by spreading the phrase amongst their family and friends. We acquire an enormous proportion of our new clients by means of easy phrase of mouth, and it’s usually these buyers who shout about us the loudest.

Marquis: What makes SunGod totally different to its rivals?

Watkiss: SunGod has grown into one of many world’s main efficiency eyewear manufacturers, and is a licensed B Corp. We’re pushed by our mission to See Higher; by means of our lenses, by means of our actions, and thru doing enterprise higher. To see a greater future, we’re constructing a enterprise that’s higher for our clients, with higher performing merchandise, which might be higher for the planet. From our market-leading lens supplies, to our Carbon Impartial merchandise; from our charity partnerships, to our Lifetime Assure; we’ve chosen to do issues in a different way.

By way of product, we’re main the business by means of award-winning sustainable innovation. Our 8KO® lens expertise is clearer, stronger and lighter than our rivals, and as of 2023 it’s being worn by 7x Tour de France-winning biking crew, INEOS Grenadiers, in addition to McLaren F1 Group. We’ve put years of R&D into creating a lens with unrivalled efficiency advantages, and we’re proud that it’s now the eyewear of alternative for the world’s finest athletes.

We’re additionally obsessive about buyer expertise. We function an impartial, direct-to-consumer mannequin, which implies clients can solely purchase SunGod from SunGod; we don’t work with third-party retailers. So, we’re in a position to construct extremely shut, two-way relationships with our clients, and it pays off (we’ve a 4.8/5 star score on TrustPilot). The business giants simply don’t have that. Our D2C mannequin additionally lets us provide our unrivalled lifetime assure, which might be nearly unattainable to honour if we labored by means of retailers. Plus, our merchandise are hand-assembled to order within the UK, and are absolutely customisable, at no further value. This implies our UK clients can order a unique pair of SunGods at 2pm they usually’ll land on their doorstep the subsequent day – not many manufacturers can provide this!

From a sustainability perspective, we’re proudly B Corp™ Licensed, we provide a Lifetime Assure on all merchandise, we donate 1%+ of income to charity, and we’re licensed Carbon Impartial – throughout each our merchandise and our operations, again to Day 1. We work with a spread of charities to boost funds and consciousness for the causes that matter, and we’re dedicated to utilizing our model as a pressure for optimistic change. This comes by means of campaigns like our MOMENTUM marketing campaign, which celebrated the progress being made in ladies’s sport (significantly across the first ladies’s Tour de France final 12 months), and highlighted the work that’s nonetheless to come back.

However finally, as B Corp, we’re centered on collaboration, not competitors. After we see different manufacturers taking inspiration from our method of doing enterprise, we view that as a hit, not an issue; it means we’re influencing the broader business to make optimistic, sustainable change.

Marquis: What does SunGod being B Corp licensed imply to you / the enterprise?

Watkiss: In Summer time 2022, we turned a Licensed B Company™, becoming a member of a worldwide neighborhood utilizing enterprise as a pressure for good. This implies we meet verified excessive requirements of social and environmental efficiency, and we’re commited to a triple backside line of individuals, planet and revenue, that’s written into our authorized constitution to guard it ceaselessly.

B Corp means quite a bit to me as a result of on the finish of the day, it means we’ve held ourselves to account throughout each space of the enterprise and that our clients can belief us – its evaluation course of leaves no stone unturned to make sure companies are creating optimistic change. Greenwashing is rife in right now’s market, and B Corp is certainly the best choice on the market to information clients in direction of manufacturers which might be working underneath excessive ranges of integrity, transparency and accountability.

Changing into a B Corp has reached into each space of our enterprise. From measuring the minute particulars of our carbon emissions, to providing free, limitless psychological well being help for workers, to utilizing our advertising platform to advertise gender equality in sport; the B Corp framework has helped us analyse and improve the whole lot we do at SunGod, throughout individuals and planet. I’m unimaginable proud that we’ve invested in constructing such robust foundations now, that may assist us proceed to develop sustainably as we scale up.

Marquis: How essential are partnerships to SunGod’s imaginative and prescient and values?

Watkiss: Our companions are completely important to our enterprise. We now have a devoted Partnerships Group who, earlier than signing a brand new associate, ask: a) how is that this partnership significant? and b) how might we work collectively to positively affect our neighborhood?

From England Rugby and McLaren F1, to the skilled biking crew INEOS Grenadiers, to charities like Surfers In opposition to Sewage and Defend Our Winters UK; we’ve constructed a associate neighborhood that proves the efficiency of our merchandise on the highest ranges. They assist us regularly faucet into new and engaged audiences, provide product suggestions to permit for fixed innovation, and create aspirational digital content material to maintain our neighborhood engaged. On the identical time, we help our companions by creating distinctive merchandise particularly for his or her groups and followers, elevating funds for his or her charities, and utilizing our personal substantial platforms to help their goals. SunGod partnerships actually are symbiotic relationships, they usually’ve performed a core function in getting SunGod to the place we’re right now.

Marquis: What’s in retailer for the long run?

Watkiss: We now have some actually thrilling plans for the subsequent 12 months. In addition to signing our largest and finest partnerships but (that are strictly underneath wraps… for now!) we’re going to be increasing into the US market. We’ve proved our idea in our dwelling market and skilled unimaginable development, so scaling up throughout the pond, the place we’ve a rising buyer base already, looks like the apparent subsequent step.

We’re additionally extremely excited to be releasing prescription sun shades to our neighborhood, imminently! It’s one thing our clients have been asking us about for a very long time (70% of the UK inhabitants are glasses wearers!), and we’re lastly ready the place we are able to provide an distinctive product and and shopping for expertise to them. Watch this area!