Online spending in the U.S. rose almost 15 percent from 2018 to 2019, an increase that represented almost $80 billion. That growth also accounts for more than half of all gains in the retail market last year.
But as consumers increasingly look toward the larger environmental and social impact of their purchasing habits, e-commerce remains an area that is tedious to track. The carbon footprint, for example, of everything that goes into an e-commerce purchase — from technical infrastructure to packaging to shipping vehicle emissions — is highly situational and dependent on a complex host of factors.
Even more complicated is, once calculated, how do you offset the carbon output of your purchase?
So how can companies and consumers ensure that their purchases are made responsibly? Enter Cloverly.
Cloverly is a simple API (Application Programming Interface), a line of code that plugs directly into a website, e-c at checkout. If not, they simply deny the option and continue to purchase.
For businesses, Cloverly has no cost for implementation, simply taking a small transaction fee each time a customer chooses to use it.
With almost no marketing, the product’s simplicity and accessibility is driving impressive growth. It’s currently used by over one million people worldwide, in 150,000 transactions, and offset over 11 billion tons of carbon.
“Customers today are much more sensitive about the brands they want to spend their dollars with,” said Anthony Oni, the Founder and CEO of Cloverly. “As a whole, I do think that customers want to support brands that are more sustainably-minded.”
Anthony would know. He is not only the brain and heart behind Cloverly, but also works full time as a Vice President of Corporate Communications at Southern Company Gas, one of the largest regulated utilities in the U.S. He spent almost a decade with Alabama Power Company prior to this role.
During Anthony’s time at Southern Company, the company has come out with strong sustainability goals and benchmarks, becoming one of the first utilities to pledge to reduce carbon substantially and aim for carbon neutrality by 2050.
Anthony says the backdrop of his corporate career was an important impetus when doing the early work to build Cloverly.
“The question for me wasn’t why, but why not. When you think about Southern Company and the focus we have around innovation, they encourage employees do to just this. And one of the things I’ve always been passionate about is how we can create a better environmental impact through technology.”
Engage is honored that Anthony and his co-founder (and fellow Alabama Power vet) Dave Folk will become the first corporate spinoff to enter the Engage platform. Along with six other high-growth companies, the team kicked off the Engage experience last week.
Read on to hear from Anthony directly. Welcome to the family, Cloverly! ☘️
When looking at the clean tech market, there’s opportunity across the board. How did you come up with this specific tool?
When we started taking a look at the market, we realized that it is extremely hard and sometimes overwhelming for companies to figure out how to participate in the green environment. We saw that just to offset a purchase, the process was lengthy, cumbersome, and there were too many parties. And as we started to think about how to make that easier and more accessible, the idea of Cloverly was born.
Our goal is to make it easy and accessible for a company of any size, big or small, to conduct business in a more sustainable way.
How did you validate the idea?
We validated this idea through various Southern Company projects that focused on sustainability and the environment. We released a prototype with Southern Company and the response from customers was just enormous; this led us to think we needed to pursue the opportunity further.
Since we launched on Earth Day 2019, the growth and engagement we’ve seen has been incredibly strong. I think that speaks to the need in the market for a straightforward solution — that’s why our simple API tool has been received so well.
The positive feedback also sheds light on how hard and inaccessible being green really is. People want to participate in meaningful ways to support the environment and right now, the barriers are too high most of the time.
How did you convince the leadership at Southern Company Gas to give you bandwidth and resources to pursue Cloverly?
Southern Company was one of the first utilities to pledge to reduce its carbon by 50 percent by 2030 and be completely carbon neutral by 2050. So Cloverly is completely in alignment with Southern Company’s goals in the environmental space.
The challenging part was that an environmental tech startup is one, two, even three degrees away from what our core business at Southern Company. It did take a lot of work to engage and convince people — it was kind of like a video game where you go through each level of a boss and finally hit the big boss. I eventually met with Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Company, and was able to secure his endorsement to start building.
What do you hope to get out of joining the Engage platform?
We have a lot of work to do digging in and building the company. We started organically like any other company does — we launched a website, did a lot of speaking engagements to get the word out. We were fortunate in that most of the customers we see continue to be inbound. Now we want to turn that around and create a repeatable sales and marketing model, which we think Engage can help us build.
The relationship-building and exposure to other startups who are in the same stage or ahead of us is key, as are, of course, the connections to the corporate partners. We’re very interested in talking to companies like Delta, Goldman Sachs, UPS and others who we know are leaders in their industries when it comes to improving the sustainability and environmental footprint of their business practices.
Learn more about Cloverly here. And check back next week to meet another Engage company from the Spring 2020 Cohort!
