Connecting Consumers with Ethical Brands; with Sydney Sherman
Sydney Sherman’s vision is to eradicate extreme poverty. She founded The Etho to help ethical brands and artisans connect with conscious consumers world-wide. You can think of it as the “Etsy” for ethical brands. Her goal is to make The Etho a centralized hub where people can make purchases and know that it’s a reliable source for ethical products.
In the interview below, Sydney talks about the struggles entrepreneurs face and the importance of continually working on your mindset.
Tell me about your company and the work that you do.
The Etho is a marketplace for ethically produced products. Around 2014 I was doing a lot of traveling around the world, and I was seeing a lot of extreme poverty. That led me to see that there’s a gap between some of these ethical vendors, the products people are making, and the increased interest in how to access those products. And I was thinking a lot about Etsy at the time, and how they created the craft market, and how no one’s really done the same thing for the ethical market. So that’s our goal, to do anything and everything we can online, and eventually offline for ethical brands.
You said you were doing a lot of traveling and that’s what prompted the idea. What made you decide to go in this direction, as opposed to something else?
I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so I had already started one business at that point and was just about to start another. I’m always thinking of problems to solve through business. I’ve always had an interest in other cultures and visiting other places even when I was much, much younger. I was raised by people that were constantly looking at how to solve problems.
I think one of the biggest things that entrepreneurs overcome is the mindset it takes to start a business. A lot of people don’t even know that it’s an option, or see it as a very difficult option. And for me that was the easy part. I didn’t see that as a barrier.
When I’m seeing extreme poverty en masse, it’s one of those things you just can’t unlearn. I started seeing all those things, doing a bit more research, and you can’t look at a pair of jeans the same way after you’ve seen poverty on that level, especially when it’s thousands of people in one location.
All of those things converged, and lead to this point.
What was your background originally before starting the different businesses?
I have very little work experience. I worked through college and high school, had internships. I studied advertising in school and then got an MBA to start this business. I did not want to go back to school, but I recognize that a double sided marketplace would need to bring a lot of volume business. So it takes a while.
What’s been the biggest lesson you’ve learned so far throughout your career?
It goes back to mindset and resilience. That’s the hardest part, because I think most problems are solvable, and if they’re not solvable then there’s a pivot, or maybe that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing. I care about the people that I work with, I care about the brands that we are trying to help. There’s a lot that really matters to me. So I think that any people-problem issue that we have I might take more personally than otherwise. Business is very trying on the individual, so I would say constantly working on myself.
The company is a reflection of me in some ways. Always being open, aware, and trying to keep myself sane, happy, healthy, all of those things, is probably the hardest. The rest of it I see as a problem that can be solved.
I just got a new partner in August and before that I was operating the business as the sole decision maker, and now there are two of us so that has been an adjustment (although a good one!). It’s still my own mindset that I have to work on to be approachable.
What advice would you give to other social entrepreneurs?
To have those one or two people that you can ask for advice. A lot of people have a lot of opinions so they should be people that you would trust to tell everything to, and someone who’s willing to give you feedback in all areas. This is isn’t just professional, it always is inevitably personal as well. So, finding those people, not listening to too many people, and listening to your gut. It’s difficult. Sometimes, I don’t know if what I think is right, so having feedback is helpful.
I didn’t take a vacation, like a real vacation, for two years. It’s operating nationally, so I could be on 24/7. Especially the first year, I was working crazy hours. I would say having that space to take a vacation, it cleared my mind and gave me the ability to reassess, and tackle problems in a different way. As hard as it is, having space to take a break is also really important.
What is your vision for the future? Either for your business, or the world, or both?
My true goal is to help eradicate extreme poverty. Personally, professionally, in any capacity that I can. Here are numbers that show the progress we’re already making. Every day 170,000 people move out of extreme poverty. 325,000 people get their first access to electricity. 200,000 get piped water for the first time. We are making a lot of progress, and people tend to think that the world is getting worse, not better, but all the facts point to that the world is improving. I think it’s possible in our lifetime and maybe in the next 10, 20 years, to eradicate extreme poverty. That is the goal.
For the business, we want to be the hub for ethical businesses and consumers. Everything that they would want to do online, connecting to other sites, offline markets even, running financial reports, knowing what products sell best, anything we can do for the brands we want to be able to do from our site. A lot of them are lacking the tools. Ethical businesses under-utilize technology compared to other small businesses. Oftentimes the workforce is there helping them come out of extreme poverty or human trafficking or something like that, so there’s an extra added element to it, which means more work. Helping them get online and connect to the world is my vision for the company, and also for consumers to have one place that they know. We polled just under a thousand people through a third party. There was not a single place that they listed for ethical consumption, that they knew was reliable source for products. They need it.
What action do you want readers to take?
I realized people don’t want to know a lot of the issues, it’s depressing. So just knowing that there’s a source where they can make a purchase they were already going to make, but have that go the extra mile without extra work on their part.
It’s a combination of little actions from all of us. Whatever they can do, even if it’s just recycling a little bit more that day. I think it’s a really easy way to start.
Find Sydney Online
The Etho: https://theetho.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sydney-sherman-038b7a48
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