Tony Small on business that gives a shit
It’s not often that you come across good work in a toilet, but that is exactly where this story begins. In the Burger Burger Newmarket loos, I discovered a pile of eye-catching ‘smartass’ toilet paper rolls proudly displayed by the sink. After a quick google I came across the innovative work of the team at Innocent Packaging; New Zealand’s only packaging (and now toiletries) company to produce 100% plant-based products. You might have used their compostable cups, bowls and plates without even knowing it — at a food market, zero-waste event, or even your local coffee shop. Innocent is re-thinking the entire product life-cycle by using waste materials like wheat-straw, partnering with local composting businesses to break down their products after use, and even supporting Million Meters to replant and clean up our riverways.
Founder and Managing Director Tony Small sat down with me in their funky new office space to talk about simplifying sustainability, the challenges and pay-offs of long-term thinking, and how business and creativity go hand in hand.
What is smartass all about?
smartass was an accident. In the first year of Innocent, I had a meeting with a potential customer — quite a big contender — and they told me that the packaging industry was very competitive and that I should look at sustainable toiletries. So I left that meeting determined to win their business — and we did — but at the same time thinking, ‘shit, that’s a really good idea’. I just started toying with the concept; toilet paper is so boring but it’s actually something that you can have quite a bit of fun with. It’s something everybody uses and we’ve all this weird embarrassment about going to the toilet. It was fun coming up with ideas for the name — we were going to call it ‘Cheeky’, then ‘Bummer’, and then we came up with smartass.
How do you consider environmental impacts when you come up with new product ideas like smartass?
At Innocent, we’re trying to create products that we can un-make. Our process is: what are we trying to achieve, what are we making, and then how do we make sure that it’s genuine, honest and sustainable. It’s really easy to get excited about something and rush it but the first thing you need to do is think about not the first impact,
but what’s the second and the third and the fourth carry-on effect of what we’re currently doing.
Because if we do X right now and we haven’t crossed our ‘t’s and dotted our ‘i’s, it might bring in huge amounts of revenue in six months but really harm us in the long-term. That’s what how we’re trying to do things and we put a lot of time and energy into it, but to be honest it is really challenging and it’s never going to be perfect.
What are some of those practical challenges?
If we take a box of our plant-based compostable cups, there’s 20 sleeves and each sleeve has to come in a plastic bag to be protected and meet food-grade standards. Essentially we’ve got a carton of cups that used to have 1020 pieces of plastic and now only has 20 pieces of plastic; we’ve been able to decrease it hugely, but it’s not perfect. We’d like it to be zero so we’re looking at alternatives and hoping that in the near future we’ll be able to have a plant-based option instead, but even then it still wouldn’t be perfect because we’re using disposable products.
How do you balance that brand tension of producing disposable products, but creating them in a way that’s better than what’s currently on the market?
It’s huge. Before I started Innocent, I had a reusable coffee-cup company and I ran that for just shy of two years. It was going pretty well, but I realised that all my friends and family — myself included — would forget to bring our reusable cups. People would give them for Christmas and be really excited to save the planet, and then eight weeks later they’d leave it at the bottom of their car, or at the back of their cupboard. So reusables are a great idea, but we need to get 90 or 100% of the population involved to have any serious impact and the only way that we’re going to do that is to simplify sustainability. My view is that 99% of humans are good humans; they might not care about the environment as much as us but they have decent intentions. A lot of them are just busy, literally just trying to look after their family, bathe their kids, and get ready to go and work bigs days and hours. So we need to simplify sustainability to the point where people don’t even need to think — and it is possible. I was in San Francisco last week and they are pretty much there — you go to the airport and everything has to be compostable or recyclable. It’s considered. Right now in New Zealand, it’s not considered. We really need to consider what we’re aiming to achieve — if it’s zero waste then what are our best options?
You’re right — it needs to get to the point where it’s convenient to do the right thing. What are the business implications of that long-term thinking?
It impacts your revenue and it means that you might grow slower.
It might take more time and energy, but I think if you rush it, it’s probably going to cost you a lot more — and at the same time you’re not going to be able to sleep at night.
We went off on a bit of a tangent a few years ago when we did a couple of products that weren’t really in line with what we were actually trying to achieve. We knew that they weren’t the most sustainable products in the market but we were preaching about them like they were. So we decided to discontinue them. We lost some customers and it cost us a lot of money, which was tough, but I think that when you do that, it opens other doors. Now we’re the first packaging business in New Zealand to be fully plant based — and for a small, young company, that wasn’t easy.
How do you make those tough business and ethical decisions?
I think we’re at a different time now in business where ethical decisions are good business decisions. Sometimes it’s hard to see because when sustainable innovation happens, it’s new, and anything new tends to be expensive to produce. So it’s more that new ways of doing things that can cost a lot rather than sustainability itself being expensive. But I think things have changed — sustainable options are becoming cheaper, and the cost of not being sustainable is becoming more expensive. If you’re putting your food in plastic or polystyrene and it’s hurting the people who eat it, that comes at a brand perception cost.
You started Innocent in a garage, is that right? Tell me more about how it started and the transition to now.
Essentially, yes. I started Innocent at home in my parents’ two bedroom unit, just by getting on the phone and seeing if people would meet with me. Thinking back, I used to be in my car with 30,000 napkins, dropping cartons off, and time’s just flown. You go from creating an idea and selling and selling and selling and then all of a sudden you’re managing 3 offices with 13 staff, and the business has so many more elements. Now we’ve got an amazing team and the people here are pushing just as hard as I am so it’s become its own, growing organically now through their passion as much as mine.
Why do you care about doing good?
My passion is business — that’s what I love — and I read a book when I was 16 and it said that if you’re going to start something, start something that has a positive impact. It took me 10 years to get a business up and running after that, but it really stuck with me and it just makes sense. I think at the end of the day there’s gotta be more to it than just cash. Business is tough — really tough — and if you were doing it just to take home the dollers, I don’t think that would be motivating enough. You can buy all the iphones and all the Teslas you want, but it only brings you satisfaction for a short period of time, so you get sick of that motivation. It needs to be deeper than that for you to put up with the stress and long hours.
So what is it about business that really drives you?
Starting a business is one of the most creative things that you can do. I’m more of a creative mind, so I love bringing all the different elements together. I love the strategic side of it, and I love that we get to create an environment that we want to work in. We work bloody hard and do a good job but at the same time we have a lot of fun doing it. It is tough, but I would never ever hope that it would stop anyone from trying because it’s very rewarding.
That’s such a great perspective — I’ve never really thought about business as a creative outlet. If you were to travel back four years, what advice would you give yourself?
I probably would say start sooner. Start now. Tomorrow. There’s so much talk about creating these huge business plans, but you’ve just got to get out there.
You cannot guess where you’re going to go, but I can guarantee that it’s not going to go to plan.
And at the end of the day this is my 4th company, and it’s probably going to take 3, 4, or 5, tries for some people to get it right. So I’d just try and validate the idea before wasting any time. Try to pre-sell your idea to the point where someone pays you for it before you’ve even produced anything. We started with branded coffee cups — so I’d literally go around to cafes and say ‘hey, would you be interested in us printing this for you?’ If they said no, I didn’t have a business. But if they said yes, we got a deposit to help pay for the set up, and I had a business. So start yesterday, and try not to focus on perfect because you’ll never get there. Just do your best, right now, because you’ll probably have a better impact than what is currently out there. Then just continue to get better and better and better.
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