All for a good cause: Purpose-led brands aim to put philanthropy first
Credit to Author: Aleesha Harris| Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2019 19:00:34 +0000
It’s fashionable these days to tack a charitable element onto your brand in an effort to set your reputation as one of the ‘good guys’. And that’s all good: Even if a business is giving a tiny amount, it’s better than nothing.
But there’s another level — purpose-driven brands — where instead of being buttoned on, doing good is woven into the very fabric of the company. In purpose-driven organizations, the philanthropic work is just as important as the business. And, sometimes, even more so.
When Treana Peake started her Vancouver-based design house, Obakki, in 2005, she had no particular desire to create clothing or even be an entrepreneur, though she found a talent for both. Philanthropic to her marrow — aged 18, she travelled alone to Romania to volunteer in orphanages there — she believed the old way of fundraising was dying.
“It’s hard to have a gala and have people donate to a place they’ve never seen or been,” she explains. So she created Obakki in order to fund and amplify the work of her Obakki Foundation, which works with communities in Africa.
While it initially focused on providing clean water, Obakki Foundation is now involved in many different types of projects, most of which are about providing jobs, not cash. Peake is hands-on with the work in Africa, even becoming a qualified beekeeper so she could pass on her skills. The Story of Us wall hangings are a prime example of how she and Obakki’s lifestyle products connect with philanthropy and community.
“I was in the Bidi Bidi resettlement area in Uganda with women who have all come from South Sudan. They were traumatized, staying inside their homes. I brought out some fabric and was teaching natural dyeing. I gave each woman three strands of fabric: One to tell the story of their past, one, their present, and one, the future,” Peake says. “They started telling their stories to each other, crying and laughing, and we wove those pieces together. One-hundred-and-fifty women came out of nowhere and started participating and in the end, we had created this huge Story of Us wheel.”
Smaller versions of the wall hanging are now available to buy on the Obakki Foundation’s website, each woven by a different woman in Bidi Bidi, whose picture and name are enclosed in the package when you buy one. The foundation also sells solid perfume, blankets and more, all made in Canada or Africa, all beautiful, unique and storied, with all proceeds going to philanthropic work.
AG Hair CEO Lotte Davis also concentrates her charitable efforts in Africa, providing educational opportunities for girls. Her organization, One Girl Can, builds and rebuilds schools, gives scholarships, and connects girls with mentors.
One Girl Can and AG Hair founder Lotte Davis in Kenya.
“I was born during the Apartheid era in South Africa in the 1950s and witnessed an incredible amount of intolerance. I have a rebellious nature and this mistreatment of people because of the colour of their skin didn’t sit well with me,” Davis says. “I moved to Canada in 1960 and began to notice how women were undervalued and underutilized. I realized I wanted to do something with civil rights and human rights, and this became a motivating force in my life.”
In 1989, Davis set up hair-care brand AG Hair, which was one of the first brands to make professional hair care without certain harmful ingredients like parabens. But the goal to do philanthropy was always there.
“There came a point when the business was stable, my two daughters were going to university and it hit me like a thunderbolt that the time was now,” Davis says. “I knew I wanted to work with girls because I had so much joy seeing my own two growing up with no barriers, and I knew it had to be Africa.”
Initially, Davis worked with an NGO in Kenya on building schools and it was just a personal project. “But AG Hair is a close-knit organization and the employees wanted to know what I was doing, so eventually we decided to use our own business to grow the work we were doing in Africa and make it more successful.”
Davis established One Girl Can in 2008. There are annual fundraisers and events, but its lifeblood is AG Hair. Ten cents from every litre of product sold goes to the organization, plus more on special-edition products (this holiday season, it’s the Firewall Flat Iron Spray, where 50 cents of the price will be contributed). Like Peake, Davis is hands-on with her charity and personally invested in the girls’ success.
Jennifer Harper also reached into her personal experience to found Ontario-based Cheekbone Beauty in 2015, with the goal of empowering Indigenous youth.
“My grandmother was a residential school survivor. I read the Truth and Reconciliation Committee Final Report and began to understand the idea of generational trauma and the truth about my family’s history and the history of First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. I discovered that this truth is the truth for all Indigenous people everywhere when their communities are taken over,” she says.
Harper says that during her own childhood, she didn’t have role models in her community so she decided to highlight them through her products. Each of her rich, highly pigmented Warrior Women liquid lipsticks is named after a successful Indigenous woman, including iconic Cree singer Buffy Sainte-Marie, northern Cheyenne and Crow fashion designer, Bethany Yellowtail, and Attawapiskat First Nation youth-education advocate Shannen Koostachin, who died in a car crash aged 15.
Treana Peake, founder of Obakki and the Obakki Foundation.
The brand also puts its money where its mouth is, donating 10 per cent of profits to Indigenous-education-focused Shannen’s Dream, a foundation created to honour Koostachin. Recently securing independent funding (she turned down the Dragons on Dragons Den) Harper has huge plans for 2020 and onward, including building her own manufacturing facility that is an epicentre for Indigenous arts in the Niagara region, and starting an education foundation, the Emily Paul Scholarship Fund, named after her grandmother.
While some brands are a long time in the making, others come about quickly.
SNOW is a collaboration between Taya Hawes-Puiu, founder of branding agency Partners and Hawes, and Karen Johnson, the woman behind K’Pure Natural Body Care. Galvanized by Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future, they conceived and set up their beauty brand in just eight weeks, with 10 per cent of net profits going to Polar Bears International.
“We wanted to do something, and we thought, maybe this is the thing we can do,” says Hawes-Puiui. Currently the brand makes two products — Arctic Bath Soak and Arctic Mist, both clean, fresh-smelling and pure white. They’re currently sold on the K’Pure website, but there are plans to launch a SNOW retail platform, plus new products in the new year.
SNOW Arctic Mist, $18, a toning facial spray with organic witch hazel, coconut oil and and organic essential oils of peppermint, Palo Santo, Australian cypress and lavender.
“Two-thousand-and-twenty will be about expansion, using the communities that our brands have built to drive the cause — we’re not going to stop trying,” Johnson says.
It’s easy to be motivated at the beginning, but how do the more established philanthropic entrepreneurs stop themselves becoming jaded?
“I think back to the frustration I felt as young woman, and the experience of gender discrimination and harassment, the frustration and anger I felt about that, the lack of opportunity I saw,” says Davis. “It is a privilege to facilitate change for the girls who are really doing it all themselves. All I’ve done is put my hand in the small of their backs and pushed them forward.”
It’s all part of furthering their respective missions — and leaving a lasting impression for others to look up to as well.
“I’ve stated publicly I want to be the first Indigenous woman who wants to build a brand worth one billion. It’s not really anything to do with money — my life is already rich and I don’t need more,” Harper says. “It’s to do with showing young Indigenous women it’s possible, that anything is possible for them.”