How Who Gives A Crap’s unique model steers growth, decisions and led to bumper revenue in 2020

Who Gives A Crap made international headlines last year when it donated a record $5.85 million to organisations that improve sanitation in the developing world.

Given that donation totalled 50% of its yearly profits, the sustainable tissue products brand affirmed to the public — and its competitors — that its profit-for-purpose model not only works, but is disrupting an industry dominated by large corporations.

In just 10 years, the social enterprise has become a recognisable household brand for a growing number of ethically conscious consumers, and it doesn’t plan on stopping now.

Simon Griffiths, co-founder and chief executive of Who Gives A Crap, has a daring goal: to make sure everyone has access to a toilet within 30 years.

“That means finding potentially billions of customers around the world,” he says.

Griffiths attributes his brand’s success to appealing to consumers’ values and prioritising long-term goals over short-term gain — two commitments he says help steer business decisions and make becoming a lifetime brand achievable.

“As a business it’s our goal to make sure everyone in the world has access to a toilet by 2050. So, when we come up against difficult decisions, we ask ourselves ‘what’s the best way to reach that goal?’” he says.

Five key takeaways

1. When you’re partnering with an organisation, it is crucial to see how they operate in person.

2. Customers expect businesses to take a stand on social issues, beyond sustainability.

3. Focus on progress over perfection. It will take time to get things right.

4. Setting long term goals are key so that your short and medium term goals are in alignment with the greater picture.
   

5. To make the biggest impact on your environmental footprint, identify the most energy intensive part of your supply chain and focus your efforts there.

The purpose-led business

Founded in 2012, Who Gives A Crap is a social enterprise that donates half of its profit to philanthropic organisations that build toilets for the 2 billion people worldwide who do not have access to one.

The idea was developed by Griffiths, who has a background in engineering and economics, after he spent time volunteering for non-governmental organisations in South Africa and Asia. While volunteering, it dawned on him that selling goods to fund philanthropy had the potential to scale humanitarian work.

Who Gives A Crap has since bootstrapped its way along a steady growth trajectory. Initially selling online to customers in Australia, the brand now sells to consumers in New Zealand, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and ships to 30 countries across Europe.

The product range boasts colourfully packaged toilet paper, paper towels, tissues and, most recently, a washable ‘Dream Cloth,’ which Griffiths hints will be expanded in a new offering this year.

The star of the range — the toilet paper — comes in two options: bamboo or recycled fibre. Both are renowned for their quirky wrapping with tongue-in-cheek slogans such as “good for your bum, great for the world”.

Fun, bright, colourful: Who Gives A Crap’s toilet paper. Source: Supplied

Griffiths takes a big-picture view of Who Gives A Crap’s business model, its place in the world and consumer trends.

“We strongly believe that profit and purpose are inextricably linked,” he affirms, before describing the profit-for-purpose model as a form of ‘new capitalism’ that sells goods to help solve real problems by scaling philanthropy.

The growing need for businesses to align themselves with a purpose was highlighted in a recent global survey by Accenture Strategy. The survey of almost 30,000 consumers found 62% want companies to take a stand on current issues like sustainability, transparency or fair employment practices. The survey also found 47% of consumers who are disappointed with a brand’s words or actions on a social issue walk away — with 17% never returning.

In Griffiths’ view, the ability of brands to take a stand on social issues is essential to remain relevant in the long run.

“You have to have purpose as part of your business model. We’ve seen that with sustainability, which has been this mega trend over the last decade,” he says.

“Even Apple and Nike have set goals to achieve a net zero carbon position,” he adds.

However, it is not only the issue of sustainability that Griffiths believes businesses should take a stand on.

“We’ve seen consumers really challenging brands based on their position on Black Lives Matter and Me Too and as a result, the values a brand has are becoming more relevant to how consumers want to spend their money,” he says. “We’re just at the start of this huge movement which will hopefully be a mega trend like sustainability.”

Choosing the right partners

Who Gives A Crap’s social mission and sustainable ethos means it chooses its funding and manufacturing partners carefully. The profit that the business donates is distributed to its funding partners including its chief partner Water Aid, along with Sanergy, Lwala Community Alliance, SHOFCO, Water Shed and iDE. 

When looking for partners, Griffiths says he considers a few main criteria. He looks for organisations that have a record of high-impact work, a bold plan for future impact, a track record of capital efficiency, and a committed team that is based locally. 

A red flag, Griffith says, often appears when an organisation doesn’t have a locally grounded team.

“There are many very well-intentioned organisations and projects that haven’t considered the local context of their work enough,” he says. “So for us, having a local team to implement and support programs long-term is a must.” 

Griffiths also likes to see the work the funding partners do firsthand. The 60-person team at Who Gives A Crap had plans to visit WaterAid in India in 2020, but had to cancel the trip due to COVID-19. Prior to that, Griffiths says he and his co-founder Danny Alexander visited WaterAid in East Timor and in 2018 the entire team saw WaterAid’s work in Cambodia.

 

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Building stronger relationships with funding partners is an area Griffiths says he would like to expand.

“We’re actually just about to hire our first head of impact,” he says. “They’ll focus exclusively on how we go about building the pipeline of partners that we can fund now that our donations are well above the $5 million mark.”

When it comes to manufacturing and logistics, Phil King, vice president of supply chain at Who Gives A Crap, says it is important that the approach matches the brand’s values.

“Our customers have a strong emotional connection with the brand from a values perspective. So, I think how we interpret and develop our sustainability approach has to be really true to those values,” King says.

King has more than 10 years of experience in manufacturing and green sourcing. Prior to starting with Who Gives A Crap in 2016, King set up supply chains for the ethical home cleaning products brand Method in both Europe and Asia, and also established a recycled packaging factory in China in 2011. King says the biggest lesson of his career so far has been about partners.

“You can’t change the world on your own,” he says.

Who Gives A Crap strives to work with manufacturing and logistics partners that share its values.

“Choosing partners whose values you align with allows you to tap into great work that’s being done, even though you don’t have to invest and fully own that change yourself,” King says.

“So, pick your partners carefully and recognise that, as a brand, part of your role is to help manufacturers tell their story”, he says. 

The power of long-term goals to steer decisions

Last year, sales for household items skyrocketed as consumers spent more time at home due to the pandemic. In Australia and the United Kingdom, consumers panic bought staples including toilet paper, which stripped supermarket isles bare and in the case of Who Gives A Crap – emptied its inventory. In March, Who Gives A Crap sales increased 1100%, contributing to a record $5.85 million donation — a 750% increase on the previous year.

When asked how he plans to reinvest that profit into the business, Griffiths replied simply by saying he would continue to work towards the 30-year goal of ensuring every person has access to a toilet.

“We’re continuing to execute on the five-year vision that gets us to the thirty-year goal, and for us that means finding more customers,” he says.

Part of Who Gives A Crap’s expansion strategy is to grow its overseas markets and launch a broader product range. This year, the team will focus on building its existing customer base in Europe and Canada as well as launching a new product range outside the toilet paper category.

Who Gives A Crap will also continue reinvesting in its supply chain to ensure its mission to make sustainable products goes further than simply using recycled materials. Who Gives A Crap has almost removed single-use plastic from its supply chain, installed solar panels in some of its warehouses and even conducted its first lifecycle assessment.

“As we’ve grown, we’ve been able to have more influence over more aspects of our supply chain, so not just what we make our products from but how we make it,” King says.

A lifecycle assessment allows businesses to assess their environmental footprint across all stages of production from raw materials to distribution and use. King explains that it is a complex blend of gathering information from the business’ own facilities and partners and then filling in the gaps with industry-wide data. 

“You pull all of that data together and essentially try and work out where your most intensive energy usage is, because that’s where you’re going to have most impact if you can drive progress,” King says.

The challenge of doing it differently

A 2020 report by IBISWorld found companies holding the largest market share in the Australian sanitary paper product manufacturing industry include owner of Kleenex tissues Kimberly-Clark, owner of Quilton and Naturale ABC Tissue Products and Asaleo Care, which owns Pyrex and Sorbent.

King says Who Gives A Crap’s biggest challenge is that its competitors are multinational corporations with very strong economic advantages.

“They’re fully invested in products made from trees all the way from the forest to the pulp mills and then distribution,” he explains. “Our role within that, and why this is challenging, is to be a call to action and to lead some kind of change away from making products with trees and do it in a more sustainable way.”

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King says it is tough to compete in an economically uneven playing field without asking consumers to pay a premium.

“We do have a remit to be as profitable as we can so we can reach our goal of donating money,” he says. “So, our challenge is how we overcome that in a sustainable way, while staying competitive against really big players who have driven cost efficiencies by having supply chains that may not be as responsible.” 

Griffiths echoes his colleague in saying that challenges come up “all the time” when you operate a social enterprise in an industry driven by profit-led businesses. But ultimately, the business can charge more for its products compared to less sustainable alternatives and remain competitive because consumers want to contribute to its mission, he adds. 

“Our customers know that buying a roll of toilet paper with us as opposed to Kimberly-Clark is going to make a difference,” Griffith says.

Who Gives A Crap sets a high bar when it comes to doing good by doing business.

But if the leading men of Who Gives A Crap’s supply chain have any advice for other businesses wanting to align themselves with a purpose, it is to focus on “progress over perfection”.

“If you are trying to be absolutely perfect from day one its very overwhelming. So, focus on measuring and improving the things that you can,” King says.