The Poli: Responsible Consumption for a Sustainable Future

The products that we use in our daily life can create massive environmental footprints and health burdens if we are not aware of where and how what we buy is manufactured. For example, Bangladesh's leather industry is worth a billion dollars a year, but that value comes at a significant environmental and human cost. The process of tanning leather hides, in most of the cases, is highly toxic. Chrome tanning is the most popular and controversial due to its wide-spread use in the fashion industry. The chromium salts that are used in the chrome tanning are carcinogenic, persistent, and further harms environmental and human health. We offer the possibility to reduce the environmental footprint through careful selections of the products. We have identified our materials vegetable tanned genuine leathers and jute, the most sustainable natural fibers, to serve the existing bag industries and restore degraded environmental conditions in Bangladesh. 

There is an estimation that  about 2 billion barrels of oil require to serve the plastic bag industry annually. Then it takes from 400 to 1000 years for plastic bags to degrade (Bell & Cave, 2011). Paper bags are not much better as their production requires 4 times as much as energy compared to plastic bags. Also producing of paper bags generates 70 times more air pollution and 50 times more water pollution than plastic bags, and requires cutting down of 17 trees per ton of paper. Bangladesh's leather industry is worth a billion dollars a year, but that value comes at a significant environmental and human cost. The process of tanning leather hides, in most of the cases, is highly toxic. Chrome tanning is the most popular and controversial method due to its wide-spread use in the fashion industry. The chromium salts that are used in the chrome tanning are carcinogenic, persistent, and harms both environment and human health. The unsustainable production and consumption pattern is degrading the total environmental system of Bangladesh and creating adverse impacts on human health including factory workers involved with such manufacturing processes. 

The Start-Up aims to improve overall environmental conditions of Bangladesh that will benefit workers involved with manufacturing as well as general people. Environmental friendly manufacturing process will also reduce health hazards of factory workers in Bangladesh. 

At the moment, we are producing bags with our Eco-friendly materials in collaboration with top compliance factories in Bangladesh. The bags are served in European market, starting with the Sweden, under a Swedish Start-Up "The Poli". The ambition of the Start-Up is to create value of Bangladesh made ecological products in the world market of Eco-friendly life-style while addressing pollution scenario in Bangladesh through digital marketing. We would like to attract more and more foreign brands to produce Eco-friendly products from Bangladesh through our initiative. We also plan to have a manufacturing unit of our products in Chittagong in near future. 

We plan to implement the below strategies to make our business unique. 

a) Follower reached: We plan to build brand through story-telling marketing approach such as writing about environment, sustainability, sustainable consumption etc. By this way, we plan to raise awareness of responsible consumption and our products among consumers. We can measure our progress through the numbers of followers that we are going to reach through our unique branding strategies.

d) Recycle of wastes: Our factories are located in Bangladesh. This country is producing goods in mass to satisfy both domestic as well as international consumer’s demand. The solid  by-product of every production goes in the landfill as wastes. For example, the discarded leathers occupy space and it degrades very slowly when disposed in the landfill. We are producing card-holders and/or wallets from the discarded leather that generates during production of a backpack or shoulder bag from the beginning of our business. We have a target to achieve “zero waste discharge” with our business growth. We will track the percentage of wastes, particularly discarded leather wastage, that we can convert to reusable products from our production for positive environmental impacts continuously. 

c) Research and development: We plan to invest in research and development to continuously improve our products and manufacturing process that will ensure cleaner environment and lower Carbon emission. 

We plan to address three important social concern:

a) Create strong awareness about responsible consumption: One of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations is to ensure responsible consumption pattern in order to protect the earth. The goal of this initiative is ‘doing more and better with less’, increasing net welfare gains from economic activities by reducing resource use, degradation and pollution along the whole life cycle of a product, while increasing quality of life (UN, 2015). The Poli shares the very same idea and responsibility towards the society. We will make consumers aware about responsible consumption and our products value through marketing and PR. 

b) Factory workers welfare: We plan to organize workshop on environmental issues, sustainable consumption and production pattern, specifically to make aware factory workers. It will create awareness among them about health safety and environmental degradation related to manufacturing facilities. Besides, we will also address fair compensation issue of the workers through our business. We will ensure the protection of basic human rights of the workers following our commitment to ethical business.

c) Plastic free campaign: A recent report published by Earth Day Network, US has ranked Bangladesh 10th in-terms of massive plastic pollution. Another research conducted by Environmental and Social Development Organization, Bangladesh has identified the presence of micro-plastics in most of the fishes they have collected from rivers, ponds and other water bodies. We plan to implement plastic free campaign in educational institutes and among our partners factories in Bangladesh. 

We will consider the below points to measure our success:

a) Unit products sold in B2C: We will measure the types (either jute or ecological cow leathers) and how many products we sell in three months, six months, nine months and in a year period in our B2C sale. It will help us to determine the acceptance of our environmental friendly offering among the people. This is most important for us to generate target revenue and grow the business gradually as well.

b) Increase in B2B volume sales: We will track how many B2B clients that we can acquire through our marketing and measure the increase in B2B volume sales in two, three and five years period. The more B2B clients we can acquire for our products from different countries, the more positive environmental and social impacts we can create through our business. In B2B, we also plan to sale jute fabrics and finished leather pieces to the clients who will manufacture products with their own craftsmanship. This strategy will help us to reach to more consumers and create wider impact as well. 

We have identified the below most important challenges:

a) Investment: We already developed initial base of our company, established a team, designed and developed products, developed E-commerce platform (B2C), conducted primary market survey and acquired first clients. However, we still have not raised any funding to invest in marketing and PR for sales growth of our products, invest in new designing and run the business smoothly. From the above context, we consider securing necessary investment will be the most important challenge for the next five years.

b) Improved manufacturing facilities: We  have a challenge to improve manufacturing facilities that will create lowest carbon foot-print as well as improve environmental conditions significantly. 

c) Brand value development:  We need to consider a very special focus on the development of creative marketing and PR strategies that will help us to stand out from the market competition and develop a brand value gradually.

In the next  year, we will give our efforts to secure necessary Start-Up funding. We will invest in marketing and PR and acquire more customers for both B2B and B2C sales. We will develop our traction through inspiring blog writing, social media marketing  and appointing brand ambassadors. We will also do direct marketing through attending networking events, trade fair etc. 

We have a target to develop eco-friendlier manufacturing process through research and development initiative within next three years. We will focus how we can reduce water and energy consumption from the present production system. We will do this through investing in Masters research projects at the Department of Soil, Water and Environment, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. As a Swedish company, we can also facilitate to develop collaboration between Swedish research institutes and our research partner in Bangladesh for the exchange of knowledge and technological know-how to get robust research and development output for our business.

Further, we plan to facilitate recycle water and solar power use in our production, wherever appropriate, provided we manage necessary funding. 

Mohammad Azim (Founder, Bangladesh). He works on the venture full-time. Diania Giaisa (Designer, Rome, Italy), she is working on the project on part-time basis. Oscar Rino Granström (Marketing and sales manager, Stockholm, Sweden), he is working on the venture part-time as well. David  is a design and product development student at Linköpings University, Sweden. He is supporting the venture with designing the products on part-time basis. Rubel Amin and Mostaq (Bangladesh), Olof Engstrom (Sweden) are supporting in IT and E-commerce development from time to time basis. We have additional contacts to help with  accounting, social media promotion and blog writing. 

The Poli team is quite diverse, both in-terms of their nationalities and the skills and experience they possess.  

Azim holds two MSc in environmental science; the second one was from Stockholm University. Earlier, he studied at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. He participated 16 international programs in 12 countries around the world. He developed a strong international network. He has experience in jute and leather based products development for international market. Diana is pursuing a Masters in Products Service System designing. She is responsible for designing new bags following the ethics of minimalist fashion of our business. Oscar holds a Masters in Business Administration from Stockholm University. He has experience in b2b sales. David  is a design and product development student at Linköpings University, with a key interest in smart and simple solutions. His greatest achievements so far was to be awarded an honorary participation in Sweden's Youth Entrepreneurship exhibition finals for innovative leather products designs. Olof is a MSc in Information Technology student at the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Rubel has practical experience in E-commerce business development in Bangladesh. Mostaq is proficient web-developer from Bangladesh. If funding requirements are met, the team can achieve their dream to be an international  brand of strongly sustainable fashion. 

We are targeting customers who are committed to both environment and sustainability globally, particularly focusing on North Europe at this stage and planning to gradually expand to Asia and North America. Our primary customers segment target people who are between 18 and 49 years old, however anyone is free to enjoy our bags and accessories. Our b2c revenue is generating from E-commerce website, other online retailers and re-sellers. We plan to have b2b revenue through attending trade fair and expo for b2b order and serving Eco-friendly organizations/companies that intend to produce customize bags with our sustainable materials. 

We lack funding to scale up the venture and fulfill our dream. I am applying for this program to see if I can get any finance, whatever the amounts is, from the Tiger Challenge.