Positive Impact Through Business
This is the 2nd post in a short series pulling back the curtain about why we started Amari.
For a little context…
I went to CU Boulder in the 90’s. It was a blur of skiing, hiking, partying on Pearl St and studying my ass off. I graduated with a degree in Environmental Studies along with a Business minor. Looking back, sustainability was core to my business interests before it became the career path of today.
I always believed that businesses could peacefully coexist with doing the right thing for the planet we all depend on. In the many years since college, I gravitated toward opportunities to demonstrate that sustainability made business sense and was ultimately an advantage.
Enter Amari. It’s our opportunity to highlight how a dedicated group of customers can influence positive change by channeling their collective purchasing power through a business. We can vote with our dollars, which love it or hate it, is the most powerful vote we have.
The video was filmed on location and jumps right into the 2nd reason. The text below is mostly from the video.
We’ve had longstanding desire to use the power of capitalism for good and build a company that has a positive impact on the world. Sounds great, but what does that actually mean to reconcile these goals with the conventional wisdom that capitalism is a zero-sum game.
For Amari, it’s using the collective purchasing power of our customers to influence change. We want to make a handshake agreement with our customers that if we all believe in something, then we will actively support and report on our progress.
Two examples of this are; supporting regenerative agriculture in our supply chain and supporting/protecting the outdoors.
Regenerative Agriculture – Better soil = better ingredients = increased human health + all of the other environmental benefits.
As a young brand, we are not close to the goal of sourcing all of our ingredients from regenerative grown sources, but will work towards that transition with the support of our customers. Our vision for Amari’s supply chain is to contract with growers who produce to our standards, lowering the risk for the farmer. The raw ingredients are then processed to our spec and packaged to Amari’s standards.
The Outdoors –It is the power of these places to decompress, recharge and absorb the amazing world around us. We support preserving the remaining wilderness areas, rural landscapes and the communities that encourage shared experiences outside.
Over the coming months and years (post COVID), we’ll do our best to provide opportunities to enjoy shared experiences outside. We encourage you and your companies to join groups like the Conservation Alliance and Big City Mountaineers who are doing amazing work protecting wild places and helping others enjoy the outdoors.
My background
Prior to Amari, I spent 10+ years working with early-stage CPG companies and commercializing technology from a University setting. We leveraged a community-based model that put the best domain experts in the room with our client companies. I was fortunate enough to learn from those experiences and now apply those lessons as an operator.
