Apr 8, 2020
If you are brand new in your journey
of shopping ethically, or if you’ve been shopping ethically for a
while, one of the most common frustrations I hear from people is
that there’s not one central place to find all the things they need
to buy. They don’t want to have to scour the internet and go to ten
different websites to find all of their ethically made products. My
guest today is trying to solve that exact problem. Rachel Kois is
the founder and CEO of Simple
Switch. Three years ago, Rachel was a business
consultant for entrepreneurs in the poorest parts of South Africa.
She was so impressed by what they created and learned so much from
them. Rachel also understood the privilege she held, and when she
came back from her trip, she knew she wanted to use her everyday
choices to empower those with fewer resources. She found it was
actually a very difficult thing to do. The hours it took to
research company ethics, labor laws, and environmentally
sustainable impact did not fit into her busy life and schedule. She
wanted to make a positive impact, but she felt exhausted every step
of the way. This gave Rachel the idea to start Simple Switch to
help people like her, people like you, and people like me find
easier ways to spend our money on products that help us vote for
the kind of world we want to live in. The companies that Simple
Switch has partnered with have committed to improving livelihoods,
protecting the beautiful Earth that we live on, and empowering
people to change their future; our future. Rachel firmly believes
that even if one person uses Simple Switch, it would be worth the
work of creating and sustaining the company. Simple Switch really
is a one stop shop for finding ethically made, simple products that
you use in your everyday life. I loved my chat with Rachel, and I
know you’re going to be inspired by her too!
3:25 - The Rachel 101
- Rachel is a young entrepreneur
living between Denver and Boulder, Colorado. She grew up in
Colorado with the mountains as her playground, and the outdoors are
a big part of her life. She majored in both Business and Theatre
Performance. Her theatre background has helped her take care of
herself, express herself, and connect with people while starting
Simple Switch.
- Rachel loves traveling and just
finished visiting her 28th country! Her travels
have been both personal trips, mission trips, and now, business
trips to meet with Simple Switch partners.
- Rachel has had a heart for
learning about other cultures from a young age. She learned a lot
about both entrepreneurship and the world outside of the US from
her parents who owned a real estate company and were friends with
pastors in Nigeria.
- When Rachel graduated, she thought
she wanted to go into counseling but choose business instead as a
safeguard. She was surprised with how much she fell in love with
business, specifically, business as an opportunity to do good in
the world.
- She had a chance to intern in
South Africa and do business consulting there. When she came home,
she wanted to use her everyday choices to help support people like
the clients she’d worked with in Africa. She recognized that they
were incredible businesspeople but didn’t have the same access to
market as we do here in the US. This is where Rachel’s idea for
Simple Switch took root.
5:58 - Simple Switch
- Simple Switch is an online
marketplace for “positive impact purchasing.” They carry over 3,000
products from home goods to jewelry, and even toilet paper! The
company started out of the desire to help people make simple
changes in their purchasing decisions in order to support ethical
businesses.
- Rachel saw that Amazon had such
convenient ways to purchase with their “One-Click” buy feature, but
ethical companies were so much harder to find, requiring hours or
research, difficult payment, and long shipping times. Simple Switch
was started to create an easier, more convenient place for people
to find ethically made products without so much hassle.
- The biggest challenge for Simple
Switch has been changing customer perception. Often this kind of
shopping is still viewed as a niche for things you don’t need every
day and will only money on if your motivation is making a positive
impact. Rachel realized there are so many day-to-day items out
there that are sustainably made.
- In our society, we’ve had it
drilled into our brains that these story brands for the “feed good”
factor. Simple Switch is trying to change the narrative that people
can switch to ethically made brands for typical shopping
needs.
- Owners of big brands don’t have
personal relationships with the people who make their products. It
really makes us all more interconnected when we can say who made
our clothes and know a little bit about that person’s life and
story. Consumer stories are just as powerful too. Simple Switch is
always hearing about how someone’s entire perspective can change
when they realize how their small decisions can have a huge global
impact.
- Connections between consumers and
impact partners create empowerment for artisans because they know
that consumers value what they make, and it grows their confidence
in both their skills and the quality of their
handiwork.
- When impact partners create safer,
environmentally friendly products that are not contributing harm to
people or communities, our society can start to value those
products as more highly desired than wasteful, fast fashion or
environmentally harmful company practices.
15:24 – Launching an Ethically Led
Business in 2020
- Would you believe that Simple
Switch officially launched in 2020? Rachel had the idea for Simple
Switch five years ago, and spent a year abroad doing World Race
, which allowed her to visit 11 countries in 11 months and absorb
cultural context behind some of the companies Simple Switch is
working with now. Traveling with younger people also gave Rachel a
way to plug into a focus group of consumers.
- When she returned home during the
Fall of 2017, Rachel thought she needed to find a technical
cofounder, thinking she couldn’t do it herself. Although the
learning curve has been steep, Rachel has found her way through the
technical side of the business.
- 2017 was a year of realizing that
this is a company Rachel can run. She spent time bringing on
partners and testing their infrastructure and making sure it was
secure before launching to the public in 2018.
- Now that they’ve had a year under
their belt, Simple Switch has had some big growth with partnerships
that have helped spread the word about the company and get more ads
to a wider audience.
- All partners hold their inventory
and orders come to Simple Switch. They then send the orders to
their partners, and orders are shipped from there. Warehouses can
have issues with ethical treatments of workers and environmentally
wasteful practices, so the drop-ship model also helps Simple Switch
with their ethical mission.
23:22 - On the Horizon
- Rachel’s biggest goal right now is
to get Simple Switch’s name out there. She doesn’t want anyone else
to feel the way she did as a conscious consumer when she was
looking for ethical brands for hours. She wants people to be able
to find these brands in one place, quickly.
- Four trillion dollars will be
spent on online shopping in 2020. Rachel’s motivation for getting
word out about Simple Switch is to get just one tenth of a percent
of that ($4 billion) spent on ethical business. That would go
toward Simple Switch projects like reforesting and carbon
sequestration in rural Africa or helping women coming out of sexual
trafficking.
- Ethical business terms are more
mainstream now than they were even just five years ago. Now that
we’re hearing the terms, people are still a little confused about
what it means. Rachel thinks we have a great opportunity right now
to take advantage of people’s awareness as they discover their
desire to make better ethical and environmental decisions, and that
it’s actually achievable.
26:52- Getting to Know Our
Guest
- Learn a few fun facts about Rachel
like what her guilty pleasures are, what she’s reading right now,
the longest flight she’s ever been on in all her travels and who’d
she’d want to be sitting next to on that flight, and of course,
what it means to her to run a business with purpose.
Memorable Quotes
6:59: “I really believe that every
dollar you spend is a vote for the future you want. I think actual
voting is very important, and second to that, I think that the way
we spend our money is extremely important in creating that
future.”
10:34 – “That’s why we’re called
Simple Switch. We really don’t want to encourage you to buy more
things, that’s not the goal. It’s things that you’re already going
to be buying, we want you to switch that to these impactful
companies.”
12:41 – “For me it’s really exciting
that it also makes people really interconnected, so it’s not just
about the economic empowerment, but if someone just knows who made
their clothes or home goods, it’s a fun way to feel connected to
someone either around the world or here in the United
States.”
15:52 – “I was able to just try to
be a good listener and hear what kind of impact needed to be made
there. It shifted my perspective on what Simple Switch needed to
be.”
24:20 – "Four trillion dollars is
going to be spent on online shopping in 2020, just in the US. If we
put one tenth of a percent of that toward ethical shopping, it
would be $4 billion dollars. And I think about my incredible
partners and the work they’re doing. That would go toward projects
like reforestation and carbon sequestration in rural Africa where
it really is affecting people’s livelihoods that the soil has been
so depleted. Things like women who are coming out of sexual
trafficking, and we have women both in Nepal and Bolivia who are
working on products for Simple Switch. Really big systemic changes
that four billion dollars put towards those projects, that’s very
real change. My motivation behind getting our word out is
that kind of thing where if we’re able to make this shift, it’s a
game changer.”
ABOUT RACHEL:
Rachel Kois is the Founder and CEO of Simple Switch (simpleswitch.org) an online
marketplace for ethical and impactful shopping. She believes
fiercely that our everyday shopping can change the world, so she
started Simple Switch to make sure there is a solid option for
conscious consumers that matches the convenience of modern online
shopping. She’s made friends in 28 countries and grew up with the
beautiful Colorado mountains as her playground, so taking care of
our planet and the people on it are very important to her.
Connect with Rachel: