Companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars on ‘swag’ or promotional merchandise every year, but what happens when they change their logo or go through an acquisition? Swag Cycle helps companies repurpose and recycle items in a responsible, ethical, and affordable way, keeping unneeded swag out of landfills.

In this episode of Logistics with Purpose, Kristi Porter and Luisa Garcia are joined by Ben Grossman, Co-President of Grossman Marketing Group and Founder of SwagCycle. Prior to assuming his current position, he was the director of his firm’s Green Marketing & Sustainability Practice and he founded SwagCycle in 2019, for which he received the 2022 Bess Cohn Humanitarian of the Year award from the Advertising Specialty Institute. Listen in as he talks about his unique professional journey.

Intro/Outro (00:02):

Welcome to Logistics with Purpose presented by Vector Global Logistics in partnership with Supply chain. Now we spotlight and celebrate organizations who are dedicated to creating a positive impact. Join us for this behind the scenes glimpse of the origin stories change, making progress and future plans of organizations who are actively making a difference. Our goal isn’t just to entertain you, but to inspire you to go out and change the world. And now here’s today’s episode of Logistics With Purpose.

Kristi Porter (00:35):

Hello and welcome again to another terrific episode of The Logistics with Purpose podcast presented by Vector Global Logistics in supply chain. Now we are thrilled to talk with today’s guest. I’m also doubly thrilled because this is my teammate valued colleague Luisa. This is her first time co-hosting the an episode with us. So Luisa, good morning. Welcome. Hello, I’m so glad to be here with you.

Luisa Garcia (01:01):

Thank you, Christie. Yeah, I’m so excited to, to be here and well, first of all, because as you mentioned, I’m co-hosting this interview with you, but mainly because we have an amazing guest today, I’m happy to welcome to the show to Ben Rossman, co-president of Grossman Marketing Group, and founder at Slack Cycle. Welcome, Ben. How are you doing today? Welcome.

Ben Grossman (01:22):

I’m doing great. Luisa and Christie. Thank you so much for having me.

Kristi Porter (01:26):

Absolutely. We’re thrilled for you to be here.

Luisa Garcia (01:28):

Yeah. To start us up, Ben, please tell us a little about where you grew up and about yourself, your childhood.

Ben Grossman (01:36):

So I grew up in the Boston area. I’m the middle child of three boys, so I have an older brother who is my business partner and a younger brother as well, who were all super close. Eventually, after having some experience outside of the business, I joined a family business. So I grew up around a family business gross and marketing group, which today is a fourth generation family company. And getting exposed to the business, coming in on Saturdays with my dad. My grandfather who’s alive at the time, was active in the business. And then my aunts and my grandmother were involved in the business too. Oh, one of my aunts is still involved in the business. And so coming in and experiencing and seeing what it was like to work in a family business that was reasonably successful and where the family relationships were pretty harmonious, especially relatively speaking to other family businesses. And I grew up, I always enjoyed business. I enjoyed trying to be creative and starting things and loved sports. And we got exposed early on to philanthropy and community activism, both through the company as well as just through our family. And it was ingrained in us the importance of giving back to the community in which we live both locally as well as globally. And that’s sort of the, some of the inspiration that’s that that I’ve drawn on to work on some of the initiatives like Swag cycle.

Kristi Porter (03:01):

That’s fantastic. I’m curious too about the philanthropy aspect. Was that something that was ingrained fourth generation business is pretty remarkable? And to have your family just so involved in every aspect and as you mentioned, for them to get along so well, was the philanthropy aspect. Was that early on? Was that from the beginning of the business? Did that come later?

Ben Grossman (03:21):

So it was both philanthropy as well as being active in the community. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> in some way, shape or form. And we learned that from our parents and our grandparents. There’s a really interesting piece that we found in our archives that the family that the company sent out the day after Pearl, the Pearl Harbor bombing. So Wow. So the Pearl Harbor bombing was December 7th, 1941. And this piece went out December 8th, and it was to announce that the founder of the family business, my grand, my great-grandfather, max Grossman, was leaving the business to become what was called a dollar a year man under President Franklin Roosevelt to take his skillset to work in the Office of Price Administration to help ration pay for supplies across the United States. So he was leaving his job to devote his efforts full-time for a dollar a year. It was a program designed for business leaders around the country who were too old to serve in armed combat, but wanted to devote their experience to helping the war effort.

Ben Grossman (04:28):

Also, my grandfather, Edgar, who was at the bus, who was in the business at the time, also in the, in that letter, it was being announced that he was enlisting and he ended up serving as an officer in World War ii. And the letter, it ended and it both started and ended with this phrase, we are proud of the company we keep, and it talked about being active to give back to the world, both locally as well as globally. And that’s the inspiration that we, that we’ve drawn on. Our father, Steve, who ran the business for 35 years, we were in business with him. And then he decided during the financial crisis to run for state treasurer of Massachusetts, the election was in 2010, and he was elected with bipartisan support to take his skillset in business to try to help shore up the finances in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Ben Grossman (05:23):

And when he won, we actually sent a piece of direct mail to all of our entire database, our customers, our prospects, our suppliers, and any other special friends. And it was both a letter announcing he was departing, but it was also a copy of that letter from 70 years prior. Wow. And said something like, like in 1941, we are proud of the company we keep and explaining what our father was going on to do and how my brother and I were going to take the mantle on to become stewards of this business, not lose sight of the values that got us here, both in terms of how we treat our employees, how we service our customers, and how we’re involved in the community to take the company forward.

Kristi Porter (06:06):

That’s remarkable. Yeah. What an incredible history and lineage.

Ben Grossman (06:10):

Thank you.

Kristi Porter (06:11):

A lot to be proud of.

Luisa Garcia (06:13):

Yes. And as you mentioned, like through all these generations, uh, combining both business, but not only that, I mean including all these giving, giving back heart, and, and in your woman experience you have be following that, that from your great great grandfather and following that. So that’s amazing. And well, you’re a Princeton University graduate and also you hold an MBA from Columbia Business School, both Ivy League institutions, which is really impressive. Please, could you tell us a little bit more about your educational or life lessons as you, during this season in your life?

Ben Grossman (06:57):

I was incredibly fortunate to be able to go to those institutions, the, just the friends I, the relationships that I, that built over the years have stayed with me, getting exposed to that incredible talent from around the globe and having to compete in a friendly way, but compete with those incredibly talented individuals and learn and more importantly, learn from them. Learn about their backgrounds, learn about their upbringings, which were certainly different than mine. What their values were, what they wanted to do, what their aspirations were, and just trying to think more of in a global mindset rather than a, a local mindset. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so, again, I was very fortunate to go to those institutions and I tried my best to take advantage of the resources that I was exposed to by working really hard. You get a, a limited amount of time to be a full-time student and it’s an incredible privilege.

Ben Grossman (07:53):

And I tried to recognize that. I actually think that when I went back to business school after having worked in strategy consulting after graduating from Princeton, I actually think that I took that to heart and more in terms of appreciating what I had after having left college in sort of the safe confines of college and going into a workplace where you have to, you’re responsible for deliverables and going to meetings and servicing a client and servicing and, and communicating with your boss and all of the things that are required to succeed in a large corporate environment. Then going back and going to Columbia Business School, I approached it, I think with a little bit more discipline mm-hmm. <affirmative> and with more mindfulness that this was a very special situation that I was in and I wanted to do everything I could to squeeze everything out of that experience and not take it for granted.

Kristi Porter (08:54):

Mark really smart. Well, for those who haven’t caught on yet, the three of us are in marketing. Let’s point that out. We’re all very proud to be marketers. So going to both the Princeton and Columbia, you studied, you didn’t study marketing, but you’ve talked a little bit about your family. So what led the transition to it’s time to join the marketing family business rather than one of your, that you thought was gonna be maybe your career path? Cause I think you studied history maybe at Princeton and then business at Columbia.

Ben Grossman (09:25):

When I was in college, I actually started and sold a small company with a really close friend. Actually, that really close friend introduced me to my wife, so I owe him big. Yeah. But we had this idea for a, it was like a T-shirt slogan, it was called Live Big. And it was almost like a, there was a brand back then called No Fear and Life is Good was just starting. And we actually got our products into 15 stores in six states. Wow. When we were in college. And this was, we built an online store before tools like Shopify existed. Yeah. Uh, we took orders online before. That was a simple process. Yeah. It was actually incredibly hard to do. What we learned about though was fulfilling orders, generating sales. That was so valuable, such a valuable experience to get to go and generate sales from scratch.

Ben Grossman (10:21):

Take your ideas, see what worked, see what didn’t iterate. And it was really fun to do something entrepreneurial. So I always knew I wanted to do something entrepreneurial and have some semblance of control over my career when I, so this was while I was at Princeton, I was also just interested in business in general. That’s why I went into strategy consulting. Sure. I was with a strategy unit at IBM m that worked both internally as well as externally. And then I decided that I wanted to go to business school because although I had some business experience, both in a small entrepreneurial setting, we ended up selling that business actually after college to a company that wanted to own our assets and own that slogan and make that their corporate slogan. It was a large company that bought us, although we had some experience in an entrepreneurial setting, as well as I had some experience in consulting.

Ben Grossman (11:12):

I had never studied business, I had never studied finance, I had never taken corporate finance. I didn’t really understand what a balance sheet was, what an income statement was. I hadn’t taken marketing or other types of entrepreneurship classes. And I was very fortunate to be admitted to Columbia Business School. And I just, I tried to take ev take advantage of every opportunity there. While I was at Columbia, I was really interested in potentially joining my family business, but I was also interested in other endeavors. And I tried to expose myself to a number of different, of avenues. Investment management, venture capital did internships in both as well as a potential startup. Ultimately, I was most passionate about joining my family business, which at the time when I graduated business school was a fourth generation, 96 year old family business. Incredible. My brother David was my older brother.

Ben Grossman (12:07):

David was already in the business working with our father, and it sounded really exciting and the business was at this turning point where it had, it was started in 1910 as a company called Massachusetts Envelope Company. And for the first seven years of our existence, from probably 1910 to 1980, visually a regional envelope printer and distributor. And then under our father’s leadership, working in partnership with our grandfather, it grew into other markets, other product lines, other types of printing forms, et cetera. And then what really supercharged the growth was getting into the branded merchandise space, what we call swag. When I joined the business in 2006, only about 10 to 15% of the revenue of our business was derived from swag. Now it’s the overwhelming majority of the business. And when I joined the company, I knew that I had to do a little bit of everything.

Ben Grossman (13:08):

I got some great advice from an alum of Columbia Business School before in a, in an in-class project with a professor Frank Flynn, who’s now at Stanford Business School. And I interviewed a number of alums to find out how I could be most successful in my, in a family business setting. And I interviewed alumni who had gone into their family businesses and had achieved some varying levels of success. And one of the best pieces of advice I got from someone was try to find a way to generate revenue. Because if you do, no one can ever question your existence in your family business. You’re not just there cuz of your last name, but you were generating gross profit. You were generating sales, which helped to protect people’s jobs and help the business grow. So I took that advice to heart, and I’m really proud of the fact that almost 17 years later, I’ve never cost the company a dime.

Ben Grossman (14:00):

I’ve always generated more gross profit than I’ve ever crossed the company. Starting on day one, I started getting orders about a month in from my network. And so I did a lot of focus on sales, but also corporate strategy. We’ve done a number of acquisitions of other businesses. That’s something that I generally spearhead. The, the cultivation of those, the lead generation of opportunities, the cultivation of those relationships, and then the negotiation and integration. I really love that, that aspect of business and of m and a. My brother and I run the business and we split our responsibilities. Well, he’s more creative, he’s more touchy-feely. But we have a great, we have a great partnership and we balance each other out quite well.

Kristi Porter (14:45):

I, I wanna ask you really quickly about the fact that you just took an upon yourself to go interview people who were part of family businesses. I feel like even that’s something that I wanted to highlight per a minute, because you’re sort of just like, oh, this is what anybody would do. That’s sort of the way it came outta your mouth. But that’s not the truth. So what, what kind of made you wanna go and do that? Because I feel like no matter what position you’re in, that’s a lesson that anybody could learn. Go find a mentor, whether it’s a mentor of a one time thing or an ongoing thing, but to be able to learn from the lessons of others rather than, let me just figure it out on my own without any experience. But I’m just curious what your thought process is and why you decided to do that.

Ben Grossman (15:29):

Well, I have to give credit to the professor who I mentioned Frank Flynn, who’s now at Stanford. But at the time, I was in his class, it was the spring of my second year, my final year in business school. And it was a course called Power and Influence. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And the final project, you were tasked with interviewing people who were in the workplace. You were going into alumni of Columbia, so if you were going to be an investment banker at JP Morgan, you would interview other alums who had gone to do that. My project was a little bit different because I was going into a family business that didn’t, it wasn’t full of Columbia Business School graduates, so to speak. Yeah. And so I had to create this project and find alums to interview. And those were incredibly powerful conversations. I wasn’t a novice at interview.

Ben Grossman (16:20):

I did journalism starting freshman year in high school. And I ended up being the managing editor of the Daily Princetonian at Princeton, managing a newsroom of more than 50 reporters and putting out a newspaper every single day. I was responsible for with my editorial board. So I’d done a lot of interviewing people Yeah. Over time and not being afraid to ask questions, because if you don’t ask the question, you’re not going to learn something. And like you said, rather than just going into gross and marketing group and winging it. And thankfully I had some, my brother and my dad and my two aunts were there and my grandmother was still there. So I had some family resources, but it was so helpful to speak to non-family members to find out what was successful, what were some pitfalls, what to avoid, what they recommended, and distilling that down into an in-class paper.

Ben Grossman (17:12):

But I will tell you, I referenced that document Yeah. Many years. And going in, it was almost like a kind of first 90 day guide. A little bit of guidance on how to comport myself guidance on, on what I should do to learn what I should do to build relationships, what I should do to generate sales, or the idea that generating sales above all else would’ve been beneficial for me in my development. Yeah. Most of all is the importance of being humble. One of the things that holds people back, going to family businesses, going to a, building a company with their name on it, or they feel like their name’s on it, is they come in and act like they own the place. It is so important to walk into those situations with humility, with gratitude for what the platform that you have, but also all the work that your family as well as all the non-family, employees and stakeholders have done to get the business to that point.

Ben Grossman (18:16):

And what I’ve learned over time, and what I’ve tried to share when I get interviewed by business school students or other people who are going into their family businesses, is the importance of never, ever take for granted past success does not guarantee future success. And at any business. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, if you don’t reinvent yourself and try to be creative in terms of what you’re doing today, how can you improve rather than resting on your laurels, if you don’t take those actions, you will be left behind. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and my brother and I have taken that to heart, tried to take a wonderful platform that we were given, but that without being reinvented, would not have survived. And trying to take leverage the success that we, that the company had and building on that and building from the strong foundation that we were so fortunate to come into. But how could we build on that to help the business continue to be a sustainable enterprise and a sustainable enterprise that might be able to make to the fifth generation, maybe not, we’ll see. But we’re 113 years in now and we’ll optimistic and excited of what the future holds. And what’s been so exciting about the seat that I sit in is in addition to running our business, I’ve been able to take some passions of mine around sustainability and entrepreneurship and work on other initiatives like Swag Cycle, which be thrilled to talk about.

Kristi Porter (19:44):

Yes. Well that is incredible. I wish every student had that as part of their curriculum. That’s really fantastic.

Ben Grossman (19:51):

Thank you.

Kristi Porter (19:51):

And it sounds like it’s something that has just continued to stick with you.

Luisa Garcia (19:55):

Yeah. Yeah. It is. Really. Well, I love to listen to you like how you look up to your family, how you admire them, but also how you build your own path. And I, I would like to know, you were also working on green and sustainable marketing before it was popular as it is now. So you are also a pioneer in your own way. That’s amazing. And what was that attracted you to that specialty?

Ben Grossman (20:24):

Just the recognition that we live in a planet with finite resources. And having seen the statistics that back 15 years ago, there was a lot of argument that global warming wasn’t even, wasn’t even happening. And it was clear that it was clear that it was fact and that it wasn’t fiction and how, and I wanted to think about how we could take our business. This is 15, 16 plus years ago when I started something called a green marketing and sustainability practice at the business, which we received a lot of recognition for locally as well as nationally. We wanted to find ways that we could operate more sustainably and responsibly, but also help our clients do the same. And then drawing from that inspiration came swag cycle, I got involved with an organization, a nonprofit in, it’s a national organization that’s headquartered in Boston called the Product Stewardship Institute.

Ben Grossman (21:22):

And it’s an organization that’s focused on really passing legislation to get producers to be responsible for the full life cycle of their products. Wow. Or like companies like mattress manufacturers, that they can’t just make the mattress, but they need to build pathways that when the mattress has, is no longer useful. That there are ways that people who have mattresses can have those recycled so they don’t just end up in landfills. Having products, going to landfills is the biggest reason. One of the biggest reasons it’s bad is because when products degrade in landfills, they release methane gas. And methane gas is a really, really harmful greenhouse gas to the environment, far more harmful than co2. And so that’s a sci and scientific reason why sending things to landfills is not the answer. There’s a lot of practical reasons too. But in our business I saw we had this lived experience where we worked with companies to help them make a wide array of marketing collateral and branded merchandise, logoed water bottles and t-shirts and backpacks to help them build their brand, help them reward their employees.

Ben Grossman (22:35):

Employees love swag when it’s well done, help them generate sales and a whole host of other benefits to why they, they do swag and why we work with organizations to make them useful, practical, branded products. But what I saw and what our team saw is that when companies rebranded, they changed their logo or there might be an a corporate acquisition, it would leave the high quality branded merchandise to becoming obsolete nearly overnight. And I saw that the path of least resistance for companies was generally just throwing the goods away, throwing them in a landfill. And it wasn’t because those companies didn’t care about the environment, it’s just they didn’t know what to do with ’em. And everyone is so busy, all of our customers that we work with, they’re so busy and they just don’t have the time to figure out where to send these goods to charity, how to recycle those goods, how to upcycle those goods.

Ben Grossman (23:35):

And so the bell went off in, in our minds of, okay, so at four years ago, we came up with this concept in our early 2019, and we saw this challenge of what companies went through. And we wanted to try to figure out a way to build some type of frictionless platform where companies could divest of their goods, either through Char charitable donations or recycling upcycling efforts to leave less of a footprint and potentially create positive social impacts. And so leaning on, there’s a famous book called The Lean Startup by Eric Reese. And the, there’s a concept in the book about building a minimum viable product, trying to get something rather than sit and workshop it for years, try to build something and get it out there and iterate and collect data so you can improve upon that to determine if this business is viable and if not, shut it down and move on.

Ben Grossman (24:38):

And so I drew some inspiration from that book, and we came up with this name Swag Cycle, which we liked. And we designed a logo and built a website. And I personally reached out to a number of nonprofits, we’re headquartered in Boston. So I started locally just where we had some relationships. We’re now global by the way. But we started locally and I personally reached out to some nonprofits that focused on, uh, kids and afterschool programs and homeless shelters and other organizations like that to determine what kinds of products they might need and if they wanted to be charitable partners, a spec cycle. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So we hand created a small group of charitable partners and then in addition, did research, did research, and then direct outreach to recycling partners around textiles and apparel and metal and plastic and other types of materials. And so then once we did that, we did a little bit of marketing search engine engine optimization, content marketing, reaching out through our industry and just word of mouth.

Ben Grossman (25:39):

And it took off. And then Covid hit six months later and everything changed then. And for a little while, the inbound traffic for swag cycle really slowed down. Sure. While everyone was collecting themselves. And then about six months into covid, so fall 2020 about, we saw a dramatic uptick in interest. And this was around, there was a lot of m and a activity that happened later that year. And then in 21 and 22. But in addition, a lot of companies started reassessing their real estate needs and finding supply closets full of stuff. Vendor partners of these companies were want made, wanted to downsize their space. They had pallets of old merchandise that was no longer in use. They started reaching out to us. And these weren’t folks in the northeast, these were California, Texas, the United Kingdom, Asia, other elsewhere in Europe, south America, Canada. But then just all around the United States.

Ben Grossman (26:42):

And based on that, we continue to build out our, our charitable and recycling network. As word of mouth grew, we also started hearing from wonderful charitable partners who wanted to become, or wonderful charities who wanted to become partners of swag cycle one. One example was summer of 21. We heard from the Y M C A in Greater Houston. They were responsible for resettling at the time, several hundred families from Afghanistan in the wake of the US polling their troop, our troops out of Afghanistan. Um, several hundred refugee families on special immigrant visas. It ended up being more than a thousand families. But they reached out to me and they said, we need everything. We need clothing for kids, we need clothing for adults. We need long sleeved clothing for women, for religious reasons. We need backpacks for kids and water bottles. We need coffee mugs to outfit the temporary housing for these refugees.

Ben Grossman (27:42):

We need fun light up pool trinkety things for the local teenage youth mentors who come and volunteer their time to help the Afghani youth get acclimated to American society. And so we’ve only done this one time and, and since we launched Swag Cycle, we actually sent a blast to our entire swag cycle database to the companies that are in the database like Donor Partners and said, this is the request from the Y M C A in Greater Houston. This is the challenge they’re facing. If you have any goods to donate, please let us know. We’ll help to facilitate the donation. We heard from several dozen different companies that we helped them facilitate donations. It ended up being several hundred thousand dollars of merchandise. Wow. Incredible. High quality clothing and drinkware and backpacks and that kind of thing. And what we feel is we’re giving dignity to these folks.

Ben Grossman (28:41):

We are trying to treat them the way we’d want to be treated with a high quality piece of clothing, a high quality water bottle, and something else where we want to arm them with products that they can go out into the world and feel proud of themselves. And we’re really grateful that we have that ability to do so. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> another example. We’ve worked with Dress for Success in the past, and Dress for Success is most known for helping women PRI primarily in the inner cities, get back into the workforce. And they’re known for outfitting those, their female participants with professional attire to go to their interviews and go to and go to work in mm-hmm. <affirmative>. We’ve facilitated donations of high quality like moles, skin style notebooks that these women can take to job interviews and feel that that dignity and feel professional writing in a high quality, in a high quality notebook. Right. And, uh, it’s been, it’s been the most meaningful work I’ve ever done, done trying to help take these goods that could otherwise end up in a landfill and getting them to worthy causes where they can make a difference.

Kristi Porter (29:51):

Incredibly clear that you’re passionate about it. I, those are terrific stories and you’ve come a long way in just a few years, especially given the pandemic, which is the asterisk on everything for that all of us do. So I’m curious, I know one of the things, as a marketer, as somebody who’s ordered products like this, I fully understand the need for it. I know one of the things that you’re also passionate about is making it really easy for people to participate. So what are kind of from the company side and from the nonprofit side, what are the couple steps to getting involved

Ben Grossman (30:25):

When a company reaches out and we hear from companies every day, the first question we ask is, what goods do you have? And can they go to charity? Can they live on? Cause our, the best environmental outcome is to have the goods live on and reused. Sure. The best social outcome, of course, is also to get those high quality goods to worthy causes that can make use of, if the answer is no because of brand guidelines, then we can work to potentially recycle or upcycle those good. We’ve done that for a number of companies. The most commonly cited reason that companies want to recycle those goods and have them leave the marketplace is because they don’t want anyone ever impersonating their workers. The largest product category in the swags face is apparel. And so we’ve worked within in-home healthcare organizations as well as like direct to consumer telecom companies that make house calls and they don’t want anyone to ever impersonate their workers and showing up at someone’s house that is saying that they work for their local telephone company.

Ben Grossman (31:30):

And having that lead to something a bad outcome. So, so when, so the first question we ask is, can the goods live on in the marketplace, i e going to charity? If the answer is yes, then we find out a little more where are the, where are the goods? Where do they reside? Are you the donor comfortable with them being donated nearby to cut to, to minimize carbon emissions, to ship those goods? Or do you want them to maybe go to a different geographic area outside of your main kind of territory that sometimes is a request? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And then we take an audit of what they have and we send those key details to our charitable partner group. It’s several hundred, uh, nonprofits around the globe. And when we have a good match that we think is appropriate based on all the various parameters, we present that back to the donor.

Ben Grossman (32:21):

And if they approve those goods going to address for success or Y M C A or boys and Girls clubs, or a whole host of others, then we give them the, the logistical information to ship the goods out. We don’t charge for charitable donation matchmaking. We view that that is a public service. The only cost that the donors are responsible for is the shipping cost to get the goods from their wear. Generally their vendor’s warehouse to the charitable partner. So we don’t charge for the service whatsoever. And in fact, if they ship on their shipper number or work, work on that with their vendor partner in the warehouse, no dollars change hands of swag cycle. Where we do charge is for recycling upcycling efforts. And that’s based on different and the cost ranges depending on what the items are and what the quantity is and where they’re located.

Ben Grossman (33:11):

We’ve worked on some very large recycling projects. Worked at a very large technology company where they had about 20 pallets worth of metal water bottles that we were able to recycle. We worked with a very large consumer goods company where they had skids and skids of display materials and peril and other types of products that we’re able to recycle with a really specialty partner of ours. For us, a challenge for us is just building out more of our capabilities. There are some products that you can’t, we can’t really recycle right now, like silicone straws or things like that. And so the goal is I’d like to get to a place where we could recycle a hundred percent of the goods that we come in contact with. We’re not there yet, but it’s an aspirational goal. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,

Luisa Garcia (34:01):

Wow. I’m so delighted to listen to all of the things you do. And it’s so hard coaching for me to know how many people you’re helping with this effort efforts and talking about this efforts. Can you please explain the difference between upcycling and recycling?

Ben Grossman (34:19):

Yeah, no, that’s a great question. So upcycling is generally when you take the products and turn them into something else that is, at least the way I define it, is you take the goods and then turn into something else that might have some other use. So an example is we have a wonderful partner of ours and we’ve helped some people, some companies take their obsolete vinyl banners from trade shows and have those cleaned and cut up and turned into do kits and messenger bags and other products. So I view that as upcycling, whereas we have a really good recycling partner for some of the apparel that we deal with where the apparel gets shredded down and really recycled into insulation material where it’s sort of kind of leaves the consumer marketplace. That’s sort of how I look at it. I think other people have different meanings, but for me, I view upcycling sort of remaining in circulation in some tangible way.

Ben Grossman (35:16):

Whereas recycling is really ground down more to the fiber level, might get recycled in a recycled yarn or other products like that. We’ve also done some really fun things with some textile recycling partners of ours where shirts get shredded and turn into the fill that goes into boxing speed bags, the and boxing bags and even carpet pad fill. And I mentioned insulation materials and car seat fill and mattress fill and things like that. So it’s great because those, there’s industrial uses for those goods, those raw materials, and rather than having them go to landfills, they can at least find some way to live on in some shape or form.

Kristi Porter (35:57):

For sure. You’ve already mentioned some incredible case studies that you’ve done, some stories of how you’ve helped people and how you’re working. We noticed also in your latest impact report that one of your largest projects to date was working with Facebook’s parent company Meta. So tell us specifically about that project.

Ben Grossman (36:17):

Thanks for asking about that. When Facebook rebranding a meta, that’s probably the most famous rebranding effort in recent corporate history, and Facebook reached out to us directly. They had goods sitting in one vendor’s warehouse in the United States and one vendor’s warehouse in the uk. And we asked the same questions, we asked everyone else and they were willing to have the goods live on in the marketplace. They wanted to know where those goods were going and the goods in the us And it was about approximately 20,000 items, but a hundred thousand dollars of value. Some really nice products. Yeah, I mean some vests and apparel and water bottles and backpacks and notebooks and things like that that really are useful and people want. And we facilitated the uk, the UK donation to a UK partner called Giving that we worked with before. And some of those goods actually went to help with like Ukrainian refugee efforts, families coming to the UK and needing to be outfitted with products similar to the, um, the Y M C A example I cited before.

Ben Grossman (37:26):

Um, and then the US based goods were in the southeastern part of the US in Georgia and we actually had those facil, we facilitated that donation to a Georgia based nonprofit partner of ours. So again, minimize carbon emissions in both places in the UK as well as in the us getting them into the local markets and keeping them outta landfills. And then actually since then we’ve worked, we’ve supported Facebook Met on another project through one of their vendor partners. So the first time we worked directly with them, another time worked with one of their vendor partners. And it’s been really rewarding work to again, take these goods that are high quality and get them in the hands of those who need the most.

Kristi Porter (38:12):

Perfect. Thank you for sharing.

Ben Grossman (38:14):

Sure.

Luisa Garcia (38:15):

And what have been one or two challenges with getting SAC Cycle at the ground and why did you learn?

Ben Grossman (38:22):

It’s at early on, it’s slow going. And sometimes in a startup you’re wondering, do people even know that we exist? Do people want this product or service? And the is sticking with it and grinding it out and get, putting yourself and you the company in a position to see, to collect more data, to be able to decide if you want to continue? Thankfully we did, and the data showed that it was a benefit to the community, a benefit to our industry, a benefit to us, and just really rewarding, it makes us feel good that we can leverage our infrastructure to be able to create positive environmental and social outcomes. Another challenge that we’ve had is just what I talked about before, just building out the capabilities so that we can recycle everything. I sometimes feel badly when we get an inquiry and an organization wants the goods to leave the marketplace, and we might not have a good recycling or upcycling avenue for those products like the silicone straws that I mentioned.

Ben Grossman (39:33):

And so a challenge has just been building out that cap capability. So in a my day job at Gross and Marketing Group we’re, it’s almost supply chain management and making goods and delivering a finished product to a client. It in swag cycle, you’re reversing that process. You’re taking those products apart in a responsible way and trying to minimize the amount of waste that goes to a landfill now. And about that, I’ve seen some just incredible statistics, especially around textile and clothing. That clothing and household textiles currently make up more than 6% of the waste stream in the United States, which is actually, there’s a crazy number. It’s about equivalent to 81 pound per person thrown away annually in the us. And that’s both from an industrial as well as in-home perspectives. That’s what drives the numbers up. But that nearly 95% of those clothing and textiles could actually be recycled if they got into the hands of the right partner.

Ben Grossman (40:33):

And so that’s what we’re responsible for, getting the, that, uh, those goods in the hands of the right partners. And we operate in a very partner-based way. We’re a platform. We work with charitable partners. So swag cycle’s not a non-for-profit. It’s a, we’re a corporation, we’re a platform facilitating donations to charitable organizations around the globe. And then we’re also, we then also facilitate the recycling projects with our recycling partners. And we’re much more actively managing those to completion, getting certificates of recycling to our clients when it’s a charitable donation. We don’t view the project as being done until a donation receipt is generated by the nonprofit and gets sent over to the donor.

Kristi Porter (41:18):

Terrific. It’s also, swag cycle is the perfect example of you saw a problem, you created a solution, which is simple to say, but you just explained some of the challenges involved with it. So for people who have, whether they’re entrepreneurs within their own company or extra, and entrepreneurs outside, they wanna start something. A lot of people have a lot of ideas. They don’t necessarily act on them. So what would be your advice for others who see a problem that needs solving to take action

Ben Grossman (41:52):

For those folks, if they see a problem and it’s an informed, you know, they, they’re informed because they might have information about their industry or their business or their customers and they understand there’s a pain point and they wanna address that pain point. Well, they already have that, that now they have some good experience to drop on. So now it’s just a sort of trying to create a quick, you don’t have to create a 30 page business plan. You can just write up almost a to-do list and brainstorm. Okay, what, what do I need to build? Is it software, is it hardware? Is it really a website? Is it some communication? What are the different elements? And trying to experiment. So you don’t, you’re not betting the farm on it, but you’re making thoughtful investments of resources and your time to be able to collect data and get it out to the marketplace, either through perhaps almost mini focus grouping.

Ben Grossman (42:46):

Right. Bringing the idea and what you’re trying to work on to the customers that you think might be helped with the solution to see if they’d be interested. I already knew because I ran a company, I already knew Right. That it would work for us. It would benefit gross and marketing and, and our clients. And in my, in the course of my travels, I did speak to other business owners and other suppliers in our space and end user companies to find out, hey, this platform existed and you were to rebrand. Would it be helpful for you? And generally the answer was, would be, I don’t think people think about it a lot. It’s a very niche focus, but I knew based on our experience that it could provide value. So I’d encourage people if they have an idea to talk to people they think could be helped by their tool or solution to see if there is some interest there in what they’re trying to do.

Luisa Garcia (43:41):

Right. Good advice. Yeah. And finally, what do you hope EL marketers will learn or implement when it comes to sustainability? As we collect collectively try and achieve climate goals for our companies?

Ben Grossman (43:58):

So it’s very clear from all of the research that I see that people want to work for, buy from and invest in socially responsible organizations. So it’s really important that sustainability and being a good corporate citizen is part of the backbone of an organization. If someone just slaps a eco logo on something but they don’t back it up through their corporate actions, that’s greenwashing. And so we highly recommend people don’t greenwash. If you are trying to do things sustainably in your marketing, you need to back it up in all facets of your operations, your real estate operations, your fleet, vehicle management, how you treat your employees, how you ship things, how you generate energy or derive energy, what your manufacturing processes are. If you’re a manufacturer and a whole host of others, I’m only touching on a few, but the key is that it has to be part of your every day. It can’t just be something you say you need to back it up with action.

Luisa Garcia (45:00):

Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. <laugh>. And how can our listeners connect with you and of course engage with Slack site?

Ben Grossman (45:11):

So Swag Cycle’s website is swag cycle.net. Uh, so we have a contact us form on the site that if someone fills it out, I will see as well members of my team, if someone is interested in reaching out to me personally, they can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, I’m at at bi Grossman, and then my email is ben swag cycle.net.

Kristi Porter (45:32):

Terrific. Do you have any current needs that we can give a shout out to right now? Whether it’s corporate or nonprofit? Do you have anything you’re trying to get rid of or something you wanna suggest? Or maybe one of those recycling partners or something?

Ben Grossman (45:45):

I would certainly be thrilled to hear from recycling partners who can handle like specialized plastics and vinyls and display materials and other types of metal, some metal scrap metal companies can handle, but some that are parts of other products, it’s a little more challenging. So Sure. I’d welcome hearing from Recycling Partners and then charities if they hear about what we’re doing. Um, just like the Y M C A reached out to us. Another example of a wonderful organization that reached out to us directly and we’ve helped them through a number of donations, is an organization called Birthright Foster Closet. They’re in Michigan and they help foster families and they needed a little bit of everything as well. And their, their executive director reached out to me and we’ve built a wonderful partnership. So other charitable partners have needs for things we, I’d love to hear from you Yeah. And them so that we might be able to add them into our network. And then of course, if companies out there, uh, hear that, hear about Swag Cycle are interested in learning more because maybe they’re planning a rebrand mm-hmm. <affirmative> or even brand agent, brand marketing agencies or whatnot who help companies rebrand. If they wanna learn more about Swag Cycle and they think that Swag Cycle could be a useful tool in their toolbox when they work with their clients, I’d be thrilled to talk to them as well.

Kristi Porter (47:07):

Terrific. Yes. We’re hoping more people will reach out to you as well. Yes, I have. I know exactly what we’re talking about when you talk about the closets full of things sitting there, not going to you. So it is a terrific mission. You’ve already had some wonderful successes and hopefully that will continue and we hope that people will pay attention and find more purpose beyond the original use. So thank you Ben, for being here. Thank you for what you’re doing. And thank you to everyone who joined us again for another episode. We look forward to bringing you more stories that are inspiring and encourage you to take action soon. So from all of us here at Vector and Supply Chain now, thanks for another episode of Logistics With Purpose. Thanks, Ben. Thank you both. Really appreciate it.