Creating and marketing sustainable products is no small challenge. Consumers often have a perception problem when it comes to sustainability – whether that’s doubting that they can afford to make sustainable choices, or not knowing which sustainability claims they can trust.

Suhas Ramegowda

We recently spoke with Suhas Ramegowda, co-founder of The Good Doll, about working to make sustainability an affordable, achievable goal for organisations, consumers and Indigenous artisan producers in rural India. We also heard his thoughts on the importance of verification and education around sustainability and his hopes for the future of the movement.

Can you tell us a bit about your career so far and how you first got into the sustainable business space?

For about 14 years I was a typical urbanite, living in big cities and heading up the corporate HR functions at Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Shell. But my wife and I both reached a point in our lives about 10 years ago where we didn’t see meaning in the corporate world, or in consumerism anymore.

In 2017 we wrapped up everything in the city, reduced our life down to five bags and moved to Nilgiris in rural India. We built our own house there and were living pretty much off the grid – we even had elephants and bears living around us.

As we got more integrated into the local Indigenous community there, we saw that there was a serious issue around livelihood. Their priority was being able to make ends meet, but that meant they didn’t have as much focus on looking after the local ecosystem. In the villages there was a lot of plastic waste thrown around and this was all because they were struggling to make ends meet in ways that didn’t disrupt their traditional way of life.

How did The Good Doll come about, and how does it work?

The Good Doll came out of asking what could be done to bring more jobs to the Indigenous folks in the Nilgiris, that allowed them to make sufficient income without disrupting their way of living.

It started about five years ago, with five local women in our living room. We decided to focus on craft because it came naturally to them and that helped decide what shape the solution would take. We knew there had to be a commercial element to it to make it a self-sustaining source of income and we knew the craft products had to be sustainably made because we couldn’t create another beast out of the solution we were trying to build.

We started out by helping the members of the local community develop skills to become first generation artisans, testing out different products. Last year we hit product-market fit with fabric dolls, which turned out to be a sustainable alternative to all the plastic in the toy market because they were made from pre-consumer textile waste.

Credit: The Good Doll

Now we’re entering the next stage, which is working towards the community owning the solution themselves. So far The Good Doll has been built entirely within the community – all the trainers, admin and support staff are from the Indigenous community and every time we have a new position we ask if it’s a role we can fill with someone local.

How did you first learn about Social Enterprise World Forum?

I first heard about SEWF through being part of the Good Market community. At the time, especially in India, nobody was really prepared to create a framework or a definition that described what a social enterprise was.

SEWF gave that framework, but it also gives a label. That isn’t so important for us because we understand what we’re doing and why, but it’s really important for consumers because they need a label to understand what they’re buying.

Why is verification important for purpose-driven businesses?

It brings credibility at the consumer level. Today, you hear sustainability so much more than 10 years ago – everything in the market is called sustainable in one way or another. Consumers get fatigued by that and they only need to see one example of it being used incorrectly for them to doubt every sustainability claim.

Verification also makes it easier for consumers to make the right choices. It’s not just a label you put on your product – consumers are intelligent enough to go and learn what the label means. When they learn what the badge means and what the company stands for, they also learn more about what sustainability really means.

What changes have you seen within the ethical business space over your career?

The movement’s gained a lot of traction and some of that has come from peer pressure. Organisations that didn’t care about sustainability and ethical business in the past care more now because they’re forced to walk that path. That’s still good because it’s forced organisations to think differently and take at least some steps in the right direction.

And there’s peer pressure at the consumer level too. If my neighbour is buying something sustainable, I don’t want to be seen buying something that isn’t. It’s forcing people to make different choices, but also forcing them to learn more about sustainability and to change their perceptions.

Of course there are still instances where the sustainability term is abused, but I think it’s still a much bigger win that people are more aware as a result. Consumers are becoming more aware of production processes, they’re reading labels, they’re making an effort to find out who’s making a product and what materials are being used.

What do you hope that we will see in the future?

When we think of sustainability today, there is a price tag to it. The moment you say a product is sustainable, it becomes more expensive. That needs to change in the future.

This is something that we’re trying to do with The Good Doll; our dolls aren’t priced in the premium section of the market. It’s about making sustainability more mainstream, using thoughtful design innovation to make sustainable products affordable for a much larger segment of the population.

The perception that sustainability is expensive has to change. Until we as an industry can do that, we’re not going to make any kind of a dent. We’ll continue to only be serving 2% of the population, which is not going to solve the problem.

People and Planet First is a verification and a global collective that is accelerating the transition to an economy that puts people and the planet first. We provide a verification system, access to resources and collective advocacy. Our shared values include taking a collaborative approach and having a global view as we believe that we all have a role to play in building a better world. You can view more verified enterprises here and join the global campaign by being part of People and Planet First Week which will spotlight enterprises worldwide that are changing the way business is done.