Eva Ross on understanding impact at Sendle (B Corp)

Eva Ross, CMO at Sendle, sits down with host Mark Jones to discuss understanding impact, what it takes to build a sustainable brand, and how marketers can amplify their impact through storytelling.

If you were to design a postal system from the ground up in the 2020s, it would likely have the following elements: be digital first, competitively priced, and carbon neutral. 

It’s a good idea that’s already been taken by Sendle, Australia’s first 100% carbon neutral delivery service and a certified B Corporation. Their mission is to make door-to-door shipping “cheaper, simpler, faster and greener for small businesses.”  

Chief Marketing Officer Eva Ross is striving for industry level change as part of a long term drive to amplify Sendle’s positive social impact

“At the beginning of 2019 [we asked] "Well, what are the two biggest issues that the world faces now?" One is climate change, and the other is equality,” Eva says. This marked the Sendle transition from simple, reliable and affordable, to “shipping that's good for the world.”

In 2019, Sendle’s fully-fledged competitor Australia Post announced its intention to introduce carbon neutral delivery for parcels. Sendle championed for immediate action. 

According to Eva, sustainable change has to come from industry level change. Sendle manifested this idea with a campaign illustrating the negative environmental impact of e-commerce deliveries. 

“We created a sticker campaign where we challenged the industry - and in particular Australia Post - to join us in offsetting their emissions. Folks were encouraged to put a sticker on their parcel and we would offset it for them on behalf of Australia Post. We ended up offsetting over a million parcels, which was a wonderful thing.”

Eva says this shift towards driving change on an industry level provided a creative storytelling opportunity for the brand to encourage Australians to take responsibility for their decisions when it comes to shipping. 

“The great thing is that Australia Post now offset parcels in the SMB category and when you go to the post office. So that's a huge win for the industry,” Eva says. 

Check out this episode of The CMO Show to hear more from Eva on the Sendle story, and find out how marketers can amplify their impact with purpose-driven brand storytelling.

Resources

• B Corporation Australia & New Zealand 
• B Corp = Better Business - Sendle  
• Sendle creates stickers of Aussie animals wearing gas masks to challenge Australia Post's carbon offset announcement

You might also like…

• Ryan Barlow on brand responsibility at McGrath Foundation 
• Suzana Ristevski on simplifying complexity at NAB 
• Amy Smith on brand purpose at T2 Tea

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The CMO Show production team

Producers – Charlotte Goodwin & Stephanie Woo

Audio Engineers – Tom Henderson & Daniel Marr

Got an idea for an upcoming episode or want to be a guest on The CMO Show? We’d love to hear from you: cmoshow@filteredmedia.com.au.

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Transcript

Host: Mark Jones

Guest: Eva Ross

Mark Jones:   
What is a journey with no destination? In the context of a holiday, it could be an exciting adventure! But for us marketers - we can’t measure the impact of our work without first setting clear objectives. And a business’ impact is about much more than just the bottom line - it’s about the impact on workers, the environment, community, governance and customers. So as a marketer, are you conscious of your brand’s multifaceted impact on the world? And what are you doing to ensure that impact is a positive one?

Mark Jones:   
Hello friends! Mark Jones here. Great to have you with us again on The CMO Show for a conversation with a marketing leader at a brand with a purpose beyond profit. My guest today is Eva Ross. She is Chief Customer Officer at Sendle - Australia’s first 100% carbon neutral delivery service. And just like us here at Filtered Media, Sendle is also a Certified B Corp! 

Mark Jones:   
For those who don’t know, Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. If you want to know more about B Corp, of course, you can head to bcorporation.com.au - or if you’re outside Australia, bcorporation.net. 

Mark Jones:   
In this episode we’re going to talk about how we understand a business’ multifaceted impact, what does it take to build a sustainable brand, and how can marketers amplify their impact through storytelling. Let’s go to my conversation with Eva. 

Mark Jones:
Eva, so great to have you on the show.

Eva Ross:
Thanks for having me.

Mark Jones:
Now, straight off the bat, we're a B Corp, you're a B Corp, so I feel like we’re friends already.

Eva Ross:
Amazing, partnership done.

Mark Jones:
And that's how it works in the B Corp land. I'd love to just get a quick picture of your own career.  You've landed in this fantastic role with this really inspiring company in the delivery space, but what's the backstory? Can you summarise it for us?

Eva Ross:
I'd love to. Yeah, interestingly I was calculating that I - maybe I've spent 30 years in logistics, because when I was a little kid, I used to run this company called Letter Posting Kids. I grew up in Hong Kong and I lived at the top of a really big hill. And at the bottom was one of those classic British post boxes, and people used to pay me 50 cents to run down the hill and post their letters for them. So the entrepreneurial spirit's been in the blood for a long time, I suppose. And it's interesting that, because I think I spent seven years at Airbnb, and absolutely loved it. And loved the storytelling, and the humanity, and the community building. But really what it was, was sort of a giant employer of entrepreneurs. People who'd taken underutilised space and found another purpose for it.

Eva Ross:
And the stories were so interesting. People had big houses, and had gotten divorced, and had to work out another way to fund them. And other people had sort of worked out a way to pay for weddings, or pay to go and see friends, or pay for their own travel. And some lovely stories about people who'd - maybe their kids couldn't afford to travel, but through their guests, they'd see a map and understand what was for breakfast in their country or what their homes look like. And I suppose that really made me an addict - to not only the entrepreneurial spirit and finding new ways to tell those stories - but also just the opportunities that can be created just from pure optimism really.

Mark Jones:
I think people would be interested to know from a career perspective - in marketing or storytelling - what was the one thing that really kind of surprised you or opened your eyes when you were at Airbnb?

Eva Ross:
I mean, I think the humanity and the authenticity of it all. And the absolute obsession with it, right? Every casting call was for a real Airbnb host. And you had to have actually travelled on the platform in order to appear in that creative. And I remember at the time in my office, 90% of the employees were hosts and I think having that real integrity and real depth of understanding of the product was just so important and led to a real belief in all of the stories that were coming out of it.

Mark Jones:
Now to get into the Sendle space, I think some people will be familiar with the logo and the little orange arrow.

Eva Ross:
The chevron.

Mark Jones:
The chevron -  isn't that a great word? Just give us a very quick snapshot of the business. It's come a long way in - what I think is about five or six years, is that right?

Eva Ross:
Yeah, that's right. Well, I suppose my extension of that story is - truly loving the entrepreneurial spirit. Loving the idea that someone who's currently just making dresses in their garage would go and put that on a platform and ship it and send it really anywhere in the world. And the fact that that transformation can happen quite so quickly. But the story of Sendle is - so we're a 100% carbon neutral, small business parcel delivery service and we operate in Australia and in the U.S. And from Australia you can ship to absolutely anywhere in the world. And at the moment in the U.S. you can only ship domestically, but plenty on the cards there, I'm sure.

Mark Jones:
Yeah, of course.

Eva Ross:
And why did the community need us was really a question of what were all the issues and the pain points that people were experiencing when they were having to line up at the post office, when they were receiving bill shock when they got to the front of the queue, and when they were running a bit more of a small business operation - how are they accessing the discounts and how are they accessing a free pickup for all of those parcels? Really combating all of those questions was a little bit of where the challenge was.

Mark Jones:
And it's no secret that you compete with Australia Post in that context - the bill shock at the counter, right? I've been there by the way.

Eva Ross:
Yeah.

Mark Jones:
It costs how much to get to where?

Eva Ross:
Exactly.

Mark Jones:
I can drive there myself. But I think many people don't understand the technology side of what you do, because when you say, “I've been in logistics since I was a small person,” and we obviously think of couriers as logistics - and it is, right? 

Eva Ross:
That's it.

Mark Jones:
So we need to get our heads around why that's important. And I think more importantly, why it's so difficult.

Eva Ross:
Yeah. So, what is the disruption really? So we don't employ any drivers. We don't have any vehicles ourselves. What we do is partner with a collection of couriers across Australia - and also in the U.S. - and what we do is to get a parcel from A to B, we consider what's going to be the most sustainable route, what's the best on cost, and what's the best on speed. And really work out what's a hybridised network - or a way that you might go from somebody home to a depot, from that depot to another depot, to somebody else's home or business - and work out the most efficient way to do that.

Mark Jones:
And track it.

Eva Ross:
Track it, and make sure it gets there on time and all of the right things. But also just build that flexibility into the network. So if there's something wrong at a given depot, at a given time, how can we really quickly reroute that and not cause any impact on your delivery or your delivery speed? And I think that's the real magic in all things Sendle.

Mark Jones:
When we think about the value proposition, consumers of course don't care about your tech and they just care about it being shiny and cheap and getting there fast and looking great on your website. But one of the biggest issues I think is anybody who has waited for anything would be is, not only just where is it, but how good is it, and can I trust these people for it to arrive on time?

Mark Jones:
There's a huge expectation there. So I think in the CMO role, I’m interested to hear just need to understand how do you balance all of that? Because you've got to project this positive image. You've got a great story. And how do you balance that out with the customer service drama - if I can call it that - that's endemic in the entire logistics sector, right? You're not the only ones.

Eva Ross:
Exactly right. And one of the interesting things about logistics is, when everything's going well, it's transparent. You don't hear a peep. You don't think about it. You don't have to think about it because your package has just arrived and you've ordered it as you expected. The reason we've combined my role - so marketing and customer support - is exactly that. Truly thinking about the customer journey from the time we acquire that customer to hopefully building some level of loyalty, to being there when things go wrong. The thing about looking after small businesses is, we are a big part of their growth journey from where to go, and we feel that we can add value in what that experience looks like.

Eva Ross:
And it was an interesting time throughout for us through COVID. I think it's important to think about what more we can do in a time of so much uncertainty, the thing we did want to do was create what are called the Sendler rights, which is really about, if we don't pick up your parcel on day one, we will come the next day and we will refund the cost of that delivery if we haven't arrived on time. Things like - we've got cover for small businesses, we'll refund up to $100 of the cost of your item. So really trying to build trust and credibility in that full journey. Having insight into what it looks like at each stage, and what small businesses need, and providing ease and providing technology integrations and all those sorts of things to speed up the operational parts of the business is really key.

Mark Jones:
I also note the strategic use of the word ‘Sendler.’

Mark Jones:
And ‘to Sendle,’ right? So you're pursuing this idea that in marketing we love to be able to imagine that we could become a verb one day, right?

Mark Jones:
So to Sendle, how's that working out?

Eva Ross:
It's working pretty well. I think the Sendler community has really been built out by our team that run their own podcast called, “Hey Sendler.” And that's all about the experiences of other small businesses, how they've grown their trials and tribulations, how they got started, how they learnt. And one of the things that we do know about small businesses is, some of the most interesting pieces of information come from other businesses just like them and understanding their journeys. So we're trying to create a community around that idea. I've certainly seen the verb use in sendling a parcel, but I'm working on the Sendler community specifically.

Mark Jones:
I think it's fascinating because as I try to understand the big picture of your marketing strategy and how you - are sort of tying the messaging together with the customer side of things, it seems that you're working on this idea that community equals scale, but what's the movement aspect of this? So is the cause that you're trying to drive here - is it the environmental one or is it, if you think about the small businesses, it's the really championing the idea of being an entrepreneur? Can you give us a bit of a sense about how you think about the customers in that respect? Because I think that's really what people struggle with I think is, go build a community, get people excited, but what's the cause they're going to really care about?

Eva Ross:
That's right. Well, let me take you back a little bit. So before Sendle there was TuShare, and TuShare was a giving marketplace for people who really want us to prevent things from going into landfill. So I could send something over to you, no matter which city you lived in, because you found a use for it. So sort of like an eBay where you're paying for the shipping rather than the product.

Eva Ross:
So in order to really find our way through a market there, the shipping part needed to be really easy, because the competition was basically the rubbish bin, right? If it all looks too hard, it's just going in the bin. And with that process we found, "Okay, here are all the barriers, and here are all the deterrents to going to the post office. What could we do?" And one of the biggest things was pick up directly at your door. So it's basically the same position as your rubbish bin. And to have it be really, really affordable and a flat rate price. So those sorts of things really created a new market that we didn't realise we had. And we started to see e-commerce users - so people who had actually sold something on eBay, go and seek out TuShare to ship that product.

Eva Ross:
At that point, this sort of other use case of TuShare became very clear. And so TuShare started to disappear, and so Sendle was born. And Sendle was this idea that you could ship something seamlessly and easily - and also carbon neutrally. It only figured that coming from a circular economy idea that the shipping should be carbon neutral and the environment should take precedent in that process.

Mark Jones:
With that in mind, now you've got your entire proposition, your whole community is built around this idea of, “How can I make things easy, simple, predictable, stress-free presumably. 

Eva Ross:
Simple, reliable, affordable-

Mark Jones:
How I'm doing? Tick, tick, tick?

Eva Ross:
You're just about right.

Mark Jones:
Okay, right. Look, a lot of organisations struggle to get that simplicity though, don't they?

Eva Ross:
Oh, definitely.

Mark Jones:
To really boil it down. Have you faced any struggles in terms of either getting it further simplified - or alternatively getting people to understand it?

Eva Ross:
I think though - what do you want from your shipping? You do want something simple and easy and reliable. What's the difference between something else? Well, I think your customer support needs to be taken care of, and you need great visibility, and tracking, and all of the tools that otherwise you're going to have to provide and spend operational time on. So really, when you think about creating a product, the last thing you want to think about is your shipping. You want to think about how you're going to build it and design it and the colours and the marketing and the box and the packaging - but really that part of it, that backend, as I said, it needs to be simple and invisible.

Mark Jones:
James Chin Moody, which I think many of us will know from his New Inventor days.

Mark Jones:
What's it like working for him in that context, because clearly a lot of this thinking comes from the background that you just mentioned. But also his, what I imagine is a brain that never stops?

Eva Ross:
Oh, it certainly is. And look, he's been the chair of the environmental council. He can speak in-depth on all things innovation, he has a PhD in innovation theory. And so distilling that down into a single brand proposition has not always been easy. But one of the things we did is, the beginning of 2019, we say to ourselves, "Well, what are the two biggest issues that kind of the world faces now?" And one is climate change, and the other is probably equality. And I think this was the real transition from “simple, reliable, affordable,” to “shipping that's good for the world.” Which has kind of been our mission since, and proposition that we're using a lot more clearly. And when we're thinking about good in that sense, we're thinking about carbon neutrality and sustainability and also moving towards electric vehicles and other ways of thinking about impacting our logistics and our services. As well as good in the sense of how we're levelling the playing field for small businesses, how we're creating additional opportunities beyond just the shipping, and really that led into us becoming a B Corp.

Eva Ross:
So in 2014 we were certified as Australia's first technology B Corp. And very recently we just re-certified as a B Corp, which honestly is quite a process. The guidelines shift and how you look at your business really changes, but it's been a wonderful experience and something that our team are very, very proud of.

Mark Jones:
Well at Filtered Media, as I said at the top, we have also been through the process so I can empathise with you. It is rigorous and for a good reason, right? So for marketers and comms people, I'm interested from your perspective, how have you incorporated that into your storytelling and how influential do you see it becoming over time, particularly from a customer point of view? We're just tapping back into that community-cause idea. Are you finding that it's becoming one of the leading factors in - if you like brand choice or brand selection?

Eva Ross:
Well, it's interesting because as I said, we were always more affordable, and we were also carbon neutral. So we used to lead in a lot of our messaging with the price point and then only to share with folks that in fact their delivery was carbon neutral, and then the retention factor ended up being sustainability.

Mark Jones:
Okay.

Eva Ross:
Now things have changed. I think particularly since COVID people are more climate conscious. We're seeing a lot of our customers ethically and sustainably source their materials and their packaging and their processes only to then look for a shipping solution that also takes those things into account. And so certainly with our entry into America, one of the most important tribes that we've been sort of tapping into is in that green space. And we've been doing work with GreenBiz and other media publications over in the U.S. to really tap into that audience. And we're finding more and more of that green movement be a happy place for our brand.

Mark Jones:
You just anticipated my next question, which is, how's it going in America? 

Mark Jones:
So you find that niche in America and really go after that, but it turns out the niches is rather big over there.

Eva Ross:
It is. It's a big wedge, which is brilliant.I think the stakes are higher. The education is greater, folks - where they didn't really use to understand carbon offsetting now have more questions. They've got questions on sustainable development goals and biodiversity credits.  We have long asked our community who they want us to invest in. So we put out a series of different carbon offsetting projects and put it out to our community to say, "Hey, where would you like to invest?" Interestingly, people usually choose places close to home and reforestation projects - which are brilliant and very high value - are generally the areas that are selected.

Mark Jones:
To what extent have people asking you to prove the effectiveness of that work so that all the carbon offsets -  that has to keep increasing as your business grows. So, there's an interesting aspect to what changes well, the scale of what you're doing changes, but do you have to keep retelling that story?

Eva Ross:
We do. And I think that the complexity of the questions is getting greater. And so we're now providing more and more educational resources and more depth and more updates on how the projects are going. Whereas in the past, a simple carbon neutral badge was enough for people and was enough for them to share with their audiences. But more and more we're being asked to supply kind of a greater amount of detail on that.

Mark Jones:
Going back to last year and to now, what kind of percentage increase have you seen in the business and how has that impacted your role?

Eva Ross:
Oh, I mean, it's been fun. Tell you what. I think Black Friday to Black Friday was 124% increase, which is a big one. I remember thinking that we'd done a Christmas every month from March at one point - which of course is our very busy season. So yeah, folks didn't sleep much. We gave everyone at Sendle a day off and allowed them to sleep for 24 hours, but then it was sort of straight back at it.

Mark Jones:
Okay. Well that sounds like a proper tech company.

Eva Ross:
Yeah right.

Mark Jones:
Never stop, never stop. That's an incredible thing. So what impact does that have in the culture, in the way that you work with your internal stakeholders in your role? I think that there's a growing awareness that increasingly - and I'm seeing this with many CMOs is up to half - sometimes more of your time is looking after those internal stakeholders and trusting your team to get the execution right on the other side. How has all of that working out for you? You're you finding yourself more and more in that strategy and advisory side?

Eva Ross:
Very much so. I think so first of all, it was a huge shift for our customer support team because not only were volumes up so much, but also there were more delivery delays, and there were more questions on logistic services. So I suppose the increase was even greater in that space. So there was a big hiring moment probably in the middle of last year for our support team. And then there sort of does come this time when your team really help you out. So we'd been through the bush fires and rather than us just donating, we went out to the community and said, "Hey, what are you, as small businesses doing to help people in the communities in the bushfire affected areas?" And a lot of them were running their own promotions.

Eva Ross:
So rather than us funding them, we were simply offering free shipping to anybody who was going out and supporting in those areas. And similarly, we had a lot of concerns around what was going to go on post COVID, but more and more just found incredible stories of like - there's one woman who used to be a milliner. Her core time of year is Melbourne Cup and weddings-

Mark Jones:
Of course, of course.

Eva Ross:
- and those sorts of events. But she took all of those millinery skills and started making PPE and masks. And rather than letting go of six employees brought on an extra 12. And so eventually it just becomes about not only your employees and going out to them for ideas, but actually going to small businesses and saying, "Hey, what are you doing, and how can we help you with it?"

Mark Jones:
Now it strikes me, having looked at your website and seen the long list of partners, that you are competing for ownership of these tribes - of the milliner and the small businesses. There's accounting companies, there's all sorts of service providers out there that would say, "We are for small business, and they're our community." So effectively you're trying to grab a slice of that emotional pie. How do you think about that from a customer engagement perspective and how do you treat people? How do you look after your partners and develop a plan around that? Knowing that, we would like to think people have a lot of time to share their stories with us, but they're also busy doing a job.

Eva Ross:
They sure do. Look, the partner one's interesting. So our launch with Shopify came in April of last year. So right at the time when a lot of people were starting a small business.  We surveyed our customers around that time, and 49% were running a side hustle or a sole trader - so these businesses were very new to them. And I think those people really needed resources on how to get started. So our role in that space was very much, "Here you are. Here's how to set up on a platform. Here's information on how you might get a small business loan, and here are potentially some partners to go out to."

Eva Ross:
So really kind of creating an ecosystem where there's benefits for everybody in that space. You're right, everybody's trying to tell that story. I think there has to be something unique that we're providing. For the most part it is the fact that we're offering a carbon neutral solution for their shipping. But also the fact that streamlining a lot of their processes is an operational part of their business is facilitated through the integrations that we have provides a huge advantage. As I said, people want to focus on their product and marketing it, and they don't want to focus on spending time working out how to run it. And so anything that we're doing from a product marketing point of view comes back to time efficiencies and time savings.

Mark Jones:
I'm interested what role content is playing in your marketing and how you think about that now?

Eva Ross:
Yeah, a massive role. I think all of the storytelling that we can do for those businesses. So if we're here to help them grow, how are we telling that story? What customer case studies are we doing? How are we getting that out further? And that's been wonderful and we've seen a lot of those customers share their stories. But also, as I said, what business loans are out there? What grants are out there? How can we help them in other ways? How can we help them streamline what they're doing, how they're finding packaging, how they're finding other carbon neutral brands to work with - and other sustainable brands or B Corps to work with? If we can become a resource centre for all of those things, then we're truly adding value beyond just shipping.

Mark Jones:
And where are you at on the whole “do a big integrated campaign” thing? Some people love it. Some people say, "Ah, not so much."

Eva Ross:
We're early. From my point of view small businesses live on Instagram. They shop on Instagram, they get inspired on Instagram, they themselves market on Instagram and more and more, they have a shop available on Instagram. So that's exactly where we need to be too.

Mark Jones:
Yeah.

Eva Ross:
Look, it's a battlefield.

Mark Jones:
Yeah, it is.

Eva Ross:
The platform is really right for the sort of content that we have. And I think as we go more deeply into kind of key vertical areas and sustainable based marketing, Instagram feels really right.

Mark Jones:
How do you see that universe playing out in terms of some of the traditional things we've relied on, like influencers and there's different approaches to paid versus organic - it's an endless list of things that you're supposed to optimise these days.

Eva Ross:
It is.

Mark Jones:
What's the best approach that works for you?

Eva Ross:
I think - posting natively is always a great way to go - but I think we're starting to have some success with influencer marketing, particularly in the U.S., and particularly within particular verticals. So more and more the reseller marketplace space is growing. So people talk a lot about carbon neutral shipping, people also talk a lot about how can you reuse an item, and how can you share that item? And so having those influencers who've been really important in the reseller domain speak about the shipping services that they're using has been working quite well for us.

Mark Jones:
I guess maybe long term you'll be looking at, after Instagram then what, right? So that's the year though.

Eva Ross:
Absolutely.

Mark Jones:
Something that really fascinates me at the moment is, large corporates' increasingly talking about purpose as the thing that holds them together in troubled times. Small business world is slightly different and far more dynamic in terms of immediate needs. And it can be far more driven by survival and all those sorts of things, and just get this thing done, right? Busy, busy, busy, and less time for the big picture stuff. But having said that, from your perspective, this conversation about being very close to customers is clearly taking place. You've got a purpose that's understood and being communicated.

Mark Jones:
The last piece that I'm continuing to explore is this notion of impact, which I noticed is being measured and tracked on your website in terms of what you're doing. Tell me about how you've connected those ideas. Because I think this impact piece is a really interesting one, because we haven't - as a marketing community - really got our heads around how to measure impact, right? And how to tell that story. And even whether there's a question I think in many CMOs mind as to whether anyone's interested in that anyway, right? So, but I think that's where it's going. So what's your perspective on that?

Eva Ross:
Well, our two key brand pillars really are sustainability and design for small business. And so I suppose if I think more deeply about what change we can make within sustainability, it has to be an industry level change. It can't just be us offsetting our individual parcels. So transport makes up 17% of the world's global greenhouse emissions. And it's all very good that we're doing our part, but I think one of the bigger things we did a year or so ago was challenge others to join us. So we created a campaign where we challenged the industry and in particular Australia Post to join us in offsetting their emissions through a sticker campaign where folks were encouraged to put a sticker on their parcel and we would offset it for them basically on behalf of Australia Post, and ended up offsetting over a million parcels, which was a wonderful thing.

Eva Ross:
The great thing is that now Australia Post do offset parcels in the SMB category and when you go to the post office. So that's a huge win for the industry.

Mark Jones:
Yeah. Well transport and logistics as you say, is enormous. And so that's probably the other big cause, right? So from an industry perspective, being able to continue to drive that - much like we're seeing in the electric vehicle market, right?

Mark Jones:
So same sort of structural changes that are going on. So, I guess I imagine then for you the balance in terms of your effort and focus will be how you prioritise that versus our business and the day-to-day, right?

Eva Ross:
That's right. I mean, on the other side, I suppose, so if our second pillar is designed for SMBs. And for SMBs it's really about that levelling the playing field piece. So if you, as a small business want to send a parcel, generally there's a minimum order quantity that's required for you to get a discount. Whereas on Sendle, you can send your first parcel as a business, and we will provide that discount to you. And that's 15-70% cheaper than sort of general competitors. But we'll also provide you all of the tracking, all of the tools. A lot of aggregator services require a subscription fee. We'll make that freely available to you. That's the first attempt at the way we're providing extra value. But yeah, what those costs savings look like in aggregate really does get quite big when you're running a business for the longer term.

Mark Jones:
So what are you worried about as you think about the future? Is there, I mean, it all sounds great, right? But there's got to be issues. I mean, firstly attacking Australia Post isn't something to be done lightly, I would have thought.

Eva Ross:
No certainly not. But look, I think - look we're all in the same industry. I think we're trying to make that change more generally as to have a greener network. And it feels like we're all taking the right steps in that direction. I think the next thing is really what else. Carbon offsetting is great, but we have started to work with Bonds Couriers on their electric vehicle networks. So all of the deliveries that we do very locally in Sydney are done so using off-grid electric vehicles and we're trying to roll those systems out further. But I think looking a bit more to the future as to how do we get to net zero - maybe in 2030 rather than 2050 as we're seeing in Paris? And what are we doing as in the industry to make that change? I'm really thinking about those things.

Eva Ross:
And I'm thinking about, do consumers really care? So, you'll read a lot of surveys about how people are willing to potentially pay more for a sustainable service. I'd like to see all of that really coming to light. But we have to follow Evelyn, a great example of a company that has real transparency on, where was the sweater produced? What was it produced by? How can I find all of that information out? Our consumers these days, they want that level of depth. So thinking more deeply about how we can show that across different businesses has been top of mind for me.

Mark Jones:
Well, sounds like you might be looking for more conversations with partners to that effect, right? So again, the scale through multiple organisations thinking the same thing. Thank you so much for sharing your story. It's really interesting to see how that you've connected the purpose with the - if you like, the very detailed processes that required to bring this all about. And of course, how you tell that story. So it's a great example and I wish you all the best.

Eva Ross:
Thank you so much.

Mark Jones:   
So that was my conversation with Eva Ross. I hope you enjoyed it! Right, I gotta tell you, it never gets old to have a cracking yarn with a fellow storyteller - especially one who’s part of the B Corp community! 

Mark Jones:   
Package delivery - it’s a little bit innocuous when you think about it. But this is an organisation that’s taken a completely different take on it, and it’s really interesting the way they have thought about it from a customer perspective - how to really make it suit the target audience from an SMB perspective. 

Mark Jones:  
Sendle is thinking about the whole sector - t transport, and logistics, and package delivery -  how can they be part of more structural change? And those sorts of lessons can be applied in any sector - whether you are a B Corp or not. How can you think about the positive impact you can make more broadly beyond your own four walls? 

Mark Jones:   
And I’d challenge you to think about your brand’s impact - think about how you can make that change. What could you do to make the life of your employees better? How could you help the environment, the community at large, governance and customers - and anywhere there's change to be made for the better. So, what can you do to make a difference? 

Mark Jones:   
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