Being a B Corp means being part of a community. We believe that all B Corps truly have their hearts in the right place when it comes to advocating for and helping communities near and far through their business operations. The Impact through Community: A B Corp Workshop was inspiring for all those who attended. It highlighted the diverse ways in which businesses can show up for their communities, not only now, but for the generations to come.
How Outland Denim has kicked their impact ‘out’ of the park
It was a pleasure to have James Bartle, Founder and CEO of B Corp Outland Denim, speak about his key learnings creating impact through communities. Outland Denim’s B Impact Score is 111.5, with a Community impact area score of 51.8. Outland Denim is one of the B Corp community’s long-standing members, currently undergoing their third recertification. Viewing the business as an opportunity to activate a cycle of freedom for vulnerable women, Outland Denim has reimagined a somewhat notorious industry to create environmental and social change.
“Being able to watch the journey of how business could completely change someone’s life, and not just their own life, but flow out into family and community — wasn’t necessarily because of amazing strategy in the beginning — but it was because of a lot of trial and error and a lot of failure.”
— James Bartle, Founder & CEO of Outland Denim
Image Source: Outland Denim
James’ honesty and authentic interest in bettering his community through the fashion industry was energising. His commitment was demonstrated through some of the practical aspects of Outland Denim’s supply chain management, such as carrying out an eight year-long audit of their supply chain, and being open and transparent with customers about where they needed to improve.
“What are we telling our customers that we believe to be true, but might not actually be true? That’s a really scary thing to identify — actively looking for issues in your supply chain so that you can identify and tell the world about.”
— James Bartle, Founder & CEO of Outland Denim
Image Source: Outland Denim
This process enabled the team at Outland Denim to know the people at the earliest stages of their supply chain, as well as their needs. In turn, the business could then facilitate the necessary steps to ensure those needs were met and exceeded. James highlighted that this type of change is “real change…lasting change that can go on for generations by completely [changing] the mindset.” A particularly fascinating partnership James discussed was collaborating with Outland Denim’s direct competitors to enable identification of issues and gaps that his organisation might not have otherwise grasped alone. James left the workshop guests with nourishing food for thought:
“I think the world is changing today, and when you’re honest and transparent with the world, they will go on the journey with you. The days of the old PR strategy of everything needing to look shiny, clean and perfect, are gone. And now, as citizens of the world, we are looking for brands and organisations who are telling the truth. Truth is the precursor to trust, and if we trust a business then we will partner with them.”
Insight from our Business Sustainability Analysts
Image: Interactive component of the workshop led by Lauren Diggle, B Lab AANZ’s Certification Manager
The Community impact area focuses on diversity, equity and inclusion, civic impact, charitable giving, and supply chain management. There are various, innovative ways in which businesses and B Corp earn points in this impact area, such as:
- Using the B Impact Assessment to help to identify areas of improvement within a business’ operations
- Diversity and Codes of Conduct within supply chains
- Supply chain management and sourcing locally
- Donations
- Community and pro bono services
- Banking with a B Corp
Aspiring B Corps were reminded to utilise the review call with their analysts, and given guidance about the types of documentation required to substantiate claims during the application process.
“I often view this experience as a two-way learning process. As an analyst myself, I find myself constantly learning from different industries. Quite often we have to learn everything from scratch. We see this as a very valuable experience to learn from your business. I hope this process will be quite rewarding and useful to your business.”
The presentation slides for this workshop can be downloaded here.
A big thank you to all the businesses and individuals who attended the Impact through Community: A B Corp Workshop. A special thanks to speaker James Bartel and Outland Denim for their continued efforts to use their business as a force for good.
Excited to learn more about the Best for the World: Community honourees? READ NEXT: When giving back is more than a buzzword — what we can learn about community from these top scoring B Corps↗
