Interview: Toilet paper, a social conscience & a $5 million donation

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Jennifer Duke: Welcome to the Fear and Greed Business Interview. I’m Jennifer

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Jennifer Duke: Duke. We all love a good entrepreneur story. Even better

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Jennifer Duke: when it’s a purpose- driven business with a social conscience,

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Jennifer Duke: and especially when that business is toilet paper. Who Gives

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Jennifer Duke: A Crap is one of the big Australian success stories

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Jennifer Duke: of the last decade, donating millions of dollars to improve

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Jennifer Duke: access to clean water and sanitation. Simon Griffiths is the co-

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Jennifer Duke: founder and CEO of Who Gives A Crap. Simon, welcome

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Jennifer Duke: to Fear and Greed.

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, thank you. It’s great to be here.

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Jennifer Duke: So can we start at the very beginning? Where did

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Jennifer Duke: the idea come from for Who Gives A Crap?

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Simon Griffiths: Oh, I know we’re not talking for too long, so

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Simon Griffiths: I’m going to have to abbreviate the story as much

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Simon Griffiths: as I can, but I think what really resonated with

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Simon Griffiths: the three founders that we have in the business was

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Simon Griffiths: this understanding that, at the time, sanitation was the most

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Simon Griffiths: off track of all of the development goals that existed.

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Simon Griffiths: There was about 2. 4 billion people globally without access

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Simon Griffiths: to adequate sanitation, and that sounds like it might not

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Simon Griffiths: be such a big deal, but if you think about

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Simon Griffiths: going without access to a toilet for a day, let

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Simon Griffiths: alone a week or a year, you can start to

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Simon Griffiths: understand the negative health consequences that come for you personally,

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Simon Griffiths: but also the people in your community around you when

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Simon Griffiths: no one has access to a toilet. And so the short

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Simon Griffiths: version of that story is that bad stuff ends up

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Simon Griffiths: in water that’s then used to cook, clean, or wash,

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Simon Griffiths: and that results in diarrhea- related disease that is the

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Simon Griffiths: number one filler of hospital beds in Sub- Saharan Africa

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Simon Griffiths: and the second- largest killer of children under the age

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Simon Griffiths: of five globally.

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Jennifer Duke: Gosh.

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah. Kills about 700 kids under the age of five

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Simon Griffiths: every single day. So it’s a huge problem, and fortunately,

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Simon Griffiths: one that we do actually know how to solve. We

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Simon Griffiths: have to provide people with access to not just clean

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Simon Griffiths: toilets and clean water, but also education around why hygiene

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Simon Griffiths: and sanitation is so important. We realized that this was

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Simon Griffiths: massively off track because toilets and sanitation aren’t great dinner

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Simon Griffiths: party conversation. They’re not something that people want to talk

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Simon Griffiths: to other people about. And so we saw an opportunity

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Simon Griffiths: to not just raise some money to help try and

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Simon Griffiths: solve this problem, but also to raise some awareness about

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Simon Griffiths: the actual problem itself by talking about a product that

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Simon Griffiths: we all use every single day.

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Jennifer Duke: So, where did that inkling of, ” Let’s use toilet paper

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Jennifer Duke: to talk about this issue and to raise some funds…”

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Jennifer Duke: Why was it toilet paper? What drew you to it?

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Simon Griffiths: Well, I think I’d been turning over this idea for

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Simon Griffiths: almost a decade, probably since early days at university, of

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Simon Griffiths: how to use the skillset, which for me was economics

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Simon Griffiths: and engineering, how to use that skillset to have an

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Simon Griffiths: impact on a problem that I truly cared about which

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Simon Griffiths: was about social mobility in other parts of the world.

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Simon Griffiths: The penny dropped that it was possible to create businesses

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Simon Griffiths: here in Australia and use the profits from purchases to

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Simon Griffiths: donate to help create social impact somewhere else. And so

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Simon Griffiths: bringing all of that together after mulling over this problem

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Simon Griffiths: and thinking about, ” What’s a product that everyone needs regardless

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Simon Griffiths: of where they live in the country or what their

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Simon Griffiths: beliefs are or how much money they have?”
I one

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Simon Griffiths: day walked into the bathroom and saw a six- pack

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Simon Griffiths: of toilet paper and said, ” Oh my God, that’s it.

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Simon Griffiths: We should sell toilet paper, call it Who Gives A

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Simon Griffiths: Crap, and use half of our profits to help provide

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Simon Griffiths: access to toilets around the world.” So that quarter- second

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Simon Griffiths: business idea epiphany that you sometimes hear about was exactly

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Simon Griffiths: what happened to me, and I got out of the

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Simon Griffiths: bathroom after washing my hands and I called three friends

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Simon Griffiths: and said, ” What do you think of this idea?” And

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Simon Griffiths: they all said, ” I love it. You’ve got to do

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Simon Griffiths: it.” And the third friend that I called was Jehan

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Simon Griffiths: Ratnatunga, who became one of the co- founders and helped

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Simon Griffiths: get the business off the ground.

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Jennifer Duke: I’m glad that you wash your hands. That’s the first thing. Well,

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Jennifer Duke: definitely, particularly when you’re caring so much about sanitation, and

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Jennifer Duke: obviously, one of the things as someone who’s a bit

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Jennifer Duke: particular about my toilet paper and I like a certain

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Jennifer Duke: number of plies, the design is actually very important to

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Jennifer Duke: me and I assume a lot of other people. How

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Jennifer Duke: much of a focus was getting the design right as

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Jennifer Duke: part of this development process?

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I think that, particularly

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Simon Griffiths: when we were getting started, design was something that was

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Simon Griffiths: lacking across a very large number of product categories, and

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Simon Griffiths: I think that’s changed as what is now known as

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Simon Griffiths: a direct- to- consumer business has become a more popular

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Simon Griffiths: concept. But our third co- founder, Danny, one of the co-

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Simon Griffiths: founders, he at the time was working in a design

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Simon Griffiths: thinking consultancy called IDEO. org, and as we were thinking

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Simon Griffiths: about bringing this concept to life, we’d run a successful

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Simon Griffiths: crowdfunding campaign, but we honestly thought that the path to

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Simon Griffiths: market was going to be through supermarkets. And it wasn’t

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Simon Griffiths: until after that crowdfunding campaign was completed that we realized

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Simon Griffiths: that we had a thousand customers in households, but no

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Simon Griffiths: contact at all from supermarkets. And we knew at that

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Simon Griffiths: moment that we had to pivot what we were thinking

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Simon Griffiths: about in terms of how the business could be successful

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Simon Griffiths: to instead of relying on supermarkets, to actually start selling

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Simon Griffiths: toilet paper online to people’s households directly.
And so Danny

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Simon Griffiths: took a step back and thought about the entire product

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Simon Griffiths: lifecycle and he said, ” What if we could make some

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Simon Griffiths: of these boring moments that exist in parts of the

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Simon Griffiths: product lifecycle, from thinking about purchasing to purchasing, to throwing

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Simon Griffiths: away the box or whatever it comes in, how can

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Simon Griffiths: we insert moments of joy into that experience?” And he said, ”

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Simon Griffiths: Well, people stack toilet paper rolls on top of each

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Simon Griffiths: other. What if we could design those rolls with fun

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Simon Griffiths: wrappers on them so that when they were stacked up,

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Simon Griffiths: they looked really fantastic, and if we could do it

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Simon Griffiths: so well that people would take this thing that used

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Simon Griffiths: to be stored at the back of their cupboard and

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Simon Griffiths: instead have it proudly on display in their households?”
It was

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Simon Griffiths: one of those probably 50 ideas that we had on

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Simon Griffiths: how we could do things differently, but it was probably

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Simon Griffiths: the one that took off. And so now, all of

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Simon Griffiths: our products have five different wrapper designs, including a red

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Simon Griffiths: emergency roll that sits in the bottom of every box

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Simon Griffiths: so you know when you’re about to run out and,

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Simon Griffiths: therefore, should reorder. And as a result of that, we

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Simon Griffiths: see our products being shared on social media and sent

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Simon Griffiths: to friends as photos of moments that our customers really

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Simon Griffiths: care about and want to share with someone else. So, it’s

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Simon Griffiths: been a core part of who we are as a

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Simon Griffiths: business, but probably the first time that design and toilet

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Simon Griffiths: paper was used in the same sentence.

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Jennifer Duke: I absolutely love the Marie Kondo’s spark joying of the toilet paper

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Jennifer Duke: process. That’s-

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Simon Griffiths: Was pre- Marie Kondo. Hats after Danny. It was pre-

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Simon Griffiths: Marie Kondo.

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Jennifer Duke: One of the things obviously that you do is give

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Jennifer Duke: half your profits to these aligned causes. I’m sure that

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Jennifer Duke: sparks a lot of joy for plenty of your customers

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Jennifer Duke: as well. How do you measure the impact of what

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Jennifer Duke: you’re doing?

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, measuring impact, it’s a really good question. It’s unfortunately

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Simon Griffiths: a really hard thing to do, and it’s because of

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Simon Griffiths: the way that we give that we believe is truly

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Simon Griffiths: the most impactful way to give. And so what we

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Simon Griffiths: do is called unrestricted funding where, if an organization is

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Simon Griffiths: being funded by us, we’re saying, ” Look, we know a

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Simon Griffiths: lot about toilets but a hell of a lot more

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Simon Griffiths: than we do, so we’re going to give you this

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Simon Griffiths: money and we’re not going to tell you how it

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Simon Griffiths: has to be spent because we believe that you will

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Simon Griffiths: be a better allocator of capital than what we can

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Simon Griffiths: be in order to make sure that every dollar has

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Simon Griffiths: the most impact that it possibly can.” But the challenge

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Simon Griffiths: with that is that we’re not saying, ” Hey, our money

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Simon Griffiths: can only be used to build that toilet block in

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Simon Griffiths: that school which serves 1, 000 students,” which would make

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Simon Griffiths: it much, much easier to keep track of the impact

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Simon Griffiths: that we generate.
And so I think that what we’ve decided the

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Simon Griffiths: best thing for us to do is to look at

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Simon Griffiths: how much money we’re donating in total, and that’s one

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Simon Griffiths: of the core metrics that we track. But then we

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Simon Griffiths: also look at the impact that each individual organization is

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Simon Griffiths: having in total and what percentage of our budget we’re

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Simon Griffiths: making up. And so that starts to allow us to

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Simon Griffiths: narrow down on what our total impact could look like.

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Simon Griffiths: But you can’t specifically say, ” We’ve served this many people,”

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Simon Griffiths: which is something we’d love to be able to do,

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Simon Griffiths: but very, very challenging unless you give what’s called restricted

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Simon Griffiths: funding, which ultimately hamstrings the organization you’re giving money to.

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Jennifer Duke: Stay with me, Simon. We’ll be back in a minute.

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Jennifer Duke: I’m speaking to Simon Griffiths, co- founder and CEO of

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Jennifer Duke: Who Gives A Crap. I was curious to ask around

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Jennifer Duke: COVID and, clearly, toilet paper was a really big deal

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Jennifer Duke: during that time. I believe Who Gives A Crap made

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Jennifer Duke: a lot of donations through the COVID period and also

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Jennifer Duke: got a lot more profit from the panic buying that

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Jennifer Duke: was going on. I was eager for you to talk

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Jennifer Duke: to me about what happened through that time and what

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Jennifer Duke: your lesson is for businesses who want to maintain their

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Jennifer Duke: social license during a time of crisis.

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, I think you made the link between profits and

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Simon Griffiths: donations there for us, and those two are really the

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Simon Griffiths: same thing because we give away half of our profits

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Simon Griffiths: each year, and so we really think about donations and

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Simon Griffiths: that’s the metric that we talk about internally in our

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Simon Griffiths: business. But as you alluded to, I think we were

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Simon Griffiths: having quite a strong year financially coming up to February

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Simon Griffiths: of 2020, and then no one could have predicted what

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Simon Griffiths: happened from March through to the end of June. I

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Simon Griffiths: think in those first few days of March, we saw

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Simon Griffiths: our sales double on the first day of March, and

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Simon Griffiths: then they were up 5x a regular day on the

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Simon Griffiths: second day of March, 12x the day after that. And we were

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Simon Griffiths: going through a 30 to 40 times day of sales

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Simon Griffiths: on the 4th of March before we had to turn

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Simon Griffiths: our site to sold out to hold onto product in

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Simon Griffiths: our warehouses for our subscribers and our business customers who

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Simon Griffiths: we want to make sure would never run out of

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Simon Griffiths: toilet paper again.
And so after we’d had this crazy

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Simon Griffiths: exponential growth doing more than a month of sales in

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Simon Griffiths: a day, we turned on a wait list on our

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Simon Griffiths: sold out product page, allowing people to sign up to

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Simon Griffiths: find out when we’d be back in stock. And we

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Simon Griffiths: expected a few thousand people would sign up for that,

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Simon Griffiths: but we ended up with more than half a million

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Simon Griffiths: people on that waiting list all around the world-

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Jennifer Duke: Wow.

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Simon Griffiths: … which was pretty crazy and a pretty challenging problem

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Simon Griffiths: to figure out how to solve. But once our team

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Simon Griffiths: figured out that what we needed to do was pack

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Simon Griffiths: our product into smaller packs so we could ship out

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Simon Griffiths: more orders, we hired and trained 25 freelancers to help

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Simon Griffiths: us triple our customer service capacity. And then we basically

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Simon Griffiths: took our warehouses and our couriers to their maximum limits

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Simon Griffiths: before the wheels would literally fall off the trucks. We

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Simon Griffiths: ran what was this secret online toilet paper club, which

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Simon Griffiths: was a clone of our website that you could only access

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Simon Griffiths: if you’re on our wait list, and we sold… Probably

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Simon Griffiths: the coolest club anywhere in the world in 2020, but

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Simon Griffiths: we sold toilet paper through that for about eight weeks

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Simon Griffiths: before we were able to officially come back in stock.

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Simon Griffiths: The end result of that was that coming up to

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Simon Griffiths: the end of financial year, we were able to make a $5.

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Simon Griffiths: 85 million donation, which was just this amazing moment for

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Simon Griffiths: everyone that had worked incredibly hard through that period to

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Simon Griffiths: see a really direct correlation between the work that had

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Simon Griffiths: gone in and the impact or the donation that we

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Simon Griffiths: were able to make at the end of the financial year. So

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Simon Griffiths: just a kind of amazing experience that obviously came out

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Simon Griffiths: of quite a tough time all around the world, but

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Simon Griffiths: something that I think we all look back on and

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Simon Griffiths: do so, remembering how exhilarating it was, but also how

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Simon Griffiths: exhausted everyone was working through that at the same time.

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Jennifer Duke: That’s definitely something to be very proud of. How has the

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Jennifer Duke: growth been since then, and have you managed to hold

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Jennifer Duke: onto some of those COVID customers?

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, our customer retention from that group of customers was

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Simon Griffiths: actually very, very strong. Our NPS is usually in the

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Simon Griffiths: 80s, and I think it actually shot up to the

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Simon Griffiths: 90s through that period, which was a testament to the

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Simon Griffiths: work that the team did to help manage where people

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Simon Griffiths: were at in the waiting list process and keep them

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Simon Griffiths: informed about what we were doing and how we were

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Simon Griffiths: working through that list, but incredibly strong cohort through that.

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Simon Griffiths: I think, as you said before, ” What were the key

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Simon Griffiths: lessons that emerged from that?”, I think really it was

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Simon Griffiths: around communication with customers and we realized that the state

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Simon Griffiths: of mind of customers at that moment in time was

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Simon Griffiths: very different to what had ever been before.
So we

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Simon Griffiths: really took it upon ourselves to communicate often and with

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Simon Griffiths: a high quality of information to keep people informed. One

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Simon Griffiths: of the other things that we did was we could

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Simon Griffiths: see which customers were on that wait- list who were

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Simon Griffiths: existing customers, and we moved them through the wait- list

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Simon Griffiths: faster than new customers. So, we were able to keep

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Simon Griffiths: our existing customers engaged through that period and reward them

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Simon Griffiths: for having shopped with us and being a part of

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Simon Griffiths: our community before. I think all of that resulted in a

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Simon Griffiths: pretty amazing customer experience, which was what saw our NPS

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Simon Griffiths: shoot up so high through that period.

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Jennifer Duke: It’s clearly been a very big journey for you all.

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Jennifer Duke: I’m eager to know, and I’m sure that our listeners

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Jennifer Duke: are eager to know as well, what’s next for Who

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Jennifer Duke: Gives A Crap. Can you tell me a bit about

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Jennifer Duke: the Good Time range of products?

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, so we launched Good Time just under a year

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Simon Griffiths: ago, which is our sister brand, and it’s a plastic-

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Simon Griffiths: free hair and body care range. The realization that we

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Simon Griffiths: had was that when we talked to our customers and

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Simon Griffiths: asked them how we could help them in their household,

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Simon Griffiths: they said, ” We love you and we trust that you

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Simon Griffiths: make great quality products. Can you solve some of the

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Simon Griffiths: other problems that we have around the house?” And one

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Simon Griffiths: of the things that came up was plastic- free hair

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Simon Griffiths: and body. A lot of our customers were trying to

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Simon Griffiths: find good solutions for this, but we thought that the

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Simon Griffiths: Who Gives A Crap brand couldn’t stretch outside of household

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Simon Griffiths: cleaning and more kitchen and bathroom based products rather than

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Simon Griffiths: going into the shower.
And so we said, ” If we’re

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Simon Griffiths: going to do this, we probably need to create a

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Simon Griffiths: sister brand who shares a lot of the DNA of

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Simon Griffiths: Who Gives A Crap, also believes in philanthropy and donates

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Simon Griffiths: 50% of profits, but while Who Gives A Crap might

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Simon Griffiths: be the comedian, Good Time is the sister who’s an

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Simon Griffiths: architect who’s a bit more into design and photography and

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Simon Griffiths: a bit more sophisticated as opposed to a bit more

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Simon Griffiths: slap dash maybe,” is how we would think about Who

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Simon Griffiths: Gives A Crap.
And so we launched that about a

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Simon Griffiths: year ago and it’s been amazing seeing it in our

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Simon Griffiths: customer’s homes and helping to solve a problem that our

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Simon Griffiths: customers have taken really seriously. And so, for us, gets

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Simon Griffiths: us excited to think about what other products we might

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Simon Griffiths: be able to bring into the range and so that’s something

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Simon Griffiths: that we’re working on now as we think about what

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Simon Griffiths: the next 12 to 24 months look like and whether that’s under

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Simon Griffiths: the Who Gives A Crap brand, under the Good Time

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Simon Griffiths: brand or potentially under a third or fourth brand as well.

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Jennifer Duke: Definitely. And I’m very pleased that there are a vegan

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Jennifer Duke: range of products as well. I did see that on

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Jennifer Duke: the website and I think that it’s obviously an increasing

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Jennifer Duke: trend across Australia at the moment. I was curious to

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Jennifer Duke: know about the competitors popping up in this space and

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Jennifer Duke: how you view that competitive environment and whether or not

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Jennifer Duke: you’re seeing other people going the way that you are

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Jennifer Duke: in terms of the philanthropic element.

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Simon Griffiths: We don’t look at what competitors do too much, to

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Simon Griffiths: be honest. We’re very focused on what our vision is

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Simon Griffiths: and we see the world in a different way to,

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Simon Griffiths: I think, what most people do. We’d love to see

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Simon Griffiths: a version of the world where every product gives back,

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Simon Griffiths: whether that’s 50% of profits or something else, but if

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Simon Griffiths: you think about how many products you buy every single

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Simon Griffiths: day or use every single day that don’t have that

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Simon Griffiths: give back element built into them, if we could start

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Simon Griffiths: to really shift what products are out there and what

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Simon Griffiths: they’re doing in terms of social and environmental impact so

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Simon Griffiths: that every single product gave back in one way or

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Simon Griffiths: another, the impact from that would be absolutely astronomical.
So

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Simon Griffiths: when we see competitors or not just competitors but other

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Simon Griffiths: brands that are coming along and have that give back

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Simon Griffiths: model built in, for us, that’s an incredibly exciting thing

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Simon Griffiths: to see because I think that we’ve been able to

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Simon Griffiths: show that it is possible to create demand by talking

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Simon Griffiths: about what you will do with profits. So this is

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Simon Griffiths: now becoming a mass consumer trend where consumers are thinking

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Simon Griffiths: carefully about who they’re buying products from because they want

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Simon Griffiths: to understand if their values aligned or not. And so

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Simon Griffiths: we’re hoping that this is going to be something that

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Simon Griffiths: is a really mega- trend over the next 10 to

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Simon Griffiths: 15 years in the same way that we’ve seen sustainability

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Simon Griffiths: be a mega- trend in the last decade behind us.

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Jennifer Duke: Simon, that was wonderful. Thank you so much for talking

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Jennifer Duke: to Fear and Greed.

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Simon Griffiths: Yeah, thank you for having me. It’s been fantastic.

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Jennifer Duke: That was Simon Griffiths, co- founder and CEO of Who

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Jennifer Duke: Gives A Crap. This is The Fear and Greed Business

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Jennifer Duke: Interview. Join us every morning for the full episode of

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Jennifer Duke: Fear and Greed, Australia’s best business podcast. I’m Jennifer Duke,

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Jennifer Duke: economics correspondent for Capital Brief and filling in for Sean

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Jennifer Duke: Aylmer. Have a great day.