Venkat Raman
Auckland, April 15, 2023
A new support initiative has been launched to help reduce the failure of New Zealand startups with an environmental or social purpose.
According to the latest government data, less than half (45%) of New Zealand startups, including those with a social mission, will survive past their first five years.
Brianne West, the founder of Ethique, stated to be New Zealand’s largest regenerative beauty product exporter, has created ‘The Business, but Better initiative’ to offer assistance.
She has stepped down from the post of Chief Executive of Ethique, which she started in her kitchen about 11 years ago as a 24-year-old Biochemistry student.
Today, the company accounts for $100 million in sales.
Ms West said that while she will remain with the company to support product and brand sustainability, her focus will be on supporting hundreds of entrepreneurs who want to start and scale up a social or environmental business venture that has the potential to change the world for the better.
During her tenure, the company exported a range of sustainable shampoo bars and soaps to over 8000 retailers in 22 countries and prevented 25 million plastic bottles from entering landfill.
Barriers to women entrepreneurs
According to research, women are more likely to start a mission-led business.
However, they face a number of barriers including poor access to information, funding and gender-specific networks and support.
Ms West said that while there is significant entrepreneurial talent in New Zealand, with people willing to offer their time and guidance, there is a shortage of female mentors.
A study has found that women prefer to be guided by other women.
Ms West said that other countries have a legally defined business entity category designed specifically for mission-led companies, such as benefit corporations in North America, which could be considered as part of a regulatory framework to recognise the inherent value of social enterprises to the New Zealand economy.
New Venture for Startups
She has established ‘Business, but Better’ to help entrepreneurs learn from the ‘many’ mistakes that she made while Ethique was in its startup phase.
Ms West said that the new initiative has evinced an interest in environmentally and socially focused ventures from various parts of the world.
The programme provides entrepreneurs with an extensive video resource covering a wide range of topics including branding, funding and exporting, as well as regular group mentoring and individual one-on-one mentoring sessions.
According to Ms West, three weeks after the launch, the Programme’s first marketing course intake was full and the platform attracted interest from social enterprise founders in the USA, UK and Australia and New Zealand.
“The level of demand has caught us by surprise; however, we believe that it is a reflection of the unmet need for greater support for social startups both locally and abroad. We know that social enterprises are much more likely to be led by women than traditional startups, and they are often headed by young entrepreneurs,” she said.
Ms West said that while more mature businesses can readily apply for R&D funding to explore new markets, there is little in the way of customised support for mission-led startups.
The Trademark experience
“That is a significant contributor to a high failure rate of startups,” she said and cited one of her early mistakes in trademark registration that was educative.
“The first time I registered a trademark I could not afford an IP lawyer and so I applied under an international trademark protocol known as the Madrid System to register the brand across multiple off-shore markets. That triggered the arrival of a series of letters each demanding payment of €2000 to various ‘IP officers’ around the world. “They looked extremely legitimate, and I panicked thinking they were real and it was only by sheer luck I found out it was a well-known scam. I also did not bother to register a trademark in Australia but later had to change the original business name,” she said.
Programme for newcomers
Learning from these experiences and many others, Ms West created a resource and sounding board for other entrepreneurs to learn from the misadventures that she experienced.
She said that the platform was developed to help more entrepreneurs through a video library resource, which can be used in conjunction with customised mentoring sessions.
“Trial and error is a great way to learn in some respects, but it can incur more cost and stress than a startup entrepreneur can manage. The objective of the programme is to remove some of the common pitfalls associated with launching a business and help these fledging ventures make it to maturity,” she said.
According to Ms West, some of the traditional business advice that is commonly disseminated is not well aligned with the social enterprise model.
“What we know is that business models have changed significantly in recent years. The old-school concept of staying on-shore until you are profitable or the prerequisite of having a 50-page business plan is no longer relevant – as international markets have become much more accessible, even to early-stage SMEs,” she said.
She said that her Programme is designed to integrate with a multi-million dollar fund and incubation initiative, Nous Labs.
