C3MD’s February morning meeting was a great success! New and familiar faces joined us via Zoom for our first meeting of 2025 — a lively and informative discussion centered around Higher Purpose.
Tara Milburn, the founder of Ethical Swag, contributed to this month’s discussion as our guest speaker, sharing her journey of starting her own purpose-driven business in 2018 and stressing the importance of trust, staying true to her mission, and mindful customer service in its success. Ethical Swag is a sustainable promotional products company that only works with suppliers that meet rigorous standards related to social compliance, environmental impact, product safety, supply chain security and product quality. It also measures and offsets its carbon footprint and embodies the principles of sustainability in every aspect of its operations.
About Tara
Tara’s idea for Ethical Swag came from her realization that many organizations were not communicating their values through their products. She spent a lot of time researching and defining what Ethical Swag stood for and how its core values could differentiate the business. Tara’s business model focused on making sustainable products more easily accessible and the process easy to understand. She made sure to address common objections to her products, such as cost and quality. Her effort, dedication, and mindful business approach was rewarded. Ethical Swag took off after she launched her website on March 1st, 2018 and word got around! Tara didn’t see a need to focus on a marketing strategy for Ethical Swag until recently.
From Grassroots to Structure
Like any small business, there was an evolution to the business model. Originally, Ethical Swag took a grassroots approach, depending heavily on word-of-mouth and referrals. Tara highlighted the importance of commission-based sales in the industry and how her company’s unique approach of focusing on purpose-led products and e-commerce allowed the company to maintain margins while not paying high commissions. One key to her success has been the trust she’s established with vendors and clients. With the commitment to environmentally sound…led Tara to pursue a B Corp certification to prove the authenticity of her company. 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.
For those interested in learning more about how to infuse purpose into their business model, Tara suggests using the B Corp certification standards as a guide to doing so. While becoming qualified for B Corp certification was a heavy lift, it’s not one that she regrets doing.
If you missed this month’s meeting, or want to revisit part of the discussion, watch the recording on the C3MD YouTube channel! You can watch the video recording here.
*Special thanks to Mary Jo Neil of Drawn Dialogue who attended the meeting and was inspired to create this beautiful feature image about our conversation!
Save the date for our next *virtual* event on Tuesday, April 15th at 12 PM. Join us for our Food for Thought virtual lunch. We’ll be discussing stakeholder orientation. View details and register for the event on our website.
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