Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Itzla.
Heather, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Nikki and I (founders) built our zero-waste school/office supply company after years of volunteering in the plastic pollution activism space. We were both ready to shift from beach clean-ups to preventing as much plastic as possible from becoming pollution in the first place. I had been blogging about the amount of plastic I was finding while walking my dogs (thereisnoaway.net) and it opened my eyes to how much of my kid’s school supplies were ending up as pollution/landfill every year. I was able to convince their small school to allow me to shop for/purchase plastic-free supplies for the classroom, and the rest of the families reimbursed me. What started with one classroom eventually became the whole school, and then a teacher from a nearby school asked if I would do the same for their school – and that’s where the journey to launch Wisdom Supply Co. started.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Anything but smooth. For starters, we were activists/volunteers with zero business experience. We tried to do too much too soon rather than building a healthy business based on just a few products in those early years. We spread ourselves too thin, we did not have our pricing set to anywhere near a sustainable level, and we said yes to everything. The impact of every school in the country closing their doors for two years had an outsized impact on our school supply company – did not see that coming. This forced us to pivot to online advertising direct to customers rather than focusing on schools. Once Nikki got a handle on DIY’ing our advertising, the growth was significant – close to 400% growth that year, however the cost of online advertising – especially after the iOS 14 update, more than kept pace with our growth.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Wisdom Supply Co.?
Traditional school supplies and how they are obtained year after year is flawed from start to finish. The materials are garbage (plastic, vinyl, and spiral-bound), and back-to-school shopping inefficiently sends every family in the school on a scavenger hunt to purchase an overabundance of all the same materials.
After years of sorting through the products discarded on that last day of school, we have designed school supplies that prevent this waste. Our products are 100% recyclable, reusable, and repairable – by design. Waste is a design flaw.
The first thing we encourage every family/student to do is to take stock of and use up what they already have (gather up forgotten supplies from cupboards, junk drawers, and old backpacks). Have a conversation about the practice of throwing everything away each year and buying everything new. It’s madness, and it’s creating waste that will exist on the planet as pollution or landfill – forever.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Nikki and I are both happy to have read Yvon Chouinard’s (founder of Patagonia) book “Let My People Go Surfing”, as well as the B Corp Handbook. Those two influences have formed our business from day one. Yvon’s unique approach to business and the environment remains a north star for us, and we are continually proud of our B Corp Certification.
We spent a year of the pandemic in a small warehouse in a suburban Northern California town (San Anselmo) that allowed for local high school (and home from college) students to easily walk to our space and work the hours they were available – by some miracle, this very fluid and flexible “system” worked and kept us moving forward during this strange and uncertain time. The students who worked for us have all been FANTASTIC, smart young people that we hope will come back to work with us as we grow the company.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wisdomsupplyco.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wisdomsupplyco
- Other: https://thereisnoaway.net/
