332 | Turning a Tree-Planting Mission Into a Global Brand | with Derrick Emsley

Derrick Emsley

Being able to actually sit back and evaluate what is really driving customer behavior and then really doubling down and continuing to evolve and iterate on that has been one of the things that I think has been our, I would say, secret sauce in a lot of cases.  

Chase Clymer

Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game. 

On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating  real results. 

I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.

Let's get on with the show.

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming the show CEO and co-founder of Tentree, Derrick Emsley. Derrick, welcome to the show. 

Derrick Emsley

Thanks for having me.

Chase Clymer

I'm excited to chat. I do quickly want to shout out the Surf Expo down in Orlando, where I met a team member of yours. Not you, but I always like to say that go to trade shows, go to conferences. Networking is power and you'll meet cool people. For those that are unaware, what are the types of products you're bringing to market over at Tentree? 

Derrick Emsley

Yeah. So we're at Tentree. We're effectively an outdoor lifestyle apparel business. So we make products that are designed for the outdoor space, but generally tending towards the more lifestyle angle of it. And we make the most sustainable product we can. Everything from t-shirts to tops, bottoms, fleece, woven, button-ups,  jackets, everything like that. It's the most sustainable product we can make. And then we plant 10 trees for every product we sell.  

Chase Clymer

Oh, wow. That's exactly where the name came from, huh? 

Derrick Emsley

Yeah. We're not very creative when it comes to names.

Chase Clymer

Now take me back in time. Where did the idea for this business come from? 

Derrick Emsley

Yeah. So my background, when I was 15 years old, my brother and I started our first company and it was a tree planting company. So I grew up in the prairies here in Canada. And it was around the early days of the Kyoto Protocol and a lot of sustainable conversations were happening. 

And what we saw was that in Saskatchewan in particular, it's a really resource driven economy. And so we started to see a lot of concerns and fear about what this could mean. And so we came up with the idea of saying, well, what can we do to help solve some of this? And so what takes carbon out of the air, trees, and what we have a lot of is land. 

And so we came up with the idea of building a company that would plant trees and support businesses and achieve their climate initiatives through that. And so we ran that from the time I was sort of in middle of high school till the end of  my university tenure. But ultimately, it wasn't a viable business at the time. 

And so really, we sat down, we said, how can we continue to fund reforestation? I think that's what we fell in love with was tree planting, and saw the impact it had on, frankly, like the environment. But really, we also saw how excited people got about this idea of planting trees.

And so we said, how can we continue to fund it, but actually do it more sustainably? And so we came up with the idea of building a consumer brand. And so we said, how can we connect  people because we saw how excited they got about tree planting with their ability to have an impact. And frankly, apparel just ended up being the vehicle. In hindsight, we've said it internally, we're like, there's a lot easier ways to plant trees than building an apparel business.

It's really been an incredible vehicle for us to connect people with their ability to have an impact and build some amazing products along the way. 

Chase Clymer

And what year was it? Let's just say that the first couple of products went live. 

Derrick Emsley

So that would have been 2012. Late 2011, we had screen printed a couple of logos on some American Apparel t-shirts and we're wearing them around Regina. But really 2012 was when we started selling our products. 

Chase Clymer

How did you reach your first customers that weren't your friends and family? 

Derrick Emsley

Well, it's funny. Originally, we launched a website. This is the early days of Ecommerce. The ability to launch Facebook ads and things like that didn't exist. And so for us, we launched our website and we were super excited about it. And I remember we did $1,000 in sales our first day.

And then the second day we did 500 and then the next day we did nothing. And we sort of realized, you know, I think our friends and family bought everything that they were going to. So now we need to find other customers. And so what we actually started to do was we went around to all the networks that we had in sort of the prairies in Western Canada to find, you know, different retailers, different stores that were willing to give us a shot, try and carry some product.

And we started partnering with them. That brought a little bit of a halo effect that we started seeing  a little more attraction online. And then we also started to partner with a ton of different influencers all across different social media platforms, particularly with Instagram and were groups that  were connected to customers that we felt were in some way mission aligned.  Given this was before even Instagram ads were a thing.

It was a different way to hack customer awareness and customer engagement. And we started doing that. And then collectively, these things start to build and build and build. 

Chase Clymer

Now the first version of the website, 2012, was Shopify around then?

Derrick Emsley

Shopify had just started. I shouldn't say it just started. Shopify was around, but it wasn't what it is today. Our first website was Magento. And as Magento was a much heavier lift back then to run a website  than it is today with Shopify and even Magento and some of these other Ecommerce platforms. 

Chase Clymer

As you were building the business, you're still planting 10 trees at a time?  

Derrick Emsley

We are. Yeah.  

Chase Clymer

Now, we talked about this a little bit beforehand. How cumbersome was auditing making sure that you were fulfilling that promise internally? 

Derrick Emsley

We started Tentree to plant trees. At its core, we've always said we're not an apparel company that plants trees. We're a tree planting company that happens to sell apparel. And so over the first, call it decade of us building this brand, we actually invested, you know, well over $10 million in reforestation.  

And what we tended to find was that, you know, we would travel to these sites. We were doing auditing procedures that we knew were coming from  the tree planting world, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to manage this sort of global portfolio of reforestation, manage different partners, different locations, and different types of trees.

And so we started to actually recognize that we needed to build something internally that would allow us to audit it more effectively, collect data from the ground, manage data provenance and verification and then ongoing monitoring. So back in probably six or seven years ago now, we started to build different sorts of pilot test products to help us do that, you know, that helped merge geospatial data with ground data that we would collect and things like that. 

And that product through many iterations eventually came what we called internally Veritree, which was a full  sort of ERP  suite of technology to help manage reforestation. Take a tree from the moment it was planted and all the data and evidence associated with it and inventory that tree so that we could attribute that tree to a customer or anything like that. 

That tool actually, as of about 2022, we spun out as a separate business because with the reforestation work scaling the way it was, we really recognized that we needed some independence with the auditing and the support that we were providing these projects globally. And so today, that's actually a separate business that we've rolled out from Tentree called Veritree. 

Chase Clymer

Now, obviously, building the tool to fulfill your own needs. That makes complete sense. Was it obvious to spin it out? Or did you have people asking for it before you that even clicked internally that like, oh, maybe there's this product in and of itself here?  

Derrick Emsley

It was people asking for it  that pushed it. We never intended to really build this as a standalone product. And frankly, took a lot of work to get it to the point where  it could be a standalone product. But I think there were two things that were happening at the same time. One was that  there was this need for independence.

And we were building a tool that really a lot of the supply side of our planting partnerships, so the groups that are planting the trees needed to use in a more meaningful way. And so for them to use a tool that was, you know, frankly, being built by one of their funders, there was a little bit of an issue around that independence of that. And then on the flip side, Veritree was also, you know, there to call out when things weren't happening appropriately.

And so really, we just felt like overall,  there was a need for independence. Then, at the same time, what we were starting to see was other organizations were  investing in tree planting or sustainability initiatives.  And a lot of them needed  to ensure that it was actually happening. And this was the big problem with tree planting as a lot of people were saying they were planting trees. 

But we funded over $10 million. And we were lucky if we'd gotten more than a Google Drive album with some photos that were probably shared with other groups, maybe a certificate. And it just frankly wasn't good enough. And there were other companies that were funding reforestation in a meaningful way too. And so they started approaching us. And so it was like a bunch of things that came together at a similar time. 

Chase Clymer

Yeah, absolutely. If all I got out of that was a couple pictures, I personally would be like, did they pocket this money or not? Let's make sure that this actually happened.

Derrick Emsley

Yeah. I don't think it’s…

Chase Clymer

Yeah. I don't say that your partners are bad actors or anything. It's just like my mind would naturally wander. 

Derrick Emsley

Exactly. I think the thing is that there's a lot of really incredibly good intentions in this space.  The challenge is that what we're seeing and as more and more awareness is being learned, more and more awareness and focus is being placed on companies actually participating or playing some role in climate initiatives  and, you know, reducing at zero commitments and things like that. There's more awareness coming to that, which also means there's more scrutiny. 

And that's a good thing for the quality of the work that's happening. Unfortunately, a lot of the  organizations that are doing a lot of that work don't necessarily have the expertise to deliver on that. 

So really, the idea was to build the product that kind of in the Venn diagram of, you know, people that want to fund reforestation and where there's great projects to be funded, we can help bring those together, but create the infrastructure layer behind it to make sure that the impact is actually happening. And that the organizations that are funding it can truly see it, verify it, audit it. And hopefully long term, that drives more and more funding into the space. 

Chase Clymer

Absolutely. Now, with Veritree, I promise this is the last question about Veritree before I pivot back to Tentree. It's just so interesting to me. People that are using that technology also on maybe that direct consumer side of the world, maybe even direct competitors?  

Derrick Emsley

Yeah, absolutely. We have a ton of different Ecommerce organizations that are using our platform.  And actually, we partner with some really incredible groups that have built  apps and things like that to  offer Ecommerce and DTC type businesses  with the ability to embed reforestation or you know, verified impact into their customer journey. 

When I look back at what we  kind of uncovered and what we started to learn at Tentree was that we were using  tree planting. We existed to plant trees, but our success and growth as a brand was a function of our ability to solve some of the kind of equations that every DTC founder faces more efficiently through that reforestation work. 

So if I think about it, I'm like every DTC business exists because they can in some way solve that sort of customer acquisition, CAC to LTV equation. Their lifetime value is greater than the cost to acquire. so,  underneath that there's a ton of inputs, but really like what we saw was that through embedding tree planting, we were able to create more compelling advertisements where we could bring down our customer acquisition costs.  

Through our loyalty program and our email programs where we're talking about tree planting, we could increase our LTV significantly. And then in addition to all that, like we were able to find ways to embed tree planting at different touch points within our customer journey on the website where we actually saw conversion rates tick up, we saw our average order values be able to incentivize things differently. 

So really for us, you know, if you take the altruistic side of things out of it and say like, really,

what's in it for the businesses to plant trees? We've actually solved and have so many examples of where planting trees is actually good for the business too. So we actually do have a ton of D2C businesses that we're partnered with and a ton of applications  that support those D2C businesses where we're that infrastructure layer behind it. 

Chase Clymer

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Chase Clymer

There is something to be said about adding a sustainability element to the business to help with that messaging and that marketing. But it doesn't circumvent the fact that you still need a good product at the end of the day. And your product line has evolved a lot further than just screen printing a logo on American Apparel T. 

Derrick Emsley

Yeah. 

Chase Clymer

Can you walk me through the evolution of how the products evolved? And I mean, you guys are making some really high quality stuff over there.

Derrick Emsley

You know, really like when you think about our founding team, we had a lot of experience in tree planting, in marketing, in sort of general business finance. The thing that none of us had any experience in was product and apparel. And so really like that was the side that we were learning as we went.  

We started with American Apparel t-shirts, put some logos on them. Then we started bringing in hiring people that could help us really expand what we were doing. And we also got to the point where it just didn't make sense any longer to be buying American Apparel t-shirts, screen printing and  trying to,  frankly, at early days, really import that product into Canada. 

Because we also realized that early on, we thought American Apparel was NAFTA certified because it was made in America. But what we learned was that NAFTA had to be actually a certain percentage of the overall cut, make, sew, and fabric and material in America.

And most of the main American products are actually using fabric that's coming from China or Pakistan or something like that. So  we were paying the main American costs  to bring into Canada and having to pay duties like it was made internationally. And so we started to recognize that we need to build a global supply chain that allows us to source really great high quality products, and also make our own products. 

From there, we started to realize, okay, we also, in addition to that, need to start to think about what is in the product. Because again, we didn't know anything about apparel. We didn't know there was such a thing as organic cotton or recycled polyester. then so we've kind of gone, you know, as we've evolved over time, we've gone levels deeper with what it actually takes to make apparel and source sustainably. 

Because at the end of the day, if we're trying to build a business that connects people to trees, but the vehicle being produced is bad for the environment, then we're kind of going against our, our, we exist. And so it's really been an evolution. And so we've, we've been fortunate. We've hired a lot of people that know a lot more about this than we do. But we've really stumbled our way through these kinds of learnings of, how do you make a product? How do you source it? How do you make it sustainably? 

And then also you get to different commodities like jackets and fleece, which is a knit versus the button ups we make now that are woven and how those things  are different. And so it's really just been an evolution, bringing on people that are smarter than us, helping us take that next step, and really continuing to put one foot in front of the other. 

Chase Clymer

It's coming up quite often during these interviews this past month, just hiring for your weaknesses.

Derrick Emsley

I think we were very fortunate that we at Tentra had a founding team that shared that frankly the skill sets there weren't too much duplication. My brother, Kaelin, was an incredible marketer. Dave, one of our co-founders, was an amazing salesperson. Steven, who led our Ecommerce in the early days, was able to build that and think through performance marketing.

Then I really had more of an operational and financial skill set. And so really, the piece thought that none of us had actually built the product. And so we've definitely had to find incredible people to come on board to help us with that. 

Chase Clymer

Now the name of the show is Honest Ecommerce. Looking back over the last 10-15 years of building this amazing business, any mistakes come to mind or just things you want to let the audience know about maybe? Maybe don't do this. We did it for you and we learned from it. And here's what we learned. 

Derrick Emsley

I mean, so many mistakes. I would say one of the biggest ones that we made was getting over our skis with the breadth of our collection. If I look back in the days,  you said it, like we were t-shirts, fleece, things like that. And we've obviously expanded and become a much more mature product organization. But there's a way to do that the right way  and a way to do it wrong.  

And for us, I think what we often did was we tried to do too many things at once. We wanted to add  underwear at the same time as outerwear, at the same time as activewear.  And inherently, you think, well, okay, this is like, we just have a customer coming to our website to buy the Tentree brand, and now we're just giving them more things to buy. But what we found is with all that breath, there was decision fatigue. 

None of the individual initiatives could have had the success that they might have been able to have if we could have really focused on driving that and doing one and then the next and then the next. 

So that's definitely been a big learning for us is what's the right breadth of product assortment because to me, like the long tail of product and what that does to your organization is where companies go to die. 

And I think the other thing that we've had to learn was we are an omnichannel business. So we do wholesale and Ecommerce. Some ways that's been  a secret sauce to us. When  e-commerce exploded at the beginning of COVID and retail was shut down, we were in a really good spot. Then as retail recovered and Ecommerce continued to hum, we were able to accelerate a lot faster. But also how you build a product to support two channels and  differing needs is something that we've really had to learn and  screw up a few times.

Chase Clymer

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's something I often tell even our clients and oftentimes during discovery calls is like, hey, if everything's important, nothing actually is important. And really focusing on things, seeing them through and then moving on leads to more stuff actually getting done. And I think that it's beyond just your assortment of products and launching a bunch of things.

Adding features to the website. It's your marketing initiatives like you spoke about earlier. It's definitely the things that get worked on, get improved. And if you scatter yourself too thin, nothing's actually moving forward. 

Derrick Emsley

Absolutely. And it hits at every point. You don't realize but  it takes a lot of  upstream resources to build the product. But then you have to shoot the product, have to build ads for it, you have to market it, you only have so many marketing dollars, those dollars tend to go towards what's working most. 

So it can end up being self-fulfilling that you build products and they fail because you don't give them the opportunity and just like, yeah, a lack of focus is really for us, one of our biggest learnings, because  oftentimes founders too have a bit of shiny object. We think everything's a good idea.  

Chase Clymer

I am guilty of that. And that's why I have a business partner that puts me in my place.  

Derrick Emsley

That's right.  

Chase Clymer

Awesome. So  is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?  

Derrick Emsley

We talked a lot about sort of. I think that one of the most interesting things about our journey has been how we have learned to leverage our impact side of things to actually be a competitive advantage. We're in a world now where it's just becoming increasingly, frankly, noisy and competitive.  

And everything is very quickly becoming productized and then commoditized. And so for us,  think what we've kind of, what's been an amazing journey and that we've learned is that, you the need to actually ensure that if you're doing something, and this goes back to focus as well,  you're really all in and you're making it a productive thing for your business. 

We've kind of looked at our entire customer base and said, what actually is driving them to be a supporter of Tentree? Is it tree planting? Is it the brand narratives? Is it the outdoor side of our business? Is it the products? And then is it sustainable? 

And being able to actually sit back and evaluate what is really driving customer behavior and then really doubling down and continuing to evolve and iterate on that has been one of the things that I think has been our, I would say, secret sauce in a lot of cases, which has allowed us to really stay ahead of the curve in a lot of ways on the sustainability and really the impact messaging that has helped us be successful. 

Chase Clymer

That's amazing. Now if I'm out there listening to this podcast, and I'm curious to see these awesome products that we've been talking about, or I just want to pitch in to help plant 10 more trees, where should I go? What should I do?

Derrick Emsley

Well, you know,  if you want to check out the gear,  support us, plant some trees through that, you can find it at tentree.com. So T-E-N-T-R-E-E.com.  Like I said, we're not super creative when it comes to naming. And on the flip side, if you have a business that is looking to embed some sustainability or whether it's carbon neutrality, whether it's really engaging your customers in a meaningful way, check us out at baritree.com again.

not very creative. It's verifying and the tree just smashed together. But it's  v-e-r-i-t-r-e-e.com.  And we're always looking for new ways to partner with organizations to help them do good. 

Chase Clymer

Awesome. Derek, thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Derrick Emsley

Thanks, Chase.  

Chase Clymer

We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes. 

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Until next time!