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Interview with Mo Chicarro and Anthony Oram, Founders of Male Organics
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“The Cleanest Men in London”
Male Organics is a UK-based internet store that’s a one-stop shop for organic and natural grooming products for men aspiring to be chemical-free and earth-friendly.
The two founders of Male Organics share why they seized upon the idea of starting a store for men - and surprising things they’ve learned along the way.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- Why Male Organics was told off for being sexist….
- …and a surprising fact: 50% of the customers at Male Organics are women!
- What from the marketing toolbox is working? Offering discounts is working to attract people to their site
- Find out the #1 bestselling natural grooming product purchased for men
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: This is Patrick Dominguez from Green Business Innovators.com and I am here speaking with two gentlemen from Male Organics. Why don’t you introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about what your company does and its history.
MO CHICARRO: Sure, I’m Mo Chicarro.
ANTHONY ORAM: And I’m Anthony Oram.
MO CHICARRO: We started out Male Organics almost a year ago and the idea was we were looking ourselves for products on the internet - to wash with or brush your teeth with, a toothpaste, shower gel, stuff like that and previously you would only find them on websites that were mainly female orientated and a very small men’s section. So, we spent about a year researching a wide variety of products and then put them all in one place which is now Male Organics. Guys can go there and the whole website is laid out for men’s idea of shopping.
So, it is very simple. So, you go there if you are looking for toothpaste you click toothpaste, buy toothpaste, and go somewhere else. And that was the idea behind it and we are just sort of now trying to build up a bit of a head of steam and let people know about it.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about how you have been letting people know about the company?
ANTHONY ORAM: We come to shows like this obviously and did a lot of marketing online. So through other green websites, green blogs offering discounts to people. Just trying to get more people to the sites. The more people that we can get there the better really. More people using less chemicals.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And what have you found works the best so far?
ANTHONY ORAM: So far, discounts. Shock, horror! [laughs]
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And is it a discount for a first purchase or how does it work?
ANTHONY ORAM: Yeah, it will last for like maybe a two week period or even sometimes just a weekend. You know we’ll do like a Father’s Day offer, say the weekend before Father’s Day. You get 15% off, to get people on the website.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And do you work with your suppliers to provide discounts that you pass on?
ANTHONY ORAM: We don’t generally. They have help out in the show though because we are giving away prizes at the show and I think sort of all of the suppliers we asked have given us product that we can give away as prizes.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And for people listening to this interview, we are at the London Aware Show today which is all about green businesses. And so, Mo you were telling me before about who actually uses the website. So, it’s targeting males, but you were saying that…
MO CHICARRO: Yeah, we actually have a mix - we have got actually about 50/50 percent male and female customers so far. So, we get guys who are actually already interested in this kind of market area and already want to use products that don’t have the kind of chemicals that big mass-produced companies sneak in without letting people know. And then we have a lot of ladies that come to the site who basically buy stuff for the men in the family. Yeah, and we have quite a few unisex products so sometimes they also buy stuff for themselves. As for age groups, we have had mum’s ring us up and say I’m looking for hair wax for my son because he uses it all of the time and I am worried about him putting chemicals in his hair all day long. And then we had some lovely old gentleman ring us up who was about, he was in his 70s and about to go around South America on a six month trip and wanted all sorts of nice products to use. So, it’s a big range really. So we are constantly surprised.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And what are some of the hottest products right now?
MO CHICARRO: The hair wax sells very well.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Which product is it?
ANTHONY ORAM: Simply Soaked Hair Sculpting Wax. We think it sells well because at the end of the day if you are going to put something that sits in your hair all day long you probably want as little or as few chemicals in it as possible. Guys worry about their hair falling out. So that sells really well.
MO CHICARRO: The American brand sells very well.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Dr Bronners? I use the same soap.
MO CHICARRO & ANTHONY ORAM: Yeah.
MO CHICARRO: We sell; we bought like four different flavors of that so we sell that on the site as well. I think that is the only American brand that we sell. So, we try and sell as many products from the U.K. to people in the U.K. We don’t like shipping things around the world for no reason. So, we only actually ship to the U.K. as well. Someone wants to buy they have to buy in the U.K. We won’t send back to America or to Europe, sort of cut down on carbon emissions.
ANTHONY ORAM: We also have Levera stuff and GreenPeople, they are very popular products. Yeah, there is a whole range of stuff. I think we have got well over 200 products now on the sites.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Who do you regard as your competition?
ANTHONY ORAM: We are the only site aimed at men. So our main competition really would be the sites that are more aimed at women, but have men sections. So, we are the only one that is aimed at men.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And are men telling you that they appreciate the fact that your site is somewhat better organized for men or more tailored for men.
ANTHONY ORAM: Yeah, but we get told off by women as well for being too sexist. We have had people this weekend say why is your site only aimed at men and then we explain the other sites are all aimed at women so we are sort of like fighting in the men’s corner.
MO CHICARRO: Literally, we would get frustrated trying to buy this kind of stuff ourselves a couple of years back and so we just made it easy really and put it all in one place.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Are you finding in the U.K. that men are interested in these sorts of health care products for themselves?
MO CHICARRO: Interest is definitely growing, like literally day upon day. I mean, part of it really is education. One of the reasons why we are here at the show is just to speak to people. educate them really about certain things about the pharmaceutical industry as a whole and the fact that it is self-regulated like for example the food industry isn’t self-regulated. When you buy food in a supermarket or wherever the ingredients tells you exactly what is in the food. When you buy a mass produced pharmaceutical product or cosmetic product they are allowed to kind of like lie a little bit about actually what is in it. For example, a lot of products have parfume. We have spoken to people at the show and they go wow I just thought that was French for perfume and it is, but it is also can be made up of any number of tens of thousands of chemical ingredients. So all of our products don’t have parfume, don’t have parabens. There’s a whole list of chemicals that you can read on the website there. We are trying to make sure that everything that we sell when it says it’s natural organic it actually is as opposed to you being sort of slightly mislead, shall we say, by the big brands.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And how did you determine which chemicals you wanted to not include in your products?
ANTHONY ORAM: Just by doing research really on the internet about what products are, because you need a chemistry degree to understand what these things are, so we just did a lot of research about, say, for instance sodium lauryl sulfate. Is it necessary in a product? No it’s not; it is a skin irritant, so we won’t stock products with it in. For example, like parabens, the body finds it very difficult to break those down, so they generally stay in the bloodstream. We don’t really see the point. They are generally used to extend shelf life. It’s just that there is really no need for them to be in there. Parfume as we have already mentioned is another one. There is a massive interest in organic food. The other interesting fact is that whatever put on your skin, which is the largest organ on your body, the skin can absorb up to 60% of it. So, it is going into your bloodstream anyway. So, maybe you should be you know as well as worrying about what you eat, you should also be worrying a little bit more or thinking a little bit more about stuff you put on your skin and use on your body.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: So, what can we expect in the next 12 months from Male Organics?
ANTHONY ORAM: Our own range.
MO CHICARRO: Yeah, we would like to produce our own range that would be good and try to sort of promote that and we are going to be constantly researching new products. We are in constant talks with our suppliers, so whenever they come out with new stuff we test it. Everything that goes on the website, we test. So, at times we are the cleanest men in London from time to time. [laughs]
ANTHONY ORAM: We are also extending the ranges. So now we stock shoes and we would like to enter clothing so the men when they want to buy something organic or natural they come to us. They know that we are the place that sells what they need.
MO CHICARRO: Yeah, and we would like to think as well that they kind of get the idea that we have done the research for them. Every product on the site has a full list of ingredients, has background information. So, it is all very detailed.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: On the ingredients?
MO CHICARRO: On the product and on the ingredients and if go to the website and go to the About Us page you can read about all the chemicals that you know we’ve basically make sure are not in our products and the reasons why. Basically, it is an education thing as well as a retail thing really.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Mo, you were telling me earlier in addition to having organic products for men you have done a lot of work to green the company itself.
MO CHICARRO: Yeah. I think because we started the company from scratch we were in a good position to try and put as many green or ethical things in place. For example, we bank with a co-op that’s ethical banking. The co-op have a very good ethical policy where they don’t invest in anything to do with arms, pollution, that kind of stuff. Even the website itself is hosted on a wind-powered server. Also, delivery is carbon offset as well.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: The delivery of the products to the customer?
MO CHICARRO: The delivery of the products to the customer is carbon offset.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: And who are you using to provide carbon offset?
MO CHICARRO: That is a company called Climate Care. They spend the money that we give them on carbon offset projects around the world. We try to source as locally as possible within the U.K. or Europe. We’ve only got one brand from the U.S. We don’t sell outside of the U.K. So, we don’t see the point in getting product here and then shipping them all around the world again.
PATRICK DOMINGUEZ: Okay, well I’d like to thank you very much for this interview and good luck at the show.
ANTHONY ORAM: Thank you for much indeed.
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