Episode 23
Creating award-winning luxury products from waste
Our current definitions of success and the pursuit of more – more wealth, more things – are not sustainable and do not lead to true fulfilment. We need to shift our orientation towards a more interconnected and accountable approach, where success is measured by the positive impact we have on society and the environment.
Kresse Wesling is the co-founder of a social enterprise that’s been at the forefront of the B-Corp movement. It was initially setup with the goal of rescuing London's decommissioned fire hoses and turning them into luxury bags. They’ve since expanded to rescue and transform 12 different materials and work with various charity partners.
The award-winning business – Elvis & Kresse – is known for its commitment to social and environmental standards, with 50% of their profits going to charity. Kresse and her partner Elvis are pioneers in sustainable luxury and have been at the forefront of the B-Corp movement.
In her discussion with Julia, Kresse highlights the importance of embracing transparency, telling the truth about so-called “green” products and practices, and striving for continuous improvement in all aspects of sustainable business. It also emphasises the need for a cultural shift that values collaboration, empathy, and sustainability over individual gain.
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Transcript
Creating a future world where all can thrive and feel fulfilled pushes the boundaries of the current ways of doing business.
Julia:My guest this week has created an award-winning business out of other people's waste and has redefined what it means to be a luxury goods provider that actually does good in every area of the business, from employees to insourcing energy, to giving 50% of profits to charity and thriving in the process.
Julia:You would've thought that after all these years, some of these ideas would be more commonplace, but there's a long way to go.
Julia:I'm Julia Rebholz, welcome to Generative Leaders.
Kresse:My name is Kresse.
Kresse:I run an amazing social enterprise we set up in 2005, primarily to rescue London's decommissioned firehoses.
Kresse:So we didn't have anything other than a problem to start with.
Kresse:Not a concept of what we were gonna do with it or how we were gonna do anything.
Kresse:Just a raw material problem to solve.
Kresse:And after quite a lot of research, we discovered that the best possible second life for decommissioned fire hoses was luxury goods.
Kresse:So we then went into the luxury world, discovered that that was a big fat structural failure and thought we could address it by doing everything to an a plus standard.
Kresse:So social, environmental, you know, let's not just talk about circular economy in terms of materials, but also in terms of capital.
Kresse:So 50% of our profits go to charity.
Kresse:And the, the business model has largely been that rescue, transform, donate.
Kresse:And something that has grown very steadily over an 18 year period.
Kresse:Now involves, 12 different materials that we rescue and lots of wonderful charity partners.
Kresse:And I guess we were a pioneer at the forefront of sustainable luxury the B Corp movement, things like that.
Kresse:And, and now here we are still beavering away trying to work out how to solve for climate change and biodiversity loss.
Julia:I love your humbleness in Kresse, in just, you know, we ha we found this problem, we solved it, we are doing this, we've developed a great brand, but what more can we do?
Julia:And to me, that really is the epitome of generative leadership, and someone that goes out and sees how they can lead people in a different way.
Julia:How would you describe what generative leadership might mean to you?
Kresse:I've been thinking about it and I, I actually think it's like if Joni Mitchell was an entrepreneur, this is how she would behave.
Kresse:So in, in her music, she never held anything back.
Kresse:She was a hundred percent transparent with her life.
Kresse:Her experience, her whole soul was laid bare and to to large personal cost, actually.
Kresse:But she just gave a hundred percent all the time, was extremely experimental, tried all kinds of different musical genres and was always spectacular and wonderful and joyful and uplifting, and that's what a generative leader is.
Kresse:You don't stay in your lane.
Kresse:You don't only focus on one particular thing.
Kresse:You are entirely transparent and your heart is in everything that you do.
Julia:Well.
Julia:It feels like your heart is in every single bag that you produce.
Julia:And so, you, you talked about your journey and, and when you're looking back for 18 years, it kind of looks like the pieces are logical.
Julia:But you started life in, from a, from a, a waste perspective and how you were really interested in waste and how you then made that transition into luxury goods.
Kresse:I mean, yeah, we're in luxury by accident, not by design.
Kresse:For us, it was a purely a raw material play.
Kresse:We discovered that there were big luxury brands using nitrile rubber in their collections, and that's why we went on to go into that space.
Kresse:And then the more we learned about luxury, the more disappointed we were to find how destructive it was.
Kresse:This is a industry that is so self celebratory about its creative victories, and yet really is it when you're using materials at such a pace and in such volumes, and with such disregard to your supply chain that you can't really be called creative at all?
Kresse:And that just made us very determined to be better in, in every single aspect that we could, our packaging, our customer service, the way we communicate.
Kresse:And then not just in the products that we make, but how we make them, how we generate energy.
Kresse:What we do with our own wastewater, what we do with our own sewage even.
Kresse:There isn't anything that we won't look at to improve the way the business runs.
Kresse:So I suppose as a designer, that's what I design, is the way the business functions, and it has to be something that I'm incredibly proud of and happy to fall asleep knowing is in place.
Kresse:Because I'm not one of these people who can have a daytime life and then a nighttime reality.
Kresse:They're, they're all connected.
Julia:And so I'm assuming you didn't get any training in this.
Julia:Um, and you know, a lot of entrepreneurs get to a space where they go, well, I, I can't do this.
Julia:What, what have you learned about those, you know, problems that you come up against that everyone else is saying, you, you can't do this Kresse, you just can't do it?
Kresse:Well, we've had that a lot.
Kresse:We've had people flat out saying in the beginning, well, this isn't viable.
Kresse:You can't sell old hoses.
Kresse:No one will, we'll buy these products, but when people did, they just did.
Kresse:And anyone who, said in the beginning, well, this isn't luxury.
Kresse:And then we won an award for From, from Walpole rather, which is the industry body that represents British luxury.
Kresse:And we were introduced as the future of luxury.
Kresse:That was in 2012, I think, or maybe 2011.
Kresse:And Elvis and I looked at each other and went God, there's only two of us and we're the future of this whole industry.
Kresse:It's pretty scary.
Kresse:But, but by the time that happens, then no one can question the fact that your luxury or not 'cause a third party, a very well respected third party has said you are.
Kresse:And we were always making money too, so we didn't have to ask anybody for any permission to contInue.
Kresse:And I think that was really important for me and it's still important now.
Kresse:So I, we don't have any external investors.
Kresse:We don't have any debt.
Kresse:We don't have shareholders that are telling us to only make wash bags because they're the most profitable thing we We don't have people saying, Ooh, for heaven's sake, don't go into farming.
Kresse:What do you know about regenerative agriculture?
Kresse:We only have ourselves to justify our actions to.
Kresse:And the only I hero I suppose, that I have really that's a living creature is Elvis.
Kresse:So in our relationship, which is, you know, we're together as a couple, but also we run this business, it's a pretty great team because we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards, unless you're thinking about pure, um, financial revenue metrics, which are just boring to both of us, really.
Julia:And it's, it's that accountability, isn't it?
Julia:You, you've created a system of accountability that raises you both up.
Julia:And so te tell me about those, those dialogues that create that system for you.
Kresse:So Elvis has this saying, do what makes you proud.
Kresse:And there isn't actually a lot that makes him proud of himself.
Kresse:He is very hard on himself.
Kresse:He's very difficult to please.
Kresse:And I have as a saying, do more, be better, as in it doesn't matter what you did today, tomorrow you gotta do more and it's gotta be better.
Kresse:And that's it.
Kresse:Like we, we are constantly having those concepts in the back of our mind.
Kresse:When people say you've got like an angel on one shoulder and the devil on one shoulder, I don't really have a devil.
Kresse:I've got my grandmother.
Kresse:And then other people's grandchildren, and they're all egging me on.
Kresse:They're all saying there's, this is not enough.
Kresse:There's more that can be done.
Kresse:There are newts and shrews that need your help.
Kresse:I guess it doesn't matter, but we are never satisfied and making each other excited about something or taking on a challenge and then getting somewhere with it is what floats our collective boat, I suppose.
Kresse:So that's what spurs us on what keeps us going and what makes it extremely fresh.
Kresse:Even after, you know, almost two decades of rescuing hose one fire hose at a time.
Julia:So that's, that's fantastic that you have that with each other and a lot of people that are listening who are starting businesses that, you know, that co-founder mentality of, these are problems we actually want to go and solve and we wanna solve them together, and we just happen to do it through, through business, how do you reconcile that with the people that work for you?
Julia:When you, when you go on these walks and you have this dialogue and you come up with an idea to go and run a farm in Kent, which you both have done, and then you have a team that works for you and they're going, wow, they're doing that now.
Kresse:Well, they either come along with it or they don't.
Kresse:You know, we've had, we've had actually pretty low turnover over the years.
Kresse:And every time we make a big new decision or we invest into a new area, we go through with the team, we explain why we wanna do it, and we say, Hey, are you in?
Kresse:And that's how people come along and, and probably the right people stay with us, given what we wanna achieve.
Kresse:It's a shame we're so rural.
Kresse:I think we could do more if we were, um.
Kresse:Well, we wouldn't be able to do farming, but it'd be really interesting to see what kind of talent we could attract if we were in a more urban area, 'cause the reality of working in a, uh, rural setting is that, is that you just don't have the same access to talent.
Julia:It is so simple, isn't it?
Julia:And, and all these management books overcomplicate it all.
Julia:You know, you have an idea, you, you validate it, it's good, you talk to the team, they either come along with it or they don't.
Julia:I mean, it's that simple.
Kresse:Oh, it's the same with marketing.
Kresse:People are always like, what's your marketing strategy?
Kresse:And I'm like, we just tell people the truth And if the truth isn't interesting enough then you fail.
Kresse:But for 18 years, the truth of what we do.
Kresse:has been fascinating to a great deal of people.
Kresse:So it's working.
Kresse:So when people need to come up with a strategy, I generally think that's because they're doing something that really they're ashamed by, or embarrassed by, or is subpar because the truth then doesn't work.
Julia:That's very sage advice.
Julia:Kresse of, you know, looking at the truth of your product and does it, does it really help?
Julia:Is it really better?
Julia:Are you proud of it?
Julia:You know, that sounds good questions for any business leader to be asking themselves.
Kresse:Yeah.
Kresse:I mean, if you had, if you were most fast fashion companies and you had to, Elvis always says, you know, we've got this fair trade certification, right?
Kresse:Elvis thinks that actually fair trade should be no label, but everyone else should have to say why they're unfair.
Kresse:So imagine if a fast, fast fashion company like Shane or Sheen or whatever we call this nonsense, had to say, this T-shirt was made with forced labor.
Kresse:The raw materials were produced either by farmers that were underpaid and at risk of suicide, or came from.
Kresse:some form of recycled comment content rather.
Kresse:And it's largely gonna be microplastics that, that you will eventually ingest because they'll enter the watercourse.
Kresse:It isn't well made, it isn't going to last very long, but someone on social media might say, Hey, that's cool.
Julia:Well, and it's, I, I mean, it is so interesting, isn't it?
Julia:'Cause everyone has their preferences.
Julia:Everyone has, you know, their way of seeing the world, but we don't tell people the trUth.
Julia:So, you know, it's not really fair to help them make a judgment if we're not telling the
Kresse:Precisely.
Kresse:That's why I love all these new laws around greenwashing because they're effectively designed force companies the truth.
Kresse:I don't know why we just say tell the truth, but.
Julia:Well, we have to dress it up in a different way because people don't like to be shamed and they don't like to be, you know, kind of confronted with the fact that they've not been telling the truth.
Julia:So, um, you know, I guess that's a, I guess that's an elegant way of helping people to see the nakedness of telling the truth.
Julia:But so, such a shame that we have to, that we as a society, we've gotten to this place.
Kresse:I would say it's we're, we're in the position we deserve to be in, having not challenged the status quo for probably the last 30 years.
Kresse:So 1992 COP should have been the moment when people just said, well, we paying for this?
Kresse:Why aren't we, why aren't we paying for carbon?
Kresse:We've had to wait now how many years till the Dasgupta review, which precisely said the same thing.
Kresse:We have to pay for this stuff
Kresse:And like that.
Kresse:I mean, all externalities, so everyone in your supply chain, everything that's farmed, everything that's manufactured, everything that's grown, everything that's disposed of, all your emissions, all your pollutions, why don't we pay for those things?
Kresse:I just don't think it's, rational.
Kresse:But lots of people have made lots of money, or actually a minority of people have made lots of people lots of money, doing precisely the opposite.
Kresse:And that group of people seems to control, despite the fact that we're in democracies, the way things are run.
Kresse:And I don't understand why that's true.
Kresse:I don't understand why large groups of people vote against their interests.
Kresse:They vote against their future, against their children, against their grandchildren.
Julia:Well, it looks to me Kresse like it's, you have a different orientation to most people and I dunno where that comes from.
Julia:And it's happened to me too, which is, you know, the orientation is, is not, your orientation is how can I help us all be better and do better?
Julia:Not how can I do better and be better?
Julia:And in this individualized society that we are living in, I see, you know, you just, you jump on LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook and the amount of Is in the feed is, is very long.
Kresse:I think there's one thing that I find really interesting is that I would put it down to the people that I'm really lucky to be surrounded by.
Kresse:So my peers and Elvis and, and, and my family and people who are really push me, is that they're all what I call emancipated.
Kresse:So their vision of success and how we view each other's success, are you doing something challenging and interesting?
Kresse:Are you fulfilling your potential?
Kresse:And are you contributing to society?
Kresse:We're not like what is the classic all this crazy?
Kresse:Hasn't he done well for himself?
Kresse:And which from our parents' generation largely means job, house, car.
Julia:And a lot of money in the bank.
Kresse:Yeah.
Kresse:Yeah.
Kresse:And, and it's just not interesting.
Kresse:And I don't know if, if you agree with this or not, but I certainly find that that's much more true from my female network rather than my male network.
Kresse:And I, and I know this sounds oxymoronic, but I feel like there's more emancipated women in this regard than there are men, because they're still held to that more Victorian standard of old school definitions of success, and those are the definitions that have to go.
Kresse:We know that to solve climate change, there has to be a cultural shift, and it is really that definition of success being completely inextricably linked to money without any accountability about impact.
Kresse:That's gotta go.
Julia:No, exactly.
Julia:I I, I couldn't agree with you more.
Julia:I mean, you know, we, we all have this notion of expansion, and, you know, everybody wanting to grow, everybody wanting to flourish, everybody wanting to thrive, you know, that's, we see that in nature.
Julia:You know, you, you, you feed a plant, it's gonna grow.
Julia:you know, you give it the right conditions, it's, it's gonna flourish.
Julia:But the difference with nature is it does that within an ecosystem.
Julia:It does that within a connected environment.
Julia:Whereas human beings, you know, we have this thing called free will and we also have this identity of self, self preservation.
Julia:You know, we are constantly scanning for the threats and unfortunately we've equated money with self preservation.
Julia:and so that orientation gets, gets lost.
Kresse:Well, and to a certain extent it's true.
Kresse:So the biggest problem, and the reason why that is a well established thought, is that if you are on minimum wage in this country, if you are broke, we have a housing crisis.
Kresse:Housing has never costed more as a proportion of your income than ever before.
Kresse:Um, I mean, food and fashion you could say are underpriced as a proportion.
Kresse:But if your loca, if your housing is at risk that's Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Kresse:So if your food in your shelter are at risk and your access to food and water, then you are gonna have an extremely difficult time.
Kresse:And then in the US you can add healthcare on top of
Kresse:You know, I've been to some major US cities in the years and seen all kinds of people living in modified shopping trolleys, injecting drugs on the street, right in front of anybody walking by.
Kresse:And if, if that isn't a sign of failed society, I don't, I don't know what is, I don't think you can just, just say that San Francisco is a successful city So you could just, for me, it's fine to have enough, but it's almost obnoxious to have too much at the expense of everyone else.
Julia:Yeah.
Julia:And that's the, that's the, that's the issue, isn't it?
Julia:I mean, I've spoken to people that are homeless who don't have enough.
Julia:And I've spoken to multi-billionaires where it's not enough.
Julia:And both are equally unhappy with life because they're identified with the idea of more is better.
Kresse:But I don't have any pity for the billionaire 'cause they just have a creativity issue and for crying out loud, they just need to go into a forest, take a few deep breaths and soar themselves.
Julia:But you know, it's the, there's an obsession with, you know, a certain set of thoughts on, on both ends of the scale.
Julia:You know, I either can't escape this homelessness or I can't escape the need for, for more.
Julia:And so, you know, this, this cultural shift that we have to go through is, is really, you know, the mental pandemic that has been building for a very, very, very long time.
Kresse:Yes.
Kresse:And it is, it's a, it's a time bomb.
Kresse:Is going off rather spectacularly in different places.
Kresse:So we don't, or we know, we know that the average age of a farmer is too old to be in farming, so where's our food gonna come from?
Kresse:Because young people, and I'm 46 years old and I went into this very romantically, but also understanding how difficult how hard it was gonna be, even I was.
Kresse:Radically under prepared for how hard and how emotional it was going to be to be in charge of 17 meager acres of land.
Kresse:So I, I don't know how we're gonna grow food.
Kresse:That's a crisis.
Kresse:And then you could put that into almost every industry that involved making of any kind.
Kresse:So there are, there's a shortage of craftspeople, a shortage of cheese bakers, there's a shortage of olive oil manufacture.
Kresse:Like just think of what, whatever staple you want, there aren't, there aren't enough people who understand how to treat wastewater.
Kresse:We just have prioritized AI?
Kresse:I'm not sure, but
Julia:I dunno, it feels like we've pri prioritize influencing on social media, you know?
Kresse:Hmm.
Kresse:Hmm Well, and the dopamine hit associated with Facebook and Instagram and TikTok in particular.
Kresse:We, we had a young colleague who said, yeah, know, Facebook is addictive and Instagram is addictive, but he he just said, but TikTok was a disaster.
Kresse:It was so addictive that he actually couldn't stop.
Kresse:He would suddenly realize it was three o'clock in the morning and he'd just been scrolling for hours, and that terrified me because I just thought it's a complete waste of time, he hasn't learned anything, he hasn't slept either, and his worldview could potentially, in that time have been shifted just that little fraction away from center and then could keep going.
Kresse:And keep going.
Kresse:And by center, I don't mean we all need to be political centrists, but I mean people who believe in some kind of society, some sort of accountability to the people who are on the fringe who are shouting into the Twitter void.
Julia:I was reading the other day that the, the biggest problem for our future generations and continuing these crafts that have been developed over hundreds of years is focus.
Kresse:Mm-Hmm.
Julia:Because the attention span is just so delineated and, and in a, in a screen now.
Kresse:But, but then extrapolate that to human relationships.
Kresse:So some of the most powerful relationships that I have, I formed when I was a student and you have hangout time.
Kresse:And you spent an enormous amount, amount of time just listening to your friends.
Kresse:And really focusing on them, not being distracted by radio or music or anything else, just digging in, picking away at everything about them.
Kresse:So those friends of mine that I've had since I was 16, 17, 18 years old, I absolutely cherish because they really know me.
Kresse:And if you don't have an attention span, you can't develop that quality of relationship.
Kresse:is really scary.
Julia:Yes, and you know, I have a, I have a almost 18-year-old who can speak on the phone for hours, which I'm, I, I'm sort of like, that's so great that he can do that.
Julia:'cause that's what I was doing when I was 17, 18 was hours on the phone.
Julia:But he also has the side of being hours scrolling on TikTok.
Julia:And I, I feel like my generation is, is the one to blame.
Julia:You know, we, we, we became, you know, addicted to these devices and our children saw us doing that, so they did the same.
Julia:And now the technology is way more advanced.
Julia:So I, I, I, you know, I wonder, is that generation gonna be the generation that kind of finally says, actually, we've gotta put this down, we've gotta stop.
Kresse:I don't know because some of these things, once you start, you can't change.
Kresse:So at one point we all had, we all either walked everywhere.
Kresse:I mean, look at the footpaths that are all the, all the way across the UK.
Kresse:Those exist because they were ways that people moved.
Kresse:And then we had cart tracks and people had horses and carriages.
Kresse:But will people give up their car?
Kresse:I mean, it's a really, really culturally embedded.
Kresse:The fact that you can just, I mean, I don't drive, so I'm one of these, and my, my mom drives her crazy.
Kresse:She's like, how do you do anything?
Kresse:How do you get anywhere?
Kresse:I'm like, I've got two legs.
Kresse:Got a bike.
Kresse:I can, the train station is two miles from here.
Kresse:One of the people here who dropped me.
Kresse:Like, I don't.
Kresse:It doesn't stress me out.
Kresse:It doesn't bother me, but for a lot of people, that's huge stress.
Julia:So Kresse what advice would you have to anyone that was starting their journey trying to create a venture that was creating social and environmental change?
Kresse:I would really landscape the problems because we've got a limited amount of time to do a lot of good.
Kresse:So don't just pick a problem because you found one.
Kresse:Look at all of the things that we face and then see what marries with your skills.
Kresse:'Cause there's no point in you saying, well actually.
Kresse:We need to get rid of fossil fuels.
Kresse:I think it's hydrogen, but you don't know anything about hydrogen.
Kresse:You have no engineering background.
Kresse:You have no concept of the energy landscape or the infrastructure that might be required or the investment that might require.
Kresse:So find a big, actual honest to God problem and then work out if it marries with your skills.
Kresse:And then you've gotta find your network or find your team.
Kresse:Find the people who are gonna be with you on this journey.
Kresse:Who do you need?
Kresse:What skills don't you have?
Kresse:How can you incentivize those people?
Kresse:Because it's easier to do everything when you're not by yourself.
Kresse:So you, you, you gotta do those things.
Kresse:And I think, then it's a crapshoot because you've, you've gotta have the right team.
Kresse:You've gotta be doing the right thing with your skills, but there's also the issue of time of somebody else might have had that wonderful idea at the same time as you, or just after you, but be more capitalized, better at getting their team together, or spreading more quickly.
Kresse:And that just means you have to be paying attention all the time.
Kresse:So I am constantly asking myself, is this the best we can do with the fire hose or with any of our materials or with our lives?
Kresse:And we're constantly adapting and tweaking.
Kresse:That's why we're at this, why I'm talking to you from a boiler room on a farm, a boiler room that only uses a heat pump.
Julia:Amazing.
Julia:Well, Kresse how can people get hold of you?
Julia:Um, how can they find out more about what you are up to and buy a million pound bag that will go to charity if they want to?
Kresse:if they want to.
Kresse:So you could find us at elvisandkresse.com.
Kresse:So Elvis like the singer and K-R-E-S-S-E dot com.
Kresse:You can also look on our website and see when we have workshops and tours.
Kresse:If you wanna come down and actually see our beautiful search treatment system, or solar array or our heat pumps, that's all for you to view and for you to learn from.
Kresse:And I'm really easy to track down on LinkedIn.
Kresse:I'm always happy to take questions and be connected with people and try and help where I can.
Julia:Amazing.
Julia:Well, thank you so much for the conversation today, Kresse.
Julia:And we are gonna be avidly following your journey and seeing what big impact you create next.
Kresse:Thank you.
Julia:In the 10 years that I've known Kresse, every single conversation has pushed my thinking on in every single way and in multiple different directions.
Julia:One of the things that I really appreciate about Kresse is that she's always getting us to look at our own thinking.
Julia:And when you tell the bare naked truth about your business, do you feel proud?
Julia:Are there are parts that you are not at ease with?
Julia:If there are, it might be a signal for change, for reinvention, for reimagination, to do something different.
Julia:Kresse's been on a real evolution of looking at each of these different areas and asking herself those questions on a continual basis.
Julia:And it's so easy to get caught up in chasing the sales and getting everything, uh, working, but it's these little, these little changes, these little nudges, engaging with your own people and starting to look at what you might do differently.
Julia:So that leads me onto the second big takeaway, and it's one that I really loved.
Julia:It's asking yourself the question every day, are there things I can do better, not for myself, but for the good of others?
Julia:And Kresse talking about how she had that little tap on her shoulder saying, can I do better?
Julia:Are there things I can do more of?
Julia:What insights and realization might be sparked if you ask that question more often?
Julia:And then the third thing that so important, and Kresse really highlighted that her partnership with Elvis and the two of them being in life together, asking themselves the difficult questions.
Julia:Do you have someone that you talk to regularly about what you're doing, how sustainable it is, and does it stand up to scrutiny?
Julia:If not, can you find someone that might be that person for you to ask those questions?
Julia:And even if you're not running your own business, sometimes it's just really helpful to have that person that you can ask about what it is you're doing at work.
Julia:If you've enjoyed this episode and you think it might help others, please do go ahead and share it.
Julia:You can do that either at generativeleaders.co or on any podcast platform that you listen to.
Julia:I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Generative Leaders.
