Pala becomes a B Corp!
Well, I did promise some exciting news just around the 2021 corner and, so here it is! Right before the end of year buzzer there was a moment where the ‘excited child’ in me was re-engaged, and I allowed myself a brief moment to metaphorically ‘bask in the sun’ (wearing a pair of Palas of course). The bearer of these glad tidings was an email telling me that a process I had begun as far back as February had finally come to fruition with Pala becoming officially certified as a B Corp. I was now joining a growing movement of people building their businesses as ‘a force for good’.
Young girl at eye test in Ethiopia
But what does that mean?
It means that Pala has met the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. It’s a rigorous process, as of course it should be, and I can thank lockdown #1 for providing me the focus I needed.
For me personally, this certification has been a key milestone for the business for some time – it’s felt a natural part of our evolution and I’m so pleased we’ve travelled this path. It’s a long and rigorous process (as of course it should be), taking much time and energy to achieve, so you can thank lockdown #1 for providing me the necessary time to focus on the task in hand! You can add to that a number of brilliant people from the BCorp community who gave their time and expertise to provide a guiding hand on the wheel.
Supporting the incredible case weavers
Pala was always set up to do business differently, indeed it started with identifying a cause first and then retrofitting a brand and a product to leverage that cause. The positive impact of what we do is at the heart of the business, but equally we have to continue to adapt and innovate as much as we can to minimise our environmental impact. The assessment provides this crucial guidance, identifies our weaknesses and enables us to develop a roadmap to address them.
Therefore, becoming a B Corp is only the start of an exciting chapter. The assessment is ongoing and my commitment to you is to honour this certification by using it to continually make improvements to be a better business and working toward a more inclusive and sustainable economy. I look forward to sharing those stories over the weeks, months and years to come.
Finally, a brief mention about the image we captured at the top of this page. In making our announcement I wanted to connect back to nature and use it as our canvas for the delivering the message. We had a lot of fun attempting to film this – tide times, weather conditions all conspired against us for quite some time and even here you can see we only just managed to get this picture before the tide swallowed up our ‘canvas’. I like that though, nature wins – it’s how it should be!
John Pritchard, founder, Pala Eyewear
