Influx

Jonathan Greenblat and Peter Thum are the founders of Ethos water, a bottled water brand with a serious social mission, that was recently purchased by Starbucks.

Can you please describe your background, current job title and responsibilities?

PETER:
I am one of the two co-founders of Ethos Water, along with my business partner and co-founder, Jonathan Greenblatt. Today, the two of us are vice presidents of consumer products at Starbucks, managing the Ethos brand and developing strategies to expand the business.

Ethos was born out of my direct personal experience. In 2001, I was working for McKinsey and Company and was assigned to a six month engagement in South Africa. During this time, I witnessed firsthand the suffering of impoverished children, whose life prospects were diminished due to the lack of safe drinking water. Upon further research, I learned that the world water crisis is one of the greatest public health issues of our time. Shortly thereafter, I spent several months back in the UK working with a soft drink company to help improve its business. As I learned about the industry, I saw the opportunity for a new type of company and a bottled water product that would connect consumers to helping to solve the world water crisis.

After working on the idea for some time, I contacted Jonathan. We had attended business school at Northwestern together a few years earlier and I knew he as someone with the right mix of experience and skills to help me to start this company. Jonathan instantly was intrigued by the idea. He had spent five years prior to school serving in the Clinton Administration, including the White House and the Commerce Department. During this time, He traveled across the world and saw the oppressive living conditions affecting hundreds of millions of people in countries like Brazil, China, Haiti, and India, among others. I think he really found the concept of launching a consumer product that would help to alleviate a related humanitarian cause as innovative and exciting.

Thus, together in Fall 2002, we decided to start Ethos Water together with the specific mission to help children around the world get clean water.

Where you in any way nervous about selling to Starbucks, given some of the negative press they have received from the activist lobby?

JONATHAN:

Starbucks uniquely enables Ethos to deliver on our social mission and business model. With its brand awareness and customer loyalty, Starbucks presents an opportunity to reach over 20 million customers each week and educate them about the world water crisis. We could not identify another partner who could present Ethos with such a platform.

As far as the negative press Starbucks receives, I think it’s often due to the fact that many groups are unaware of the depth and breadth of Starbucks social responsibility initiatives. The company gives back to the community at a local and global level in numerous ways. Peter and I are delighted that we can build upon our vision and scale our humanitarian impact dramatically as a result of our relationship with Starbucks.

Do you have plans to extend the Ethos water brand?

PETER:

Most certainly. Ethos Water currently is sold in Starbucks company-owned stores in the US as well as natural food stores such as Whole Foods Market, concentrated on the West coast. We are beginning to look at expanding our distribution of Ethos into new channels. Moving forward, we plan to develop strategies to grow the brand while still maintaining our business model and keeping a relentless focus on our mission to help children around the world get clean water.

Why is 5 cents a bottle the donation limit?

JONATHAN:

After careful analysis, Starbucks priced Ethos Water nationwide at $1.80. This price is consistent with the pricing of other premium brands sold in similar retail environments.

Five cents from the sale of each bottle of Ethos will be donated to non-profit organizations to alleviate the world water crisis. Such funds contribute toward Starbucks overall goal of donating $10 million over the next five years (2006-2010) to non-profit and non-governmental organizations that are helping to address the world water crisis.

It is important to understand that five cents will be donated for every bottle, in every place, that Ethos is sold, whether a Starbucks store or any other channel (ie grocery store, convenience store, etc).

Five cents per bottle is considerably more than Ethos, as an independent company, could have donated on a per unit basis. Moreover, as important as we consider these donations, we also will continue to work to educate customers and initiate a dialogue in this country about the world water crisis. We believe this educational dimension of our brand is arguably as important as our financial impact.

I understand you guys are driving around the country in a bio-diesel bus – why do you think this is the best way of getting the word out?

PETER:

We believe the EthosMobile is an innovative way to get out the message about Ethos and, by using bio-diesel, its environmentally consistent with our values. We see it as part of an integrated communication strategy that allows us to tour the country, stopping in cities to talk with Starbucks partners (employees), community members and several NGOs.

Throughout our Roadshow, we are leading a series of “Walk for Water” events in several cities. These three-mile symbolic walks conducted to raise awareness of the struggle of women and their children in Sub-Saharan Africa who often walk up to six miles every day simply to retrieve drinking water for their families. Starbucks customers, partners and community leaders are invited to “Walk for Water” with us to highlight their plight. This grassroots approach gives us the chance to raise awareness about the world water crisis and engage people in a hands-on learning process.

We’ve already held walks in Atlanta, New York City and Philadelphia, attracting more than 1,000 participants. We?re continuing our “Walk for Water” events through September 30. We would invite your readers would join us. All are invited to check out the Roadshow schedule on ethoswater.com

What documentaries, books, blogs, websites have inspired you and continue to inspire you?

JONATHAN:

Much of our initial inspiration came from the work of business pioneers like Ben Cohen, Paul Newman, and Anita & Gordon Roddick, entrepreneurs who built businesses that hoped to achieve a dual bottom line. Nonetheless, we struggled with the lack of information about how to build such companies ? there were no textbooks on social entrepreneurship that we were able to find. Frankly, other than a few HBS cases, there was remarkably scant information about these types of companies.

When we first started Ethos, some of the books that provided useful learnings included The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken, Blue Gold by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, and Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schultz. More recently, during our road trip, we have been reading Freakonomics by Steve Levitt, Crimes Against Nature by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Collapse by Jared Diamond.

We regularly check out the latest in the blogosphere via Technorati, log into Salon.com and Slate.com on an almost daily basis, and read print media like The Economist, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.