Cutting the Crap with Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies

Decarbonizing Commerce

In this episode of the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast, host Keith Anderson interviews Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan, founders of Peachies, a London-based premium nappy brand focused on reducing environmental impact. They discuss how Peachies aims to disrupt the traditional nappy market with high-quality, eco-friendly products designed for contemporary parenting. Furthermore, they delve into how Morgan and Rima’s collaboration began at Imperial College and their journey from a business school project to launching a startup. The discussion covers the unique aspects of Peachies' design-centric approach, balancing sustainability with premium product performance, and their future aspirations for expanding the brand.

Learn more about Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan:

• Link to Peachies’ website
• Link to Morgan Mixon’s LinkedIn
• Link to Rima Suppan’s LinkedIn

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TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
Keith Anderson: Welcome to Decarbonizing Commerce, where we explore what's new, interesting, and actionable at the intersection of climate innovation and commerce. I'm your host, Keith Anderson, and together we'll meet entrepreneurs and innovators reinventing retail, e-commerce, and consumer products through the lenses of low carbon and commercial viability.

Welcome back to the Decarbonizing Commerce Podcast. I'm your host, Keith Anderson. And our guests today are Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies, a London based nappy brand that is aiming to disrupt the category with a premium take on diapers with a lower environmental footprint. They were participants in the Amazon European Sustainability Accelerator, among others, in the spring, they raised their first round of capital, and I, was introduced to them by another of our guests, Mark Rushmore of SURI, also based in the UK, who, you know, what I see in common about both of these brands is, you know, they're taking a very design-centric, practical approach to producing products that deliver on consumer expectations, while also being mindful of environmental and other sustainability considerations.

And, as always, we get into some interesting commercial considerations, along with how they've made climate and sustainability considerations Central to the business model. So I'm really excited for you to meet Morgan Mixon and Rima Suppan of Peachies.

Morgan and Rima, great to see you both. Thanks so much for joining the Decarbonizing Commerce podcast.

Rima Suppan: Thank you so much for having us.

Morgan Mixon: We're excited to be here.

Keith Anderson: well, I think some of our listeners may be familiar with the company and the brand, but I imagine some are not. So maybe we can start just by introducing what is Peachies? What do you make?

Rima Suppan: Well, Peachies is our life project in the meantime. I'll give you the full definition. So Peachies is a premium nappy brand for the contemporary parenting experience. What that means really is that we designed an upgrade to the, so to say, humble nappy. That means that we engineered these nappies for revolutionary softness and longer nights.

Because that is really what parents deserve, and desire, of course. that means that we, of course, you know, we made substitutions for more eco friendly materials, for high quality materials, but also changed the design slightly so, that the fit of the nappy is really perfect for a child's skin, but also the needs that a child has.

We then of course went through rigorous dermatological testing, to make sure that, yeah, we, our babies stay dry and comfortable. And we, yeah, nappy rushes is a thing of the past, so to say.

Keith Anderson: Now my daughter is seven. Why did you wait until after she had outgrown nappies and diapers to start this company?

Rima Suppan: Well, I guess because Morgan and I only met three years ago.

Keith Anderson: Fair enough. Fair enough. Well, we're gonna come back and talk a lot about some of those attributes and benefits that you've basically designed into the product and the brand, but maybe we can take a minute and you can tell us about how you met and how you ended up deciding to start a, nappy or for our American listeners, a diaper brand.

Rima Suppan: I'm happy to go first. So, Morgan and I really met at Imperial College. The nerds that we are. We were randomly selected by the Imperial College leadership to run the Innovation Entrepreneurship Club together. And then quite quickly, both coming from family businesses quite quickly realized that we really love working together and that at some points in our lives, we wanted to be entrepreneurs ourselves.

We had little idea that would happen so quickly. But it happened and we're, super happy where we are today and thank God, we both took the decision to not become, Morgan, I think I wanted to be a product manager at some point. I wanted to go, back to my consulting career or into the tech space.

I was at Google by that, at that time, and had an offer pending, but nappies, diapers just excited us way too much, to not to not go down that route. and so actually before starting that business, there, there was a funny story. it was of course COVID times when we met, we had never really met up in person before starting Peachies.

And at some point we were like, we're only going to run a company together, build a company together if we actually get along in person as well. And so Morgan invited me over to, it was Dalston, right? Yeah, to Dawson, to a park and we had a full bottle of wine, and after that bottle of wine, we knew that was a match, not only company building wise and kind of, yeah, vision wise, but also personality wise, which is incredibly important, that is also a fit.

Keith Anderson: Yeah, and I imagine you were socially distanced at that first meeting.

Morgan Mixon: Yeah, exactly. We, well, we actually had a chance meeting outside the business school, during orientation, and Rima walked up to a friend and I and said, asked about a dress we were wearing. And I remember thinking like, who is this? But now I'm so grateful for her sort of social butterfly nature, and, willingness to just chat to anybody.

And really the idea for Peachies, I mean, it started as a business school project. We are, we fall into that category. We were, very fortunate to be in a university during COVID time, a lot of down time to focus on your academics, but our course, the Imperial College Business School gives you a lot of opportunity to pursue entrepreneurial ventures, and, so just thinking about like, where can we have impact actually, and connecting back to kind of sustainability in its own right, we think about sustainability very holistically.

We think about impacts at a societal level, at also an environmental level. And so we knew when we were coming up with an idea to work on, it would have to be something that got us out of bed in the morning. It wasn't going to be B2B software. That wasn't, that's not us. We actually love consumer products.

We love getting excited about brands. We love trying new things. We love implementing them into our life. We love trying to find shortcuts to make the week easier. And we stumbled across nappies. We thought about, you know, our the people we would want to design for. And that was our friends and family.

And we thought about our working moms and like what did they go through and where could their lives have been a little bit easier when we were growing up. And just so happens we're kind of at that life stage where everybody's kinda starting to reproduce . So we're kind of more in tune to parenting generally.

And we saw this category that's, we think wildly overlooked. It's one of the kind of last necessity or essential goods that hasn't changed much, both from a product perspective, but also from a branding and community perspective, underlying also the very bricks and mortar retail service model.

Whereas increasingly the world is direct to consumer subscriptions actually make sense for something like nappies that you need on a regular basis. And this is against a, you know, a backdrop of, you know, two global players that dominate really 80 percent of the global market, Procter Gamble and Kimberly Clark.

It's old, stale brands that are boring, that are pastel, that do not reflect, in our opinion, what millennials want from the brands that they buy. both in terms of how it looks in the aesthetic, but also how the product performs and, the impact that it has. And so it was sort of a perfect storm.

We saw, we saw all of this kind of coming together and thought, "we should think about this" and Imperial being Imperial, we had opportunities to enter competitions and accelerator programs and basically by the time it was time to graduate, we looked at each other and said, "Honestly, nothing else we're doing excites us more than, diapers."

And that was a shocking for us, like, as you can imagine, you know, Rima had a very cushy job at Google. She was ecstatic about it. And I said, "surely you'd rather be a broke founder with me and pursue this." And she took the plunge as well. And we came out of school and said, "there's no time like the present.

Why wait to start our entrepreneurial journey in five years or 10 years? Let's do it now." And we, yeah, took it forward, set up some email addresses, did some Google searching and the rest is history. Now we're a year into our journey in the markets. And, yeah, we're loving every single day, I have to say.

Keith Anderson: So you launched a year ago and are you, what geographies are you available in?

Rima Suppan: We're currently available in the UK only, but the future is bright.

Keith Anderson: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, it's an interesting market, I find, in many ways, both on the retail side and on the innovation side. Yeah. you know, in our weekly newsletter, we include funding announcements from, you know, retailers, brands, solution providers, and, you know, a pretty high concentration of innovation in this little ecosystem that I'm studying in the UK.

So, it's a, good place to start.

Rima Suppan: I think particularly from a branding perspective and from a, as you mentioned, direct to consumer product perspective, London, particularly, is a very exciting place. There's a lot happening. And as Morgan mentioned, nappies is one of the, these overlooked or one of the last overlooked consumer product categories.

And what we mean by that is we've seen things happening, happen in the, toilet paper space, for example, or in the razor space, where companies have just completely disrupted first, how, products are designed, how sustainable they are, but also the way how they're serviced and the channels that you can access them through.

And so for us, London, as of course, it's. It's easier to found the business there than in many other places as well. So that was also a reason, of course, our geographical location was a reason for that. But also because it's, you know, it's an exciting space. You have a lot of accelerator programs there, a lot of, great universities.

That was of course how we met. But yeah, the ecosystem is a great one nowadays with, you know, growing after completing our funding round. also that was, helpful to being, yeah, in the British market, but also now hiring talent for the first time or growing our team, substantially.

It is just exciting, to have access to such incredible talent.

Keith Anderson: Makes sense. So you've touched on two or three of the key themes that we typically cover. you know, one is, a category that is, really mature and large and, right for disruption. And you're sort of disrupting, or aiming to disrupt in two ways from what I'm hearing. One is, with a premium product that is, you know, better aligned with the shopper that is the parent and also has benefits for the consumer, you know, the, infant and, secondly is the environmental or sustainability angle.

So I'd love to get into the interplay between those two, how big of a role in the product design and the packaging and the logistics and the branding, is sustainability? You know, do you lean on that heavily as a differentiator and a reason to buy, or is it much more about a premium, superior product, and, you know, it's sort of a nice to have, Where you can fit it into the business model?

Morgan Mixon: It's a really good question. We think premium unlocks a lot of eco credentials and I'm happy to elaborate on that. To kind of set the scene, the diaper space has been really interesting and I'll use kind of the European context cause that's ours, but you have the big, you know, the big brands, the Pampers of the world.

And then you kind of have the eco brands on the other side of the spectrum. and there's not much in the middle. And what we've seen is the big brands have no incentive to innovate. You know, they dominate. They're doing great. They've been doing great for 50 plus years or whatever. They're, fine.

They, of course, sense customer sentiment is changing, but they also lack an authenticity to be able to portray the changes they make, to be able to make those product shifts or re gear their products compelling to consumers, I think. on the other side, you have what are sort of self professed eco brands.

And we're talking really more on that kind of disposable diaper side of things. we think,

The cloth diapers will remain a niche for a lot of behavioral reasons because it's a huge fundamental shift in consumer behavior, but those eco brands that we've seen really increasingly pop up in our markets have focused so much on sustainability, they've sacrificed product quality.

And so our philosophy is, despite, if you have all the best intentions to launch an eco products, but it doesn't stack up or stand up with its most basic job, which is to hold in all the things that come out of your child, then where are we? You know, like, if it's falling apart or tearing and you're going through more of them and throwing more away,

are we really doing, are we really having a positive impact on the planet? So where we saw this opportunity was premium design. It was to elevate the product quality in a category that's been long commoditized. You know, in the UK, supermarkets, produce nappies at the White Label and even sell them as a lost leader just to bring people into the store.

And so what we could do or the opportunity that we saw was let's elevate it. Let's bring in higher quality materials. Let's really focus on things like the fit of the products and dial things up and down in terms of the features so that we can provide a product. So on a range of products, that will make a significant impact on a parent's life,

because actually parents, and Rima will undoubtedly get to this in a bit, as part of the brand, parents are our protagonist.

We design for them, we design for their well being, and we saw that if we dialed up premium, or dialed up the quality of design, we could have nappies that last a little bit longer, you could do fewer changes in a day. You could therefore do less laundry because you're not dealing with this kind of blowouts and stuff like that.

We can make sure your child's skin is dry and protected and things like nappy rash aren't a problem. And all of those things have the added benefits of reducing impact on the planet. So we're very practical about our design. We call it no bullshit design, which means we will make advances in terms of integrating sustainable materials into our product as long as it doesn't sacrifice premium product quality.

That's the most important thing to us. So, we, first and foremost, make sure that nappy works, and works to a level that we deem is exceptional, and then we think about how we can continuously improve on environment. But, the thing that is, I think, most important to kind of draw an analogy is, We think our nappies can be like preventative medicine in the sense that if you diet and exercise and take care of yourself, you end up going to the doctor less.

And of course, going to A&E, hopefully never. Same with nappies. If you can use a more superior product and it's no surprise that it does come at a higher price tag, but that value that you unlock is actually ultimately sending less to landfill because you're not using as many. And you've got that assurance that the product is, safe and

and, well, yeah, high quality, you're going to get to the night, for example, and that's really where we've tried to do something different in this space is actually premium can be something that really unlocks a lot of value for parents, and it's not just a race to the bottom, on price or, therefore product quality.

Rima Suppan: I can add a few thoughts here. What Morgan mentioned, particularly on, on how sustainability plays a role in a consumer's decision making process. What we found out is sustainability for us sits very much at our core. So, yes, we've talked about the product a lot now, you know, highest quality materials.

We, of course, continue to seek to reduce the environmental impact of our product and ensure better future for our children, in short, but for us, it is really elevating at one level higher up. It's also, as you mentioned, you know, the packaging that we use, the logistics provider that we use, the warehousing that we use, warehouse provider that we use, but even small things as a company, like,

the office space we have, the internet provider we choose. Those are all important decisions and they all contribute to the same thing. And so for us, it's yes, it's a product, but hopefully at some point in the future, sustainability will be so normal that sustainability itself is not a, not something that makes a customer, yeah, purchase a product.

And so even for us, what we've quickly realized in the market is sustainability is the thing that keeps, if the product works, that's what keeps people, coming back to you. Which of course, with a product that is, that runs on a subscription is very important from a business model perspective.

But even beyond that. you, what we found is, for example, longer nights of sleep are so essential in that period of your life that you would basically do anything to, yeah, to get an hour or two more of sleep, more, yeah, two more hours of sleep per night. And so we've actually, from reading many hundreds of reviews that we've in the meantime gotten from consumers, that is, for example, their, conversion reason number one is to get an hour more of shut-eye.

Morgan Mixon: And I can vouch for that. I've got a nine month old at home and, sleep is a premium. Talk about premium. That's what you want. I mean, you want to do better for the planet. But it's a secondary consideration for a lot of people. You're really, particularly with small children at home, and maybe I'm just projecting my own experience, but it's so day to survival, that you're looking always for hacks to how you can do it better or more efficiently.

I think we all agree people just want what's best for their kids, and we're hoping that we can help provide them with a solution that takes the pain away of also having to think about some of your sustainable impacts, but you can kind of focus on what you really want to focus on most, which is raising healthy, happy, healthy children, and we try to smooth that out for them a little bit with, that premium products.

Keith Anderson: You know, you mentioned a couple of things that I want to circle back to 1 is some of the other categories that have been disrupted. You know, razors are one that I think of, and I've seen it disrupted in two directions. There's sort of the, opening price point or discount disruption that companies like Dollar Shave Club made famous, I don't know, 10 years ago.

But I also now increasingly see at the premium end, a, renaissance of double edged safety razors and, you know, a return to simpler designs with, you know, no plastic, and maybe the handle is at a premium versus what you're getting at the drugstore, but the cartridges are much, much cheaper and, the reason I mentioned that example is, the lifetime value to a customer over 5 or 10 years, you know, even though the upfront cost is more expensive, ultimately, they save a lot of money and some of those brands are actually marketing that way, you know, they're saying, you may flinch when you see the first price, but if you think about how many of those 4 cartridges you're buying every two weeks at the drugstore, it's not going to take too long for you to break even.

So, is that at all part of the equation in this category? Do you see it becoming part of the equation? I think of things like subscription and how you can sometimes offer a consumer, some savings for locking in, you know, how are you finding managing the value equation with consumers is working?

Morgan Mixon: You know, we are a startup. We are doing. Something new in our category, in our geography, right? So we have to educate customers about what that value is of premium. that's where the challenge of marketing comes in.

That's, and that's, you know, education is, a big part of that. But what we find is once that value has been demonstrated, once that product is in somebody's hand and, indeed with Peachies, the second you hold it, you can tell it's a different type of product. Just from that first interaction with the products, we see it resonates, you know, the, those intangible benefits or kind of priceless benefits rather of, you know, the two hours more of sleep perhaps, is something that is worth the money.

And I think where we ever get pushed back on price, you know, you look at things like we all make decisions all day long, right? About what we're going to buy or spend our time on or whatever. And I don't think it's any different in our category. You know, if you want to. If you can see the value in what you're investing in and indeed get a higher return on investment than it's something that we find people stick to and something with diapers.

That's really brilliant is a perfect kind of model. If it's not broke, don't fix it kind of thing. So once people are in the door and loving the products, you're, with them through potty training and that's, something we've seen. and so we do have our, we do have our challenge of educating customers about what premium means, what the materials mean, you know, we have no dyes or fragrances.

We have an all white design. We don't have little cute animals on them. We try to limit, of course, there's no harmful chemicals. We look at our CO2 impact, those kind of things. But at the end of the day, it's how does that customer feel when it's in their hand or after they've used that first pack?

And, if you've got a product that can, stand up then that value is, demonstratable. And therefore, the price point also follows with that. So, the, momentum is there because that's starting to now emanate. We're starting to really get, you know, the kind of flywheel effect of like people sending me photos at a one year old's birthday party with our like little tote bag in the corner, hanging off somebody's stroller.

And, you know, that shows us that it's starting to really resonate. Those messages that we're putting across are not only good for advertising and bringing people to the door, but are actually backed up by, by the experience that they're having.

Keith Anderson: You mentioned, emissions and just looking at the website, you know, one of the claims is 40 percent lower emissions than conventional nappies. Maybe we can walk through, where those savings come from and, you may or may not have it at your fingertips, but anything we can cover about, emissions and the overall footprint of the category overall.

You know, why from a climate or sustainability footprint, perspective, it's a category that sort of needs some innovation.

Rima Suppan: It's a really interesting aspect of our category. The nappy category itself is quite, yeah, it's,

there's a lot of greenwashing in the industry, let's put it that way. I think there's a lot of industry where that, industries where that's happening, but for ours, I think it's especially interesting because we're dealing with children, we're dealing with, I mean, a parent or a child goes through about 5,000 to 7,000 nappies until they're potty trained. So we're talking about a lot of product, and, a lot that is being sent to landfills, for example, and a lot that is sitting around for many, years.

And so for us, one of the, most important aspects when, launching Peachies was, transparency. And so it. Against kind of what's happening in the industry, we always said, "let's provide our parents or our customers with as much information about our product and about our company and the people behind that it, that, we're not a big conglomerate, but two female founders that have a, big dream that they want to make reality, provide them with all this information and then let them take the decision themselves for what they think is best for them and for their children."

And so one of the things that we did quite early on in connection with the Amazon Sustainability Accelerator, was that we partnered with the European Union's Climate Innovation Organization called ClimateKick, and we wanted to verify our, yeah, CO2 footprint. And so, They verified that we save the equivalent of 93 tons of CO2 for every 1, 000 babies that use us, because that's quite hard to imagine.

That's the equivalent of the weight of 17 elephants.

Morgan Mixon: Just to add to that, you know, I think Rima and I on that transparency point is like, we know we're not perfect. we don't aim to convey that to parents. What we want to do is just empower them in their decision making. So, you know, we show our ingredients lists. We are very clear about what's not in our diapers.

We're very transparent that we still have some plastic in there. You know, most brands do. And they'll kind of ignore that, like, it's in things like adhesives or, or elastics, things like that. But, you know, we made a conscious decision, for example, to include it in our, include a waistband on our product because it has such a substantial impact on the product fits and how efficient it is in doing its job.

And so what we try to do is, you know, of course, benchmark ourselves and make smart decisions on materials. And, you know, things like our super absorbent polymer that's in our absorbent pad, you know, we use a more efficient material. So we use 20 percent less than other brands without sacrificing the product's performance, the fluff pulp that's also with that SAP is, from a hundred percent sustainably managed forests.

But we still use a waistband, and we still, are, want to make sure that, you know, parents know that, and so that we can empower them to make those good decisions, but for us, it's like, if you're in our products, we want you to know why you're there, and if it's working for you, great, and know that if you trust in us, and spend your time with us, we're always looking to innovate, and reinvest in our product design, and fuel R&D, and push our category to new heights, but always maintaining that, that design philosophy of, bring a brilliant product to market first and make sure it works and does its job.

And the rest we'll continue to figure out.

Rima Suppan: One important aspect that we haven't even mentioned yet is that of course, sustainability has more angles to it than the ecological side. it is also, there's an economic side, which of course, as a Yeah, for profit business, you need to keep in mind, but then there's also the social side, and that is something that is, sits very close to our hearts, and we're, actually supporting Save the Children, or have supported them since, since the very beginning, because we think they're a brilliant organization, and support with that family's in need.

because we've also learned very early on that, the first a thousand days are really what define a child's development, and, the quality of the nutrition, the sleep, that the, yeah, the environment they're in can can really have a huge impact on their, IQ and on their, yeah, on their life as an adult.

So for us, it's, we view, as we mentioned, sustainability very holistically. And so the social aspect is also part of that.

Keith Anderson: Hey folks, this is the part of the show where we say thank you and see you soon to the general audience, plus and higher tier members of decarbonize.co, stay tuned for the rest of the episode. Well, it sounds like an exciting time at Peachies and I wish you luck. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us.

Morgan Mixon: It's been great. Thank you so much, Keith.

Rima Suppan: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Keith Anderson: Thanks for listening. I'm Keith Anderson, the executive producer and host of Decarbonizing Commerce. Sonic Futures handles audio, music, and video production. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you took a moment to subscribe and leave a review or share it with a colleague. For the full episode and more member exclusive insight and analysis, join the decarbonizing commerce community at decarbonize.co. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next episode of Decarbonizing Commerce.

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