Path to Non-Profit

  • We’re here to help customers who care to discover and support companies who care.

    We do this in service of our mission, which is to push on the power of commerce to create a better business future.

    That mission doesn’t require profits. We think it might even work better without them. For example:

    • We could put our profits into a fund that sponsors independent small businesses seeking to become certified B Corps.

    • We could create an entrepreneurship grant for people looking to create companies with a sustainable mission.

    • We could fund research for sustainability concerns associated with commercial deforestation.

    Any of these initiatives could help further our mission to create a better business future. And we’re mission-driven here.

    So. We’re charting our course to be a non-profit.

    As a startup, we have many milestones to hit before we can realize this goal. Crucially, we need profits before we can give them away, and right now there aren’t any.

    But we’ve got plans and we’ve got a mission.
    We know where we want to be.
    Let’s go :)

  • How will we make the profits that we plan to give away?

    The plan is to offer a number of premium upsells to companies listed in our system. Things like:

    • Creative control over their brand page

    • Choice over their searchable product tags

    • Ability to customize brand page links

    • Product reviews, where we test their goods

    • Company profiles, where we write about them

    • Founder interviews, where we learn about them

    • and much, much more!

    But we have not yet built these features - The BMall is still a very new project as of this writing, launched 40 days ago, in October 2024.

    We are prioritizing improvements to our core search engine product before we try to monetize the brand pages we create for companies in our system.

    This business plan, monetizing brand pages from the companies in our system, requires that we will fire clients sometimes - for example, if a company fails to maintain their B Corp certification, we would no longer show their brand page or provide enhanced brand services to them.

    We see this as another benefit of committing to a non-profit model: it strengthens the focus on our mission by removing the competing interests that could bring conflicting priorities within a for-profit company.

    Ultimately, we aspire to work for people like us, who are tired of shitty shopping and want to buy better.
    And we aspire to work with companies like B Corps, who are working hard to be better.

    We see this model as being a product search engine that only fetches results from companies that deserve your dollars.

    And we’ll make money by offering enhanced listings to companies in our system, sort of like Yellow Pages once did, back in the days of paper phonebooks.

  • The BMall is starting out with 800 B Corps founded in North America who sell products online. This is not where it ends.

    We would like to eventually include all the services and products sold online and offline by all 8,000+ B Corps worldwide. But this also is not where it ends.

    There are other certifications that companies which are working toward a better future can attain. For example:

    • 1% For The Planet

    • The Rainforest Alliance

    • Fair Trade Certified

    • Certified Carbon Neutral

    There are many thousands of great, certified businesses out there we want to promote and work with around the world, and they’re providing ALL kinds of products and services. But this is still not where it ends.

    Ultimately, we want to create the world’s first omnichannel search engine that connects customers who care with companies who care, both online and offline.

    That means a person using The BMall could search for a rain jacket, for example, and in the results could be great B Corp brands like Frank and Oak or Patagonia.
    The user could then see where they can buy those products; either on the brand’s websites for home delivery, or a quick walk around the corner, where both brands’ products are sold by the local retailer, Simon’s.

    We are aiming to empower everyone in the world to buy better, vote with their dollars, and to shop with their values. It’s our way of working to democratize the future of business.

    …that is where it ends 🙏