Circular Lighting Report’s Post

Transcript

Hello, everyone and welcome to a Circular Lighting Report video short. My name is Ray Molony and today I'm focusing on Spark and Bell, a small manufacturer, a manufacturer of decorative lighting based in Brighton on the south coast of England. I'm delighted to be joined by the founder and the chief product designer, Emer Gillespie. How are you doing, Emer? I'm good, thank you, Ray. Good stuff. Well, welcome. Now, tell me a little bit about the business and, you know, the fact that you put sustainability really at the heart of everything that you do. Was that the way from the very start? Yes. I think I'm inherently a very sustainable person in terms of resourcefulness. I think when you're a small business as well, you're very kind of frugal and careful with your materials and what you're spending and also resourceful with reusing stuff when it comes into you and things like that. So it's always been at the heart of it and I think I just kind of built it with sustainability at its core, even accidentally, without being very conscious about it. But it has now become the stable kind of focus of our business and every decision that we make is now got sustainability at its core, circular design at its core, and ensuring that we are making lights that are built to last and that we're supporting our customers for them to stay going for as long as possible. And I think I'm right in saying that you are one of only two companies in the lighting industry with a B Corp score of over 100. So congratulations on that. But why B Corp? So it actually started, I was in a shared maker space in Brighton called Rodhus Creative Studios. And that was the start of me kind of looking at makers that were around me. That's where I met my first carpenter, Tom, shade maker Lulu. And it was that idea of kind of using everything very resourcefully and looking at who can make what in the local makers community, which is very rich and skilled. And it was a product maker in there called Stephen that said: 'Oh, have you ever heard of B Corp You're doing things very sustainably.' Not even really on my radar. Started to look into it and immediately loved the ethos and the way that they measure and reward companies for doing things well and doing things sustainably. So I started that a good few years ago, about five, six years ago. And you can go on and you can use their online system. So I just started filling it in and kept it going for a few years, always aware of the lessons I was learning and how they score well and it just kind of snowballed from there. So yeah, I think we are nicely positioned to score quite high because we really are like a small maker that is very conscious of where we're sourcing from the materials that we're sourcing. And then in recent years we've also set up an entire new arm of the business which is our plastic recycling workshop. So we take the way our waste, our plastic waste and the waste of other small businesses and local community and turn them in materials for our lights. So it's always looking at what's coming in and out and I think because of that and our work within the community and how we're built for kind of circular design principles, we ended up getting a great score, which I was very proud of. Over the 100 mark. Yeah, no, congratulations. And you know, you seem to put circularity at the heart of the design of the luminaire, so they're easy to disassemble, etc. Yes. And I think again, it started from being like a small maker. My degree is in textile design. I specialised in fibre optic lighting installations back in Galway when I was still in Ireland. And my masters is in photography. So I'm coming from a real art maker's side of you. And a very tactile built pieces. So because of that the lights are all very simply made and very easily come apart. And then along the way you learn about, you know, okay, I was using glue, now I use a different kind of glue because that glue can come up part easier at end of life. So really every single one of our lights can be completely disassembled at the end of life. But more importantly for repairability along the way. And that's why we offer our free lifetime repair service, a 10 year warranty. And really we're there for our customers and we're trying to do customer education so that they know that we're always on hand if there's any issues to make sure that their light stays in circulation and working perfectly. Yeah, yeah. Have you subjected any of your products to metrics like the TM66 or TM65.2, you know, the circularity and carbon metrics. Yes. So I started, I did the training with the LIA in the TM66 and it felt like it wasn't completely geared towards decorative lighting sector, which I feel we are very much in But I have started filling it in in the last couple of weeks. I think because we certified B Corp last year, I was kind of taking a breather before I launched into the new. But it is something that has been asked for. So I think we are more on the radar for trade customers, which we're trying to reach more of. They are asking for our sustainability credentials, they're asking for LCAs. LCAs are cost prohibitive for a small maker like myself, they're incredibly expensive. But I feel like TM66 is something that I want to put my efforts into because it does feel more accessible. And you should get very high score, I would imagine. Yeah, when I was filling it out, I was definitely. I was. I was going to clicking to the right a lot, which was a good sign. So I'm looking forward to. I feel like there's a lot of effort and time and resources and researching to go into the first few and then a lot of the answers are the same throughout and then I'll be able to adapt it. But yeah, I'm hoping to kind of push a lot, put that focus on that this year and get our lights certified. Would you be able to quantify the commercial advantage that you get from having sustainability? Presumably some of your customers or proportion of your customers buy from you purely because of that message and that backstory? Yes, I think there's a lot of our residential customers appreciate the handmade nature of it. I share a lot on our Instagram, like, we work with a lot of local makers, like ceramicists, carpenters, shade makers. So we try and source as local as we can. 20% of our cost of goods sold was in the Brighton and Hove area. 88% is within 200 miles. So we work really closely with our makers. So there's that story that's there that I feel our customers. In terms of trade and larger orders. There's definitely an increase in the amount of certifications that are being asked for and information relating to sustainability credentials. So I'm seeing the absolute value in us having certified B Corp and also looking forward to what more I can do to kind of specifically certify our lights for projects. So one of our biggest orders that we've gotten to date was for a hotel this year. And it was, I think, 100% because we were B Corp certified and we were on their radar for being a sustainable lighting company. So that's what I want to put my effort into moving forward. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Good news. Thank you for telling us all about it today. We're going to see you at the Net Zero Lighting Conference in April and at Circular Lighting Live in September. So thank you for that. Well, good luck and thank you for telling us all about it. Emer. Great. Thanks so much, Ray. Thank you.