{"id":19409,"title":"\u201cWe started our business with \u00a3200. Now our company Teemill provides circular, carbon-neutral supply chain to BoxHuman & 10\u2019000+ other brands\u201d \u2013 Mart Drake-Knight","description":"\u201cWe started our business with \u00a3200.  Now our company Teemill provides circular, carbon-neutral supply chain to BoxHuman &amp; 10\u2019000+ other brands\u201d \u2013 Mart Drake-KnightWe at BoxHuman are passionate about highlighting and celebrating inspiring humans and businesses; especially the ones who are inspiring, helping, and bringing light to the world.  We do this to rebalance some of the negative messages and issues that are affecting the people &amp; the world every day","content":"<p><img src=\"https:\/\/images.teemill.com\/aiwcukqylyt99ukh19g7th1dirs5g1vtnfgwjbz45w4512go.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&amp;h=auto\" alt=\"\" title=\"100510756\" \/><\/p><h2><strong>\u201cWe started our business with \u00a3200. Now our company Teemill provides circular, carbon-neutral supply chain to BoxHuman &amp; 10\u2019000+ other brands\u201d \u2013 Mart Drake-Knight<\/strong><\/h2><p>We at BoxHuman are passionate about highlighting and celebrating inspiring humans and businesses; especially the ones who are inspiring, helping, and bringing light to the world. We do this to rebalance some of the negative messages and issues that are affecting the people &amp; the world every day.<br \/><br \/>In this exclusive interview, we had the absolute pleasure to meet up with one of the founders whose company is behind helping us to provide our\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.boxhumanculture.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">BoxHumanCulture<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0sustainable\u00a0<strong>\u2018Empowered\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>clothing collection<\/strong>\u2026<\/p><p><strong>Without further ado, let\u2019s start this BoxHuman\u00a0Inspire Series\u00a0interview. Can you please tell us in your own words a little bit about yourselves?<\/strong><\/p><p>Hi, I\u2019m Mart &amp; I\u2019m an engineer. My brother Rob &amp; I started our company because while the clothing industry is the second most polluting industry on Earth, natural materials and renewable energy exist so we believe a world without waste is possible in our lifetime and someone needs to build it.<\/p><p>We started a brand and built some technology to design out waste and build a working circular supply chain. Now a team of 100+ are scaling up the technology and products by sharing it with other brands. We recently did a Ted Talk about it.<\/p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/heIXdS7Gs7c?feature=oembed\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><p><strong>What a great introduction, thank you, Mart. Moving onto our next question\u2026What does your business do and where is your company based?<\/strong><\/p><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.teemill.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Teemill\u00a0<\/a>is a free platform that anyone can use to start a brand and sell natural, renewable and circular products on the internet. We make and ship orders in real time that are designed to come back and be remade when they are worn out.<\/p><p>The platform means anyone can build a brand on a circular economy from day one.\u00a0 We started in a garden shed on the Isle of Wight and we are still on the Isle of Wight. I\u2019m in Freshwater typing this in one of our factories. This one used to be an old supermarket. There\u2019s one up the road in East Cowes, in Europe, a team in Bristol. It\u2019s the same thing basically, a sustainable technology business in sheds. There\u2019s just more sustainability and more technology and more, perhaps bigger sheds.<\/p><p><strong>Wow, what an amazing business, go Teemill! Now that we know what cool business you run can you tell us\u2026What led to your \u2018aha\u2019 moment? And how did you get to where you are now?<\/strong><\/p><p>For us, we can\u2019t say AHA unless we do it in an Alan Partridge voice\u2026 AHA! We realised somewhere along the way that what people call waste is actually material and material is worth something. So we designed our products from the start to come back at the end and be remade when they\u2019re worn out.\u00a0 Thinking of our customers as part of our supply chain helped us all keep material flowing and in use.\u00a0<\/p><p><img src=\"https:\/\/images.teemill.com\/wqd2c6jbrvzqsfthzsyapxnrmid4jikfh3vb0y056ebmhpug.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&amp;h=auto\" alt=\"\" title=\"100510306\" \/><br \/>Picture Credit: Teemill<\/p><p><strong>We love an Alan Partridge impression, thanks, Mart! As with life, there can be ups and downs and this absolutely goes with business. Can you please tell us\u2026What\u2019s been the biggest lesson you\u2019ve learned so far and what have you learned from it?<\/strong><\/p><p>To redesign a system it\u2019s not one thing that makes 100% difference but 100 changes that make 1% difference. I think a lot of people look for answers but we are comfortable just holding onto the right questions. Like\u00a0<em>\u201cwhat is this made from, where will it end up\u201d<\/em>\u00a0and if we want to change the end,<em>\u00a0\u201cdesign the end at the start\u201d.<\/em><\/p><p>It\u2019s also a journey and it\u2019s not a smooth one. There are no Eureka moments and then a linear journey to scale. Coming back from lunch one day we saw some smoke on the horizon which was dramatic so we decided to go do some rubbernecking. Then as we got closer it was our factory burning to the ground along with some neighbouring buildings where the fire started. Sustainability is a human endeavour so it\u2019s not simple, things go wrong and there are mistakes. Having a mission makes it easier to keep going.\u00a0<\/p><p>Here\u2019s a funny picture from that day and to repeat this was not our fault.<\/p><p><img src=\"https:\/\/images.teemill.com\/uwmsci51r4cqw7thbuksiy7dwgrrvkrt1a4bwhzwj63y3v1n.png.jpg?w=1140&amp;h=auto\" alt=\"\" title=\"100510399\" \/><br \/>Picture Credit: Teemill \u2013<em>\u00a0<\/em>Fire at the Teeemill factory in Cowes.<\/p><p>Every failure is an opportunity to learn. Teemill is all the stuff we built in response to problems we are trying to solve. If you enjoy problem-solving, building a company can be rewarding as there are things to work on every day.\u00a0<\/p><p>Sustainability is one of the world\u2019s biggest problems and the solutions provided by innovative purpose-driven companies will become the world\u2019s biggest companies in future. That\u2019s why we are optimists. We\u2019re the first generation that has access to the technology that could quickly and credibly solve it, so it\u2019s important to look at a problem and think about the opportunity to fix it.\u00a0<\/p><p><strong>What an incredible lesson, thank you for sharing that Mart! Let\u2019s lift up the \u2018mood\u2019 and move on to our next question\u2026What is your proudest achievement so far and why?<\/strong><\/p><p>We are not very good at pride. The curse of building and finishing these kinds of solutions is you need to go hunt problems obsessively and it\u2019s hard to stop. If you build anything meaningful it\u2019s probably because you are dissatisfied, to begin with, and that is hard to shake.\u00a0<\/p><p>It\u2019s important not to spend lots of time thinking about your own achievements too as we have not finished, so stopping would be a failure. For our solution to work, it needs to be as big as the problem so we have to drive it forward relentlessly.<\/p><p>If we take pride in anything it\u2019s watching our team thrive, many of whom grew up with the business and have helped build it. They\u2019ve achieved carbon neutral status, and we\u2019ve recovered and remade tonnes of organic materials through our Remill program. It\u2019s been nice to share this technology with startups, brands, businesses, and events.<\/p><p>We\u2019re optimistic about how much more material we can keep in use and flowing together as our recovery system gets better.<\/p><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/R51EkLZ3qYE?feature=oembed\" height=\"281\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><p><strong>What awesome achievements and proud moments! Let\u2019s move on to getting to know you a bit more. So, if you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?<\/strong><\/p><p>There have been some super brutal times but they shape you and teach you stuff so it\u2019s hard to reflect and want to change much.<\/p><p>When we first started out, we had a budget of \u00a3200. I remember spending most of that on some business cards. Why would an internet business need business cards? But it always makes me laugh thinking about it so it\u2019s probably worth the \u00a3200. I suppose what I take from it is every time we did something conventional, it failed. To build something big it needs to be meaningful, new, and that means doing things differently. So advice and experience are overrated if you\u2019re trying to do something nobody has ever done.\u00a0<\/p><p>It helps to develop the ability to think for yourself and work things out from the first principles. It\u2019s 10x more expensive to use plastic-free packaging, for example. You can\u2019t fight that.\u00a0 So we figured out how to automate our factories to support our team and increase efficiency. Then we could take those savings from one place in the supply chain and use them at the other end to create plant-based packaging to ship orders in.\u00a0<\/p><p><br \/><img src=\"https:\/\/images.teemill.com\/lnvxoyhr9adztmsmoguhq4mdlwjczwwbyacpuac4yyjcqwmg.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&amp;h=auto\" alt=\"\" title=\"100510426\" \/><br \/>Picture Credit: Teemill \u2013<em>\u00a0<\/em>Consulting with experts in our manufacturing factories<\/p><p>Once you start looking at things differently, you start noticing all the ways in which our supply chains are built for waste and if you design out waste, business goals and environmental goals align. That\u2019s why we print products in real-time. Our technology in our factories means we can make products in the seconds after they are ordered so there are no startup costs for brands using Teemill, while we also design out overproduction and waste.<\/p><p><strong>6. We at BoxHuman follow this motto \u201cWe believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.\u201d What inspires you both on a daily basis and why? And if you were to say something to uplift someone else what would it be?<\/strong><\/p><p>I think it\u2019s important to learn to inspire yourself. The best way to do that is to complete a task, change something and form the habit of reminding yourself that waiting for things to change won\u2019t change anything, only changing it will change it.\u00a0<\/p><p>I think people often think of the economy as a thing that happens to them they can\u2019t control. The economy is just the sum of all the things people do each day. Everything we do and make and use was designed, so it can be redesigned. We can all participate, change the game and make our own rules.<\/p><p>We wanted to see natural, sustainable, circular products and we wanted to see technology in the world that made all that available, accessible and affordable. When we started doing that, nobody stopped us!<\/p><p><strong>Finally and to conclude this inspiring interview\u2026<\/strong><\/p><p><strong>A BoxHuman is an individual that believes in empowering themselves and others to transform the world for the better. Can you please tell us what makes you a BoxHuman?<\/strong><\/p><p>Sustainability is not a premium thing for only those that can afford it. This is about our civilisation and that means everybody. The solution is systemic so everyone in the system has their part to play. It\u2019s a creative, technical, administrative problem, a mechanical, financial, and ethical one. Once we built a brand that had a credible solution and scaled up, we opened up all the work and technology we had built so that others could benefit. Instead of our 1 brand using a circular, carbon-neutral supply chain, now 10\u2019000 brands use Teemill.\u00a0<\/p><p>For sustainability to work, we need to empower each other and work together. If that means being a BoxHuman then it\u2019s a box we\u2019re happy to be in.<\/p><p><img src=\"https:\/\/images.teemill.com\/snot51w5xtexboilxdcsri2i9eromwkyc7tynldtnv20mr0r.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&amp;h=auto\" alt=\"\" title=\"100510455\" \/><br \/><br \/><\/p><h3><strong>\u201cThank you, Mart.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3><p>Inspired by this story?\u00a0<strong>Please share this story to inspire others<\/strong>.<\/p>","urlTitle":"mart-drake-knight","url":"\/blog\/mart-drake-knight\/","editListUrl":"\/my-blogs","editUrl":"\/my-blogs\/edit\/mart-drake-knight\/","fullUrl":"https:\/\/boxhumanfashion.teemill.com\/blog\/mart-drake-knight\/","featured":false,"published":true,"showOnSitemap":true,"hidden":false,"visibility":null,"createdAt":1657897000,"updatedAt":1657897971,"publishedAt":1657897971,"lastReadAt":null,"division":{"id":49419,"name":"BoxHuman Culture"},"tags":[{"id":1701,"code":"empower-series","name":"EmpowerSeries","url":"\/blog\/tagged\/empower-series\/"}],"metaImage":{"original":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/jhxbtempi5emyjetgom4lev7bn3wc1mmavsxkpbpwryzhpnk.jpeg","thumbnail":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/jhxbtempi5emyjetgom4lev7bn3wc1mmavsxkpbpwryzhpnk.jpeg.jpg?w=1140&h=855","banner":"https:\/\/images.podos.io\/jhxbtempi5emyjetgom4lev7bn3wc1mmavsxkpbpwryzhpnk.jpeg.jpg?w=1920&h=1440"},"metaTitle":"Teemill Co-founder Mart Meets BoxHuman","metaDescription":"We started our business with \u00a3200. 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