Across the oceans through the middle mile: The complex web of our global supply chain

By Theodora Lau and Bradley Leimer of Unconventional Ventures

When was the last time you thought about the sustainability of the products you’ve bought? Or the impact to the planet when you consume??

When we choose our next mobile device, we might think about Apple and their commitment to a cleaner supply chain, and their efforts to ensure equitable labor practices and more refined environmental protections, even for their products at the end of their lives by being properly recycled. When we choose our banking providers, we might consider Aspiration, which focuses on improving the environment by helping their consumers understand their carbon footprint through their transactions on the front end and through investments on the back end. When we think of payment providers, we might choose Alipay, as Ant Group helps consumers offset the impact of their purchases by planting trees through Ant Forest.

There are countless examples, big and small –– about the choices we make. But what about the impact of what we buy, how much we buy, and why we buy what we do? Each piece is part of an important bigger picture, with impact not only on our communities, but on the future of our planet. The place we call home.?

We make choices every day that impact a future not yet written.

And every action starts with us.?

With yet another Black Friday upon us, this might be a good time to start.

What if we just –– buy less?

Remember the days when we used to line up in front of brick and mortar retail stores before they opened at midnight, hoping to catch a good seasonal deal? Along came online shopping, and we are no longer bound by physical restraints. Black Friday morphed into Black Thursday, Thanksgiving Specials, and Cyber Monday; and the routinely busiest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, has finally transformed itself into a full Cyber Week. What’s next? Will we have special shopping days each week, each day, each hour? Perhaps we are already there, given the proliferation of financial options at checkout and product marketing inundating our social feeds with easy ways to pay. But more on that later.???

Elsewhere, Alibaba — the largest e-commerce giant in China –– adopted Singles Day (November 11) in 2009, and has turned the non-holiday, also known as the Double 11, into the largest 24-hour retail event in the world with special online deals for shoppers on its platform. In that first year, consumers spent 50 million yuan and 27 merchants offered discounts. Last year, 250,000 brands participated in the Singles Day event, with 31,000 shopping from overseas. Alibaba’s total gross merchandise value (GMV) for Singles Day, now running over a 11-day period, totaled 498.2 billion yuan (US$74.1 billion), nearly doubling last year's 268.4 billion yuan, and surpassing the online spending on Thanksgiving Day (US$5.1 billion), Black Friday (US$9 billion), and Cyber Monday (US$10.8 billion) combined.

How will this year fare? Especially with so many of us shopping our way through the pandemic. But things might look a bit different.?

We have been reading a lot about supply chain issues lately, from Asian factories being shuttered due to COVID-19, to container ships being held up at our ports, due in part to a shortage of truck drivers and safety restrictions as to how high containers can be stacked. Many of these headlines bear the warning to consumers that it might already be too late to be buying holiday presents. Explain that to a five year-old.?

Which begs the question: How many things do we really need? How many stocking stuffers is too many??

The constant consumerism and impulse purchases are no longer limited to holiday sales. Across the board, e-commerce players are hyper focused on reducing friction on the purchase journey, making it easy –– perhaps far too easy –– to hit the Buy Now button. Our shift toward online and mobile shopping, exacerbated by the pandemic, has propelled us to become impulse shoppers, fueling a seemingly endless appetite for instant gratification. Meanwhile, an array of recommendation systems and algorithms promise to offer an overly-personalized shopping experience, offering products that consumers don’t even know they want, but are lured into through the power of the finely curated personal data behind these platforms — all with a click of a button.?

Who does all of the excess consumption impact the most? What is the cost to the local businesses that lack access to these platforms of abundance and choice and data and effortless, mindless shopping? What about the army of factory workers and raw material workers and contingent workers tirelessly enabling this never-ending supply chain of goods and services? What about the impact on our planet at large? Do we really need that extra memory card the next day? Or the toilet paper in less than two hours? What is the impact of constant consumerism on our ecosystem? How much is too much?

What if we hit pause, what if we slow down a bit –– to think about our choices a few seconds longer?

__________________________________________________________________?

In this week’s One Vision, Theo and Bradley chat with Christopher Mims about his new book, “Arriving Today: From Factory to Front Door –– Why Everything Has Changed About How and What We Buy”, and the story of the complex web of supply chain. You can listen to it via Apple Podcast, Spotify, or other players. Do subscribe to our podcast to stay tuned to all our future episodes.

This is the first in a new series on the changing nature of consumption and how it impacts the financial services business model and the future of the only home we have.

__________________________________________________________________?

Our new book, Beyond Good, is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kogan Page, and everywhere fine books are sold. Keep in touch with our book launch events at BeyondGoodBook.com.

Beyond Good is a call to arms for business leaders to recognize how they can do well by doing good. Business for good, which is the philosophy that you can pursue profits while delivering on sustainable and societal development goals, is already delivering big changes. With exclusive interviews with experts from the B-Corp world, policy makers and executives, this book showcases how companies like Microsoft, Flourish Ventures, Ant Financial, Sunrise Bank and Paypal are doing their bit to make our world better.

_________________________________________________________________?

Unconventional Ventures helps drive innovation to improve systematic financial wellness. We connect founders to funders, provide mentorship to entrepreneurs, strategic advisory services to a broad set of corporates, and broaden opportunities for diversity within the ecosystem. Our belief is that anyone with great ideas should have a chance to succeed and every voice should be heard. Visit unconventionalventures.com to learn how you can partner with us. ?

__________________________________________________________________?