We talked about sales development with Melissa Wijngaarden, a Co-founder of Impactbytes. This is a company committed to making product sustainability data accessible.
1. How would you describe your company in an elevator pitch?
Impactbytes is creating the leading product sustainability data provider for ecommerce. Many brands with sustainability at their core struggle to reach more customers. Meanwhile, many apps, search tools and marketplaces struggle to find, verify & promote sustainable products and get product level sustainability credentials, as market demand grows. Impactbytes solves this with an intelligent data platform and interface that makes sustainability in ecommerce transparent & profitable.
2. What are you the best at?
We’re a team of activists continuously looking to increase our impact. By making it easy for multi-brand players to connect to products with product level sustainability data, we enable them to be changemakers in the fashion industry. We already have over 200 brands onboarded in our product datastream and by pushing their products out to the web, we connect them with consumers who want to support businesses that match both their style and their values. We have in-house developed technology that enables us to collaborate with even the smallest brands at an affordable price. Our sales revenue is directly linked to UN SDG 12.
3. What customer acquisition strategy did you use to find your first customers?
Impactbytes is born from Project Cece, a search engine for fair and sustainable fashion. We have been working on Project Cece for over 3 years already but then stumbled onto an even bigger problem that we’re more uniquely capable of solving; for search tools, marketplaces and multi-brand stores it’s really hard to get sustainability data on a product level. With Impactbytes we can leverage on the network we’ve already built with Project Cece and connect those to bigger industry players.
4. What are your customers saying about your product?
They absolutely love how easy it is to connect to a datastream with product level sustainability credentials, making sure that they’re compliant with EU regulations while supporting sustainable brands at the same time.
5. What are your proud achievements so far?
With Project Cece, we’ve managed to help over 1 million people find sustainable alternatives. Also, we’re beyond proud of creating a space where impact-focused brands can thrive and help against greenwashing.
6. What is the next big thing in your industry?
We see that there is more critique on false claims and at the same time legislation coming into play on unbacked sustainability claims. At the same time, consumer demand for sustainable products is growing. It’s becoming more important than ever to both provide sustainability data and be able to back it up.
7. What are your plans for the next 6-12 months?
Impactbytes is launching in Q3 2022 and already has a pilot partnership live with Ecosia. Our next steps are to further build out our product and change more key industry players into changemakers by connecting them to our product datastream.
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