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6. Sustaining Environmentally Focused Business Practices with Gilad Nachmani

Writer's picture: Meg CarneyMeg Carney


In episode 6 of the Outdoor Minimalist Podcast, we get an inside look at the business practices of CNOC Outdoors, an environmentally focused business within the outdoor industry. 


To help drive the conversation, Gilad Nachmani, the co-founder and general manager of CNOC Outdoors joins me.


CNOC Outdoors is a small backpacking gear manufacturer in Portland, Oregon, focused on making innovative, durable and sustainable gear.



CNOC OUTDOORS WEBSITE: https://cnocoutdoors.com/⁠

CNOC products are also available on ⁠Garage Grown Gear⁠



 

The following transcript was auto populated by Spotify for Podcasters and although we performed some minor edits, there may still be some spelling and grammatical errors.


MEG: On this episode of the outdoor minimalist podcast I have the pleasure of having a conversation with Gilad Nachmani, the co-founder and general manager of CNOC Outdoors.


CNOC Outdoors is a small backpacking gear manufacturer based in Portland, Oregon that focuses on making Innovative durable and sustainable outdoor gear.


So thank you for joining me today to discuss some of your business practices and how sustainability drives many of your business decisions.


But before we jump into those big picture topics could you just give me a brief overview of how you got involved in outdoor recreation how it's a part of your life and how you guys got started as a business and where you are today





GILAD: no problem. thank you for having me.


So I I grew up in Israel which is does not quite have a outdoor recreation environment or community. I think by now it's it's growing has got influence from Europe and in the US but when I was a kid definitely did not exist it was more the 60s of the United States we were just out outside we were kicked out of the house in the morning to school and then we kind of spent the afternoons outside without much of a definition that you go backpacking or hiking or anything like that and I was involved with a few organizations youth organizations as a kid as a teenager and that led me to spend more and more time outdoors again without any official definition that we're going backpacking but we just went on trips and some of them sometimes they were overnight sometimes they were just day hikes


Then I went to the Army. I served my three years in the Israeli Army after being released I've joined my girlfriend at the time her dream was to go and see New Zealand so we went on a trip to New Zealand and on my in my three months there I finally met backpackers or they in New Zealand they called them trampers they like to do tramping rather than backpacking.


But I've made this whole world of gear nerds and people who carry small packs and they try and optimize the way they hike and what they carry and their time outside and I got a real bug and came back to Israel and decided to go and work at the outdoor retailer just a story in Israel in Jerusalem that sells outdoors gear.


And I got even deeper into the the whole bag of of gear and tinkering and optimizing my gear and my time outside. After a few months there I went traveling some more I had it over to uh South America I pretty much hiked along the Andes or backpacked along the Andes for about seven months.


And that pretty much made sure that I will never leave backpacking or will not have backpacking in my life let's put it this way. After that I went back to reach to retail I ended up managing a few stores, moved to England, and just stayed in the outdoor industry.


Again on stores and then I ended up being a buyer and a merchandiser for a retailer in in England so my career in the other industry has been very long mainly from the beginning as the consumer side and then on the store floor for many years.


And then my wife and I well my family and I with our kids we moved to the us about five years ago and brought CNOC with us which started as really my interest in tinkering with gear. It started with my wife saying stop complaining and just make something yourself after breaking pair of poles on a trip in Scotland.


I just contacted some factories in China to see if they can make some of my ideas and my design got more and more I don't know if progressive was the right word but it seems to be aggressive because I kept on changing the way they wanted to do that because it made no sense to the point that I ended up designing a whole new product.


That's kind of how the company started in the US just making in trekking poles it started with the vertex spots which we discontinued a couple of years ago and it wasn't really much of a mind of a company it was just me wanting to make looking for something that I needed and made and then kept on trying to improve on that rather than a full design mindset.


MEG: yeah so the need of the trekking poles kind of came out of necessity and that's really cool because you have a lot of different perspectives just like cultural perspectives of the outdoor industry living in different places and visiting different places but then also being able to experience like their gear and what they have available to them.


So when you moved the company over to the United States, did you move it to Portland right away?


GILAD: yes yes we we were very much looking for a place that I can continue recreate because recreation both in Israel and under recreation in Israel and in the UK are quite demanding.


It's just it's hard for Americans to understand how easy it is to be an outdoors person here having public space is amazing which in the UK doesn't quite exist and and distances are different so we were looking for a place that we can I can we can as a family and we can enjoy outdoor recreation and the place that has some sort of an outdoor industry.


It was essentially we narrowed down to Portland OR Denver my fam my wife's family is originally from Portland so that that was the winner.


MEG: oh yeah that's an easy way to drive decisions for sure


GILAD: exactly just decided to make it easy this time yeah


MEG: so I know you now make more than just trekking poles because I have your little reservoir things that you use for filtering water and I love them thank you and I was looking for trekking poles recently and a friend of mine asked for recommendation and I was like you should try these ones and she bought them and she loves them so I think I'll have to get them as well


Because I don't have trekking poles yet but I just moved to the Pacific Northwest so with the mountains I just I need like more stability on the terrain


GILAD: yes trekking poles do make a big difference in comfort on the trail takes a while to get used to it but once you do I think it's one of those life-changing items


MEG: yeah for sure so we first connected in 2020 when I was writing the outdoor minimalist book and I'm not exactly sure how we connected but I remember first looking through your website and everything and in my book I talk a lot about how transparency should drive a lot of consumer decisions so you're looking for brands that are transparent with their business practices and that was something that I really noticed with your company.


So could you explain a little bit more how you integrate transparency into your marketing and customer communications in general.





GILAD: I guess it's more of a cultural thing I'm just I think the fact that I'm Israeli and the way we perceive communication is a bit different.


So when I started the company it was very easy to just be me and the first two and a half years of the company I was just by myself in my garage and was quite literally how the company started out of my garage.


When I was communicating with customers I wanted to make sure that I'm clear about what happened. So if we had a batch that so speaking about the vector the vector is it's such a specific product and I don't have a whole engineering team behind me so there was a lot of trial and error


MEG: and the vector is the the vector is the water container


GILAD: okay yep


MEG: the one that I have cool


GILAD: and again that one also came out of necessity I wasn't it wasn't like I was sitting down with a piece of paper and saying I want this thread and this material and this so on I was looking for a container that will have a thread on one hand and a slider on the other so I was just looking for factories that have capacity to make those things and just ask them can you make this weird idea that I have


So it was a lot of trial and error in the process and obviously as things like that happen you're going to get mistakes I know that as a consumer when a mistake exists it really frustrates me I rather just know even if it means that the company won't do anything but at least I know so I made that out of how I communicate with our customers if there's a problem if there's a mistake if there's something that I wasn't aware of if there's a way to fix things I'd rather just let people know some people will get angry some people get frustrated some will just say I want my money back and so be it


Which are all things that I think a company should be able to deal with but I also think that's part of what a company customers like about us they hear what they is to hear even if it's sometimes not the most comfortable things to say or hear.


And it actually goes back to the first batch of vectors that we made because the original idea was to just make a thousand units and kind of test the market as part of the kickstarter that we've done I think that was 2017, in the summer of 2017.


Then I had a few units tested by different people, and I got some feedback, and we have made a few more tweaks with the Factory, and then Darwin on Darwin from Darwin on the trail ended up talking about the vector even though I had no idea he was going to do that and we sold an extra 2000 units, and that origin original order of 2 000 units ended up being 3 000.


So it was very much a scramble to make things and as those things happen mistakes in the supply chain happen so when the first batch arrived and I was starting to ship them out apparently there was a leak from the slider which is the worst thing that a water container can have.


I went back and I've just checked what happened and what happened is that we've just changed the density of kind of that wide opening to make it easier to use because that was the feedback that a lot of testers had it's just it was too stiff and most people don't have climber hands.


They wanted something a bit easier to hold so we've done that in the factory haven't compensated for the changes and thickness and the difference was I think it was 0.02 millimeter of thickness difference but that was enough to create this tiny seam of the slider.


Immediately I went back to the factory we found a solution we added a small internal lip in the slider which still exists to this day because it creates a great seal and that solved all the issues but that means that now there are 3040 units or about 700 already with customers and the rest I'm still packing so instead I went to the factory I've made 4 000 units of those of just the sliders got them over and got in touch with everyone who already sent vectors to and said your slider is not good enough we have a new one that works better can we send it to you?


And that's what I've done and again it's not because I was trying to be transparent by definition just because this is that's what our customers expect and if I can provide them a product that works better then I would like to let them know and make sure that happens so that's kind of led to this concept of transparency in manufacturing and the product in pretty much our whole processes.


MEG: yeah that makes a lot of sense and I do think that it helps build trust with the customer because as a customer when you do have something that is faulty like you're saying it can be relatively frustrating especially if there's no communication from the company.


Can you repair this can you replace this or what's the process that I can go through to make sure that I can get the product that I paid for kind of thing?


So I guess one question I have about that whole process is what did you end up doing with all of the all of the faulty vectors?





GILAD: well for a very long time I just moved them from one place to another they was living in my garage and then in a storage unit when the garage was too full and then into a new warehouse and then it just I've stayed we have we had probably three big bags of faulty sliders and then we had two batches that had faulty welds that we've never even shipped out.


They just stayed in boxes and for a long time I just kept them in the hope that one day we'll find a solution.


When Nathan joined the company, Nathan is uh he's now logistics and impact manager he started almost two years ago he started by just helping me figure out how to make the company a more sustainable company so it ties directly to what we're talking about and he was looking into the process of making us into a B-Corp and my big hope was that one day we'll figure out how to recycle vectors.


That was something he managed to do he just kept on talking to recyclers and eventually we found a company that was willing to recycle even post-consumer ones.


So eventually all those faulty units ended up being shredded into pellets and then loaded on a boat and going to Malaysia to become something else probably deck chairs and things like that.


MEG: that's awesome well I guess it's good that you kept them for so long


GILAD: yeah I just could not take them to the dump it was too I I it just I felt that it's not the right thing to do so I rather keep them and find the way


MEG: so you said Nathan came on board as your impact manager about two years ago is that kind of when you started making more of a switch towards a sustainable focus in a lot of your business or when did that happen?


GILAD: um I don't think there was a clear step that it happened the more I dealt with making things the more I thought oh I was hoping that there are better ways to make them.


We are still not there I wish we were but we're not.


I find that sustainable tends to be cheaper despite what a lot of information out there. I'm an economist by training so I always look at the numbers first.


Using raw materials or virgin raw materials is the most expensive process so using recycled materials have has always been the most business sustainable process and I was always hoping to find a way to do so it just it requires a lot of resources both in engineering and r&d and relationships and at the beginning I just didn't have the capacity to do so so I was trying to tweak ways to be as sustainable as possible.


So for instance the vectors though they are made from TPU they only have cardboard or it's it's essentially paper packaging we don't use any plastic or any nylon in the packaging and that was from day one.


I remember trying to explain to the factory to not put the vector in a plastic bag and in the box and it was just really hard for them to understand.


So that was very intentional because there was just no need to put a plastic bag in it. So that that we're talking back in mid-2017 the the company wasn't even a year old so those conversations were already there but it wasn't a step that happened a decision that happened as a business strategy.


I was always trying to do small steps to have less impact and when Nathan came to me he was actually a customer before before he joined the company and when he joined the company he actually started as a volunteer just out of interest because he was he just finished a long time at the Peace Corp and he was a bit bored and he was just looking for semi hobbies to do and he was more than happy to kind of dig into the world of B-corps because it's very much part of his interest.


I was more than happy to have someone with me to just even another set of eyes to look at that because trying to tackle something as big as a big Corp as a two-people company was a bit too much so having a third provides was really useful.


That's probably where we've done the more aware stage and the moment the company was a bit more stable just after the pandemic started actually. Nathan moved into a paid employee and we more actively started pursuing the B Corp certificate and making the changes for it.


MEG: yeah so your company had been around for quite a long time before you were a certified B Corp and I think that's pretty common for a lot of smaller companies because it kind of takes some time to build up that capability I guess I don't really know how to phrase it


GILAD: no it's it's an interesting so in terms of the B Corp itself we didn't have to do much in terms of changing our practices.


They were more than happy with how we produce things with our processes uh with the carbon impact of our products which I and again we even when we do a volunteering placement we ask people to send items back so we can recycle them.


So we try and and reduce the impact constantly so we had very little changes needed for that. For B Corp model anything you need a lot of things in writing then you're committed to.


For instance are giving back or charity work has been quite robust from the beginning we always gave money to anywhere that is part of how we recreate but we never put in in writing saying we're going to allocate this percentage of what we make to do various support work but the B Corp requires exactly that so if there's a lot there are a lot of steps of just putting things into writing and defining them


MEG: right so then Nathan kind of came in and was able to do that sort of record keeping and sending that information to become a b Corp


GILAD: exactly um and then they need to examine so they they work on a lot of things and so their process is long.


We've done our first application I think was finalized towards the end of 2020 and then we will they have a point system and we were missing we thought we had a lot more points but when they reviewed the the documents they were not according to how they define them.


So we lost a bunch of points so we were missing on about three points to get the B Corp so we had to start again and you don't start from the beginning of the queue


MEG: oh wow yeah you


GILAD: go back to the end of the queue so that that took another year to once again get to talk to the front of a queue and then get assessed and get reviewed and then being approved. So that's that's the main part of the big hope and this is why very few companies start as a B-Corp. yeah I am not on the way of companies are just out of day one we're a big Corporation





MEG: yeah because it takes time to build up that backlog of information to provide to them you need to kind of prove that you can qualify that makes a lot of sense.


Something that you said was really interesting to me was that being sustainable as a company and environmentally focused is actually more affordable because I feel like a lot of times I hear the opposite.


What are the advantages then of being environmentally sustainable in accordance to like your bottom line?


GILAD: okay so this is and this is where my economist hat comes up.


To be sustainable or to have a less or being a less impact company there's a much bigger upfront cost compared to anything else because a lot of times the infrastructure is not there.


Let's take our trekking pulse for instance they are as most of a supply chain is a drive away from our warehouse so the vast majority of parts just come from around here and that on the face of it is great but we had to have a huge infrastructure investment in machinery, in teaching our factories, our factories getting machinery... so all of those had to be rebuilt in order to be a more sustainable product compared to just finding a factory that looks already exists in Korea or China or Vietnam and say make this for us those are the specs and that's it.


The investment in infrastructure is much much greater but now because we are closer the ability to scale curves much better because we can work with our factories to become more efficient or make changes more quickly.


We don't we are not susceptible to trade wars that or now the huge traffic that is outside ports. All of those creates they hit bottom line in the long term so it's harder to I think especially for small businesses understand that if they do a big investment in the beginning they'll have a more sustainable process economically more sustainable process in the long term.


It's a hard pill to swallow probably and also a lot of small businesses just don't have the capital. We almost closed down because of those trekking poles because of creating that infrastructure.


So that's why I think it's in the long term it works better you just need to go through a much bigger hoop or a much higher hoop you know to make it work.


MEG: right but then you have those standards from the get-go and you don't have to to flip your business later on because you have this framework that is sustainable both environmentally and economically and then you can kind of just build it up from there.


GILAD: exactly exactly and also there's a when you work with those big factories they a lot of times have outrageous minimum order quantity for parts or for anything it's just it's just the way it operates because they need to justify the infrastructure.


So when you work with more local systems you tend to have a more a better understanding you can buy smaller quantities you can produce smaller quantities so the upfront cost per unit is smaller and then you can find ways to scale it.


It's kind of more of a of a balance between the need to have the cheapest possible part to have something that is more attainable.


MEG: yeah yeah okay that makes a lot of sense and I think about it for a second.


GILAD: yeah that's that's it's it's it's one of those those things that until you're in in the thick of it it's really hard to understand how things are being made just just the process of making something happen and I I still claim that one of the best most amazing inventions in the world is the plastic toothbrush.


MEG: why is that you should explain that


GILAD: in a toothbrush there are three different materials and when you hold a toothbrush just a plain plastic toothbrush that might have a rubberized handle and nylon bristles that actually is made from three different materials and when you get it it looks like a seamless single unit and it costs nothing. It cost me a few dollars and if you go for the nice ones they might cost you ten dollars.


It is amazing to think that a factory optimized the process that something that has three different materials and it's seamless and has no weak spots can cost so little and it's so easy to use.


MEG: right so you're talking more on like the process manufacturing side


GILAD: and the availability I mean we don't we don't think about it but in order to make a toothbrush for someone to sit down and make manually make that toothbrush is extremely complex because those those tiny nylon bristles they need to be over molded into a handle and and just that concept is is hard to grasp.


So we have those and they're still easy to use sometimes even use recycled materials and it's just I I find it amazing every time and and that's only because now I make things in in a large scale to understand the the small wonders of the way we make things now.


MEG: yeah and I think because consumers were so far removed from that actual production process that it can be really hard to grasp those types of things and just like how much actually goes into making items that we use every single day.


GILAD: absolutely and this is why a lot of times we invite people to come in well less now but we wanted people to see how we make the trekking poles so when they hear that a trekking pole that I don't know if you've seen our design it's a really simple product.


It's so simplistic so it's effective it's a very minimalist design it ties to to the minute of this concept but the process of making them is so complex despite the fact it looks so simple.


I think we even wrote a few blog posts about just trying to give people pictures from us making them so you understand the process and why they cost so much not because we go on a shopping spree every time that someone buys a pair of trekking poles because that's just the process.


MEG: yeah and I think sometimes understanding those processes makes you more willing to invest in those products because you understand like oh these are more durable, they are more sustainably made, and there's something that well you're just investing in it like it's something that should last you a long time.


One thing that I did want to talk about with your company specifically is that you do refurbish items don't you?





GILAD: yes we try and refurbish well pretty much anything you can or let me redefine it we try and make sure as little goes into the landfill as possible.


A lot of what a lot of the and so the trekking poles also the the TPU products they're all based on the idea that you can repair them. The design is very much a repairable mindset the trekking poles the very few parts that can actually break. Breaking the the actual components is very very hard. We've tried and it's really hard. We so far I don't even remember how much uh in the market but should be in the thousands we had two carbon fiber parts actually break and one of them with Nathan's son playing baseball with so it was a valid break but otherwise it's a very very hard thing to do.


So the idea is that you can fix them just duct tape on the tray on the trail will do 99% of the problems.


It means that we can bring parts back into our warehouse take out what doesn't work and fix them rebuild them and they are good as new so we try and do that rather than then people tell people people no just we'll send you a replacement and then you can chuck them in the bin.


We would rather get the parts back see what went wrong because we get to learn from that and then fix it and turn it into an almost new product.


MEG: that's awesome but do you you guys kind of have an advantage as far as those repairs go because you make the trekking poles in Portland, don't you? GILAD: yes yes we make them in Portland and and that's part of the the mindset behind having a closer ensure the supply chain the there's a person that makes the poles his name is Devo he's making every single pole.


So he can look at the pole and know exactly what needs to be adjusted or repaired or so on so getting them back and getting them repaired and refurbished and then back into the market both offers our customers a good solution in terms of if there is a problem and they don't need a pole and also it means that we can offer a more affordable option because this is a product that already been used and otherwise would have been considered part of the cost of doing business.


Instead we are we're able to refurbish them and then we can offer more affordable product for people who maybe don't have a need for the newest and shiniest they're happy to have a couple of scratches for something they can actually afford


MEG: yeah that accessibility is a big piece I think when you're buying um in investing in higher quality gear so that's awesome


GILAD: and we try to do the same with with the vectors which is only at twenty dollars for the container but still some of them are being returned just because people don't like the idea or it doesn't work for them or back when we work with Amazon. Amazon a lot of time will just accept returns without anything so we will get back brand new products that would just returned and we don't even know why. So we'll test them and if they are in good working order will disinfect them and clean them and repack them and they are as a as a refurbished product again it's it's not a big difference but we try and offer them for 12 or 13 dollars and again it's just that tiny bit more accessible for someone who can't afford the twenty dollars


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MEG: as someone that works in the outdoor industry and you kind of have multiple perspectives here so how do you think other businesses whether they are established or just starting how do you think they can help push sustainability to become more of an industry standard and keep those as at the forefront of their business plan and production models?


GILAD: that's a hard one because each business is its own personality. I don't know if anyone if everyone cares about it enough to even do the investment.


So that's a step one.


Sadly sustainability became a political concept instead of just a way of life I am not quite well I know how that happened but that's a different conversation so just making it less political our sustainability efforts have nothing to do with my perspective about the world they're just a business practice and probably do a bit more research into what is the true impact not just the initial investment which is always going to be big but also running the numbers long term to see what is the impact and think more globally about those things over time I think things will be harder and harder to make.


It just anything from raw materials becoming more scarce and expensive it's it's just it's good business practice at this point to be a sustainable business, in my opinion, and I think if if more businesses will look at it that way rather than trying to appease the customers but actually a business practice that it will be easier to make it an important part of how they run their business.


MEG: yeah I mean I agree but it is a lot about just mindset and then evaluating your end goal is a really big influence at least sustainability should be.


So before we jump off here um last thing where can people learn more about CNOC outdoors and how can they connect with you and find your products most easily


GILAD: um the easiest is our website it's cnocoutdoors.com we also have a growing number of retailers that we work with so and we definitely encourage people to go and find those retailers and make sure that you buy through them because that's that sustains the industry much more.


We work a lot with garage grown gear that I'll be happy to see more people use them as an alternative to Amazon and things like that especially for outdoor gear


MEG: yeah so I'll link that in the episode description as well so you can just hop down there and check that out but thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about this today


GILAD: my pleasure thank you for having me


MEG: I just want to say thank you again to Gilad and the CNOC Outdoors team for all of their help on this podcast episode and for their contributions to the outdoor minimalist book






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