In one sentence, what is your product/service?

MyGoodness.com is a new online shopping destination for fashion, lifestyle and “money can’t buy experiences” that allows people to shop and give back to great causes. 

What problem(s) does it solve? 

We really wanted to look at new, more efficient ways of raising funds as well as visibility for charitable organisations and projects. There have been some interesting new ideas to revive the way we give, some great examples too; we took our inspiration from the likes of Tom’s and (RED).

We felt that by creating a platform that housed all the cause-marketing products as well as ensuring an excellent shopping experience we could create something the consumer would really want and that could compete in the mainstream retail market. 

Our platform can also be different things to different people; you can simply shop and check out, knowing your purchase has had a positive impact on others or you can dig deeper, read great editorial about the causes, understand the details of the impact your product has made. We want to refresh the editorial on offer around positive stories and charitable work and make it inspiring and exciting. 

Our mission is to allow charities to maximise their fundraising potential from brands, celebrities and consumers while offering such a great shopping experience that we eventually look to compete with the biggest retail sites.

What are your immediate goals?

Our immediate goals are to empower luxury brands to promote their CSR initiatives and products on MyGoodness.com. We want celebrities and influencers to join us to leverage their networks to support great causes and we want to create a truly exciting online destination for consumers to shop for good causes. 

The idea is to use these strands to compliment one another and to help us to begin to generate a powerful movement. 

The community aspect is really important to us, we want to give people something they’ll value and to learn from them as we go. We hope that our greatest advocates will be key in driving this movement resulting in a different cultural attitude and approach to retail and consumerism. 

What were the biggest challenges involved in building the tech or your team? 

The biggest challenges involved in building the tech was finding a great developer who could understand not only the tech and digital functionalities we needed but could also understand our creative and philanthropic vision and translate it in to a great website and user experience. We had a difficult start but have now found a “tech gem”. 

The challenge in building the team was in finding people who have a mix of skills, creativity, attention to detail and who shared the same passion for philanthropy and social good. 

How will the company make money?

We take a commission on the products and experiences we sell on MyGoodness.com after giving back a percentage to our charity partners. We are also working on developing sponsorship and advertising revenues.

Who is in your team? 

We’re two main Founders, Nathalie in charge of the website, design, sourcing and communication, and me, in charge of the strategy, new biz, legal, finance and marketing.

Julia is our Web Manager, William is our senior web developer, Marcia our Artistic Director, Estelle and Giada our graphic designers, Maria is our sourcer.

We also have a PR company, Purple PR and an amazing e-marketing agency, MMC in LA, where Jon and Ryan the founders have been the most active supporters and ambassadors of MyGoodness. 

Where would you like to be in one, three and five years’ time?

In one year, we would like to have launched successfully in the UK and proven our business model as sustainable. In three years, we would expect to have launched MyGoodness globally, and have become the coolest online destination to shop for good causes, while building the most engaged and influential community of conscious consumers. 

In five years’ time, we hope that the MyGoodness business model will have been copied and that we will have encouraged many consumers to shop to support good causes as well as inspired many brands and social entrepreneurs to develop collaborations to support charities. 

Other than your own, what are your favorite websites / apps / tools?   

We love the websites Nowness, Coolhunting, Yatzer, The Cools, and Ahalife. Our favourite apps are Shazam, Spotify, Headspace, Flipboard, Ted, and Up. We use skype, evernote, and viber.