Founder Interview - Matt Semmelhack
Q&A with the CEO of Boox
Tuesday, February 16, 2021 from Petaluma, CA
ZK: Tell us about the moment you knew you had to launch Boox?
MS: I spent a good portion of my career working in the food industry, in restaurants, and saw a ton of waste going out our door, and it was expensive. Most consumers don’t realize that businesses have to pay, in some cases quite considerably, for trash and recycling. And I thought, if we could reduce the amount of waste, not only would that bring great environmental benefit, but it would also considerably help the business.
More recently, I was working in operations for a plant-based meal delivery startup based in San Francisco. We received amazing reviews for the food and service, but we were losing customers because they were disappointed in the insulation, packaging, and ice packs we were sending them with their meals. Put simply, they didn’t like getting trash in the mail, and our bottom-line was suffering because of it. This was the inspiration behind the launch of Boox.
ZK: Can you tell us more about how Boox is working to solve this problem?
MS: We’ve developed a way for consumers and e-commerce companies to reduce waste and their environmental impact by replacing single-use boxes and other packaging with reusable alternatives. So, instead of a brand sending you their product in a piece of trash, which is effectively what a cardboard box is, they send them in a Boox, which provides not only a beautiful and premium experience for the consumer, but also gets returned to us for reuse.
ZK: We’re seeing a lot of innovation happening to promote a more circular economy, and Boox is a great example of this trend. Are there places you are looking to for a model of how to do this right?
MS: One of my favorite success stories actually is local with Straus Creamery. Their milk comes in these beautiful glass containers that are a bit more expensive than your typical paperboard milk containers. I buy these at my local Whole Foods, pay a deposit when I check out, and I get the deposit returned when I return the glass container for reuse.
This becomes a virtuous cycle and everybody in the value chain wins – the customer gets a great product, the producer can both reduce costs and build a more loyal following, the retailer gets the benefit of more foot traffic upon the return, and there is less waste produced for the environment. This is a much more delightful experience than throwing something away, and we’re working to bring that same type of experience to e-commerce.
ZK: How do you advance this movement to the point of critical adoption? Is there a path to victory in communities that may not be as environmentally conscious as the North Bay?
MS: Yes, it’s baby steps for sure, but what we’ve seen is the ability for marquee brands to drive change which leads so many others to follow. Take Allbirds for example – when they do something, you see dozens of other shoe companies follow. And if you can harness the power of social media, of influencers, you can reach millions of people around the country and world in a very short period of time.
One of our biggest drivers of growth has been through end consumers who receive a Boox in the mail from one of our e-commerce customers. They get so excited that they post about it on platforms like Instagram, and we’ve seen some of these posts go viral.
ZK: It’s not every day I see Instagram posts about packaging – that’s incredibly powerful.
MS: We’ve spent a lot of time working on how you take something as mundane as packaging and give it a personality. We’ve injected everything about our brand into these boxes, to encourage the end consumer to take care of the Boox they receive, and return it to us, because ultimately that is a key part of our business and our promise of sustainability to our brand partners.
ZK: You moved to the North Bay in 2019 and now live and work here in Petaluma. Why did you come to Sonoma county and what’s it been like to launch your business here?
MS: Like a lot of young families, we moved up here from San Francisco for the space, the schools, and the community feel, and we absolutely love it. It’s incredible having a backyard, and being 20 minutes from the beach and everything else Sonoma has to offer. For the business, we have the ability to tap into the growing local talent pool with more incredible people moving here each day. But we also can tap national and global talent to help our Sonoma enterprise given the realities of remote work.
ZK: What we’ve seen is that the traditional barriers to building a high-growth enterprise in the North Bay are dissipating and that, increasingly, this next generation of entrepreneurs want to build companies where they live that are embedded in their community.
MS: That certainly has fit our experience. We have warehouse space here in Petaluma which is extraordinarily cheaper than what it would have been in San Francisco or right outside the city. We have employees that walk to work, including myself, which to me is critical to maintaining a healthy work-life balance. And we have an engineering team that is split across three time zones, which really is a microcosm of the future of work.
Our local physical infrastructure fills a real need for us given we are running a logistics business, and we care deeply about the community. Last year, we donated to a local charity working to turn a nearby empty lot into a park – we are more connected here because we live here, my kids go to school here, and a thriving Petaluma is good for our business.
We also have a great relationship with the city of Petaluma, which has been a real partner to us in our growth here. Local officials are responsive and attentive in ways we would never get if we were operating in a big city – we have the power to make a difference for this community, and the community can make a difference for us.
ZK: That last point is so critical and really was the impetus for us launching Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures – we want to encourage the most talented and ambitious entrepreneurs in our community to launch their businesses embedded in their local community. We want you to build the next great North Bay company, not just the next great company.
MS: Every week, it seems I meet someone new who has just relocated to Petaluma for the same reasons our family did. With the pandemic, people are realizing that they’ve been sacrificing their personal quality of life to be closer to the office. I never was willing to make that sacrifice and it’s a big reason why I started Boox a half-mile from my house. I believe this to be a trend and it’s why we are so bullish on Petaluma, Sonoma, and the North Bay in the years ahead.
Zachary Kushel is Founder & Managing Partner of Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures.
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