The Eco-Business Spotlight is a Nadi Marketing’s monthly series highlighting businesses that are leading the way with sustainable practices and making a lasting impact.
Our first Eco-Business Spotlight is SAVRcup, which is helping eliminate single-use waste from events and venues. You may be asking yourself, with no events or gatherings around due to Covid-19, how are they transitioning? Rachel, Co-Founder of SAVRcup, shares with us how they’ve been transitioning in this spotlight.
What is your eco-business and what inspired you?
SAVRcup is a reusable cup company geared toward replacing one-use plastic cups with our reusable cups. SAVRcups are made out of 100% recycled plastic, good for hot or cold drinks, and can go in the dishwasher or microwave! Originally we were inspired by festivals. My husband and I would go to music fests and see all the waste of single-use cups on the floors and we knew there were reusable cup business models abroad that worked extremely well. We asked ourselves, why not start something that we knew worked elsewhere but just hadn’t come in a big way to The States yet?
What’s your biggest challenge as an eco-business?
It was a HUGE challenge finding recycled material that was FDA approved, dishwasher safe, microwave safe, and good for hot and cold drinks. It was extremely important to us though to not put more plastic out into the world and use what is already here.
What’s the most challenging aspect of your business right now?
Pivoting our business model due to Coronavirus. We serviced large events but now there are no events so we are pivoting to a smaller order clientele (i.e. sets of 8 for a beach day or home/everyday use or custom sets that are ~50 cup sets). Previously our minimum orders were 150+ but because there aren’t going to be large events for a while we had to change course for a bit.
What has been the biggest learning curve?
Honestly, everything. I have a marketing background, my husband has a service industry background so to go through purchasing a mold (this is what is used to create the cup) to buying a UV screen printing machine, we literally learned as we went. This is also why it has taken us so long to get ourselves going, and because we also used all our own money. I think having to learn screen printing (which is a career that takes so many years to master), was our toughest learning curve.
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