2016 has been an amazing year for me and in the spirit of the holidays, I wanted to give back by contributing to a cause I feel hugely passionate about – turning consumerism into a force for GOOD.
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been scrambling here at Miigle+ to produce and release an addition to our product that would hopefully help hundreds of thousands of people make more socially conscious shopping decisions this holiday season and beyond.
The premise is simple.
According to the 2013 Cone Communication’s Social Impact Study, 91% of Americans reported that they are more likely to trust and stay loyal to companies or brands that support social causes. The problem? Most people have no idea who these brands are and where to find them.
So over the past few months, we’ve tirelessly worked to curate, research and catalog, into various product categories, social good and eco-friendly brands from all over the world. So far we’ve got about 500 brands and I’m convinced there are thousands more out there!
The next phase was to build an online directory that would make our work easily accessible to socially conscious shoppers and the brands, many of them still in their infancy, who I am sure would be extremely grateful for the business.
It is therefore with great pride that I’m pleased to announce that Miigle+ is launching the world’s first online directory of social good and eco-friendly brands. Starting with a little over 300 brands, the list is certainly not exhaustive but it is a start. We also made sure to add the possibility of brands to submit themselves to the directory as well as social widgets for people to share the directory with brands we may not have come across.
Unlike other directories that simply benefit from organic traffic and therefore incur little to no costs, we wanted to pursue a more aggressive strategy to help these brands get more visibility. For example, we will be advertising the directory on paid search and Facebook which would also essentially allow us to serve as a marketing platform for the brands. To cover advertising costs, the listings on our directory are available at a small subscription fee starting at $49.99 / month and decreasing depending on the length of the subscription. Brands will need to be approved to be listed on the directory to make sure their business model supports social and/or environmental causes, and the subscription can be canceled at anytime.
As a company, Miigle+ is committed to contribute 4% of our annual revenue towards social and environmental causes worldwide and we are establishing partnerships with organizations such as The African Wildlife Foundation, 1% For The Planet, Water.org, The Nature Conservancy and Planet Aid.
This of course would mean very little without your support and millions of other people like you who care about the welfare of our planet and ALL its inhabitants. There are great challenges out there to be faced, from poverty and hunger to climate change and human rights abuse, but we must know that we are not helpless, that through our purchasing power and applying it in meaningful ways we can create ripples of positive changes in the world for the benefit of us all.
I therefore invite you and hope that you would join us in making this holiday season a GOOD one by visiting our directory and supporting the hundreds of social good and eco-friendly brands already listed by gifting some of their products.
Thank you and Happy Holidays!
Luc Berlin, Founder @ Miigle Inc.