Is it all paying off? Apparently. "Over the last five years our sales have gone from 20 to 50 million," Droppo says. "It's a huge increase and having environmentally friendly proprietary products is a major reason."
Unlike the natural roots of New Belgium or the successful transformation of Curtis Packaging, Pangea Organics was conceived during the current era of global concern and environmental sustainability. "I wanted to start a company that could be a role model for the different processes that you could put in place to become a profitable company, but do so by respecting your employees, the people making your products, the planet and the end user as well," says Pangea CEO and founder Joshua Scott Onysko, who left school at age 16 and took odd jobs for eight years, while traveling the world and learning firsthand about environmental concerns. Onysko started Pangea in 2001 and launched the first brand in 2005.
"We're basically integrating people, profits and the planet into everything we do," Onysko says. The company sources ingredients from 52 different countries and supports 80,000 acres of land where organic agricultural products are grown. Pangea even has a 3,000 square foot garden that is operated by the employees and feeds the whole staff seven months out of the year.
Package design has also been used to generate interest. "Boxes are made out of 100% post-consumer newspaper with no petrochemical in the process," Onysko says. In addition, Pangea uses viral marketing by putting product demos into the hands of people and the press. The results are impressive as the $10 million company will double in size in the next year.
"It's more than changing your logo from blue to green," Tuerff says, acknowledging a far more environmentally savvy consumer base. "Businesses that are proven to be sustainable are the ones that people will respond to and not those that are simply promoting themselves as green because they've changed their light bulbs."
