Why We Do This

Most people who are close to me and my wife Megan know that our passion and life's purpose is our budding non-profit, diaperLove. When we started Purely Products we prayed that God would use this for something 'bigger.' A few months after starting Purely we had the blessing of Megan becoming pregnant with our son Benton and then 5 months after his birth, we had the heaped-on blessing (Megan might differ in this opinion) of her becoming pregnant with our daughter, Malia. Immeasurable gifts from God. Our kids births and Megan's connecting with a mother in need through Craigslist resulted in diaperLove. God works in mysterious ways.

We are prepping the launch of the full-blown diaperLove.org website and I have had the absolute privilege to work with Patti Broyles, Purely's Community Manager and Caryn Shafer of Bluegill Creative. One of the final pieces they asked me to write for the new site was "Why We Do This." I hope this brings greater understanding of the vision God delivered to Megan and me in 2008.

diaperLove - Why We Do This

Because there is an acute need for diapers and we believe with all our heart that God has revealed this need to us and commanded us to commit our time, energy, resources and God-given talents toward removing this need from every child’s life. We believe that diaperLove is God’s purpose for us and that we can make a difference.

In Mathew 11:25 Jesus said "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” We do this because we know God’s passion for little children and recognize that through children we all can relearn and show through action what is a basic truth…to love our neighbors as ourselves. We believe that babies who are shown basic and genuine love and kindness at their earliest age will make a difference in our World and then positively affect lives of those around them.

We recognize that life is not fair and people’s positions in life are oftentimes the result of events beyond their control. Acts 2:32 states that “All the believers were of one heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had.” This beautiful state of mind put into action by the earliest Christians causes us to pursue our purpose with the recognition that most of us need help at times during our lives and that there is a basic human desire to help when possible. We do this to reinforce the basic premise that people are good and have a genuine willingness to help.

We love children! We love the way a child’s smile can take away the burdens of the moment. We love the infectious way a child laughing spreads to those around her. We love the way a hug from a child is a release of love that flows through the body and into the brain. We love the peace that comes from watching a child sleep. We love the way the smell of a child eclipses the beauty and fragrance of a rose. We love that Jesus said in Mark 10:14 "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” We love the beautiful rainbow of color that the children of our world create and the pot of gold that is the promise of their lives.

We believe that we can make a difference. We believe that we are planting seeds of love in the lives of children and delivering hope in the lives of families in need. We believe that simple actions result in wonderfully complex results. We believe that 1 Timothy 6:17 – 18 clearly guides us to “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” We believe that all of our hope lies not in this world but in a relationship with Jesus and the promise of eternity in Heaven and that our actions must speak louder than our words.

We do this because the blessings received are multi-fold greater than the diapers delivered. We do this because there is a way. We do this because we think children and the promise of their future is the greatest resource the world has. We do this because dry bottoms, loved babies, helped mommies and daddies mean a better world with greater prospects for the future. We do this because we love Sharing God’s Love One Dry Behind at a Time.

Don't Forget Who Brought You to the Dance

As Purely grows it's interesting to see the challenges that arise from growth and market penetration. Purely's focus is on developing and positioning our products into retailers throughout the US and Canada. This said, we sell direct to the public through our website and have since our inception, which leads to some questions from our retailer customer base.

Recently, a retailer that carries our Purely UV line made the comment "why should I carry your line when I am competing directly with your company" to one of our sales reps. A legitimate question worthy of an answer.

The world of retailing has taken massive hits in recent years and the 'hits keep coming' as the saying goes. Retailers have seen the buying channels available to consumers exponentially grow. From the never-before-seen dominance of a retailer like Wal Mart to buying clubs like Costco, Sam's and BJ's to the proliferation of catalog houses and then of course the Internet. The challenge to retailers has never been greater. Wal Mart has clearly created a 'new normal' for the retailing of most every-day consumer products. Buying clubs have positioned product prices to consumers at gross margins well below what was ever thought possible 25 years ago. Catalog houses created a competitive imbalance due to the non-requirement of charging sales tax on purchases shipping across state lines (in most states). Then, the Internet! Never before has the consumer been exposed to such a proliferation of purchase options with ever-lower prices, lack of sales tax, free shipping, etc, etc, etc.

My point is this, the retailer truly has cause for concern and the right to question the suppliers (vendors) they are purchasing products from for resale. The reality for most retailers is that they are fighting for their very survival in this difficult economy and environment of hyper-competition.

I have been reading with fascination Proctor & Gamble's exploration and announcement of their intent to begin 'testing' direct-selling to consumers via their own website. (P&G Selling Direct) This is intriguing to me that the largest and quite frankly the best consumer-products/branding company in the world would test the waters with a C-change like this. And it can only be called a C-change because of its magnitude! There may not be another company in the world that has as much retail lineal feet committed to their products than P&G. Consider that and then consider they are seriously going down the path of 'testing' consumer-direct selling and it leaves one to wonder, "where does it all end?" It doesn't!

"Fluid" is the statement I hear and use a lot these days because of its relevance and apropos description of the business environment we all operate. Businesses that are not fluid in their models and approach to the market will likely see an erosion of their market share as more nimble and creative-thinking companies identify and manipulate emerging pathways to the consumer. Clearly the Internet has changed the rules and created a perpetual incubator for inexpensively and effectively testing new methods of commerce. Did someone say Social Media?

Okay, so I've written all this to try and create a backdrop for Purely's position and my answer to our retailer's good question. Purely is committed to meeting the consumer's needs at every level, be it selling direct to them, selling to and through retailer's nationwide and selling to online companies selling to the consumer. We have a responsibility to satisfy the consumer first and foremost! Here's the great news! Purely will not forget who brought us to the dance and maintains a commitment to develop pricing programs that allow our retailers and online sellers to make industry-beating margins on the sale of our products while being able to position Purely Products' brands sell prices well below what we sell to the consumer direct. Our opinion is that the consumer can then choose from where to purchase our products based upon their comfort level and habits.

There is a scary attitude in the retail and manufacturing community of 'everyone for themselves' and I truly hope this trend arrests itself before catastrophic impact occurs at all levels...including the consumer. Manufacturers must recognize the value and absolute need of the retailer to them and to the consumer. (Don't believe me, try getting online and buying your child the medicine they need right now for their ear infection. See how she handles the 3 day wait while it arrives.) Retailers must recognize that the reduction in shelf space available to the manufacturer, the increasing costs of said space and the proliferation of generic and proprietary-brand products are pushing manufacturers to explore and take much more seriously consumer-direct and alternative sales models. Consumers need to know the value of their support of the local retailers (I said local, and that includes mass-merchants having stores in the local market) because their locally focused commerce equals contribution to the vitality, appeal and livability of their community and its schools, government, supporting agencies and the businesses that provide jobs.

Purely will not forget where it came from as it explores and continually develops strategies for where we are going. My hope is that all key parties in commerce understand the need for one another and collectively work together to ensure effective, efficient, consumer satisfying, profitable methods of business and modes of operation.

Lots of Love - Learn to Laugh

My deficiencies relating to the new world of communication became glaringly obvious a few years ago. I was living in NYC at the time and part of a small company, comprised of people younger than me. Yes, every employee and partner was younger than me and I was the ripe old age of 40 at the time.

The communication was quick, clever and crisp with all consideration for grammar, punctuation or complete thought thrown out the window. Perfect! I can be a part of this I thought. I'm a hip guy (yeah right) and have always prided myself for thinking young, being agile and stubborn but not immovable. Being an Irish kid, God has blessed me with a quick wit that I never hesitate to use, which creates its own share of problems, but that's another Blog post. So I jumped into the communication fray and started sending quick responses to which I would receive nothing or responses of 'good one,' 'nice,' 'sweet,' (a personal favorite), etc. The senior partner and majority owner of the company and a full ten years younger than me, who also had a great sense of humor would almost always respond 'LOL'. Strange, but certainly warm and welcoming.

So this pattern emerged for about 3 months of someones post, my comment, responses 'good one,' 'nice,' 'sweet' and sure enough before long 'LOL'! Now this is a warm group of people and all the stereotypes about New Yorkers that an Ohio guy had heard were completely wrong.

One day my partners and I were sitting at lunch and I noticed the senior partner (Mr. LOL to me) was responding to something on his Blackberry. Shortly after he sent his messaged and holstered that immeasurable communication gift from Heaven in his belt, my Blackberry went off notifying me that I had a message. When I opened it and looked at the message, it was a response from Mr. LOL to one of my earlier comments, message reading of course 'LOL.'

Now was my chance. Just the three of us sitting at lunch, so I mentioned to the other two team members how impressed I was with the warmth of our company and especially the senior partner. I mean, I told them, it took me a while to get used to the "lots of love" responses I get from you guys all the time but I really appreciate their opening up on that level. Well, needless to say that after they picked themselves up off the floor from laughing hysterically and of course messaged everyone in the office and for that matter everyone that they knew, I was informed that 'LOL' stood for 'laugh out loud.'

Now this could have gone a multitude of ways. My being embarrassed, shutting myself off and not taking any more risk of exposing my very limited new communication abilities. My partners recognizing that 'this guy really is out of the loop' and distancing themselves from me moving forward. Or, another ice-breaking event where limitations were laughed off and relationship strengthened. Thankfully, the latter occurred and interestingly over the course of the next couple of years, LOL laughingly became 'lots of love' to everyone in the company with the net affect being closer relationships and greater transparency.

Organizations are recognizing the need for transparency with their customers and the markets they are focused. At Purely we're committed to a social media process that opens us up for inspection at all levels. It occurred to me that all transparency discussions I have been a part of or read about deal primarily with the external and very little with the internal. I am so grateful to Bluegill Creative, our branding and marketing partner for their taking Purely through a very insightful process of corporate self evaluation with the result being a better understanding of ourselves. Great, great progress.

John 15:12 commands us to "...love one another, as I have loved you." I reference this to try and make a point from this post. Organizations are recognizing the need for transparency with their customers and the markets they are focused. It occurred to me that all transparency discussions I have been a part of or read about deal with the external, market analysis and little of the internal. My goal for Purely in the coming months is that I become transparent to our employees and they grow more comfortable exposing themselves to one another and to me and that we will build on lots of laughing and love.

When we learn to LOL, I'm quite certain our gains in all areas will be tangible and life altering. It will also be very helpful if some of our younger employees help me with my acronym abilities.

Well, I have a beautiful Valentine who is tired of my typing away and I think ready for her diaper to be changed. Now that's transparency!

Little Actions

I find it interesting how conditioned we are to focus on the big things in life and how accolades are oftentimes given when these big events/actions/results occur. Makes sense doesn't it? We all respond to recognition, good or bad for our achievements.

What about the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of little actions happening along the way to the "big event?" Aren't these deserving of recognition? Isn't it most likely that these small, mundane, seemingly insignificant actions ultimately yield the big results?

I am always fascinated by and have a strong desire to learn about people who have accomplished great things. Everybody loves a winner, right? The universal constant with this group of winners seems to be their ability and willingness to learn from their mistakes along the way and their unquenchable excitement and anticipation of the massive results forthcoming because of the little achievements happening each day, week, month, year. What an amazing life Mother Teresa led and how significant her impact on a tiny spec of this World, yet I suspect her daily life would have seemed exceptionally mundane to most of us. I wonder if Thomas Edison had crowds surrounding him at 2:00 a.m. on many nights as he obsessively pursued that next step in his quest to bring light to all of us? Warren Buffet has built his empire one spreadsheet analysis at a time,systematically surrounding himself with like-minded, analytical, not so 'exciting' people.

Here's where I am going with this. Life of the individual or the organization is a marathon made up of mundane actions with seemingly minor-to-meaningless impact. That's okay! The actions have impact and the yield over the course of the marathon can be really, really big or even difficult to measure. And isn't impact like success relative?

When I founded Purely the entire thought process at the time was to satisfy unmet demand for quality germicidal ultraviolet (UV-C) replacement bulbs. Believe me, nothing seems exciting about replacement components and when the product is a scientific technology the result was a lot of glazed stares. This said, we love the fact that these products help ensure that tens of thousands of consumer products work properly, hospital equipment sterilizes effectively, research institutions studies are accurate, food processing assuredly eliminates salmonella and other pathogens...you get the point. Unexciting, seemingly insignificant products helping deliver safe, effective products and services to people everywhere...excited yet?


A very cool thing that continues to occur at Purely Products is our growth and focus in lighting and the long-term impact that this step in the marathon run will yield. We recently introduced a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) that has a built-in Ionizer, allowing it to remove things like pet dander, smoke, dust mites and much more from the air. Great enough by itself, right? On top of this, our Healthy CFL bulbs use approximately 1/5 the energy of a traditional light bulb, last 5X longer for less landfill disposal and will reduce by over 2 tons the amount of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide emitted into the atmosphere by the old traditional incandescent lightbulb. I think it's awesomely exciting that a mundane, insignificant step of changing a lightbulb can have such amazing impact. And we're just getting started. We're rolling out a modular CFL lightbulb line, a nightlight that cleans the air, a light/sound/aroma/cleaning therapy unit singly doing what has required multiple units (and multiple amounts of energy) in the coming months. Individually and collectively the products will have huge impact on the individuals life and likely a very small BUT measurable positive impact on the whole.

I love how our business is being driven by the consumer. Green, eco-friendly, carbon footprint, awareness, etc. are the result of a few insignificant people raising the awareness of a few more insignificants to local municipalities, to state and federal agencies to worldwide forums. Amazing! Keep it up 'littles,' one 'little' company in Knoxville, TN is listening and all of us are learning.

Eyes of the Organization

Purely is in the middle of preparing to launch version 3.0 of our primary website by March 1. One of the very exciting and highly intimidating areas of our new site is our Social Media section complete with customer feedback, Blogs (wonder why I have begun this Blog?) and Purely as a company making a commitment to 'transparency.'

Ah, transparency, the 'synergy' of 2010. Many of you who know me well are aware of how I like to poke fun at how used and abused the word synergy was in the late '90's. I see a very similar trend with transparency. Lay it all out there. Open up completely. Show the dirty laundry, etc, etc, etc. Scary consideration isn't it? Well not really!

I remember as a kid growing up, how much I hated that my amazing mother could see straight through my eyes into my soul. Drove me nuts! I remember being questioned by her, trying to make excuses or skate around the truth to no avail and after much angst finally relenting and coming clean, aka transparent. In retrospect I recall that even if coming clean meant paying a price of punishment, the lifting of the burden made the price bearable and most times left me wondering why I made such a big deal of trying to hide the truth.

I am a strong proponent of consumer-driven, groundswells of change and finding ways to respond to this change. The old cliche "get on the bandwagon" has real truth when in the business of consumer products. Can you imagine a company saying today, 'no, we refuse to acknowledge the Internet as a viable tool for communication?" Not a good idea. I think it's fantastic that companies all around the world are buying into the Social Media phenomenon and I am very intrigued with the "commitment to transparency" statements. My hope it that there is real, corporate values driven, company cultural change, organizational purpose adjustments to transparency. At Purely, this has been a long, introspective, exciting, getting real with ourselves process with a result emerging that is the most exciting core value adoption and culture mandating initiative to which we have ever committed.

Here's the bottom line that I truly believe. The eyes of Purely reveal the soul of our organization and there is genuine, organizational-wide commitment to our employees, vendors, trade channels, associations and absolutely our customers that they will like what they see when they look. Mom truly does know best because she likely knows all! Purely has a lot of 'moms.'

Do Not Conform...

Megan (my wife) and I periodically lose our minds and decide that we'll go shopping and that our 33 month old son Benton and 19 month old daughter Malia will be in to this idea and want to go along as well.

This past Saturday we loaded up and headed to a local factory outlet for intense shopping at Carter's, Baby Gap, etc. As we're shopping I hear my wife start laughing hysterically, pointing at Malia. When I looked down I see my beautiful baby girl (she really is beautiful and I'm not just saying that. It's a fact! Just ask me!) running around having the time of her life in her new, technicolor outfit that her mommy purchased the day before with a pair of her brother's Thomas The Train underwear proudly positioned on the outside of her outfit. Benton is deep into potty training and wearing 'big boy' underwear, which of course means his sister must be wearing underwear as well. I'm sure every parent can relate.

The irony of this is that Malia wants to conform and be like her big brother, yet by dress standards of today she is completely nonconforming by wearing the underwear on the outside of her clothing. I'm very proud of her and hope she always maintains her own sense of fashion and 'normal.'

This is how I try and approach the positioning of Purely in the marketplace. A company developing and introducing products that meet the needs of the majority of consumers while having unique characteristics that make it hard to pigeonhole them into a specific category of existing products.

Words I avoid when developing products include 'traditional,' 'existing,' 'positioned,' 'proven,' 'mature,' 'entrenched.' You get the idea. Nothing wrong with these words and certainly nothing bad about these types of products. My reason for avoidance is that I think it's very important to recognize there are great companies already meeting the needs of these market segments.

My goal for Purely is to meet the consumer demand niches left wanting by offering them products in specific areas focused on eco-friendly, health and wellness. Our corporate structure and the way we approach the market are certainly non-conforming, I suspect much to the chagrin of my CPA and techie partners, who also happen to be some of the best human beings you will every meet.

I often measure how well we're meeting the 'unique' mantra of our product development by how easy it is to identify the retail section the new products best fit into and subsequently identifying the retailer's buyer for the particular product. Oftentimes some of our greatest challenge is connecting with the correct buyer for the product which leaves me smiling recognizing that we have a unique product, translating we hope in to less competition and greater market segment ownership.

Romans 12:2 encourages us to not transform to the ways of this World but to let God change us into a new person by changing the way we think. I love this! I love that Malia is her own person and pray that she and Purely always keep an open-mind to the way we think.

Here I Go...

Well, I have to first acknowledge Gavin Baker @gavinbaker for this Blog and putting up with my rantings in April 2007 about the absolute waste of time that Blogs are and people who blog obviously have too much time on their hands. Certainly sets the stage for what a foresighted, leading-edge thinker I am! Gavin, you win!

I hope to convey my thoughts as I go along and learn to be transparent. Not an easy task for an Irish kid from Ohio, raised in an autocratic, strict Southern Baptist household where right and wrong were clearly defined and quite black and white. After a 20 year hiatus from things spiritual, black and white and clearly defined filled with professional and personal successes and failures, I have come to the conclusion that my background is a blessing and surprisingly, much of what I was taught was pretty much dead on. God has challenged me to live a life of example which is the most exciting purpose of my life. I accepted His forgiveness and completely surrender my life in February 2006 and look forward with anticipation, working every day to focus on what is ahead (Philippians 4:13), forgetting what it behind.

I am excited to share with you things that are going on as Purely Enterprises continues to develop, build and grow as a company and the amazing opportunities this presents for diaperLove to provide diapers to children in need. Purely has made a commitment to donate 50% of its profit to diaperLove and other charities focused on children. This is the company's passion and my purpose for what I do professionally and personally. Thanks for visiting. I look forward to getting to know you better and let you inside...