OUR TRUE COST
Redefining traditional measures of business success
At House of Hackney, we believe in a future that benefits all. We want to move away from the current model of business where only the few profit, at the exploitation of everyone else, and to the detriment of our planet.
To become a regenerative business, as well as our financial health, we know we need to deliver and support good social and environmental health. To do this, we have begun to account for the full cost of the extractive impact our production has on Nature, including human wellbeing.
We are evolving the traditional measure of business success - a financial only profit and loss statement - by using the same framework to show that true profitability can only come when you have a healthy social and environment bottom line too.
By setting out a framework that aligns with recognised business measures, our hope is that a Nature profit and loss structure can be applied to other businesses in the same way as appointing a Mother Nature directorship to a board.
It is an important first step in overhauling our business ‘success metrics’, reporting on how our impact translates into financial cost.
Our Product’s True Price
We realise that how much we pay our factories to bring our designs to life does not include the extractive impact that production has on Nature, including human wellbeing.
To understand the amount our products should cost, including the social and environmental expense, we engaged the organisation True Price to help us measure it.
Starting with our two biggest product categories, fabric and wallpaper, we gathered impact data and applied the True Price methodology. This helped us to quantify the price we should pay for our products, taking their impact into account.
See our True Price analysis results in the table pictured:
What Does this Mean for Us?
By calculating the social and environmental cost of our products’ production, it has shown us we need to be investing 3% of our sales into reducing our impact.
We will use these results to help highlight our impact hotspots and set targets for future product improvements, with the aim of reducing our “true price”.
Most importantly, this is a first step in overhauling our business’s success metrics, reporting on our social and environmental impacts and costs through new Nature-centric profit and loss accounting.
We are in the trial stages with this new methodology, and although it is not perfect, we are committed to improving its accuracy over time, and open-sourcing our findings.
Read our full True Price report here.
Our Activism
Our purpose at House of Hackney is to advocate for Nature by informing and activating people to protect and restore all that she does for life on Earth.
Our Partners
From forest protection, to regenerative agriculture and supporting a new generation of diverse talent, we are proud to work hands-on with leading global and local leaders in this space.
