B-Corp

B Corp Certification is a designation that a business is meeting high standards of verified performance, accountability, and transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. In order to achieve certification, a company must demonstrate high social and environmental performance, make a legal commitment by changing their corporate governance structure to be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and exhibit transparency by allowing information about their performance measured against B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on their B Corp profile. Minimal Gear’s B-Corp profile is here.

At Minimal Gear, we believe businesses can be a force for positive impact. It can often seem that being a profitable company and a force for good are mutually exclusive, but we believe there is a trail that we can blaze for us where we can do both. B Corp is our way of committing to ourselves to continually create that path and improve every aspect of our company, whether it makes us money or not.

This commitment also extends to us as individuals because Minimal Gear is made up of people. As it states above, B-Corp is a certification given to businesses by B-Lab (a non-profit) after a comprehensive and rigorous examination.

Because we are a B-Corp, or if you prefer: a Beneficial Corporation, a business entity that creates a bit of good in the world. This certification is so much more than a piece of paper or logo. It requires intense scrutiny of our internal systems and external practices, and it encourages us to make commitments to be a company that holds more dear than just the bottom line. But we aren’t finished. The B Lab™ team has helped us develop an improvement plan so we can continue to advance and grow as a company and brand. This is just the beginning!

Hear it straight from our Founder, Gilad: “Back when I started Minimal Gear, I really wanted to find a way to use the company as a tool to make things less bad. I completely believed that businesses were not a good entity as so often they strip the human factor from themselves. I wanted Minimal Gear to be a different kind of company. Besides Mika’s (my wife and co-founder) and my view of the world, which is more social and equitable, we didn’t really know how to make that happen. When Nathan and I crossed paths, he was looking to do something good but wasn’t sure what yet - it was a great opportunity. Together we created a new position called Head of Impact, now managed by Kyle. We did this even though we had no marketing or sales people at the time - Impact was that important to us to invest in. With that, the B-Corp Certification Nathan managed to reach was a great tool for us. Our intention is to use it more as an accountability tool, a way for us to stay on course and remain a company for good.”

Read more here about the origins of our B Corp™ journey and the processes we followed to get to where we are today.

In an effort to hold ourselves accountable and increase transparency, we publish our internal impact goals each year.