How can brands stay adaptable in an ever-changing industry while still prioritizing environmental sustainability? On this 156th episode of the E-Comm Show, Andrew Maff interviews Cristofer Smith, Founder of Green Apple Active. With a strong focus on sustainability and innovation, Green Apple Active has consistently evolved and adapted its products to meet the changing needs of consumers and the environment.

In this episode, Cristofer shares his insights on how brands can balance staying relevant with being environmentally conscious. He discusses the importance of constantly researching and investing in new sustainable technologies, as well as staying true to their core values and mission. If you're looking to learn how to stay adaptable and socially responsible in the ever-changing world of e-commerce, this episode is a must-listen.

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Sustainability Doesn't Mean Loss of Profitability with Green Apple Active

Andrew Maff and Cristofer Smith

CONNECT WITH OUR HOST: AndrewMaff.com  |  Twitter: @AndrewMaff | LinkedIn: @AndrewMaff 

Cristofer Smith 

Dad and entrepreneur. My team and I have released over 12 activewear brands for various domestic and international accounts in the last 30 years. Founder of the first vegan bio sustainable activewear brand made of bamboo and organic cotton spandex. Packaged in bio plastic made of corn starch. Family and Dad of 3, 2 college graduates, one at Penn State. Retired pro athlete Flat Track motorcycles. Fitness freak to this day. Father of the smiley nutrient shake seen on social media. Love life!

00:03

Well, it's a big deal because it's a top killer in the natural world. It's killing between 253 people every 24 hours. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of The E-Comm Show. I'm your host as usual, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by the amazing Cristofer Smith, who is the founder and VPO of Green Apple Active. Chris, how are you doing? Buddy? Ready for good show.

01:20

Great, Andrew. And thanks for inviting us.

01:23

Yeah, I appreciate obviously, having you on the show. I know we kind of like already started talking a little bit before we even started recording here, and I'm now, I'm like, Okay, I know where we're going with this is gonna be great. I always like starting these off pretty stereotypical. So tell us a little bit about your background. How you got started on green apple active, and we're going to take it from there. Okay,

01:42

you got it? Okay, so let's go back 30 years ago, and I was a professional motorcycle, flat track racer, and we did that for approximately six years, and then after, you know, you go into an early retirement, because family starts to materialize. We had kids, and I'm like, Okay, this is a dangerous sport. Let's you know, people wanted to talk me out of it, and I allowed that to happen. So I wanted to get into the athletic trade and stay there. So that's what brought up the apparel. And I met a guy in college, and his mom made Adidas, so she taught me the ropes, and we opened up a little factory downtown Los Angeles. It looked like a garage, okay? And we parlayed our student loans into six sewing machines, and we built a cutting table. And that was the beginning. And then people go, Wow, you're really good at styling the brands. And I said, Okay, you know, I'll do some side work for you. That's how I got into design and manufacturing, just like that. And then years later, I'm like, Okay, I want to get better at what I do, and how do we do that? Well, we got to get plant based apparel going, because I'm watching what's happening to our planet, and being in manufacturing, you get to travel around the world a lot like four to five times a year, and you go to these third world countries, by gosh, and you see what's really gotten. You know what's really happening. And we're talking filth, and we're talking rivers that you can't even see. They're so covered with plastic. Now most people don't really understand, but synthetic textiles are the main polluter, not the plastic bottles. The plastic bottles are recycled, so the microplastics coming out of athletic and regular synthetic is incredible. So one legging will produce about 5000 approximately, I give or take, okay, 5000 microplastic splinters each wash that goes into the water and it acts like a conduit. It collects more plastic. So that's what's building these islands of plastic. And that changed me totally. It took. I took about 16 months off. Traveled around the world, looking at farms, testing fabrics, loved modell and lenzig tensile, which is eucalyptus. But then I came across bamboo, and I'm like, Oh my goodness. The breathability, the antimicrobial, the growing of the plant is just phenomenal. And by the way, it captures the carbon, and it's a big time producer of oxygen, high grade oxygen, they call it. So that was that I called up a buddy. We flew over to Asia, studied, I think we studied the making of it for about eight months, spent time in the farms, produced our first bamboo. Really, China was the only one producing any kind of bamboo product, and it was. Not any knits. It was more like cotton schwabs and Kleenex and stuff like that. They were making it for hospitals. So we stood there, you know, and stayed there and taught them how to make a knit. And I have all the sheets on how we did this. I actually kept everything long. And, you know, that's what brought it to market. Okay, that that was the beginning.

05:26

So with, geez, awesome story. So with green apple active, specifically, obviously we know how you got started. How long have you been in business? What's, what's been, kind of the approach since you started, I know, before we started chatting here, you mentioned like you were crushing it on retail, and then covid happened and all this other stuff. So tell me a little bit about

05:46

that. Yes. So once I kind of let go of private label and started focusing on grain Apple, I started selling to large chains, and by golly, within each year, it graduated two to $3 million by the sixth year, we're almost $16 million and then we decide, let's take a look at E commerce. And we had a very minor website. I mean, it was really nothing we focused on, but it was doing almost 850,000 a year with no ads or anything, just off of what we were selling offline. So we're like, yeah, we got to really take a look at this, because we're watching what's going on. And a lot of our retailers, they're going down, they're going to go bankrupt. You can tell the future is changing. So how's that's coming along. I had some issues with one of my sons, which we had to take care of, so I kind of kicked back for almost a year and let my sales people and everybody do their thing, and, you know, do mine as a father. And then once we had him back in action, I'm back in action, and here comes covid, not even a year later. And so that just totally almost shut us down completely. So what I did, Andrew was I said, Okay, let's just close all of our wholesale down, go retail online. We had a lot of stuff that we sold, you know, offline, in storage. So let's do that. Let's not run ads. Let's just let it sell naturally. And we did that for almost 30 some months, until we were our year. Then Asia had a year, and then we had to rebuild everything we do, a special fabric, which we trademarked under eco air tech and egg, which is eco germ guard for the medical and what happened was, I really wanted to test this textile, not just in Asia and in Europe, but here. So we made some raw goods. We sent it up to a lab here in Utah, and by golly, that stuff tested out incredibly it actually neutralized what they called hai. And being naive to Hai, I'm like, Okay, what's the big deal about hai? Because I'm only looking for athletic fiber here. I'm not looking for MediCal. And they go, Well, it's a big deal because it's a top killer in the natural world. It's killing between 253 people every 24 hours. Hospital acquired infections. I don't know if you know, hopefully people, they can, you know, catch on to this. It's a big deal because after I learned about it, I had friends, and I talked to him, and they said, Oh yeah, we were at the hospital and we had one, but luckily, they got over it, okay. But these cancer patients that where their immune system is weak and they get an HAI it's a very tough comeback. So you know, anyway to make a long story short, no hormone disruptors, no thyroid problems, no metals, quick, dry, most breathable fabric arm, and it's super comfortable, and it lasts, and you don't have to iron it. It'll just hang it up and it irons itself. So it had everything, really, you know, I couldn't beat the fiber, and then once we made it into process, the fiber into yarn, we mixed an antimicrobial herb with it, okay, which was nothing but from an American indian.com that I read about, and I bought that freeze dried, mixed it into the bamboo when we liquefy it. So anyway, that's what brought green apple to fruition online. And we're just kind of rebooting this year. So we're just starting to run our ads. Actually, I'm just kind of looking into that. Otherwise, we're doing email marketing, social media. I. And we try to keep people adrift of what we're doing. And every box has an update sheet, which I do myself, and I put it in, you know, I give it to the team. I say, let's put this in every box so people are updated. You know, we're okay. We're making it slowly but surely. And that's, that's how it all came around. And yeah, we're happy. So E commerce is now our challenge.

10:27

So the then we're glad you're here. That's, I mean, the it's always crazy to me to hear the science behind like, what is clothing, right? Like, it's close. Everyone wears clothes. Most people wear clothes. And like, the science behind it is always very interesting. And so like, you know, the the approach that you've taken with it to kind of go into this direction, because obviously, like, the organic clothing side, the bamboo side, is definitely and obviously you're the expert here, so correct me, I'm wrong, but it's been taking off over the past several years because of exactly what you said about it just being a huge waster in the whole fast fashion thing and all that fun stuff. Am I right? No,

11:10

John, I mean the hidden formulas, the chemicals that are in there are some of the top cancer causing chemicals on Earth. So whenever you're buying a fabric, say, printed, a printed synthetic fabric has approximately five to 10,000 chemicals in it. Now it's plastic. It's a derivative of plastic. So when your body heats up, we all know what plastic does. It releases those chemicals, and now we're talking about the largest organ in the skin, so it absorbs that now we have through friends, doctors and scientists, it does not affect you immediately, unless your immune system is down and then it will. But otherwise, as you age, your immune system changes and it lowers. Hopefully we've learned, we're learning how to keep it up now with some peptides in the right food, but still, it's dangerous. So that was a main concern of mine, because I did have a family member who passed away of a cancer that was an environmental cancer, not directly linked to fabric, but, you know, an offshoot of some of those chemicals. And so that helped drive me. And then there's the ecosystem, like I was telling you about when I travel around the world. So in manufacturing, you're going to India, Vietnam, Cambodia, China, and you're getting around and seeing those countries and what's happening, you know, because they don't clean it up like we do, and we have very tough laws here, but you can, you know, and I'm not, I'm not going to name a country, because I love all the countries. The people are just genuinely, you know, really beautiful. But you look at rivers that are totally covered with plastic, and the water is flowing underneath, and these people live off that river, you know, they clean, wash their clothes, they clean their bodies and everything. I mean, some of these countries are very poor, so all that just really, you know, intensify. I told my team about it, and they're just, like, so into it, yeah, but I want to, I want to elaborate with you. Andrew, about bamboo. Okay, just briefly, so bamboo, when I started it with another friend of mine, rich, it was not wanted here because the cotton industry wanted to keep that organic market. So at the little, tiny things that when they say something about boo, they go, Oh, it's dirty. And I'm like, I was there watching it be made. Okay, so I know exactly it's made. It's a viscose fiber, and it's made with a couple of chemicals, which are got certified global organic standard, and then we miss those out with water misters so there's nothing left, and it's recycled until it evaporates. Okay, there's nothing into Earth. Now, bamboo is the fastest growing plant on Earth. And I'm not kidding, it has been recorded at growing up to three feet in 24 hours. Whoa, three feet. I

14:33

know it's fast, but yeah, no,

14:35

no, this is recording where they record the plant in now this is in perfect circumstances, yeah, though bamboo will grow anywhere at any time, but if it's in that perfect climate, it just really grows so that helped, you know, everything led to a positive energy. And you know, like, I tell people in some of my ads, Hey, you want the positive karma, try to wear a plant you. It's in harmony with Earth, you know, simple as that. And that's that I I'm working at getting it more out there online, and that's a challenge right now, but we're working on it.

15:12

I was gonna ask you about that. So obviously, you had a lot of success in the retail side. You've pivoted over to the ecommerce, more traditional, like DTC side. I should say, what's been that approach, what's been working? What, Where are you guys at with that now?

15:25

Well, I, you know, I do, in just the short time, I'm working it myself. It's, it's a conglomerate of things. So, you know, you can do ads, you can do social media, and you can do email marketing, but for me, I kind of recognize those three work best together in some sort of a harmonistic manner. So your email should go out when your social media hits, if it's going to be a sale or if it's going to be a discount, or, let's just say it's a holiday, even you know you want to take advantage of all of those things and the ads need to promote almost simultaneously with all of that. Now, once that happens, then things start, they start cracking. I mean, we, we grew running the just the way I said, harmony, ads, email, social media. We got it finally all together, running at once, and our sales went up five times within a month. It just exploded. So it can't be done, yeah, yeah. And we

16:35

live and breathe this stuff, so you're preaching to the choir. Yeah. It's, you know, it's always very interesting. Of like, you know, let's say was it 2024, right now, you know, five plus years ago, everything was trackable. Every little thing that you did was okay. Here was the ROI of this specific thing that we just did. And then, you know, iOS changed with their tracking, and now with the new mark, with, obviously, things like Amazon, but you also have all these other marketplaces, and the customer journey is becoming so fluid that it doesn't make it as easy to track everyone as it once was. And brands are starting to realize that by having all of your marketing kind of working cohesively together, there are elements where there's so much gray area that if you pull one thing back, it's actually going to hurt something else. And so you've got to find that nice balance of everything kind of working together so that you can actually spread that messaging and kind of position the brand, you know, as you need to to, of course, bring in more sales. How are you positioning the brand? Is it? Are you kind of focusing on that, like, more like organic element to it,

17:41

yes. And you know, I I'm continually talking and meeting with people that are pros, because I'm not. I'm a professional at building a brand, any kind of brand. I know how to build brands. I'm a product developer. That's what I do. I build products, and I do it right? So I am constantly meeting with tech people, right? And just listening and trying to figure this all out, put it together. And let me just say, once I get it together, sometimes it goes, Oh no, Google's changing their algorithm. Oh, wait a minute. I'm just starting to figure this out. And you know, they're like, well, we'll get it. We'll get back to you on that. And you know, it's just one thing after another, but I have to say, I am using a lot of AI now, so that's helping me. It's helping me because I am not a professional marketeer. I am a product person. I can sell the product, because I believe in the product, and that creates that stigma where, you know, okay, no problem. Hey, I believe in it. Otherwise I won't do it. And I'm, you know, it's still a learning process for me. So, Andrew, anytime I talk to tech people, I just sit and I listen, and I'll sit here with my book and I'll write notes, and that's what I do. Yeah. Are you?

19:03

Are you only selling on your site right now? Are you also have you ventured into, like the Amazon or Walmart world, or anything like that? Yeah,

19:10

it's kind of strange you say that I'm not really selling any of them yet, but I, I started selling them. I actually made this Amazon apparel when they started way back. I was, I was a factory for them, you know, designing and manufacturing, and then I started to brand out. And so I let go of that. But we figure, if we really want to maximize green apple, we have to start selling with other, you know, outside vendors. Right now, we just try to get our own website and that traffic figured out, and then we'll move on. I just, I don't want to bite off more than I chicken chew. And then we're kind of, you know, I skeptical, because it's been almost three years we've been off. I. We've been on a vacation here. So you know, it's about making the apparel, doing it right, getting the right fit, right fabric, everything, you know, perfect, and then we're ready to rock and roll, because otherwise, people just sit there and they charge you back, or they write bad reviews, and on our website, I feel really bad, because we get all these five stars, and I'm like, wait a minute. I think people are, you know, think we're lying or something. If any time I get a under five star review, it's about my customer service. So that's just another thing that needs to be, yeah, I have, I insist on live customer service. So I have two customer service agents that work Monday through Saturday, 9am to 6pm and then from there, it goes auto. But you know, I still like to talk somebody, so I give that option to our customers. Yeah,

20:56

I think it's a great way to do it. And to be honest, to your point, like, I love bad reviews. I think, you know, it's, I'm sure there's a ton of people listening this right now that are just laughing at that comment. But it allows you to showcase your customer service. It allows you to show that, like, hey, these reviews aren't all fake. Like, if you come across a product, and it's especially on someone's own website, where you know, you know that they have control over the reviews. It looks fabricated. It looks fake. Like it's, you know it very well, like, yeah, sure, you're just deleting all of the bad ones. I love the bad ones, and I like to showcase them. Of like, Hey, here's we're not perfect. We want to be. Here's what we did to deal with it when things don't work out the way we want. I think it's a great way to showcase your customer service stuff,

21:39

especially under when it's a bad one, that's not anger and it's factual, you know, because there's a difference between people that are angry and people that are spewing out some factual information, like a fit, or, you know, a stretch, or something, you know, something advantageous to the customer. They don't want to hear angry people. They want to hear facts. I think. I mean, that's what I want to hear, you know, when I go to buy somebody's product, hey, I want to read about it, and I want to see what people have to say. I don't want to hear about their anger. I mean, we have enough of that going around for the next 10 years. Problem, you know, let's, let's all mellow out and get back to the love scene.

22:22

Yes, bring back the hippies. That's what I keep saying. I mean,

22:25

I'm that old, but I'm old, and my mom was hippie, so I remember hate Ashbury. I mean, I was just a young kid, but I still remember it, yeah, and I still like the music from what's

22:39

great, timeless. Well,

22:41

great Cristofer,

22:42

really appreciate you having on the show. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. I always like to do the usual and give you an opportunity let everyone know they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about green apple. Well,

22:53

I'm really, I want to thank you too, Andrew. It was really, it was really nice of you to give us this opportunity and to make yourself available. Christofer@greenappleactive.com info@greenappleactive.com is our customer service. Our greenappleactive.com is our website. Those are the three ways they can contact us now, and we're starting to sell on a couple outside websites. But I don't want to jump the gun, though, that's in near future, coming soon. So you know, Amazon, fair and all those, they're coming, but we first have to get the product right. So yeah, anyway, that's how people can contact us. Beautiful

23:37

Cristofer, thank you so much for being on the show. Everyone who tuned in, of course, thank you as well. Please make sure you do the usual thing, rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to theecommshow.com and check out all the previous episodes. But as usual, thanks for joining us,

23:54

Thank you for tuning in to The E-Comm Show head over to theecommshow.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E-Comm Show is brought to you by BlueTuskr, a full service digital marketing company specifically for e-commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth. Go to bluetuskr.com Now for more information. Make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of The E-Comm Show.