How Frank Green CEO Ben Young aims to ‘leave the planet better than we found it’

With a growing demand in the market for affordable, sustainable solutions for everyday living, pioneers in the sector are ensuring product offerings are not only practical but fun and chic, too.

Frank Green founder and CEO Ben Young speaks to how the brand best known for its reusable keep cups and water bottles plans to expand into new categories.

It’s all part of a plan driven by his mission to leave the world a better place.

Here, Young talks about what customers crave, lessons the brand has learnt in the past decade, fashion, partnerships and how continued innovation is driven by customer obsession.

Inside Retail: Personalisation is a hallmark of the Frank Green brand, why do you believe customers crave this?

Ben Young: Personalisation is important to every customer, not just a Frank Green customer.

A Frank Green customer appreciates that we channel style in a way that feels like them. 

IR: What does the next decade look like for the Frank Green brand?

BY: Frank Green is constantly evolving. It’s been 10 years since we sold our first reusable and we’ve learnt a lot along the way.

Our mission keeps us focused on what the evolution of our brand looks like.

We’re really clear that we only create beautifully designed, premium reusable products that people love and want to be seen with, so that they will use, and re-use, over and over again.

Beyond reusable cups and bottles we offer homewares, essential pet products and more recently apparel – all are stylish, functional, made to last and great for the planet.

November will also see the launch of another category but more on this later. The team and I are very excited about the launch, and the backstory is we have been working on this range since 2018.

IR: What drove the decision to refresh the redesign of some core Frank Green products? How do they enhance the customer experience compared to previous iterations?

BY: We’re obsessed with innovating to tick all our customers’ boxes.

This means we’re constantly challenging ourselves to improve the products we offer now and what we’ll bring to our customers in the future.

I can’t tell you how much time and effort we put into research and development across our team.

IR: Frank Green is renowned for the exploration of new sustainable materials, such as your cactus leather bottle holder. How does this fit into the brand’s broader sustainability goals, and what is its role in the current product lineup?

BY: It’s really simple – we envision a world that doesn’t rely on single-use plastic; where natural materials are harnessed to reduce our impact on the environment while also eliminating the need for single-use waste.

The cactus leather range highlights our pursuit to identify and invest in premium materials that aren’t plastic and are kinder to our plant.

The Frank Green cactus leather accessories are designed using high-quality bio-materials through patented technology.

Cactus leather is just one ingredient of our product pipeline exploration into new materials. Earlier this year Frank Green commenced our journey toward manufacturing all of our stainless steel products using a minimum of 90 per cent recycled stainless steel.

And our partnership with Parley for the Oceans will see Frank Green integrate Parley Ocean Plastic into our product range as well as the potential to develop new products made from it.

But in saying this, reusing is and will always be much better than materials made sustainability. You can’t go past this fact.

IR: Beyond cactus leather, are there any other sustainable materials or product innovations in the pipeline that we can look forward to from Frank Green?

BY: Yes. You’ll have to watch this space. 

IR: Do you envision expanding beyond reusable bottles and cups into other categories within the sustainable lifestyle market?

BY: Yes, and the apparel range is an example of that – our homewares and pet collections are areas we’ll continue to expand on. 

IR: I love to finish with this, what is the career legacy you hope to leave?

BY: I want us to leave the planet better than we found it.

We have started a genuine global movement of committed citizens who truly believe this is the only way to live.

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