Case Study

HSS: What is USEFULL's story?

Alison Cove: Since I was young, I've been passionate about trying to find solutions to our environmental issues, especially how environmental degradation negatively impacts humans. I grew up by the Chesapeake Bay and often went sailing on it. Some days the water was dark brown like chocolate. That was my first exposure to rampant pollution, in a place I loved and knew that I wanted to improve if I could.

At the time that I wrote my first pitch deck in 2013 (for what has become USEFULL), I was a management consultant and ordered takeout every day. I had a stark moment of "My habits aren't matching my beliefs," which inspired that pitch deck to address this issue. Initially, my plan was to pitch the idea to Starbucks because I was going there every morning to order coffee, and I knew there had to be a better way than getting a new cup every day, throwing it away, and starting all over again the next day.

I slept on the concept because, when I was just out of college, Zipcar was new, Uber and Lyft weren't yet players in the market, bike shares were in a pilot project – the whole sharing economy was in its infancy. The idea of sharing a cup felt like a step too far at that point.

And I continued to sleep on it but could not stop thinking about it. In 2017, I decided to invite friends over for a business idea pitching and pizza night and asked them for brutal feedback about my early reuse concept. I encouraged them to tell me to put this idea entirely to bed so that I could just move on with my life.

To my surprise, my friends said, "No, this is actually a really cool idea. You should see where it goes." With that encouragement, I went to my first angel networking event, hosted by The Boston Globe.

The event was structured as "business speed dating" with the angel investing community in Boston. I had about 30 seconds to pitch my idea. At the end of the pitches, the investors were asked what the most promising idea was that they had heard that night. They chose mine and I had this pivotal moment of "Now, I have to actually go build this thing."

I then did a pilot to test the waters in 2018 while I was still working a full-time job. I started a program with the coffee shop on the first floor of my office building. I got 200 cups, signed up 75 people, and wanted to see if people were comfortable with this idea.

The feedback I got was "Love the idea. Love what you're building. Hate the cups that you're using." That customer acceptance was enough for me to go off to the races and really try to build out this concept.

After the pilot, we formally launched Coffee Cup Collective in January 2020. I was going cafe to cafe in Boston to add participating partners. News of my new company and concept was covered on the front page of The Boston Globe. I was off and running. Until I wasn't.

In March 2020, coffee shops and reusing cups was a dead idea. COVID entirely stopped everything.

So here I was, in the middle of a pandemic, with a concept around reuse that had been gaining traction, and then, the world stopped. Rather than just dropping the idea and moving on, I committed to pivoting to learn where the idea might still be viable. It became clear that, even with the pandemic, college campuses were slowly repopulating, sustainability challenges were becoming more prominent, and students were the perfect audience for a reuse concept. So higher education became the new focus. Coffee Cup Collective became USEFULL, and that's where we've focused ever since.

I rebranded to USEFULL, built new products, promoted new philosophies, and since 2021 have been focused on higher ed. Why higher ed? Sustainability matters on campuses. Student health matters. Operational needs matter. Predictable budgets matter. Campuses themselves are amazing microcosms of society; we are also able to instill greater environmental and health awareness in the students that will be our future leaders. Now USEFULL is in place at campuses around the country, in smaller private colleges and large state universities. As awareness of plastics on health and the environment grows, so does our campus partner base.

HSS: Thank you so much for sharing that story. Pivoting to your raise, how were you able to raise over $7 million?

AC: I had a handful of clients signed up with real dollar values assigned and they were happy clients. I then kept showing traction over time and built investor confidence.

However, in the beginning, I really struggled to raise funds because I refused to use "reusable" plastic. All of my competition is using plastic, because "reusable" plastic is relatively cheap. They see it as an affordable entryway to reuse. I know plastic-free is the right path for reuse.

My fear is that the Reuse Movement is still tied to plastic, though, which undermines the credibility of the entire Reuse Movement. As people lose trust in plastic, whether in single-use or reusable containers and cups, the Reuse Movement overall could get tied up in this distrust. Plastics poison us every time we eat and drink out of these products. But the plastic industry is powerful and embedded in our "disposable" society.

To address that, my whole philosophy is you can't solve a plastic problem with more plastic. It doesn't make sense to me that you would swap out one plastic for a "more durable" plastic, and call the problem solved.

HSS: What would you say is your biggest challenge?

Right now, the political climate is tough. We're not directly impacted, but higher education has been under attack which is disruptive to our clients and sustainability in general. Additionally, transportation costs are up, so it's more expensive for us to ship inventory.

We use stainless steel, and all stainless steel is imported. The stainless steel tariff was expensive because there's no domestic stainless steel for us to buy.

I will say from a glass half-full perspective, people are becoming more aware of the plastic problem, and don't want plastic in their food or drink. It's nice not to finally not be the crazy person in the room saying we have a plastic problem! And it's not just plastic waste in our water and land. It's in our bodies, and eating and drinking out of plastic is hurting us.

HSS: As you look back on the business. What were some of the high and low points?

Certainly, signing my first clients was a huge high point. Another one was getting our first grant. When we had money coming in, it really validated the business. The other high point was our software developers, who are Ukrainian; they were in Ukraine when the war started, and they were having Zoom calls with us from bunkers. We ultimately got them asylum here in the States, which is so meaningful to me.

Supply chain issues were a low point. We struggled to get inventory in a timely manner. Additionally, tariffs were a concern for us.

High points: when I walk around campus and see students with our containers and seeing the program just work -- it brings tears to my eyes!

HSS: What's your growth strategy?

Sign every deal possible and drive home the need for takeout containers to be plastic-free. We're focused on academia right now, but also trying to find similar campus-like environments. For example, we recently launched in 55+ communities. We have additional pilot projects in the works in other verticals as well.

HSS: What are your lessons learned?

AC: I learned how ingrained you must be in a business to make it work. I didn't come from higher ed or food service. I didn't think that I'd be designing and manufacturing my own containers. I thought that there would be an off-the-shelf solution for this. I learned that in order to make the business successful, I needed to understand all the facets of both my business and my clients' business. I had prior experience in project management and management consulting, but I needed to add knowledge of manufacturing, importing, software development, and supply chain to my core competencies to grow the business.

HSS: Do you have any additional advice for female founded businesses?

Being a female founder, I think we just have to have our shit so much more together than our male counterparts. So, if you're fundraising, it means you need to have that many more signed contracts than male counterparts. If you're signing a new client, you need to have the products fully built as opposed to male counterparts. You need to have sold a fully baked thing in order to get the clients. That meant I had to keep working my tail off so that I could build that. My paycheck was funding this business on the side. I originally was planning to go to business school but used the money that I had saved for business school to invest in USEFULL. It's the most intense MBA I could have ever earned.

Insights

How We Met: Cold Email

I emailed Alison and we set up a time to chat. I love all my conversations with the founders, but in this one we discovered our daughters were born 1 day apart and took a bit of a detour talking about our deplastic journeys when it comes to babies.