A new force in helping businesses to collectively drive sustainable change.
Products of Change (POC) is launching officially today (November 30) as a global membership hub, which aims to help individuals and businesses to collectively drive prolonged and achievable change on the sustainable front.
The activities of this cross-sector industry organisation are to be anchored by an interactive online educational hub for brand owners, retailers, content creators, innovators, manufacturing partners and marketing experts who, by joining together and learning from each other, are set to progress real sustainable change across consumer product markets and beyond.
Spearheaded by Helena Mansell-Stopher (former licensing director of National Geographic Partners), Products of Change began life in 2019 as a small networking group of licensing professionals with a shared mission to connect sustainable best practices across industry. This has evolved into today’s official launch of the membership programme and affiliated website hub, the latter bringing together all the latest thinking, learnings and best practice in sustainability across all manner of consumer products markets, education, research, science and manufacturing.
Products of Change is owned collaboratively between Helena Mansell-Stopher and Max Media Ventures/Publishing (the team behind LicensingSource.net, The Licensing Awards, The B&LLAs, The Licensing Source Book, as well as other leading B2B publications and awards programmes).
POC is also an instrumental partner in SILC, the Sustainability In Licensing Conferences, the first of which took place last week. It was organised by Max Publishing and curated by Helena Mansell-Stopher.
“When I first formed Products of Change, inviting a small group of people to join the conversation, it very quickly grew from seven to 70 companies within eight weeks. This high level of engagement underlined the desire from industry to learn about sustainable change and progress on this front. However, in order to make a real changeable difference, we needed an infrastructure. Now, joining forces with the team at Max Media Ventures, to launch Products of Change as a visionary membership organisation means we can make this vision a reality,” explained Helena Mansell-Stopher, founder of Products Of Change.
“So, here we are today, supported by our core ambassadors, launching a global hub, to connect and drive sustainable change within industry; a platform that will continually evolve to ensure we keep members up to date with the latest sustainable technologies. I am so thankful to everyone who has been a part of the Products of Change journey thus far and feel very positive about the long-term collective impact we really can all make together.”
Alongside the new web hub, a Products of Change twice-weekly e-newsletter, featuring news, interviews, commentary, trend analysis covering all aspects of sustainability, will be sent out to members as well as to the wider community, encouraging the latter to join the POC movement.
Feeding into the Products of Change platform is a committed team of ambassadors, who are all thought-leaders in their respective fields. These include: Leonora Aixas, textile designer; Trudi Bishop, founder of Bee Licensing; Paul De’Ath, product design course director at Central St Martins; Kate French, senior retail manager for Hasbro; James George, network development lead at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation; Andrea Green, managing director of Globally Green; Simon Gresswell, md of SGLP; Peter Johnson, managing director of Creature Media; June Kirkwood, md of Nutmeg Licensing; Michelle Pearce, director of BrandFocus Consulting and Peter Rooke, md of Arts + Science/chief marketing officer for Breakdown Plastic.
While Products of Change’s origins are in the licensing industry, with its inherent huge stretch across a myriad of consumer product areas – the retail spectrum and branded activity touching millions – this is not an exclusive club.
“For change to happen in the wider sphere, Products of Change has a broad remit to extend its reach to other sectors and disciplines in order that ideas and practices can be shared for the greater good of businesses, industries and the planet as a whole,” elaborated Helena.
From just £165 annually per person, members of Products of Change will have access to content from podcasts and webinars from visionaries to never-seen-before research findings; inspiring educational modules to news galore – as well as a platform to connect and network with other like-minded individuals.
To find out more about how to join Products of Change visit www.productsofchange.com.
At the core of Products of Change is the core principle to give back to the next generation through sustainable education. Every year 5% of Product of Change’s annual profit will be donated to sustainable development causes. As part of this, POC is partnering with Wastebuster, a global leading environmental educator to be involved in the launch of a Recycle to Read campaign, delivering a toy recycling infrastructure to the UK for 2021.
POC is also supporting the planting of trees to offset current CO2 and is proud to work closely with the team at Ecologi to create a Products of Change forest.
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