Seventh Generation: Alan Newman and Jeffrey Hollender

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.7 • 31.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2021

⏱️ 95 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With its eco-friendly paper towels, diapers, and cleansers, Seventh Generation was one of the first—and most successful—green household brands to hit the market. But in the early 1990s, just a few years after it began as a scrappy mail-order catalog, its two founders had a bitter falling out. Alan Newman and Jeffrey Hollender have barely spoken since that time, but they generously agreed to come on the show to talk to Guy about the business they were both passionate about, and the delicate nature of partnership.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, it's Guy here, and really quick before we start this episode, there are a few bad words that you will hear that we did not bleed out.
0:34.0	So if you're listening with kids, just be mindful.
0:41.0	We were working with a tissue paper manufacturer out in Wisconsin that made all the paper products.
0:46.0	Yeah.
0:47.0	They thought we were crazy, by the way, because, you know, we were selling unbleached, 100% recycled fiber bathroom tissue,
0:55.0	which was the scratchy stuff that you found in a gas station.
1:00.0	And we insisted that it said made with 100% recycled paper.
1:04.0	It had always been made with 100% recycled, but they hid that in all the materials.
1:09.0	Oh, because consumers didn't want that?
1:11.0	No. Why would consumers want to recycle?
1:13.0	No.
1:14.0	Toilet paper made a recycled paper.
1:16.0	They thought we were absolutely out of our mind.
1:19.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
1:24.0	The show about innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
1:37.0	I'm Guy Ross, and on the show today, how two men who probably had no business going into business together went into business together and built seven generation.
	...

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