Meet Brandale Randolph and the Nash brothers, three Massachusetts entrepreneurs showing us that success and social impact can coexist.
The Essentials
A strong work culture is incredibly important.
Values that drive social change can also drive employee retention and a company’s reputation.
Data analysis is a helpful tool– as Brandale Randolph says, how can we take metrics to identify who’s in poverty and figure out how we can best help them?
Brandale Randolph originally founded 1854 Cycling, a bike company based in Framingham, Massachusetts, to provide job opportunities for formerly incarcerated women.
Before that, Randolph co-founded Project Poverty, wrote two books on financial literacy, conducted seminars on workforce readiness, and worked with underserved youth in Lubbock, Texas. He also spent time as a commodities broker before the financial crash in 2008.
1854 is now debuting a new e-bike, the Bowditch, designed to improve community policing; it was recently unveiled at the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Trade Show in April. The bike is purposely designed to look non-intimidating, and is outfitted with the tech police need while also giving responders more access to underserved populations.
His approach is rooted in abolition and data analysis—“how can I take metrics to identify who’s in poverty and figure out how we can best help them?” he said. “Let’s not buy turkeys for folks without ovens. How can we change the arc of their lives?”
“The more people innovate for a better tomorrow, the better the world will be,” Randolph said. “I see a world in which policing is different than it is now–where it is abolished, and we’ve started all over, and it’s something new.”
On the other side of the state, Seth and Mitch Nash have built Blue Q in Pittsfield. From an infamous flat cat that launched the company to a product line with hundreds of quirky, edgy items like socks that encourage the wearer to “kick this day in its sunshiny ass,” the Nash brothers and their team have been shipping products to thousands of gift shops, bookstores, and speciality markets from their Pittsfield warehouse since the 1990s.
They’ve developed a reputation for having a strong work culture, retaining employees for decades and hiring individuals with disabilities through a longstanding relationship with Berkshire County Arc. “We spend so much time knitting Blue Q together in unexpected ways, with the goal of just keeping people engaged. Our value system is a top priority, and it’s why we retain people,” Mitch Nash said.
The Nash brothers, as well as Blue Q’s staffers, are known for being active community volunteers, and Blue Q builds donations into its business model. For years, 1 percent of sock sales have gone to Doctors Without Borders; the company just surpassed $2 million in donations. And 1 percent of all bag sales go to environmental causes—about half of those funds are currently being steered to the Housatonic Valley Association, which is dedicated to preserving the Housatonic watershed (and whose leadership recently came to give a talk at the Blue Q garden).
“So much of our business is based on experimentation,” Mitch said. “From the outside, it can look like this was a premeditated path, but that’s not really the case. A lot of it has been having an openness to learning, suddenly connecting a couple of dots and figuring something out. Just stay out there, keep meeting people. Inspiration exists, but it wants to find you busy. You never know what could come next.”
Francesca Olsen is MFN’s Publisher and runs a communications consulting firm in Western MA.
