We were lucky to catch up with Chisholm Weaver recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chisholm, thanks for joining us today. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

Perseverance, ingenuity, and a keen interest in forever learning. My parents were entrepreneurs that had many successes but more importantly to my development as a person, many failures too. These failures allowed me to learn what it takes to create something bigger than yourself, whether it was a small failure like a failed contract or a more significant failure like the loss of a business; these struggles that my parents endured were done with grace and an interest in how things could be done better the next time. Attention to the details that brought them to this end and an ability to be self-critical without being self-destructive, which can, at times, be a fine line.

The essential life lessons they instilled in me have allowed me to be a student of life. They always sought to understand their company’s position better and how their next steps could benefit or harm them, knowing that not every decision is perfect, but it at least had to be weighed. My parents decided perseverance (which could sometimes look like stubbornness) taught me to be less in tune with the negativity of failure and to focus on the solution and next steps forward. Some days, this is easier than others, as many other business owners have experienced.

Being a professional and entrepreneur is just as much about a good idea as the time and effort put into that idea. More importantly, they understood how to allocate that time and effort and be decisive in approaching each task. Where their most limited resources of time, patience, and attention were best spent for that week, day, or hour, this was as important as any lesson, creating a steady, “more” linear line of progression and preventing stagnation in most cases.

Relationships are significant to yourself and those around you. My parents were experts at relationships and truly understood how to appeal to everyone personally and professionally. They could make the people who worked within their business feel heard, empowered, and respected and know that they were heard, empowered, and respected.

Their relationships with themselves. A healthy understanding of their strengths, weaknesses and overall advantages on a given day. Treating themselves decent and never getting to high or too low allowed them to make better decisions, and have better relationships with customers, vendors, and their team on any given day.

They were loving people who enjoyed their time with family and working in their businesses to provide for themselves and their employee’s families. This was infectious and endearing to anyone who knew them, and you always felt welcome. I can only hope to embody this attribute the most.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

The manufacturing and sustainability industries found me. I moved to NYC 11 years ago in an attempt to prove to myself that I could do something meaningful in my life. I was not sure what that meaning was in any real sense, but I was going to find it one way or another. My co-founders and I found each other at a fashion retail and design trade show we attended with our respective companies. They showcased some of their innovative circular materials. They worked with global retailers to repurpose their waste streams into beautiful sales support items providing the foundation for what would one day be BSI. Fortunately for me, they enjoyed having a drink with me at the networking events during the shows, and we struck up a friendship. Who says those events are a waste of time?

Blue Standard Inc. is foundationally a material science and manufacturing company based in Stuttgart, Germany. We are the CPG good arm of a company more significant than the sum of its parts. We bring the expertise of over 50 years in the sustainable & circular material science industry to the consumer package goods market. To provide high-quality products at competitive prices that can be trusted. We use certified third-party life analysis to measure our c02, wastewater, and non-renewable consumption and how those affect global warming metrics, along with an industry-leading chain of custody practices that ensure our materials are sustainably and ethically sourced. These two attributes enable trust in our products and claims that is not currently available in the US market. As a company with its roots firmly planted in Europe (sourcing from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Croatia, with manufacturing in Croatia and Germany) our sourcing and production adhere to the strictest EU standards, including labor laws.

The story of BetterBone: As the beginning of the pandemic rolled in, we were getting the ball rolling with our CPG market research and were looking through our portfolio of innovative and proven sustainable materials for opportunities to use proven materials in new ways to disrupt industries that had remained happy with the status quo. We landed on one of our natural and sustainable proprietary materials that had been used for many products over 15 years, including hangers and children’s toys. A completely natural material in composition, 100% renewable, 100% sustainable, and safe for children due to many different properties that also lent itself to be a perfect candidate for a potentially new dog chew product. It also helped that the gentleman who runs the factory and helped develop the material had been giving his dogs hangers and children’s toys to chew on that had not passed QC. We had nearly 75+ years of market research as he happened to have 5 dogs, and none of them had a single issue in that time.

From there we were off to the races.

The dog chew industry has not seen innovation in nearly 70 years and is ripe for a proper disruption. The industry standard materials, which are nylon and rawhides, have dominated since their introduction in the 1950s, while the consumer was none the wiser as to why these materials could be potentially harmful to their dogs, families, and the planet as a whole. Our material and our brand, which we call BetterBone (TheBetterBone.com) is an opportunity for us to truly disrupt a market that comes very few times in your life. We are found ourselves in an exploding market that was stagnant at best with something truly innovative.

For instance, our unique dog chews provide dog owners with a healthier, safer, and more delicious option. BetterBone is made with our proprietary material, using two all-natural ingredients sourced directly from the European food industry. Meaning that betterbone is GMO-free, hypoallergenic, splinter resistant, safe to ingest in small amounts (nylon is not safe to ingest ever), and we can control the density of our bones, allowing us to create three different densities to provide the best chewing experience for any strength chewer you know (or if your main concern is tooth safety.)

BetterBone is all of these things and more. It is also made from 100% renewable and sustainably sourced ingredients proven to be carbon neutral. BetterBone is guaranteed free from any harmful chemicals as we still adhere to EU food standards so you will never find anything artificially colored, dyed, or flavored in our bones, and you will never find any harmful chemicals, including phthalates, parabens, BPA, BPF, SVHC’s, carcinogens, mutagens, and PFAS. Truly healthier and safer for your pup, family and our planet.

The BetterBone is a simple product that shows our commitment as a company to spending the time and effort to develop revolutionary materials that can genuinely reshape an industry for the better. The biggest impact we can make from a safety and sustainability standpoint is in products that our families use daily, like a dog chew or maybe even a planter pot.

REPOTS:
Showcasing some of our other innovative materials, we developed a line of planter pots that are elegant in their simplicity and creative in their implementation. Using upcycled denim production waste (reducing fashion waste), recycled commercial fishing nets, and fair-trade, ocean-bound plastic, our line of planter pots RE:Pots (repots.com) is changing how you see simple products like planter pots. Beautifully unique the textile planter pots provide an aesthetically pleasing look while reducing fashion waste and ocean plastic while providing opportunities for underserved communities.

REPots and BetterBone represent the ideals of Blue Standard Inc.. Effective, practical material science solutions that are used to create simple, elegant, premium products that are healthier for your family and our planet.

We are most proud of our commitment to our environment and making industries rethink what is possible and how we should look at materials and waste streams, not only for the future of our planet but for the safety of our families, including our dogs. There is no such thing as a perfect product, but we have put forth the effort to take the next step in achieving the perfect marriage of product and material.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

That is really our background and the foundation of the company. Manufacturing paired with material science. I was fortunate enough to partner with individuals who are experts in developing proprietary materials and the manufacturing processes that are required to manufacture at scale with those materials. This process began long before my involvement and continues to be improved to this day.

The process for our material for BetterBone started 15 years ago and was originally developed as a cheaper alternative to wood being used in some industries. We originally started this process using production cut-offs and sawdust from the furniture industry in Poland and Austria, along with corn/vegetable oil as the genesis of our material. It has taken on many forms and formulations over the years, used in children’s toys, hangers, and other sales support items.

The material and the manufacturing process had to be developed hand in hand with the help of two different universities and our manufacturing plant as it cannot be treated like other injection moldable materials due to its unique issues surrounding moisture, density, heat tolerance, and lack of any PFAS used in plasticizers.

Once we realized the opportunity to use this material in dog chews, we pivoted to using ingredients only from the food industry to make the material more suitable for our favorite furry friends to chew on, as well as safe to ingest.

This is one of our innovative materials developed over the years that we believe will distinguish us as market innovator and leader.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Trade shows. A cliche and some would say the “old” way of doing it, but this has been our number one driver of getting new clients. Getting in front of the educated buyer at a retailer, large or small, has been our most significant advantage in the growing success of our products and brands. We are able to connect with the seller and speak to their biggest concerns about the market and our product lines directly. It is truly the best way to “meet the market”.

There is a large amount of education associated with introducing a new material to a space like the pet market. That education gap is best overcome by one-on-one discussions with industry leaders and the buyers at companies who are making those decisions. It is easily the best format for us to appeal to a relatively large market, but also very tight nit. What we are finding is that no matter what industry we go into to disrupt, there are always preverbal “gatekeepers” or companies with reputations that if you can impress them, then everyone else will sign off on the product and use that company as a guide for what is either in demand or of higher quality. In the pet industry, that would be retailers like Petco, Target, and a couple of larger independent retailers with which we have had a lot of success.

Our relationships with Petco, Target, Chewy, and other large retailers all started at the first trade show that we attended, which was in March of 2023. It depends on the industry you are in but connecting with people and allowing them to understand your product is a huge advantage if you have the right offerings.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bluestandardinc.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/betterbone
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betterbone
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm9Lex0Y-UY
• Other: https://thebetterbone.com/ https://www.repots.com/