We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Nataly Trusova. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Nataly below.

Hi Nataly , thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

We are Kiwi Eco Box – an eco-friendly subscription box for people who wants to live zero-waste. And since we launched 2 years ago we helped hundreds of people to adopt more sustainable habits into their daily routines.

Our goal is to help people to make their lifestyle more earth-friendly in an easy and enjoyable way. The way the subscription works – people receive a new box each month filled with different products, some of them coming on a recurring base like a toothbrush or cotton swabs, and some are different each month – reusable lunch boxes, shampoo bar, calendar, can be anything.

We also try to support small businesses by including their products in our boxes, as we believe it’s important to let local businesses grow.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

We started Kiwi Eco Box right when the pandemic hit, and it turned out to be the best decision ever, as we had all time and focus on our new project. We are two sisters – Kate and Nataly, when we started Nataly was living in Kyiv, and Kate was in Austin, and now since the war started in Ukraine, we live together in Austin.

We are actively trying to support Ukrainians in need and volunteers by donating part of our profits.

It was Kate’s idea to start Kiwi Eco Box, as she already started to implement some zero-waste habits into her life, she was always struggling to find everything she wanted online, sometimes it was out of stock, or too expensive. And she had this idea what if there is a subscription that actually helps you to make this process, you get what you need to live your life if a more sustainable way, but you don’t need to spend extra time and effort managing it. That’s how Kiwi Eco Box was born.

For those who are wondering about the name, unfortunately, we weren’t inspired by New Zealand, and the name was actually picked quite random, but we liked how it sounded and decided to keep it.

We are really happy about the fact that we helped lots of people to make their lifestyle more earth-friendly. I think it’s great when you’re able to deliver your customers a product that makes their life better in a way plus easier. Part of our subscriptions are actually gifted to our customers, and what can be a better gift than knowing that someone wants to make some positive impact on your life?

Even though we are all trying to do our part to make the world a better place, there is still so much more we can do, and that’s why we keep going!

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media definately has a huge impact on small businesses now, it gives you first customers, growth and fuel to move forward. But also it takes a lot of energy and effort to find a way to grow your audience right now, as it keeps changing rapidly.

Even though we just started 2 years ago, algorithms on Instagram (that’s where we have the biggest audience) at that time worked much better for businesses like ours or creators, that’s what allowed us to grow our audience quite fast. But also we were never focused on selling or promoting our brand, we just tried to share as much educational and motivational content as possible and eventually, it worked out for us.

I would recommend small brands that just starting to try to focus on content that they would like to share or repost themselves. But also don’t get disappointed when a video or post you’ve been working on for hours gets little interaction in comparison to some cute puppies.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

We use a few platforms as our sales channels – the main is our website – kiwiecobox.com, plus you can also find our box on platforms like Amazon, Etsy, and Cratejoy. All platforms are different and I would say have a bit different audiences, but it’s nice to be present on multiple platforms – so we have more chances that our future subscribers will find Kiwi Eco Box and eventually subscribe. But it’s also nice that we build a nice website that we love, so we don’t need to worry about that if something will happen with one platform, we can lose everything we built.

Contact Info:

• Website: kiwiecobox.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/kiwiecobox
• Twitter: twitter.com/kiwiecobox