Making an impact with trendy toilet rolls, it’s possible! Scale-up lessons from The Good Roll.
Casper, the CFO at The Good Roll, shared his scale-up lessons.
Turning toilet rolls into home accessories? The Good Roll made it happen. With colorful and humorous packaging plus a compelling story, everyone wants to display these rolls in their bathrooms.
Myrna spoke with CFO Casper Willemsen about making an impact and scaling up. And, of course, his three golden scale-up lessons. ‘We hardly lose any subscriptions; we only gain new ones.’
“Just a good story won’t cut it”
The Good Roll practices impact entrepreneurship. What does impact entrepreneurship look like in practice?
The business case must be solid if you’re giving away 50% of the profit
‘We go quite far at The Good Roll. We not only operate sustainably but also give away 50% of our net profit. Yet, we can still generate healthy figures, similar to profit-driven businesses. However, your business case must be rock-solid. It is more of a long-term investment than a short-term one. You cannot just say, ‘In five years, we’ll make €1 billion in revenue.’ Everything needs justification – even how you’ll give away half of it.’
Customer expectations differ at non-impact products
‘Customers at an impact enterprise are usually very dedicated. We hardly lose subscriptions; we only gain them. In the past years, we’ve grown by 15%, without much effort. Customers also like to identify with your product. For example, we sell ‘naked’ toilet rolls and rolls with a recognizable The Good Roll wrap; people prefer having rolls with recognizable wraps. What you often see is that sustainable brands naturally become top brands. Because your cost price is higher, you’re more expensive for the customer. Therefore, they naturally expect a certain quality. You have to deliver that quality because just a good story won’t cut it.’
A shared larger goal
‘What I mainly see within the company is that everyone here has a shared goal. Everyone is looking to enhance their career growth, but there’s something extra – we genuinely believe in our mission.’
What challenges did you encounter at The Good Roll?
‘Creating clarity was the most important thing.’ Big smile. ‘When I came on board, the situation wasn’t great. There was accounting software for small businesses implemented, there were spreadsheets – a whole bunch of spreadsheets – but things weren’t running smoothly. There was a price list, but nobody knew how it worked. There was inventory, but it didn’t match the actual costs. So, I started straightening everything out. The advantage of Google Spreadsheets is that you can link all the sheets, so you can mutate everything together. If you keep an eye on that, you can build a lot of beautiful things, if you don’t have a complete ERP system.’
“I also had to convince the rest of the team of my added value”
‘It will sound familiar to CFOs, but I also had to convince the rest of the team of my added value. At one point, a yearly budget had to be made. I worked for 24 hours straight a whole weekend so that by Monday, we had one that we could also use to steer a bit and incorporate different scenarios. From that moment on, everyone was convinced since we discovered that our prices simply didn’t add up. We were making revenue, but it was leaking from every side. That’s when we started focusing on margins.’
“Another important objective: we don’t want to become carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative”
What challenges lie ahead for you?
‘’We want to grow to 40,000 subscriptions, so we have stable recurring revenue. That means we need to grow by about 35%. A realistic scenario because we’re currently growing by 25%, without doing anything. And we want to expand our production to Ghana. The Ghanaian farmer should earn three times as much per month because of us. Another important objective: we don’t want to become carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative. This appeals particularly to B2B because it means companies reduce their CO2 footprint by purchasing from us. Compensating with toilet rolls, essentially.’
What are your three golden tips for scale-up CFOs?
“So, you better have a business case where you turn positive as quickly as possible, otherwise you just won’t make it”
Lesson 1. Aim for a healthy profit and loss statement
‘The days when you could run losses for the first three years and still find investors are over. It just doesn’t happen anymore – and that turningpoint happened very quickly. So, you better have a business case where you turn positive as quickly as possible, otherwise you just won’t make it. You’re essentially biting yourself in the tail: because you’re not making a profit, you miss out on investments, however you need them for exactly the same reason.’
Lesson 2. Search for your investors within your own customer base.
‘This is a warning and a tip in one: choose your investors carefully. It may seem like sustainable investing is already happening, but in practice, the market isn’t ready for it yet. Investors, especially at large institutions, mainly go for the short term – profit and resale – and don’t look at long-term value creation. If you really need investors, look first in your own dedicated customer base. There you have the best chance of finding an investor with the same vision as you.’
Lesson 3. Don’t structure too quickly, but quickly enough.
‘You can absorb more with good structuring than with more personnel. So, make sure your processes are transparent. Standardize them, and make sure your software aligns with them. If you don’t, you’ll quickly outgrow yourself – especially in a scale-up. Then you get stuck because your software is inadequate or your processes clash, while the workload unnecessarily rises. All kinds of problems you can prevent by structuring on time.’
The Good Roll Foundation
The Good Roll Foundation has one goal: to make sustainable sanitation available. Our Foundation was established to spend the money we raise from selling our rolls as effectively as possible on building sanitation facilities, without making a profit.
The Good Roll donates 50% of the net profit each year to building toilets in developing countries. This is the net profit, so the profit remaining after deducting expenses (personnel, office).
Casper Willemsen’s journey – CFO The Good Roll
Casper Willemsen ended up at The Good Roll through a series of steps. ‘During my accountancy studies, I got stuck on my graduation assignment. I was advised to take three months off. Exactly during those months, I was offered a job at an accountancy firm, so graduation took a back seat. After the job, there was a brief period as a freelance external controller until I found a job at an administration office that also gave me the space to finish my studies. After that, I knew I wanted to work for a sustainable company. By then, I had seen enough companies from the inside to realize that companies get so much freedom that they inevitably cause climate problems. At The Good Roll, I can make profit and impact.’
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