Sampling the Conscious Lifestyle

Morris grew up in the moun­tains of Wyoming, imbued with a pas­sion for the out­doors and envi­ron­men­tal­ism, show­ing an entre­pre­neur­ial spirit (start­ing a suc­cess­ful local hot-dog stand) at an early age and never look­ing back. Jesse Richardson was raised in a sim­i­lar environment—in Idaho and Wyoming—and is a grad­u­ate of UCLA as a polit­i­cal sci­ence major with focus on ethics, social respon­si­bil­ity, and edu­ca­tion. Borstelmann also hails from the moun­tains of the west, and has been involved with sus­tain­ably minded enter­prises his
entire life.

Conscious Box came about through a need per­ceived by its founder, Morris. “Many peo­ple are try­ing to live more con­sciously but they really don’t know where to start,” Morris said, “or they’re over­whelmed by all the choices. Conscious Box stemmed from us try­ing to live con­scious lifestyles and attempt­ing to explain to loved ones and fam­ily mem­bers how to do that as well.”

Conscious Box is a ser­vice through which sub­scribers are shipped a monthly selec­tion of pure and sus­tain­able prod­ucts hand­picked from busi­nesses that care for the planet. A sub­scriber this month would have received sam­ples of 14 products—aesthetically pre­sented in an eco-friendly package—including health-conscious snacks such as spir­ulina energy bites and Raw Revolution, cer­ti­fied fair trade and organic coconut oil, a healthy herb-based
cof­fee sub­sti­tute, an eco-safe hand san­i­tizer, vegan and GMO-free parme­san, and sev­eral other items.

 “It’s like a nat­ural prod­ucts tradeshow in a box,” said Conscious Box sub­scriber and Organic Connections pub­lisher Ken Whitman. “There are lots of fun sam­ples to try. The vari­ety is sur­pris­ing, and you might try out a prod­uct and find you like it and then add it to your list of ‘reg­u­lars.’ How many full-sized prod­ucts are you going to buy just to try them? That, along with the great pre­sen­ta­tion of the pack­age and their high stan­dards, is what makes the box an event when it arrives.”

“We’re really try­ing to get peo­ple to see Conscious Box as an authen­tic source that they can trust,” con­tin­ued Morris. “We’re also endeav­or­ing to give an expo­sure to smaller busi­nesses that don’t have the resources to get dis­tri­b­u­tion in a store like Whole Foods.”

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Unlike sim­i­lar ven­tures, a com­pany can­not pay a pro­mo­tional fee and have their prod­uct or prod­ucts included. “Businesses don’t pay to be in the box and can’t buy their way into it,” Morris pointed out. “Our busi­ness model is that sub­scribers pay for the monthly ser­vice, but the busi­nesses that are involved donate their prod­ucts to us. If they come to us and want to be in the box, we make sure it’s a com­pany that stands by our val­ues and philosophies.”

For the most part, though, Morris and his part­ners are con­stantly seek­ing out prod­ucts to include in upcom­ing sub­scriber pack­ages. “We have many processes,” said Morris. “We go to trade shows, and we’re always look­ing on Twitter, at cool lit­tle online mag­a­zines or things like that. When we do pick busi­nesses, we talk to the own­ers and seek to develop per­sonal rela­tion­ships with them and really get to know how they started and how they work.”

Conscious Box has only been out a few short months, but response has been out­stand­ing. They already have 2,200 Facebook fans and 3,500 Twitter fol­low­ers. “It’s sort of got­ten viral,” Morris remarked. “We haven’t actu­ally spent any money on advertising—we’ve been work­ing with blog­gers and YouTubers and it’s been spread­ing out there. Word of mouth has been huge, and at this point we have just over a thou­sand monthly sub­scribers in a few months. People are really thank­ful for the service.”

For the future, the com­pany is seek­ing to make it even eas­ier for cus­tomers to buy the full prod­ucts only sam­pled in the box, as well as expand­ing their efforts to pro­vide detailed feed­back to the com­pa­nies that had prod­ucts in the box. “We’re doing the best we can to make it a totally win-win sit­u­a­tion for the busi­nesses and for the sub­scribers as well,” Morris concluded.

It’s a new wave of entrepreneurs—and it’s quite refresh­ing to see ones like these mak­ing such a dif­fer­ence for our planet and society.

For more infor­ma­tion on Conscious Box, visit www.consciousbox.com.