6 Ways to Innovate Traditional Industries for Increased Impact: the M4 Factory Story with Patricia Miller
AWIA partnered with M4 Factory to support sustainability and brand building through 2022. We led their activator seat at the US Plastics Pact, reporting on behalf of the factory on the Four Targets in line with the Ellen Mcarthur Foundation priorities for a circular economy. We initiated the first company wide sustainability survey for staff and management, supported expansion of the regenerative materials library and internal operational changes on waste management procedures. Discover how we can support sustainability for your brand and business, today. Schedule a free consultation with the Angela Wallace Impact Agency, where Ange works directly with brands like M4 Factory to achieve growth and impact on their own terms.
Before Patricia Miller took over her 80-year-old grandfather’s factory in Chicago, she had been leading the commercial side of a biotech company in San Diego. She had grown up visiting her grandfather’s factory, M4, but as he got ready to retire, he shared with Patricia that the recession had impacted the business and that he would probably shut it down.
Manufacturing in the United States was dead, he said. That statement made Patricia curious.
“I’m always curious about absolute statements,” Patricia said. “How do you take this business that’s been around 35 years and just say, ‘Well, it doesn’t have a future’?”
Fast forward to 2014, and Patricia had bought the business off of her grandfather. When she acquired it, it was basically in a holding pattern. It needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. And so Patricia — who had always been interested in disrupting traditional industries for impact — asked herself:
“Okay, so do I build it back into what it was, or do I build it into what it can be?”
The only thing that felt worthwhile to her was building it into what it could be: a modern, responsible factory that was focused on both societal and planetary impact.
It wasn’t an easy to journey — and it’s one that’s still far from over — but today, eight years down the line, Patricia is able to look back and share six pieces of advice on rebuilding traditional industries for impact.
Break out of silos
“The manufacturing industry is difficult for a few reasons,” Patricia says. “Before I got into it, I was aware that it was a tough industry, but I didn’t realize just how challenging it is.”
Once Patricia acquired M4, she got to know the multitude of moving pieces within the business — and there were many. There were manufacturing complexities, machines, technology, computer systems, people, safety, and material supply chain problems. All of that worked to produce products that operated on a slim margin.
“What can be done in that kind of dynamic?” Patricia says she asked herself. She continues:
“One of the things that became clear to me was that manufacturing in the small- to mid-size market in the US ran pretty tried and true. It was a very insular industry segment. Many manufacturers operate as family businesses. They often don’t come from different industry segments.”
That type of continuity — on top of the manufacturing’s very real complexity — can make the industry quite insular. And that insularity can lead to a lack of innovation.
As someone who had come from a corporate marketing background, Patricia was able to bring a different lens to the business. Starting from scratch with a failed business, Patricia says, was also a blessing in its own right. It allowed her to reimagine what responsible manufacturing might look like, and gave her space from the hectic day-to-day to work towards that vision.
Hold the vision, not the circumstance
In the early days of relaunching M4, Patricia had to build from the bottom up. She didn’t have a team, any machines operating, or lights running. She didn’t have clients or funds in the bank.
“So it really became, ‘How do we hold the vision, not the circumstance?’” Patricia says.
Of course, her first step was to get the foundations in place: hiring a team, getting the factory functional, and starting to source for clients. But at the same time, she was also setting out a roadmap and a strategy for the factory, with a pretty big vision for what M4 could become: a responsible factory that prioritized lasting design and innovated with sustainable materials.
Patricia is clear, though, that she couldn’t action those goals from the get-go:
“It wasn’t like I could really sink into it when it was such early days and we just needed to get the basic fundamentals right. Start to paint the roadmap of what comes first and second and third, because otherwise it can feel so daunting.”
Get creative in tackling sustainability challenges
When most people think of ways to improve the sustainability of manufacturing — myself included — their minds immediately jump to materials. And Patricia and the M4 team have introduced new and sustainable materials to their factory. In fact, the factory is home to a Materials Library where clients can come and learn about sustainable and innovative alternatives to traditional materials. When consulting with M4, they learn about the different materials they could use to craft their products.
But M4 hasn’t stopped at materials alone.
“One of the questions was, how do we make sure to integrate design and product design and manufacturing together so that we don’t lose the creativity on the front end, and we don’t just get to commodotize cheap plastic that gets thrown out?” says Patricia.
Part of M4’s sustainability approach is to make long-lasting products of quality — not single-use products destined for the landfill.
Position yourself for maximum impact
One of the ways that M4 works to change the industry is by joining its clients earlier on in the manufacturing process.
“We know a lot of decisions have to get made early on to be able to influence change,” Patricia says. “So if we have design and engineering in house, we can be much more likely to influence some of those better decisions than if we’re just doing something on the back end.”
By working with clients to design their products, Patricia and her team could help them understand how to use less plastics, use more sustainable materials, and how to make products that stood the test of time.
Aim for better, not perfect
Leaders at the helm of conscious startups can often become overwhelmed by the amount of work there is to be done — it seems like there are constantly new improvements that can be made. However, it’s important to take things one step at a time.
“We really are just aiming for better, not perfect,” Patricia says. “We acknowledge that we don’t have it all right. There isn’t a perfect model yet, and there aren’t perfect solutions.”
Patricia empathizes with any customers that want to improve their sustainability but struggle with the high costs of doing so, especially in a low-margin industry. That’s a difficult decision, and sometimes sacrifices do need to be made. However, by keeping the vision in mind, you can work with the current circumstances — all while striving for better in the future.
Build for the future, not the present
It’s easy to see a lot of the news around climate change and the plastics crisis and feel a little bit defeated — but there are many, many reasons to be excited.
“Seven years ago, when I restarted this business and was talking about sustainability and circularity and materials, most people were like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Patricia says. “Now I feel like businesses are making decisions off of it. They’re coming to us and asking about it. I’m finding that we’re really poised for growth — not just in the standpoint of growing the business, but creating bigger impact.”
It’s never easy to build a product that breaks conventional norms, but those that are building purpose-driven businesses are seeing demand catch up as the world changes. And so part of being a leader of a conscious business means simply trusting: trusting that those instincts are correct, that the world will catch up, and that the difficult tradeoffs made now will pay off in the future.
Ready to start scaling your conscious business?
Ready to start moving your business towards impact, but not sure where to start? Schedule a free consultation with the Angela Wallace Impact Agency, where Ange works directly with brands like M4 Factory to achieve growth and impact on their own terms.
© Angela Wallace Impact Agency 2021
Authored by content co-conspirator Kenza Moller: professional story-telling for impact-oriented companies, agencies and thought leaders.
