Image source: World Wild Life, Critically Endangered Animals - Sunda Tiger <https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/sunda-tiger>.
Nature was always a concern. Initially at a personal level but early on, seeing the kind of impact our small business had on the environment, we could only imagine what kind of impact much bigger businesses must have. With the business growing, timing was perfect to develop good habits, and make sure they were our priority along the way. We are proud to say that those good habits have now become a part of Gorila’s unwavering values.
We soon realized that it wasn’t the most economical way to go, in our industry at least. In a world where you can seemingly get the “same product” for half the price and get it by tomorrow morning, taking the locally made approach wasn’t exactly going to be smooth sailling. We would learn that we constantly have to convince people that quality and ethic is worth the extra buck and the extra delay. Some people understood our values and they are now as much apart of this difference we are making as we are.
Important numbers
A great (and a little lucky) start was our location. The province of Quebec in Canada is known for it’s hydro electricity. Therefor, 99% of the energy we use (for products manufactured by Gorila) is renewable. To put this into perspective, the state of Ohio uses mainly natural gas and coal* with renewable energy resources representing less then 4% of Ohio’s total in-state electricity generation in 2021.
In 2016, we changed almost half of our suppliers to bring 79% of our suppliers within a 3h drive. 99% of our materials (for products manufactured by Gorila) are now sourced within a 1h drive.
The next thing on the list is plastic... We already started to limit the use of it in our packaging as much as we could. Some of it had to stay for lack of a better alternative but we’ve managed to reduce our use by 80% in 2021. Plastic represents only 1% of our packaging materials for locally manufactured products but we're closer to 25% for items that are not yet made here and we have plans to lower that number, of course.
Hopefully we can inspire the fitness industry to follow our footsteps and together we can make a REAL difference.
Today, we're proud to say that money and profit margin is not our main motivator, quality, equality and nature are.
*Source: Energy Information Administration, State Energy Data System.
Text by Martin Roy, co-founder & CEO