Last month, I took a great vacation with my extended family. My parents were generous enough to rent a great beach house at Litchfield Beach in South Carolina, which is the state I grew up in. The beach and weather were beautiful; the time with family was priceless.
Mid-week I got a call from one of my staff saying that a customer asked her about Sigg bottles and BPA in the lining. Neither of us knew a thing about it so I headed to the local coffee shop where I could get internet access and Googled it. Sure enough the story had just hit the news wires that Sigg’s old liner contained BPA, a carcinogen that had been the reason everyone threw away their plastic water bottles a few years back. The BPA issue was a significant contributor to many people choosing Sigg as their new water bottle.
Well, as Nemo’s dad Marlin says in ‘Finding Nemo’ when face-to-face with the hungry anglerfish: “Good feelings gone.”
You see, my retail business, Sundog Trading Company, sells Sigg. In fact, we sell a lot of Sigg. We sell Sigg online at sundogtrading.com, we sell Sigg in our store at the Mall of America, and we have a dedicated kiosk at the Mall of America that sells everything Sigg makes. Sigg water bottles, Sigg Thermoses, Sigg caps, Sigg lids, Sigg cleaning brushes…you get the idea. We sell A LOT of Sigg. We’re the largest retailer of Sigg products in the region, so this was a rather significant issue for us. And it came close to ruining an otherwise ideal week. After all, the mission of Sundog Trading is to retail products that are stylish, fun and responsible. I take this mission very seriously and was worried we had contributed to the problem rather than been a resource for solutions. And everyone in my family drank from Sigg, including my children.
When I got back home to Minnesota my first call was to my Sigg rep and requested a meeting. In the meantime, I had read Steve Wasik’s (Sigg’s CEO) letter on Sigg’s corporate site and had a better understanding of the situation.
I was relieved that, though BPA was in the liner, there was no leaching. I knew Sigg had always posted their test results for leaching on their website.
But, there had never been any thought in my mind that the old liner might have BPA in it. I think that is why the response by people was/is so severe. People feel lied to and they feel betrayed. They chose Sigg for the very reason that Sigg was now announcing it had changed it’s liner. I felt betrayed at first as well. After all, my company was out there selling their product to our customers.
But I can’t run a business based on emotions. I needed information and a plan to deal with the situation once I fully understood it. I met with my Sigg rep, expressed my concerns and asked him what Sigg’s plan was. He and I discussed the matter for a long time. I had questions that he couldn’t answer and he followed up with me the next day with answers. I was pleased that Sigg was being proactive in their response to the matter and had a plan. I was even more relieved to learn that the liners containing BPA had been replaced in August 2008 with a new liner and that all the bottles we had been selling had the new BPA-free liner.
At Sundog Trading, we also developed our own plan. First, we went through each and every Sigg bottle we had in stock to ensure we were only selling the new liner. I was pleased to find we were. Sigg had just initiated a voluntary exchange program wherein customers could ship back bottles with the old liner by October 31 and exchange for a new bottle. We worked with Sigg to ensure we could act as intermediary for our customers and allow them to make that exchange at our stores and ship them back (at Sigg’s cost) on behalf of our customer. In addition, we worked with our staff to ensure they had the facts and support material to answer questions our customers had. And our customers had questions. I was very worried that our business would suffer badly, and we certainly had folks asking questions.
So, once I had all the information, I felt much better. We had a situation where the company, our vendor, was increasing transparency by releasing the fact that old products contained the chemical in the liner. They had proactively launched a new liner over a year ago, replacing the liner that contained BPA. They did this not because the liner was leaching, as had been the case with plastic bottles, but because it was the right thing to do. They had a program in place to allow customers to replace their old bottles, and Sigg was communicating.
I’ve spent a great deal of time on this issue. My company had to make a decision about our future with Sigg. My wife and I had to decide if we were going to continue to use Sigg bottles in our home. This was a personal as well as business matter.
It’s now a month later and I’ve read the blogs and responses. I’ve talked to a lot of consumers, my staff and my family and we have decided to stick with Sigg. They never lied to us; by omission or otherwise. They made the right decision to replace the old liner. They came forward with news about the old liners despite the fact that there was zero leaching, and they are taking the shots. I have no doubt that both our businesses will take a hit. Some people will decide that they aren’t comfortable with Sigg’s response and will look elsewhere. I respect that decision.
The cynical reader will think that I’m just trying to save my business and protect our sales. My response to that line of thought is a resounding ‘No.’ We carry other bottle brands: we sell Sigg’s stainless steel line, and we are excited about KOR ONE’s BPA-free plastic bottles. I don’t have to sell Sigg for my business to succeed, and now I can say we sell Sigg because they did the right thing.
Companies aren’t perfect, and the situation could have been far worse. Had the bottles been leaching my response would have been different. But it takes courage to do the right thing, and that’s what I think Sigg is doing here. That’s exactly the kind of brand we want to be in partnership with at Sundog Trading Company and it is entirely consistent with our efforts to sell responsible products from companies who are taking real steps forward. Sigg will take it’s lumps, and our Sigg sales will probably suffer, but we’ll stick with the brand for the same reason they came forward about the old liners; it’s the right thing to do.
Tags: aluminum water bottle, BPA, mall of america, metal water bottle, plastic water bottle, SIGG