Collaboration – the power of plural
You can achieve more as a team than you can on your own. This isn’t true of just individuals but of business. This sentiment is thrown out of the window in other markets though, where anyone in the same niche as you is seen as your competition. Your job is to do everything better than them, bigger than them, and shout louder than them, right? ‘Healthy competition’ takes on a different meaning when being a successful company means trying to wipe out other companies who offer the same. But what’s genuinely amazing and heart-warming about vegan companies is this type of competition just doesn’t exist. I’ve never heard a vegan chocolate company say “Natasha has started selling her vegan chocolates too – it’s awful, and I’m going to do everything I can to ensure she fails so that my own business can be more successful.” I’ve never heard a vegan virtual assistant say “Jamal has started his own vegan virtual assistant business so I’m going to make sure I put him out of business!” All I’ve ever heard is genuine encouragement and excitement: “Natasha and I have shared some great ideas about marketing our chocolates!” and “Jamal and I have monthly Zoom meetings to catch up on what we’re both working on, it’s great to find someone else who’s doing the same that I am!”
This willingness to help, and desire to lift each other’s businesses up, is very real in the vegan sector. Why? Because we all have the same mission. We share the same ethics. We have the same dream of a vegan world, and we’re truly excited to work together to make that happen. And the most exciting thing about this is that we can genuinely create some amazing experiences, products and services by working with our fellow vegan businesses. I don’t mean merging multiple businesses into one entity – I mean businesses collaborating on really exciting new things together. By creating new partnerships you’ve got the opportunity to get you the type of coverage you can’t get on your own and introduce your brand to each other’s audiences.
For example, when Meatless Farm launched their direct-to-consumer deliveries (meaning you could order their alt-meat products direct from their website) they teamed up with One Planet Pizza to also offer their frozen vegan pizzas. One Planet Pizza already offered their own direct-to-consumer service meaning the two could have easily seen each other as competing services, but instead they introduced each other’s audience to another great vegan brand and created a far bigger story. Since then, the two companies have also teamed up with Applewood Vegan Cheese to create the amazing One Planet Pizza Meatless Farm Cheezeburger Pizza. When Applewood first launched their vegan cheese in the UK it sold out in supermarkets across the country meaning it was the perfect brand to bring into the collaboration and the pizza is One Planet Pizza’s best selling product.
What collaborations could you do with other vegan companies so that you both reach larger audiences? This might be creating a whole new product or service together, or bundling your products up into a package deal. Your lip balm might be the perfect bundle product for another company’s vegan moisturiser. Your restaurant could be the recommended vegan evening meal venue to the local B&B. You could team up to be the vegan brand advisor to complement another company’s vegan social media services. Who do you know? Who could you know? Start reaching out and see what complimentary collaborations you can work on to make something bigger than the sum of its parts.
