I spoke to Mia Davis about her work at Ollie. Below is our conversation (which has been edited for clarity and brevity)

‍Lizzie:  Thank you for being here! Can I have a quick intro to who you are?

Mia: My name is Mia Davis. I am the chief impact officer at Ollie. Ollie is a fresh human grade dog food company. It's really focused on quality science, packed ingredients and formulas and increasingly since I joined the team last year, the impact of our ingredients and materials.

Lizzie: Incredible, and you came from the clean beauty space. So tell me what drew you to pets and Ollie in general.

Mia: I had a great experience after my grad school degree was finished. I dove into consumer package goods and the beauty industry for about 14 years, really helped to pave the way for clean beauty and move the beauty industry in a more sustainable direction. Very proud of that work, but I didn't get into it just because I'm a beauty junkie. I got into it 'cause I really wanted to use the market as a tool for positive change. I have had my eye on the pet industry for a long time because it's a huge industry with a lot of impact, and I'm a pet owner, have been my whole life, and I volunteer at shelters and do home visits for dog adoption. So I've always just been very passionate about the space as a consumer and wanted to help to make the industry more sustainable.

Lizzie: That's so interesting. I have to ask about the pets that you have.

Mia: I have a dog and two cats and they're all rescues and they're all adorable and full of personality and we love them very, very much.

Lizzie: I love it. So tell me a little bit about what some current priorities at Ollie are regarding impact.

Mia: Well, I joined the team one year ago, almost to the day and have really spent the last year learning more about the industry and the brand and where we have greater opportunity for impact, either because we have a big hotspot, a big footprint or because it's low hanging fruit, not necessarily that it's easy but that we can kind of make some strides quicker. So I've been doing that, really setting up our foundation for our impact program that will be long and overarching and continue to evolve for the next year to three years. We'll definitely be focused on waste and material reduction, so that's from the manufacturing process packaging. I will also be focused on ingredients sourcing. In any food product and probably most of the pet industry, the biggest environmental footprint that we have is in the ingredients that we source, so that's a real priority area.

Lizzie:  I'm also a dog owner. I've lived with a dog since I was born and I've seen this from even people who cared a lot about their own health and prioritized organic food for themselves were feeding their dogs kibble like 10 years ago. It doesn't feel like it was that long ago. What do you think has been some of these changes and shifts from families really prioritizing what they're feeding their pets?

Mia: I think that as American consumers have awakened more to the organic food movement and the fact that environmental contaminants like heavy metals and other ingredients like PFAS, for example, can contaminate our cookware, cosmetics, electronics, food... The more people kind of awaken into this, they think about the areas of their life where they have either greater control or where they're really concerned about exposures. They might not think of it that way, but of course, meaning like, they might not label it as such, right? But if they're thinking about what they're eating, they'll start to eventually think, "What am I feeding my furry best friend?" And I think there's been a trend in the industry toward humanization, so we're seeing more human grade food, which is what Ollie is, emerge on the market, not just like the kind of kibble that we thought of when we were young and still on the market big time.

Lizzie: Definitely, and I guess to your point it's not really any different from the movements happening in makeup or what you're cooking on and everything else. It's pretty in line with where the world is moving.

Mia: Yeah, I think so. And I mean, that's not an accident. That's because of the emerging data over the last several decades that show that low-dose exposure to toxic chemicals really matters, or that buying organic or buying more sustainable regenerative foods helps the communities, helps the waterways, can actually help the soil, helps the crops and the quality and nutrition of the food. So of course, that would be the same for dog food.

Lizzie: Are there any big challenges that you're experiencing in the space?

Mia: No, not at all. (laughs)

Lizzie: It's all perfect. (laughs)

Mia: Of course there are a lot. So I attended the pet sustainability coalition conference last week. There were a lot of players that put on this conference and I was fortunate to be able to give one of the keynotes for the conference, and of course we're talking about opportunities for driving impact and really creating meaningful strategies and programs no matter what kind of business you're in, whether you're an ingredients supplier, packaging supplier, or a brand or retailer.

Along with those examples, talking about advice for strategizing, but also challenges that you're going to come against, and it depends of course on your role in the industry. For me being at Ollie, one of the challenges has been on data gaps. So you don't know what you don't know, and if you haven't asked the questions, that can take a while to kind of backfill and do, for example, a proper packaging audit. So for my first year, there's been a lot of data gathering and attempts to just get a solid baseline. I think that challenge probably applies to a lot of stakeholders in the industry or in any industry.

Lizzie: Sorry, can you clarify? With data gaps - are you talking about like what's best in class or is the supply chain really opaque, or is it sort of all of the above?

Mia: Yeah, supply chain being opaque. This is true for ingredients too, but more around packaging and other things. I have extensive experience in the beauty industry and personal care, some experience in supplements, so I can say that this is not unique, but when you say like, "Hey, I need to know all of the material that I am buying. I don't want to hear it's plastic or it's mostly polyethylene. I want to know 100% and we have restricted substances that we need to adhere to." It's still not common that brands like ours are saying, "No, we need to know everything because we can't measure, we can't manage what we're not measuring. We can't control and improve if we don't know what we're buying."

Lizzie: Makes sense. With that, are there any discussions around... I don't know if this came up at the conference or otherwise, but there are a couple of brands like Ollie who are trying to do the right thing and use human grade food, etc. Is there any sort of pre-competitive collaboration where you can all band together and try to demand this transparency in a better way?

Mia: I made a call for that honestly. I think it's really important that we put aside competition. Of course I'm not saying that isn't real when we all wanna win, and we also need to make sure that we're not getting into any antitrust issues, but I have done this in beauty, and I know that we can do it here. We can come together in a pre-competitive way so that we're speaking the same language, making the same asks of our supply chain. I think that we all win when we have greater disclosures, and it will also help with innovation and creating new and better materials. So I really hope that we will have more collaboration moving forward.

The pet sustainability coalition is a great example of collaboration. I mean, there's a lot of different stakeholders in that room, a bunch of competitors, and I think the packaging suppliers were very friendly toward each other and were sharing information. That's always helpful.

I do want to say, in case it wasn't clear when you asked the last question about challenges - I feel like I took you in a little bit of a circuitous route there, but I don't want to leave you or anyone listening to this with the impression that Ollie or other brands have no idea what they're buying or using.

Lizzie: Oh of course not.

Mia: It's just very common in most packaged goods to have the suppliers kind of try to give you the bare minimum, and I think we all need to be asking for total disclosures.

Lizzie: And I think anybody who knows about supply chain knows that data gaps are a massive challenge, like you said, in all industries. So no, I think that makes perfect sense, but I appreciate you clarifying.

Mia: Yeah, I think people who know about supply chains know that, but I don't think customers know that, so I don't want customers to be like, "Wait, is this person saying they don't know what they're buying?" That's not what I'm saying.

Lizzie: No, I understand. Anything else from the coalition conference? I know you mentioned you did a keynote. What other takeaways do you have from it?

Mia: Let me see. So I gave a definition of impact for businesses which includes sustainability, environment, social responsibility, animal welfare, and more.

Lizzie: Wow.

Mia: I talked about why impact matters to the planet and your business. I talked about ways to prioritize, measure and report your work, and used relevant examples from Ollie and Credo Beauty and Pact Collective and other brands and retailers. And then, I'm getting to your other question, I shared ideas for pre-competitive collaboration and offered some very direct thoughts on the need to get moving and not waste any time on this.

Lizzie: So interesting. So correct me if I'm wrong, but when you were at Credo, you helped create Pact Collective.

Mia: Yep.

Lizzie: And you also defined with Credo what sort of the clean beauty... I don't know what you wanna call it. It's not a threshold. What did you call it? You made a definition for clean beauty and standardized it, yes?

Mia: A standard, yes. I don't know that there will be something so cohesive because I think it's a little bit more diverse in pet. Meaning that obviously, there are a lot of parallels - like in beauty we talk about efficacy, right? Like results and the user experience, and then there's the clean formulas. There are parallels, of course, where we're talking about nutrition and quality, and we want high quality clean ingredients. So there are parallels there, and I'm planning on really building that out for Ollie. We're off to a really great start. I think we're already industry leading in this respect and will only continue to grow that program. But I don't know that it will be a standard across brands in the industry. I take an open approach so I'm happy to collaborate, but I don't know how to answer the question without just sounding negative. Like, I don't think it's gonna happen.

Lizzie: Why is it... The big difference is that Credo brought together a bunch of different brands. Ollie is its own brand, so that in itself is not apples to apples, I guess.

Mia: For sure.

Lizzie: So I think that makes sense, but that's very interesting.  I don't have any other specific questions. Is there anything that I didn't ask about that you wanted to add?

Mia: Let's see. I'd love for dog owners to check out Ollie. I think that the food is incredible and we really are results driven. We have an industry leading app where you can do health screening so you can take pictures of your dog.

Lizzie: What?!

Mia: Yeah, take pictures of your dog's skin and coat, their teeth and gums, and their stool to see if it looks like it might be time to go to the vet, or if you wanna track your dog's transition from kibble over to Ollie fresh food. That's really interesting. And the app is also just so easy to use, so very easy to control the cadence of your deliveries because we are a subscription company. So Ollie comes right to your door.

Lizzie: I had no idea.

Mia: And it's just really easy to manage, like much easier than any other app I've ever used. So I encourage people to go check it out. And the health screenings that I mentioned are also viewed on our team by our vets. We have vets on our team so it's very high touch, science backed.

Lizzie: Incredible. And where else can you find Ollie? Just on the website, or are there other places you can get it?

Mia: Yep, you could go to myollie.com and then we're at Petco and some other specialty smaller locations, but mainly Petco and ollie.com.

Lizzie: Fantastic, this was so much fun. Thank you so much.

Mia: Yeah, always fun to talk to you.

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