One Year of B Corp: Some sustainable design highlights

This week marks our first B Corp birthday!

It has been a big year both professionally and personally. Being certified B Corp before our co-founder Gemma went on maternity leave marked the beginning of a new chapter for StudioXAG.

Embracing the power of using our business as a force for good, we fulfilled several goals, including working with Choose Love, a charity we have long supported, and investing in innovation with our carbon tracking tool XAGzero.

It meant a lot to our team to lend their talent and expertise to reimagining retail for the better and make a real positive impact in the world.

Read on to find out more about what we’ve been up to in our first year as a B Corp or download our full Impact Report for 2022-23 here.

Being a B Corp is much more than just ticking boxes and filling out forms; it’s how we behave, how we see the world, and what we aim to achieve. With our certification in hand, we can help accelerate the change we need to see, and set an example for others to follow.

The driving force behind our greatest initiatives, including our B Corp journey, is of course our team.

Three times a year, we create a space for collaboration, new ideas and employee-led company goal setting to push StudioXAG to the next level. We call this programme COGS (Company Objectives and Goals).

With a transparent approach to our finances, our values and the progression of previously set goals, we’ve been hosting COGS since 2019 to foster innovation and make waves not just within StudioXAG, but throughout our industry.

Over the past year, we’ve seen a shift in retail. A shift from superficial sustainability talk to more tangible action. Yet the throwaway nature of our industry remains a challenge. Rather than turning a blind eye, we’re developing strategies, from the realistic to the radical, to tackle these challenges head-on.

Launching XAGzero, our in-house carbon tool, developed to understand the carbon impact of our projects, has allowed us to partner with clients to make reductions and offset through certified carbon projects.

From strategy to design, production, and beyond, we believe sustainability should feed creativity. It pushes us to constantly innovate and evolve, to work smarter and drive change faster.

After rolling out XAGzero in mid-2022, we’ve been able to measure and offset the carbon footprint of projects for brands like COACH, Joseph + John Lobb.

We want to use our business as a force for good, so gifting our skills and expertise, pro bono, to Choose Love to design and build their 6th annual Christmas store off London’s Carnaby Street felt like the perfect way to put purpose at the heart of a project that could make a world of difference.

Throughout the year, the StudioXAG team have also organised and participated in several community and charity-focussed events, including:

• Raising £1,780 doing a charity run for mental health charity Mind
• Hosting a Clothes Swap within the StudioXAG studio
• Taking part in a Hackney Herbal wellness walk in our local community
• Organising a Choose Love fundraiser party to generate sales for the charity