Jet.com's Nate Faust Turns His Focus to Sustainable Delivery

After selling Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016, and then helping the retail giant build an online business that, at one point during the pandemic, was nearly doubling its sales versus the prior year, entrepreneur Nate Faust's ambitions have not diminished. As an encore, the Jet.com co-founder and former svp of Walmart's ecommerce supply chain is aiming to make apparel, one of the most wasteful areas of ecommerce, more sustainable. "My most pressing focus was actually on doing something that would have some sort of social environmental impact, having spent the last 10 to 12 years in ecommerce with a huge focus on driving growth and consumption," Faust said. This included eyeing opportunities both outside the business world with nonprofits, and inside with projects tied to renewable energy. The a-ha moment "And then one night, I was just taking out the trash and recycling, and after about 30 minutes of breaking down boxes, my fourth trip down the driveway looking up the street at my neighbors' houses, who had similar piles of waste on their curbs, it sort of dawned on me: 'This is crazy, to be 25 years into ecommerce, [with] all this growth yet to come, and this is the status quo delivery experience,'" Faust said. While consumers love the convenience of receiving goods at home, the truth is it's terrible for the environment, from all of the packaging used to ensure its safe arrival to the fuel burned to get it to a shopper's front door. The demand for home delivery is not likely to wane, however, considering it remains the safest way to shop and it was an essential lifeline for many retailers, helping them survive when stores were largely shuttered. But given the increasing focus on the environment, brands are going to have to find ways to provide the convenience and safety of shipping in a more environmentally friendly way. The package Enter Faust's new startup Olive, an ecommerce platform on which shoppers can order from hundreds of brands and whose list of partners reads like a who's who of the apparel industry, from German athletic wear maker Adidas to luxury label Michael Kors to digitally native apparel brand Everlane. Those partners also include the U.S. Postal Service on the shipping side. Olive consolidates a customer's orders into one weekly shipment and then removes wasteful packaging by placing the items in reusable containers it calls shippers. The containers are then dropped off at a shopper's doorstep. Customers can place any items they want to return in the shippers and request a pickup. The delivery startup takes care of the rest. The benefits Olive says by doubling the average number of items in a delivery, emissions can be reduced by nearly a third. And, of course, there's much less packaging involved, which is good news considering Americans break down some 10 billion cardboard boxes a year, according to Faust. He noted orders arrive in their own packaging, which is then removed and recycled. (To get started, shoppers sign up for a free account at shopolive.com.) Faust sees having a bigger impact on the environment by providing a service that people are more willing to adopt because it makes their lives easier rather than asking them to make compromises, which he characterizes as a "win, win" for everyone. What's next Initially, the environmental benefit lies in vastly reducing the number of deliveries, he said. As the service evolves, Faust hopes to have a bigger impact via new services and initiatives. He foreshadowed more "more seamless opportunities for consumers to consign old and used clothing" so less ends up in landfills. "Then, as our joint supply chain integration with our partners increases over time, there'll be other opportunities to even go further back in the supply chain, [and get] the original packaging back to manufacturers to reuse," Faust said.

Sustainability News

For His Encore, Jet.com Co-Founder Nate Faust Aims to Make Delivery Sustainable

The startup, Olive, has already partnered with a number of household fashion names

Richard Collings

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Richard Collings