What is a B Corp and why we got certified
22/2/2024
This B Corp Month we take a moment to pause and reflect on Dec 2021, when we jubilantly celebrated our newly gained B Corp status. It had been major biz goal and a year in the making, with our co-founder Jamie Palmer leading on the notoriously rigorous assessment process. But we got there with a score of 106.4 – over 100 is considered outstanding, so we were all feeling pretty proud at Social Supermarket HQ!
You might be wondering why this meant so much to us. For any of you curious readers, we’ve put together an explainer of what exactly a B Corp is and why we were determined to get certified.
What is a B Corp?
A B Corp is a business that’s serious about their social and environmental performance, transparency and accountability. Becoming a B Corp means proving you’re responsible in all areas of the biz and at all stages of the supply chain, committed to balancing purpose and profit.
If you’re familiar with our brand, you’ll know how closely this aligns with our mission. (If you’re less familiar with us, check out our founder interview to understand what we’re all about).
As a shopper it can be overwhelming to try and work out which brands are really committed to sustainability and social responsibility. Spotting B Corp certification takes away the guesswork: you can be sure that a brand’s words are backed up by action.
B Corp isn’t just a UK thing – it’s a global mark of quality. The B Corporation Movement is championing business as a force for good around the world, fostering an inclusive, fair and regenerative economy.
The movement is snowballing year on year: the first 19 B Corps were certified in 2007 and in 2023 there are over 6000 across 80 countries. In the UK alone there are 1,100+ B Corps across 55 industries, with London being the fastest-growing region. So we’re among plenty of B Corp friends in the city and across the country.
This video from B Lab UK sums up the motives of the movement:
The assessment process
Every B Corp has been independently assessed by B Lab, the not-for-profit behind the certification. The assessment process is the same worldwide and it’s a rigorous one, covering five impact areas: governance, workers, customers, environment and community. That makes it a truly holistic certification, not focused on any single issue.
Every three years B Corps must go through a recertification period, to make sure businesses are keeping up their commitment to responsible business.
B Corp has noticed a jump in lead times because so many people are applying for certification. Around 3,000 companies have submitted an assessment but haven’t certified yet, with people making the most of the free-to-use assessment tool to manage their impact and measurement.
The B Impact Score
To get certified, you need to hit a B Impact Score of 80 out of a possible 200 on your application, calculated across all the impact areas.
Questions and sections are weighted differently depending on the industry, size and geography of your business, as well as what B Corp considers the most relevant to being a responsible business at the time of your assessment. One of the biggest scores you’ll get is for changing your Articles of association (that’s a set of rules about how your company is run) to make a commitment to social responsibility and environment over profit.
Any score over zero is actually considered good, as it shows a business is doing something positive for society and the environment. Between 80 and 100 is great, 100 to 160 is outstanding (that’s us!) and 160 to 200 is extraordinary.
Why did we decide to go B Corp
Who better to explain why we decided to go B Corp than the person who oversaw our application hitting an outstanding score – our co-founder and CEO Jamie (centre, together with co-founders Alex, left and Matt, right). We picked his brains for an insight into our B Corp journey…
Why was it important to you and the other founders to become a B Corp?
B Corp is recognised as the highest certification standard in responsible business and it’s a great way to keep on top of various different aspects of responsible business measurement. It measures not only one angle of social commitment but also how you govern the business and your environmental impact too. It’s like the Golden Globes of responsible business!
What are the benefits of being a B Corp, for you as a business, your customers and your brand partners?
For us as a business, it’s a way of benchmarking ourselves against best practice in the industry. It’s also a very recognised standard both for clients and customers who respect it as a kitemark of being a great business.
For our brand partners, I think it also means we have practices where we’re treating or working with them in the right way. It helps measure and understand what our brands are doing as well. B Corp asks quite a heap of questions not only about our practices in the organisation but also what our suppliers do in this space. So things like what percentage of Fairtrade brands do we work with and how many brands are within a certain radius of us.
What was the process to get certified like? Was it as you expected or was there anything surprising about it?
I’d say the process is very thorough. The whole application process took us a year including the review. The application in the first instance is reasonably straightforward. The process where someone from B Corp assesses what you’ve submitted is where there’s more time intensity to it. You’ve got to review and discuss the documents which you’ve submitted, you’re asked various questions about it, you might have misinterpreted a piece of information.
So the second and more gruelling part of the process is demonstrating and proving the parts that you’ve submitted to the B Corp assessor.
What advice would you give to any other business owners thinking of starting the process?
I think just get going! There’s nothing stopping you – you can apply completely for free and it’s very straightforward to do. So there’s nothing you’ve got to lose from it and you’ll learn a hell of a lot too.
Our fellow B Corp social enterprise brands
We’re far from the only social enterprise brand to be a B Corp – around 16 of our brand partners are also certified, from Brewgooder to Elvis and Kresse. Y.O.U Underwear even has the UK’s highest score! Which is no surprise given every single brand on our site balances purpose and profit.
From wine and beer, to backpacks and sunglasses, to skincare, we’ve made it easy for people to shop B Corp by featuring all of our B Corp purpose-driven brands in one place.
And to celebrate B Corp month or company certifications, we often work with our corporate partners on special gifts or branded merchandise for the team. It’s a great way to incorporate B Corp social enterprises into your employee engagement efforts, all while proving that gifting excellent products and doing your best to be a socially responsible biz can go hand in hand.
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The B Corp Gift Box
Be inspired by some of the options available to gift your team or clients: you can raise a Toast Ale, a beer brewed from surplus bread or a glass of Ridgeview sparkling, which supports charity projects; brew a zesty peppermint tea from Great Taste Award-winning Summerdown or an organic coffee from Cafédirect, the UK’s largest Fairtrade drinks brand; spice up your snacks with relish made with wonky tomatoes from Rubies in the Rubble, and much more.
In fact, you can also shop all of our B Corp purpose-driven brands in one place, as we have B Corp certification as an impact filter.
We’re better when we’re both
We like to think we’d be doing a pretty good job of running things responsibly at Social Supermarket even if we weren’t a B Corp. We are a social enterprise, and bigger upper of other social enterprises, after all, built around creating positive impact.
But being B Corp certified only makes us more committed and accountable for sticking to our high standards in business practices and putting people and planet over profit. It’s given us a comprehensive review of how we do things around here, and how we can keep doing better.
So it’s definitely safe to say, we’re better when we’re both.
