Back in the summer, our CEO Liz Warner spoke at City law firm (and Different Kind clients) Bates Wells. We wanted to share it because we know the idea of being more radical will be as exciting to you as it is to us.

When asked to talk on the subject of being more radical, I couldn’t refuse. I have been a radical all my working life and think if I could have chosen a middle name it would have been Liz ‘rebel’ Warner.

We have a brilliant opportunity ahead of us, an opportunity to reinvent and we need it. Old systems don’t work any more. They are creaking and cracks are appearing in education, health, business, food and in retail.

Never before have we been more in need of visionaries, mavericks and modernisers. We need radicals to challenge the norm. We can’t keep pulling out the same corporate examples of Patagonia and Change Please.

We can’t wait. We can see the growth of distress, inequality and low, creeping unhappiness. I can’t bear to see only five percent of people with a learning disability in work. To see businesses founded by women of colour going bust because of a pointless rent hike. To see prisons gridlocked and with fewer rehabilitation programmes.

Many old institutions, often built 100 years ago or more, are failing us. But at the grassroots is a promise of what the future holds: big change.

Business can be a force for good. The growing number of social enterprises is one of those green shoots of promise, the promise of a kinder business, one that grows slower, but lasts longer.

There should be business that puts people in the heart of what they do, founded on principles of mutuality and not individual greed.

With these ideas in mind, I left my role as CEO of Comic Relief and, with three other women, founded Different Kind. We wanted it to be a department store of kinder business, a one-stop shop only selling goods that do good.

We are Rebels of Retail. We took the rulebook of retail and we tore it up. Whatever Phillip Green had done, we did the opposite. (And I spent two years researching Tesco’s practices for Tesco: The Musical during my TV career, so I had knowledge…)

We wanted a new model. Regenerative retail: retail that puts in more than it takes out.

We started with selling items from 30 different producers and makers, all of whom were committed to changing their corner of the world. Now, two-and-a-half years on, we showcase and sell 125 producers’ high quality, stylish and well-made goods.

We work to be mutually viable - we want them to do well. Our work helps our suppliers to grow. We want 125 chubby kittens, not one fat cat.

• We buy stock upfront and share the risk.
• We pay upfront and on time.
• We don’t discount or drive the price down.
• We work together to develop new products.

But our true USP is that we’re about people. Our products are ethical as hell, and sustainable, well-made and stylish, but they all help people.

The more cheese biscuits, made by Step and Stone, we sell, the more young people with Down’s syndrome and autism will be trained for employment.

The more candles we sell the more people with mental health and complex needs can attend wellness and employment training workshops.

Increasing our sales is increasingly important, not for shareholders or bonuses, but because it shifts the dial on impact.

Is that radical enough? Perhaps we should also consider Different Kind’s wider impact?

We are showcasing, unashamedly glamorising, goods that do good to a mainstream audience. These are not items you buy out of pity to support a cause. Even Tom Jones, WILL.I.AM and LeAnn Rimes have seen them and liked them. We have all kinds of businesses as clients, but even City firms who are used to a steady diet of Fortnum & Mason are making the change. We are a very long way from being a damp table at the back of a church.

We are a test case for regenerative retail: putting more back than we take out. Our products create social value, dignity, empowerment and skills.

And we are influencing companies beyond the simple act of buying a gift. Different Kind is creating a dialogue between small producers and big corporations. Fat Macy’s, who train young people without secure accommodation in the hospitality industry, now supply their signature granola to the cafe in BNP Paribas Bank’s London offices. Would learning about Redemption Roasters coffee, roasted inside prisons, make your company rethink your recruitment approach to be more accessible to ex offenders? How about your company’s involvement with refugees?

Touching a product, buying it, appreciating it, brings its story into your life. These products can touch your values too.

So be more radical by:
• Become a Rebel of Retail - buy for good with Different Kind.
• Become an intrapreneur - use your internal influence to agitate for change within big organisations.
• Become a radical start-up - there’s room for so many more of us.

Because your coffee shop that employs care leavers, your law firm staffed by neurodiverse talent, or your cooking school run by refugees - might not make you as financially rich as doing it the old way, but it will make us all better off.