Patine is officially B Corp certified! Explanatory guide.

Dear Club Patine,

we are happy to share with you our official status as a B Corp certified company with a score of105.1 points!

What does that mean? What's the point? We will explain everything to you!

•What does “being a B Corp” mean?

B Corp is the most well-known and trusted label worldwide awarded to companies that meet demanding environmental and social impact criteria. To assess compliance with these criteria, a questionnaire of more than 200 questions was developed. To be officially certified you must obtain a score of more than 80 points. This represents hundreds of hours of work and 2 years to think about and structure Patine's social and environmental ambition: calculating our carbon footprint as well as the life cycle of all our clothes, writing our ethical charter...So many projects exciting events which kept us very busy and seemed like mountains! This certification would therefore not have been possible without the rigorous work at Patine by Maïa Broyer and Lucie Camail and Lilas Lieutaud who started the process at the beginning of 2021! Thanks also toEthiwork, an impactful studio which supported us in certification, to our Mission Committee made up of authentic and exceptional beings: Marie-Anne Vincent, Priscilla Jokhoo, Thibaut Ledunois, Delphine Plisson, Emmanuel Giraud.

Thanks to the entire Patine mini team who understood in the blink of an eye the importance of the project.

•What's the point ?

First of all, even before being certified, the B Corp evaluation grid allowed us to take stock of our actions, compare them to demanding criteria and produce new data that we were not yet measuring: it is therefore a fantastic tool to become a better version of ourselves! It's like building a sturdy foundation for a house, then growing with straight walls, and being able to add floors that won't collapse! Sorry for this metaphor The Masons of the Heart but it is the clearest we found. B Corp is the starting point for the fashion house we want to become.

Then, this label is a tangible recognition, for you dear community, for our partners, our shareholders and for all those who do not yet know us, of all the actions implemented over the past 5 years to measure and reduce our impact on the environment and pursue a model of reasoned growth through aligned governance, financing and community. In the current context, it is particularly complicated to bring about a new brand model: this B Corp certification which “forces” us to do so, is exactly what we dreamed of!

This certification is in line with our status as a mission-driven company and our community fundraising on the ethical financing platform.Lita.coand more generally of our “Patine Season 2” project, that is to say our desire to be ever more coherent and ever more creative and inventive with constraints which are for us “the new normal”. So yes, it will never be enough to have a label or certification but it is proof of consistency, transparency and it is for you as for us, a way of evaluating ourselves and motivation to continue to innovate.

•Hey Patine, are there many BCorp certified companies?

Let's be honest, no. On its website, B Corp indicates that there are today 4,000 companies worldwide that are B Corp certified, including 200 in France: literally a tiny micro drop of water in the ocean. If you have the impression that there are plenty of them, it is certainly a magnifying glass effect but it is also good news: you follow brands and companies which are keen to measure their impact and commit to concrete way! As we told you, a B Corp certification is obtained with a score higher than 80 points and it can be more or less above: it is therefore up to you to look at the score of each company labeled B Corp in detail and assess its relevance for yourself. Here we share our score of 105.1 points in detail below.

What does a score of “105.1 points” mean in concrete terms?

At the risk of awakening somewhat painful memories: like on a college report card, it is useful to look at where we are compared to the average: on a global scale, the average of certified B Corp companies in the fashion sector is 80.9 points and across France, all industries combined, it is 77.7 points. These points are awarded on 5 categories, the pillars of the BCorp label.

Concretely, here is the detail by category:

Environment: 41.8 points / 75(Country: 17.9 / Sector: 18.8)

Our strong points: Reduction of the impact of our products (recycled materials, innovative process)
Our areas for improvement: Ecological construction and green energy, water conservation. For example, in 2023, we will favor companies that invest in green energies to choose our new industrial partners for clothing and new materials.

Employees: 21.6 points / 40(Country: 18.9 / Sector: 15.8)

Our strengths: Employee satisfaction
Our points for improvement: Employee training. We conducted a 2 ton workshop at the end of December, we need to speed up next year :)

Governance: 7.3 points / 10 + 10 bonus points because we are a mission-driven company, i.e. 17.3 points / 10(Country: 5.6 / Sector: 6.8)

Our strengths: Our mission which formalizes our social and environmental commitments with objectives and committees.
Our points for improvement: Diversity of the board of directors, transparency on financial performance and the board of directors vis-à-vis the public. This means working on accurate reporting for the next fiscal year.

Customers: 4.5 points / 5(Country: 1.9 / Sector: 2.3)

Our strengths: Measuring customer satisfaction and the impact of our products on our customers.
Our areas for improvement: Reviews of products available online. This will therefore be in place on the new site which will be released in January.

Community: 19.8 points / 40(Country: 10.8 / Sector: 12.9)

Our strengths: Participation in working groups, strict choice of partners, long-term relationships with our partners.
Our points for improvement: Measurement of internal and partner diversity.

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•And now ?

The Patine brand recipe must be unique but change is everyone's fight, so we have everything to gain by joining a global community! A single company cannot alone assume the evolution of all economic systems, it is a movement led together by B Corp companies and our heroes Patagonia, Dr. Bronner's VEJA... Beyond the chic of this new label that we are going to display enormously on the future site, it is all that it implies for our vision of a new model brand which delights us. The B Corp assessment allowed us to point out areas in which we still have good room for improvement. Once we have made progress on these subjects, we will be able to have our B Corp file reassessed and obtain a higher score: this is awork in progressconstant.

At the same time, we are preparing to publish our first“Patina report”aka our CSR report, 100% non-boring: we document everything we have done and everything that remains to be done, it is the equivalent of our best of brand new model logbook. If you want to discover our behind the scenes, sign up to receive it right awayhere!

Thank you to you without whom nothing would exist, this is only the beginning!

Team Patina