Last year, given the circumstances, shopping online became the way to buy more than ever. I had wanted to explore the idea of sharing what I enjoy in shopping by looking for sustainable and plastic free products. We launched McGowan Realm which is run from a family home on Teesside. My name is Josh and I am running the project on behalf of our family business McGowan Realm.
We have now been around for 6 months and got in a position where it becomes possible to look at making our project more of a business and hopefully find more people who might like to be on board to join in with sustainability shopping. We want to grow from where we are into something that can be easier to shop, for customers to be able to find more products and to be able to make it that tiny bit more affordable in order to get more people involved in plastic free living and shopping sustainably.
Our initial work has been with a very small number of products brought in and made by us, but we always wanted to move from a small ‘hobby’ to work more. We have a small number of regular customers, some buy one off gifts, others keep buying similar items but without further investment at this stage it may start to dip into the ‘hobby’ category.
We would love to get more people who want to make a change to shopping habits, who want to support our project and enjoy the rewards of seeing the fact McGowan Realm has reduced the need for over 300 pieces of plastic in our short time and sent our first small donation already to wildlife conservation through the sales of our products. We work hard for making the right decisions and believe it is time to invest in McGowan Realm.
What will we do with crowd funding?
These two areas are where investment would be needed.
1) Introduce our subscription boxes. Investing in products to make up our new month by month delivered boxes for sustainable products and allowing us to reduce the price slightly, on all these products with a subscription. Buying direct from us will help supporting our regional brands from across the North of England and Scotland with businesses and producers.
2) Expanding our range of products. We have a list of products we would like to offer from across the UK who share similar thoughts.
I am working to change our current website and move onto something more user friendly.
If it has not raised the full amount, not to worry we can still start our expansion it may just take more time!
If we raise the amount, we would use the funding with a proposal to split our raised amount to set up our subscription plans and buying stock in order to be as plastic free.
If we exceed our target it would allow us to put even more products on our website to cover the plastic free options which we have in mind from around the North of England and Scotland, it would also allow us to work on the next step of our project which would be growing local and reducing carbon at McGowan Realm to offer a high quality and more freshly produced range.
The UK is pledging to get more people using low carbon energy and eating less meat in the decades to come, this comes a few years after a number of plastic reduction campaigns which got my idea for our business and we believe people should get on board with these movements as the health of the planet should begin at home and if encouraged with support we can see more of what we believe is right, in plastic free, sustainable and regional on McGowan Realm to flourish alongside other similar minded businesses.
- If you can’t donate, please don’t worry there is other ways to be involved!
- Like and share our cause on Facebook, Instagram & Twitter
- Spread the word! We are still getting out there for people to see.
- Let us know what you would like to see us stock on our website.
- Shop with us at www.mcgowanrealm.co.uk (I am working to improve the ease of shopping on our website)
Many Thanks,
Josh from McGowan Realm