When ‘Thankyou’ comes straight from the heart

And that is no typographical error. For “Thankyou” is really two words connected, with no space between, no gaps — just as the founders of the Australia-based Thankyou personal care brand hoped the world would be. No gaps.

“We think gratitude is a really powerful concept. It is an idea that can change the world. There’s a lot of darkness in our world, a lot of things going wrong. We want a brand that’s positive, that brings light to dark places,” says co-founder Daniel Flynn, explaining the origin of the brand’s name.

Thankyou, an Australia-based social enterprise, was created to close the gap between the 736 million people  living in extreme poverty around the world and the $63 trillion spent on consumer products each year. After all the costs in running a business to get consumer products to people are taken care of, every last cent that Thankyou makes goes toward ending extreme poverty.

“The reason we say that 100 percent of Thankyou is for our mission is because our business is owned 100 percent by our charitable trust. So, no founders or directors get shares and all the money we make and all the profit we make go to either our impact partners or keeping the company afloat so that we can make more money for our partners,” adds Daniel, who, conscience-stricken at 19 after watching a documentary about the gap between the haves and have-nots in this world, decided to take action.

Because these are not ordinary times due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel, who founded Thankyou in 2008 along with Justine Flynn and Jarryd Burns, believes now is the time for extraordinary strides.

Thankyou announced last week an invitation to two of the world’s largest and most influential consumer goods companies (one begins with a “U” and the other with a “P”) to make and distribute Thankyou products globally to help end extreme poverty. They will announce in November which of the two giants has decided to lock arms with Thankyou on one of the largest digital billboards in the world in New York City’s Times Square.

To convince these companies to take this bold move, Thankyou is asking people around the world to get involved and show their collective power through its campaign, aptly named “No Small Plan.” 

 “We compete with some of the biggest multinationals and for over 12 years we’ve gone head-to-head with them. We think the world right now is in a really tight spot. It’s 2020, the world’s upside-down. The pandemic has really kind of stopped the world in its tracks, and we think the world needs bold new paths forward, so yes, it is risky and ambitious but maybe we should stop competing, work together.”

 “We believe that we, together with people and a partnership with one of the two biggest companies in the world, can change this by funneling the dollars spent on consumer goods into helping extreme poverty.”

“Thankyou has the number-one hand wash in Australian supermarkets and we’ve held that position for about four or five years now,” Daniel told me in a Zoom interview exclusive to the Philippine STAR. “And people love the hand wash. There’s also body wash and lotions, hand sanitizers. We say good for you, good for humanity. We use botanical fragrances, we use essential oils. We keep the nasties out and our hope is that the product alone is good enough. And you buy it just because it’s a good product. When you find out that it’s a mission and a cause, then you’re kind of like, ‘then I can commit for life’.”

In Thankyou’s website, according to Daniel, are two rules under the product section. Rule 1: Make a great product. Rule 2: Never break Rule 1.

“And there’s an asterisk on Rule 2 that says, ‘Never use a good cause to sell an average product.’  And that’s the mission. We don’t want this to just be cause, we want the product to stand on its own two feet,” says Daniel.

“Thankyou has sold so many bottles of hand sanitizers in the last six months. We’ve raised millions in the last few months from hand sanitizer. We’ve just given that to 16 of our project partners around the world. And if you look at our website, we list all of them but we have partners who are working in water, health and sanitation space. We have partners in healthcare, in microfinance, in community development to help people get back into work. We’ve even got partners who are working in the mental health space.”

Daniel looks like a matinee idol but his audience is probably those who don’t swoon over him for his looks.

“I think the passion comes from the mission and the vision, and the vision is a world where not one person lives in poverty. But I think what wakes me up in the morning is our mission to get there. It’s the whole idea of redistributing wealth from consumerism. At 19, when I saw the problem, I felt helpless, like I couldn’t make a difference. But for me, Thankyou is a way we can all make a difference and so every day we get up and we’re like ‘How do we get more people to get on board?’ because the more people get on board, the more people we can help. And globally, there will always be people who are poor or in poverty but there is a global goal to help end extreme poverty by 2030.”

Daniel’s Thankyou mission has taken him to Cambodia, Indonesia, India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Burundi. “I was able to travel to — not the whole world — but parts of the world to see the work that we’re funding, and in every trip, it’s moving. I met a boy named Vieni in Burundi and he took on a walk to collect the dirty water he used to collect, from rain and into mud. And he showed me how he used to collect water every day and it’s bad. But his community now has a water project funded by Thankyou. Together we can make such a big impact.”

Who would Thankyou like to say “Thank you” to?

“We would say ‘Thank you’ to every person who’s willing to stop and listen to an idea that could change the world and be brave enough to join us.” *