Innovation helps Londonderry firm through pandemic

“What’s key to me is to stay very positive and motivated,” says Nancy Sampo, president and co-owner of Londonderry’s Enviro-Tote. The 30-year-old company with 70 employees makes cotton tote bags and other made-in-the-USA reusable fabric items.

A large part of Enviro-Tote’s business relies on trade shows and meetings as the bags it makes are used largely as marketing tools by its 12,000 customers. From organic and traditionally grown cotton, the bags are cut, stitched and printed on-site to customer specifications from standard sizes.

According to Sampo, losing trade shows because of the pandemic has affected both sales and the free exchange of ideas critical to companies always in search of new ways to market and advertise.

The company added T-shirts to its catalog several years ago and now offers cloth face masks. “We were donating a lot of masks to the hospitals, and the (sales) response has been okay,” Sampo said. “But there are a lot of imported masks out there.”

Enviro-Tote is trying two new avenues. It will venture into retail with what Sampo terms a Flag Bag. While the details on a point-of-sale display box containing a dozen bags are still being worked on, the 12-by-18 inch patriotic totes are already in production.

Sampo expects to wholesale a box for between $50 and $60. The company will also have a presence on the popular website Etsy where it will sell bag components such as handles, thread and plain panels to smaller crafters and vendors. She cited the breadth of Etsy’s search engine as a means of expanding the Enviro-Tote brand and hopefully making customers interested and curious enough to go to the company’s website.

“My No. 1 goal is to be fully Americanmade,” Sampo explained, saying that four of a bag’s six components are now made in the USA. “When the markets warrant it and the prices warrant it, I want to get my last two materials American-made,” she said.

Typically, Enviro-Tote purchases cotton from industry jobbers or middlemen representing growers or from weavers who work to company specifics. Sampo noted, however, that not one mill or weaver she used 30 years ago is still in business.

“We are loyal to our vendors,” Sampo said.

“If you’re loyal to your vendors when times get tough like what we’re going through, it’s very important to have players on your side. We work with a handful of vendors for all of our materials and they know our buying patterns. They know our payment patterns.

They know the importance of a relationship between us and them.”

Loyalty also means recognizing the importance of employees, she said.

“We were definitely down last year,” Sampo said, adding that Enviro-Tote did not survive 2020 without layoffs.

“We were still able to cover costs,” she continued. “We were still able to take care of everybody. I started saving money early on so that we would do a year-end bonus. That was very important to me.”

Organic vs. traditional

Cotton, whether it’s grown organically or traditionally, is a water-intensive crop. The environmental war plays out between the Textile Exchange, representing organic growers, versus Cotton Inc., which represents growers of traditionally grown.

The Textile Exchange cites a total energy savings of 62% versus traditionally grown cotton, primarily based on the reduction in land and water pollution by eliminating pesticides and insecticides and by less soil erosion. “The real issue about water is pollution,” the Textile Exchange website reads. “Toxic chemicals used in conventional cotton production are poisoning the very water it (traditionally grown cotton) claims to save.”

The Textile Exchange is a global nonprofit that has a goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030.

“The way we produce our bags has a low impact on the environment,” Sampo said. “There’s little waste when we cut our sizes. We have a process of reclaiming print screens that doesn’t use a lot of water. All inks are drain-safe.”

Still, the company president says going entirely organic would result in many customers balking at the increase in price. Sampo cites smaller farm sizes for organic growers as a main contributor to higher prices, although she also views the Textile Exchange as representing innovations yet to come.

Enviro-Tote offers the anti-microbial spray Fuze on bags for an additional 50 cents per bag. According to Sampo, organic cotton will shrink 5% to 10% on the first washing, but any wrinkling will flatten out.

She also said that consumers aren’t always aware that the cotton bags can be washed up to 100 times. She cites a bag she’s had since the 1980s made from recycled cotton and recycled PET plastic, which the company also offers. The company’s website claims that each of these bags used for grocery shopping over the course of a year saves 192 single-use plastic bags.