 Hi and welcome to School of Castle. I'm your host Sarah and this is the show we chat with everyday entrepreneurs about everything that goes into starting a new adventure. Every year over eight million tons of plastic waste are dumped into our oceans and Tyson Toussaint is the co-founder of Bionic Yarn, a mission-driven material science company that produces high-performance textiles, polymers and other materials from recovered recycled or regenerative sources. And impressively Bionic Yarn is committed to preserving our oceans and protecting the future of our planet. Tyson welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. It's so great to have you here and I just have so many questions. I read up a little bit about your story and I know you're from New York which is amazing because I'm also from New York so I like this New Yorker thing going on we have here. Could you tell me a little bit about how you started the company because I know it was kind of you came up with the idea on the New York streets when you saw garbage or something like that? Yeah it didn't start directly from the garbage being from New York or wherever you're from as a kid you always want what you don't have and I always wanted to be from a place like Boulder Colorado. I lived up the street from Central Park West and I like would go out of my way to step in puddles when I had my Gore-Tex boots. I was the guy on the subway like overly teched out in outdoor gear and that was my first entrepreneurial project trying to create a sustainable backpacking brand and from doing that in doing that and trying to figure out all the cool ways to manufacture sustainably have a social message to it. I really got into the fabric because that makes up the product and in researching the best options to go about it sustainably in the fabric I discovered that fleece was made from plastic bottles and some brands and naively I asked why isn't that and everything I want this in a tent I want this in my backpack why is it only limited to a fleece like people who are into the outdoors should be into protecting it at any means possible. So in my naiveness I just went down a google hole trying to figure out why this wasn't done and there were a bunch of I guess like property that involved in the plastic where it couldn't last as long from a recycled source. When you talk about like the process of making these fibers it's so scientific. How did you learn how to do that? It is very challenging and the great thing about the time that I got into my business was when high speed internet access really took off. I guess I'm like showing my age right now and all the smart people in the world just decided to put all their information out there. So between it's like all you really need to have were the right questions and I had the right questions and I was very lucky to get patient people who were just like I'll talk to this crazy kid and see where this can go and I met a lot of really cool scientists who should own a part of my business based on the information they gave me that got me on the track that I'm on. So I can't take credit for being like super breakthrough or smart. I was just persistent. I asked the right questions and I met the right people who answered my questions and walked me through. But that's such an important part of the process you know unless you do your research it really would be very challenging to start a company like this or really do anything. So once you got those answers did you did you actually start producing the fibers yourself or did you hire that out to a lab like what is the process there? Another word for entrepreneur is just like a project manager. Like you find all the right pieces you coordinate the pieces you stay on top of it and you connect everything along the way and then you bring it all together under your idea brand you present it to the world. But I'm standing on the shoulders of about a hundred really smart people in their specific spaces in what I'm doing and they allow me to bring it all together to create my brand. I love that and that's a great description of the definition of entrepreneur. I mean that's exactly what it is. So you get the plastic bottles do you have to break them down first or like what do you if you could just walk me through the process so I can understand. I know that there are some companies like Rothes that does something like this where they use plastic bottles as fibers and they integrate it with another type of fiber and then they end up producing a sustainable shoe is it similar to that? Yeah it's very similar to that. The process starts at the collection point and our original way into this was collecting bottles from you know First World Nations. So people who recycle their bottles in Whole Foods or countries like Japan or Canada where the recycled goods are almost as good as the virgin material. So there's already a business of recycling there and it's being used in multiple places and so our idea was to like take it from that stream and to put it into clothing outside of the fleece that we saw so we started applying it to backpacks and tents. But the process is very simple in some ways. The polymer that's in plastic bottle is similar to the polymer used for polyester. So when they melt down the plastic bottle and they run it through these filters and then they extrude those filters I mean extrude the plastic into a filament yarn and you twist that together with other yarns depending on the character or the strength needed for the application. Correct me if I'm wrong Tyson. I read that like part of your idea came from seeing garbage on the streets. Is that not correct or? Yeah I think in seeing the bottles on the streets while having this idea of being in New York I think it all hit me that people in this environment should care the most about it and how can we get urban people excited about spending time in the environment and also improving the environment they're in at the same time. And so every time I'd see a plastic bottle on the street I'm like this is valuable. It's a something that needs to be mined. It could be in a backpack. It could be in a shoe. It could be in fashion apparel outside of outdoor products too. It could be in fashionable clothing. So it sounds like there's a lot of investment that goes into producing bionic yarn. How did you get funding for this idea? Yeah that's been very tricky and once. Yeah I imagine. Another place where I've gotten so lucky I think 90% of being in a position that I'm in is luck. You know you have to like work hard and even with all the hard work you still need luck. I happen to come up with this idea at a time where brands were rethinking materials and where they wanted to be 10 years from now and you know the whole world is kind of shifting in this direction but the whales in business don't have to move as fast because they could just wait till the last minute and then convert. I just happened to meet some progressive companies that happened to be whales who were interested in seeing what this was about and they gave us a chance and 10 years ago here we are today. And where did you meet these companies? Did you email them? Did you go to a trade show? Like how does someone go about that? As I told you earlier we started an outdoors brand and we were making sleeping bags and backpacks and we'd go to this trade show in Utah called the Outdoor Retailer Trade Show and trying to sell our backpack products into these chain stores a lot of the chain stores even brands around more interested in the fabric that we were making and less into our finished goods. So in going to the trade show trying to sell my brand my backpacking brand with the fabric already in it no one cared about the sleeping bag or the backpack they were just so interested in the brand and I was like well this is interesting maybe we should go down this road instead of trying to make a finished good there's plenty of backpacking brands or plenty of you know places to get outdoor gear so why would we waste more time doing this let's do something impactful and that's when we decided to take on making yarn. It sounds like you came in at the perfect time when all the companies were looking into sustainability and material goods and it just it all worked out perfectly and speaking of things working out perfectly I know that you have an amazing investor Pharrell wow I'm a big fan of his so I'm just like so excited about that uh how did that connection happen? Another lucky situation most entrepreneurs have to moonlight with other jobs to keep their lights on as they're trying to figure out what they're doing and my moonlighting position was DJing and I mean DJ with a good friend of mine who happened to be Pharrell's tour DJ and I never thought it was a possibility like I never would ask for anything like that and he actually asked me he was like why don't I show Pharrell what you're doing maybe he'll make a t-shirt or something out of it I was like okay sure no problem he went to Japan with it with Pharrell showed it to him and when they got back they were like hey I want to get involved with this are you open to it and my partner and I looked at each other like uh of course yeah and that was around the time where he started to really examine his footprint and what he could do more for the world and ever since then he's been really active in social environment environmental causes also so tell me what are your what is your plans in the future do you have plans on expanding to other products other services what's coming up for biotic yarn? Well our initial goal is to recycle as much improperly discarded plastic as possible and put them into quality products that stay in closets on shelves forever so get that problem out of the way and then after dealing with the plastic issue we're working on building products from regenerative fibers oh what does that mean? Things like hemp or let's say what's another example. Jutropha, cotton, things that have a lower that use less amount of water that grows faster that's stronger less taxing on the environment and it's easy to regenerate. So you've worked with really well known brands like Topshop and H&M and Timberland and even Chanel uh was how how do you get into those brands how do you start those partnerships? Well the the beauty of the strategic partnership in being down with Pharrell is you come out with hot records and everyone wants a piece of you somehow and it's like an easy door for him to open usually you didn't have to open it they opened it for him they asked him what do you want to do will you design a line for us will you model for a campaign and then he would come in and say I'll do this if you embed two tons worth of plastic from my recycled yarn company into your brand and so that's about so many times so he's leveraging his likeness for the environment. That's brilliant so some of your clothing well I guess not necessarily the clothing because I imagine you you take the you sell the yarn to the the designers and then they produce the clothing with the yarn and then they sell it to these brands is that kind of the chain? Well we sell it so that we sell it into the brands and brands talk to their supply chain and then their supply chain contacts us and they buy whatever fabric or yarn they need to complete the product that they're designing. Are there any brands that you haven't worked with yet that you would really love to? Yeah I would love to get a contract with like the US parks department be involved with the uniforms for the Rangers and the national parks That would actually make so much sense and that would be cool. So you love the outdoors so much yet you live in New York City which granted there are some outdoor opportunities here you have some nice parks and things like that. Have you ever considered moving out of New York into a free day somewhere like Colorado? Every day. Why don't you? I'm sure every New Yorker says that but it's hard to leave here it's just it's really hard. It is it's like you want the best of both worlds well maybe someday you can spend some time in Colorado or wherever the outdoor place is and then sometime in New York. I hope there's a big aviation innovation during like my time you know something that's like the concord times 10 so I could just go back and forth. Speaking of travel you know the world's changed so much with travel how has the pandemic affected your business? It's affected it in bad ways you know as it has everyone the customers that we deal with their sales have dropped about 70%. I think most people have been at home wearing sweatsuits or only dressing from you know the waist up and so while that has been tragic the other side of it I think a new mindset is born from this where I think people are doing things with more purpose it's there's less the need for vanity is more about you know being deeper and things that you do from the way that you eat your health and I think car buying patterns are going to change vacations patterns are going to change and also I think the type of clothing and gear that you buy will change also. Is there specific stores that your products are sold in because I don't like how would someone buy a product made by Bionic Yarn? Well it's sold through the brands and right now like if you were interested in an in-case backpack or a laptop sleeve you go to the in-case website and figure out where in the world they have retail partnerships or their own standalone stores at the moment we're not in control of the retail aspect of it but we're working on that now. What are what are some of the benefits of using Bionic Yarn besides just the sustainability element? Well when we designed it we wanted to make sure that it was being purchased for more than a way that we pulled strings or guilted you into helping the environment we and that's one of the benefits of being in New York it's there's a tough crowd here and you have to give them quality you have to give them something that they like and it's almost better to introduce the sustainability and social aspect of it after they've already fallen in love with the product because if you lead with that it's like you're trying to sell them on feeling bad to be being remorseful or having empathy for something that may not even connect to them so if you can connect with the selfish part of them where they're going to look good they like the way something feels and then you say and this is also helping our environment that's been our our pitch and lead in to selling to people from the beginning. That's so true about New Yorkers I never realized that you really are in tune with your customers how do you how do you connect with your customers how do you learn what they want? The other beauty about being here is it's just a melting pot of everything so if I like walk from midtown to Soho you'll see every kind of person all kinds of clothing color sounds and it's just constant inspiration that has led me running home to come up with different ideas present to brands on things we should collaborate on so one reason why it's hard to leave here is because it's a constant source of creative inspiration. Is there anything that you've learned along your journey as an entrepreneur that you kind of wish you knew when you started? Yeah that everything takes time and stop to be patient and enjoy the journey and you know hopefully there is no end you're just constantly pushing forward I think I like tortured myself with having this like made-up finish line of where I was supposed to be at a certain time and there's no such thing as that it's just you know especially with all of the amazing things that are happening in the world around our business that helps to enhance what I'm doing or bring more attention to it like I couldn't have rushed that or you know done anything different than what's been happening. Yeah and I think really you can only go up from here because more and more people are beginning to look towards what you're doing and there's a focus on it. Yeah I think I was a little impatient before. Yes I think we all are as entrepreneurs we expect to work for a month and then we'll see results and it's just not it's not realistic I mean on average it takes most businesses two years to even start making money let alone two months so being patient is a really important lesson. What else is a piece of advice that you would give to aspiring entrepreneurs like yourself? I think one thing that I did right was I asked myself a bunch of like really straightforward honest questions and it was like what's my lifestyle what do I want my lifestyle to be how do I want to spend my day when I wake up what's going to keep me driven and locked in and you know I love the environment I love sports I love being creative I love problem solving I love doing it at my pace and sometimes working for another corporation you move at their pace and your your ideas could be ahead of theirs and you just have to like shrink yourself you know do what you have to do to stay in the job and I like the environment that I have in my company you know we're all equals everyone that we work with and you know I have a lot of really smart people around who hold us up and continually bring us new things and opportunities. Well you couldn't have said it better than that what is your hope for what your brand will become in the future? I hope we find more ways to take waste and turn it into something new so outside of plastic bottles you know when we're collecting on the shorelines of Costa Rica we're collecting more than the PET and HTP I've seen like toothbrushes and styrofoam ropes from boats there's all kinds of things Barbie heads lighters you name it and we sort all of these things there's probably about like 10 piles from the sort and we're only building things from two and so if I could figure out ways to turn all the like Barbie heads into maybe an end table and the lighters I think you could sell a Barbie head end table in Brooklyn no problem it's been wonderful having you on the show with us Tyson thank you for joining us and thanks to everyone who tuned in today now if you want to learn more about Bionic Yarn visit bionic yarn dot com and follow them on instagram at bionic yarn and that is all for this edition of school hustle so keep up with our other episodes on youtube apple podcast google podcast or wherever you stream and download podcasts and if you like what you heard please leave a review share with your friends and subscribe to our show we'll see you next time bye