Brothers, best friends and self-proclaimed blockheads, Will and Chris Haughey, made a simple trip to Honduras that would eventually change thousands of children’s lives. The unorthodox thinkers saw an opportunity to do good and do well, and founded Tegu, a company rooted in the principle of positive social impact.
Tegu harvests tropical hardwoods in Honduras to make magnetic children’s wooden building blocks. Not only is the for-profit company making simple and sustainable toys that expand the imaginations of children all over the world, but they also give back directly to the community where they are based. The children of Tegucigalpa work and live on a municipal garbage dump collecting recyclables to pay for school. Tegu works to provide tuition to keep kids in classrooms — and out of landfills.
They also started a program funding local reforestation projects in Honduras, replanting thousands of trees — more than the company actually uses in their products. The brand isn’t making zero impact, they are actually making an environmentally positive impact. Want in on Tegu action? Plant 3 dozen trees for only $5 (12 dozen for $20); $60 sends a child to school for 1 month. here
Will Haughey takes a break from playing with toys to sit In The Hot Seat for Tonic:
1. What did you want to be when you were growing up?
An entrepreneur. I knew it and was convinced of it when I was 13. If you ask my parents, I think they’d mention funny and naive brainchilds like Haughey Airlines. I’m a dreamer. As a kid, I poured over things like Popular Science and wouldn’t be able to sleep afterwards because I was so consumed with the possibilities. Today, I’m grateful that I get to be doing what I thought I wanted to do; however, these days I spend a lot more time looking at magazines like Parenting, Dwell and FastCompany.
2. What’s the best advice you ever got?
I’m thankful to have received a lot of great advice from personal mentors and friends over the years. That said, I’ve been most inspired by folks who understand what risk really is and embrace it as they navigate the facts. To that end, a very successful entrepreneur and investor named Ronald Cohen wrote a book called The Second Bounce of the Ball. When I finished the book, I told my wife that I was ready to leave my then stable job at Goldman Sachs. His advice was simple: “Start young, think big, stick with it.” Some might think I took a risk when I left a great job at Goldman to start a wooden toy company in Honduras; however, at that time no one knew with certainty that a financial meltdown was just around the corner. It’s slightly humorous to me, but I have a pile of emails in my inbox from Wall Street folks who later said that my departure timing was perfect. Neither I, nor they, had a crystal ball; nor will we ever. My brother and I saw a need in Honduras and worked diligently to create a solution. We were young, we were thinking big and we are definitely sticking with it.
3. How are you improving your triple bottom line through CSR? Economic performance, environmental responsibility and positive social impact?
Tegu was created to fulfill, at its founding, a triple bottom line mission and vision for Honduras. In fact, unlike most proven businesses out there, we didn’t start with a plan to directly address a consumer need. Rather, we saw Honduras — a country in need — and decided that the best way to attack some of its largest problems was to found a business in the country that generated profit.
Recognizing some of the country’s limitations and challenges, we set out to create jobs by establishing a business that would attach Honduras to the global economy in a scalable way. Doing this meant that we would need to create a product for export. In determining what we might make, we discovered an incredible supply of amazing hardwoods that could be sustainably harvested. We then determined that it was critical that we create a “relevant good,”* a term we use to describe a product which matters to consumers in developed economies.
After discovering Honduras’ amazing supply of awesome woods, we then started proper product discovery and development in the USA. Through a series of fortuitous encounters, we started taking aim at the toy market. It didn’t take long to realize that the large players in the toy space had lost a great deal of credibility by working with contract manufacturers and factories in China which were, unbeknownst to the conglomerates, using harmful substances. We kept asking who the Apple or Patagonia of the toy space was, and we didn’t have an answer. Interestingly enough, we were seeing Apple-like business show up in other parenting markets. The Bugaboo stroller, at $800-plus, is a great example of such a product. After a great degree of research and observation in schools, we were left with some prototypes that provided a novel new twist on a trusty classic: wooden blocks powered by strong (but hidden) magnets. We kept hearing people say that our concept reminded them of a wooden LEGO and that we had reinvented the wooden block. Excited at this response, we raised capital and launched the business and the product this last year.
4. Where do you see your company in five years?
We’re determined to become a household name that stands for quality and innovation amongst parents and schools throughout America. More specifically, we’re out to unleash and then celebrate the innate creativity of children by designing and introducing environmentally conscious products that don’t have batteries or on-off switches. We celebrate this creativity through Tegu Show ‘n Tell, a program in which we seek images and photos of the awesome things that kids (and their parents) are creating with our blocks. There is huge potential for Tegu Show ‘n Tell, but suffice it to say, the kiddos are running the show, not the company, and that brings us a lot of joy.
And, of course, if the business functions as it has been designed to, we’ll have created a ton of jobs, planted a heck of a lot of trees, and funded a lot of school days for disadvantaged children in Honduras.
5. What are you most proud of?
My brother and co-founder, Chris. He’s a man driven by compassion for others, and he had the vision and boldness four years ago to address Honduran poverty with profit. He left a highly successful career at the Boston Consulting Group to make Tegu happen, and last year he uprooted himself from the comforts of the States to live in Honduras. When he arrived, he built our factory from scratch, imported all the necessary equipment and hired a growing team of amazing employees. He’s the most determined and focused person I know, and, more than that, he’s the reason I am an entrepreneur today. He’s a man of action, and I am proud to be his brother and partner in the vision of Tegu.
*To take you on a bit of a tangent, “relevant goods” are products that have certain qualities and characteristics which enable them to compete in the most competitive marketplaces. They can be created anywhere, but our thesis is that if they’re intentionally made in languishing economies like Honduras, you can harness the free market in such a way that a sustainable wealth transfer naturally occurs over time. It is also important to mention that they are typically not purchased by the consumer because they overtly help those in need; rather, they are purchased because they fit within the normal consumption patterns of the individual making the purchase. They need to hold their own in the marketplace without having to appeal to the purchaser’s compassionate side. To take this idea to the extreme, imagine that Steve Jobs relocated Apple’s manufacturing to Haiti from China. While global consumption patterns of Apple products would likely continue per usual, the people of Haiti and its economy would be transformed in countless, game changing ways. Haiti would be sustainably grafted into the global marketplace. We hope the same for Honduras.
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Photos courtesy of Tegu.