A Letter of Solidarity. Black Lives Matter. We Stand With You.

We’ve been listening, researching, and soul searching this week about how we can authentically and humbly help in the fight for racial justice long term, as well as step up our commitment to inclusion, diversity, and transparency. Even as a fledgling indie brand in the middle of a pandemic and global crisis, we know that we can and need to make a difference NOW. Ignorance is no longer an excuse for the reality of privilege, structural racism, and implicit biases. It is essential that our actions go deeper.

What We’ve Done Short Term

We have personally donated to families of BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color) slain victims of police brutality and bail bonds, matched employee donations to their BIPOC organizations of choice, supported local campaigns to elect officials that will bring about social justice, dropped retailers and suppliers that don’t align with the movement, started an employee library at our studio with books and resources on racism, signed every petition, used our platforms for anti-racism and amplifying black voices— while pausing ALL other content and marketing across every channel, among other things... but we want to be certain we take this further within our company consistently from here on out.

What We’ll Be Doing Long Term

-Creating a POC (People of Color) council that protects voices that may go unheard amongst our employees, partners, and customers 

-Cultivating relationships with more BIPOC brands and creators

-Proportionately representing black content and creators on our feed and in our marketing

-Including more BIPOC in our product testing 

-Writing skincare protocols that specifically represent diverse skin types for POC

-Implementing evidence-based training resources for our crew on systemic racism, tokenism, and microaggressions; also making this available to our suppliers and retailers

-Redistributing supply chain to include more BIPOC and other minority-owned suppliers 

-Continuing to analyze all suppliers, retailers, and other partnerships to ensure their values align completely and wholly with ours, especially in regards to inclusivity and reflection of BIPOC voices, perspectives, and intersectional identities.

-Working with our existing humanitarian programs through 1% For The Planet to align our donations with grassroots nonprofits that directly help disparaged communities, and where our giving can have the greatest impact on intersectional issues of environmental racism.

-Hiring more Black contractors/freelancers, and when we are able to expand to hire employees outside of our family we will work to continue to bring on more BIPOC, including in leadership positions. (As a little grassroots indie brand, I am still the only full-time employee and I rely heavily on my family for help.)

-To see more on our multiracial family employee demographics and our response to the #pulluporshutup challenge head to our Instagram post here.

-More progressive steps to be taken as we continue to learn and grow because WE CERTAINLY HAVE WORK TO DO.

Thank You

Many thanks to the Black community for sharing your wisdom with us. You are creating so much positive change! We know this is just the beginning and that we still have so much to learn and countless actions to take. We are your ally and will fight for what’s right because BLACK LIVES MATTER. 

With love and in solidarity,

Ali

Founder + CEO, Earth Harbor