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Joe Walkuski — Industry Veteran of Supply Chain Compliance and Sustainability
Russo: Hey everyone. Welcome Joe Walkuski CEO and Founder of Texbase, contributing to sustainability in the retail sector.
Russo: Welcome Joe.
Walkuski: Thank you, Christine. Great to be with you today.
Russo: It’s my pleasure. Now you founded this company after a long successful career at Patagonia. As we know, Patagonia were early and really led the way in terms of sustainability — way before we realized that we needed to pay attention to it. Do I have that right?
Walkuski: Yeah, absolutely. Upwards of 30 years ago, we did some of the first lifecycle assessments of the fibers that that go into the textile and apparel industry. And that’s what really emphasized what’s really going into our products and, and really escalated the need for everyone in the supply chain to pay attention to what they’re doing.
Walkuski: After my years at Patagonia, rather than just going to go to work for any one individual brand; I took it upon myself to create an application way back then, and then realized quite quickly that my peers in industry were struggling with the same challenges in managing the information within the supply chain going all the way back to fiber org. And so I realized that there was a need in the marketplace or a solution to address these challenges.
Walkuski: And that’s how Texbase came about.
Russo: You were ahead of your time and yet you keep adding to it because you have…