A night of hopeful energy at the Social Enterprise Trust in Hartford

By: Dan Haar

Hartford Courant

Read Article HERE.

Amanda Rinderle and Jonas Clark of Tuckerman & Co., winners of the reSET Social Enterprise Award for 2014. (Dan Haar)

There are not many business events that I try to attend year in and year out. One of them is the annual awards dinner at reSET, the Social Enterprise Trust – and not only because the food is invariably interesting.

No, reSET is not yet a major force in jobs and commerce of central Connecticut, though the hope is that the non-profit group helps enough people form enough new companies that it does move the dial. The reason I’m drawn is the exuberant energy as entrepreneurs and gawkers like me gather to talk about what it takes to launch a business with sustainable revenues, let alone some good in the community.

On Tuesday night at the Society Room in downtown Hartford, once a staid, old bank, we saw plenty of all that in a superhero-themed event —- with advice and storytelling from Will Haughey, co-founder of Darien-based Tegu, a toy maker.

Tegu makes upscale wooden blocks that hold together with magnets, in Honduras, where the company is having a very real effect. The company, winner of this year’s Social Innovator Award from reSET, works with cooperatives using sustainable wood.

They want to change the world and will say so. But Haughey said, “We didn’t want people buying our toys because they felt compassionately inclined toward our social mission.”

He advised would-be company founders that the odds are against them, and that they should stick with it “until you can’t pay the bills.”
One that’s just starting is Tuckerman & Co winner of the top, $15,000 award for its startup effort to make upscale men’s dress shirts out of organic cotton. As it happened, on Wednesday, the co-founders launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise capital for their first run of shirts.

“That allows us to order the fabric, which they’re weaving for us in Italy as we speak,” said Amada Rinderle. Her partner, the only other employee so far, is Jonas Clark, who is also her classmate at Yale School of Management and her fiancee, to boot.

They will use a historic, unionized factory in Fall River, Mass., but if they stay and grow in Connecticut, that’s good for us here. And just by going organic, every shirt they sell prevents more than a half-pound of pesticides in a cotton field.

As with social enterprise startups, the critical mass isn’t there yet but it might start to add up.