Repurpose is an eco-friendly brand that offers alternatives to plastics.
The small business is using AI across the company, including for accounting and marketing.
This article is part of “How AI Is Changing Everything: Small Business,” a series exploring how small businesses are using AI for success.
Known for its plant-based, compostable home and kitchen products, Repurpose has spent the past 15 years building an eco-friendly brand that gives consumers a viable alternative to plastics.
Repurpose says it owns one-third of the compostable-tableware category and its products are sold at 20,000 retailers nationwide. Products include plates, cups, cutlery, and kitchen bags.
To better compete in the crowded consumer-goods market, Repurpose has turned to AI to automate its financial processes, optimize its marketing campaigns, and streamline its employee review process.
A sustainability-minded brand using an energy-intensive technology like artificial intelligence might seem counterintuitive, but in today’s business environment, it’s virtually unavoidable. AI is now embedded into most of the tools businesses use every day, so for a 21-person company like Repurpose, it’s vital to embrace the technology.
“We’re a small but mighty company, so we do rely on external partners, and we need to utilize tools and technology to be able to compete in the marketplace with these much larger conventional players,” Lauren Gropper, Repurpose’s CEO, said, adding that AI has “been really helpful for us to help scale where we don’t necessarily have the same financial resources” and that “it’s leveled the playing field.”
Gropper said Repurpose began using AI last year. The company started experimenting with ChatGPT for marketing and copywriting support. It then incorporated a third-party financial platform to improve its billing processes and streamline external payments to vendors and contractors.
The tool prepopulates vendor information into different fields and autofills invoice data, so Repurpose’s four-person finance team doesn’t have to input this information manually. Before using AI, Repurpose largely relied on spreadsheets and paper-based processes for financial management. Automating its accounting has eliminated the need for physical signatures and paper checks and documents, which saves time, is better suited for Repurpose’s entirely remote-work environment, and better aligns with the company’s sustainability mission.
