user has finished adding to his virtual shopping cart in the Goods Unite Us store, the details of his order are relayed to Amazon, where he pays and provides shipping information. Goods Unite Us receives up to 8 percent of the sale price of certain items purchased on Amazon via the startup’s website, Wuest says.
Shoppers have made about $15,000 worth of purchases through the Goods Unite Us store in the seven months it’s been active, says Brian Potts, one of the startup’s four co-founders. (Potts, who is married to Wuest, has some experience with e-commerce. He’s the founder of LegalBoard, a computer keyboard that’s sold online and has special keys for symbols and words attorneys frequently use when composing legal documents.)
When an executive becomes enmeshed in a political controversy, hardliners often call on others to boycott the company. There are pages on Facebook urging boycotts of Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, both of which have had leaders speak out in support of conservative causes. Despite that historical context, when one considers that just in the past two months, brands such as Papa John’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:PZZA]]), Keurig, and Patagonia have all made headlines for weighing in on matters related to politics, the potential appeal of a service like Goods Unite Us becomes more apparent.
“I think we’re at a time when a lot of companies you don’t necessarily hear a lot from are starting to feel the need to speak up,” Wuest says. “Companies like Patagonia, who have been good stewards of the environment for a long time, haven’t needed to engage as much until politics were really directly affecting things they care about, like national monuments.”
Potts says Goods Unite Us’ mobile app has been downloaded more than 1,000 times. The startup is hoping to get to 10,000 downloads by next fall, when the 2018 election cycle will be in full swing, he says. (Potts says he and others on the team are currently finalizing a version of the app for Android devices.)
Wuest says her company’s foremost goal is reducing the amount of money in politics, which may seem at odds with her plan to funnel a portion of Goods Unite Us profits back in to politics. At the same time, she says, it’s important to be realistic about where things stand in the short term. If the Citizens United decision is eventually overturned—a big “if”—it would most likely not be until 2021 or later.
“Until we can get money of out politics, we’re going to have to figure out ways to live with it,” Wuest says.
Many Americans say they can’t remember the levels of political polarization and tribalism in the U.S. ever being as high as they are today. Some critics might charge that by creating a marketplace that intentionally excludes products from corporations judged to have right-leaning political views, Goods Unite Us is only likely to exacerbate the problem.
Wuest says the prospect of Goods Unite Us further increasing polarization is a “legitimate concern.” In her view, though, polarization does not stem directly from what people know, but rather how they interpret and act on information.
“My response is, ‘OK, we agree–we do not want our society to become more polarized [either],’” she says. “What triggers polarization, I think, are anger and resentment that our needs are not getting met. Information itself is not inherently bad. Knowing who the companies you’re supporting are donating to should not be the thing that triggers polarization.”
