Founder and CEO Morgan Berman, the first lady of Philly eco-consciousness, has learned to listen to her users and adjust accordingly

As if creating a startup from scratch and propelling it into a crowded market place wasn’t tough enough, how does rethinking the central business model two years in sound?

To Morgan Berman, founder of My MilkCrate, it sounds like heaven. When we last checked in with the naturally disruptive Berman last August, her then one-year-old MilkCrate app was carving out a niche as a one-stop shop for anyone wanting to be an environmentally conscious consumer, arming users with an array of nearby businesses that produce and sell locally grown and made products.

In short order, Berman had met the one-stop-shop dream of her grad school thesis on sustainable design at Philadelphia University, and she’d received significant attention for her efforts, taking meetings with senior White House officials and even auditioning for Shark Tank. But late last year, Berman started hearing a different message from her users. Through Craigslist focus groups, social media interactions, and mailing list questionnaires, she heard that her users were overwhelmed by the content MilkCrate was providing and wanted more guidance and rewards for their socially impactful behavior.

“We decided to pivot our business model,” says Berman, “and instead of just giving users options of where to shop, we wanted to reward them, and create something social for them.”

Read the full article here.

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