Eric Dayton made climate and sustainability issues central to his last startup, the clothing brand Askov Finlayson. His latest startup, Cold, is aimed at helping other businesses walk the same path.
Dayton, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the Dayton's retail empire, teamed with Dan Lindquist, a former Google product manager and co-founder of tax-credit automation software firm MainStreet, for the new venture. Like Mainstreet, Cold aims to automate a task that can be a chore for businesses: The management of sustainability reports to ensure companies are meeting environmental compliance targets.
Dayton said the idea for the business came from his work at Askov Finlayson, which he launched with his brother, Andrew. Askov Finlayson debuted as a retail shop in the North Loop, then later morphed into a maker of "climate positive" parkas. (Eric Dayton remains CEO of Askov Finlayson.)
Dayton found there was no guideline for building green practices within his business when it became a B Corporation — a certification that requires careful documenting of environmental and social sustainability.
"There really wasn't a roadmap for sustainability, or many tools to support us on our journey, so we just figured it out and learned a ton along the way," Dayton said. "Cold is the solution I wish we'd had back then, and we created it to help other companies make their own progress faster and more efficiently."
While Cold is in the early stages of development, the company has garnered several clients including eco-cleaning product manufacturer Branch Basics and camera bag and gear retailer Peak Design. Cold is currently raising a pre-seed round of funding.
To develop Cold's sustainability compliance software, the team spent the past year talking with founders, CEOs and sustainability leaders about their climate efforts and the challenges they're facing, Dayton said.
"What we started to hear more and more is that sustainability reporting sucks valuable time and resources away from doing the critically important work of reducing an organization’s environmental impact," Dayton said.
Dayton and Lindquist created Cold to solve this problem by centralizing and automating sustainability compliance. Typically reporting is required by one of three types of organizations: retailers and other big enterprise customers, certification bodies like B corporations, and regulation. Cold's software supports a range of frameworks across all three categories and is adding more every week, Dayton said.
Trends suggest a growing number of companies needing similar help. A 2023 Wall Street Journal survey found that two-thirds of respondents stated their company was reporting ESG metrics, up from 56% the prior year. Earlier this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission passed a new rule that requires some public companies to report certain climate-related information in an annual report.
Over the next year, Dayton said one of the big priorities for companies is the elimination of "forever chemicals" from their products and supply chains. PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of synthetic chemicals that break down slowly, and have been largely blamed for water contamination.
"We're building PFAS documentation and reporting tools into Cold's platform that will streamline compliance and make sure our customers are ready," Dayton said.
