Meet Maryclaire Manard | Founder and CEO, Cluey

We had the good fortune of connecting with Maryclaire Manard and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Maryclaire, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
Cluey’s mission is to empower impact-conscious consumers with reputable data to make a greater impact through their everyday purchases. This is accomplished through Cluey’s user-friendly website and chrome extension where consumers can search thousands of brands, discover easy-to-understand impacts about those brands aggregated from best-in-class third-party data, and identify alternative brands better aligned with their values. Conscious consumers can use Cluey as a values compass for everyday shopping decisions.

By helping these consumers make more educated purchasing decisions and drive impact through their spending, this solution has the power to harness conscious consumers’ collective power by making disparate actions aggregated and focused. By impacting bottom-line incentives, this movement that we are fueling can drive companies to better decision making that impacts all stakeholders like workers, consumers, and the planet, and not just shareholders.

Thanks in part to younger consumers who are driving the conscious consumer movement, the need for access to a centralized and reliable information tool like Cluey has never been greater.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Cluey sets itself apart in the space of consumer transparency tools in a few ways:

(1) We are an all-in-one solution agnostic of impacts… some tools may only look at environmental impacts or may only look at a few consumer categories, we do it all because we know no two consumers are alike in terms of what they care about most or what they buy.

(2) We personalize our recommendations for consumers based on their unique set of values in order to make the recommended changes as compelling as possible

(3) We aggregate best-in-class data from third-party sources who have already spent years gathering reputable data and information in their respective niche. From ESG ratings providers to impact assessment tools to government data and more, we build trust with our consumers by gathering the best data and translating it into an easy-to-understand ratings and values system.

Building this type of business, truly the first of its kind has not been easy for a variety of reasons. Partly because it takes a lot of educating others.. consumers, investors, but we’ve been able to overcome that by focusing our efforts on first focusing our efforts of building a community of brands, consumers, and investors who most understand the mission, and expanding from there.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
In LA? To clarify, I am not from LA, but my husband is, so I have enjoyed loving it as a second hometown city to my hometown of New Orleans.

Itinerary would entail:
– a hike on Temescal Canyon Trail
– Lunch at either Cha-cha chicken or grab a Godmother sandwich from Bay Cities
– check out any speaking events happening at the LA Cleantech Incubator https://laincubator.org/
– head to the beach near playa del ray and see if there’s an open firepit OR end the day with dinner and drinks at a spot in Venice, likely Ospi

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
So many folks to shoutout! My fellow founder friends who took the time in the early days to give me feedback on the idea, and put me in touch with invaluable resources. My early investors who believe in our long-term mission and have supported us when we were no more than an idea. My life partner who has been a constant source of support on a personal level, and last but not least, the people and organizations who took the risks years ago to lay the groundwork in this burgeoning space of impact information on brands in order to make a solution like Cluey possible. Groups like B Lab, Good on You, EWG, Consumer Reports, Sustainalytics, Open Secrets, and many more.

Website: clueyconsumer.com

Instagram: @clueyconsumer