5 Purpose-Driven Businesses Succeeding in 2025
(And What You Can Learn From Them)
Making a profit feels like the be-all-end-all for most businesses, which makes logical sense. After all, you need a steady income and capital to keep your business running and growing to new heights. But have you ever considered what success looks like for your company outside of the numbers on your monthly ledgers? What else is there beyond what goes into your bank account? Can purpose-driven businesses truly succeed in today’s market?
For many businesses today, a new holistic mission has emerged: Identifying and living by a purpose or purposes that matter to them, their employees, their partners, and — most importantly — their customers. Becoming a purpose-driven business might seem like an extra effort with little reward, but business leaders are increasingly finding that all aspects of their businesses grow and gain traction when people buy into a meaningful purpose, not just their bottom line.
If you’re interested in becoming or enhancing an existing purpose-driven business, there are several steps to take and missteps that could set you back. To forge a clearer path forward, we’ve decided to take a look at some of the most notable and successful purpose-driven businesses around the globe today, honing in on a specific lesson all businesses can learn from their existing models.
Purpose-Driven Business #1: Warby Parker
Lesson: Keep Your Mission Simple
Warby Parker is an eyewear brand and retailer that is also a public benefit corporation and a certified B Corp. Like many other purpose-driven businesses, Warby Parker has a simple phrase or mission that employees and customers alike can remember: “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair.” Their “Buy a Pair, Give a Pair” Program has become famous for how it directly supports people all over the world to receive access to eye exams and eyeglasses via each customer’s purchase.
Another popular purpose-driven brand that keeps its mission simple is TOMS, with its One for One business model, meaning that each purchased pair of shoes leads to one donated pair of shoes to a person in need. In both of these cases, the impact is easy to understand because of a one-liner catchphrase. While both brands do a great job of telling more of their story and impact beyond their simple tagline with accompanying blog posts and documentation, the straightforward mission statement makes it easier to get customer buy-in and draw interest from new customers with little more than a quick first impression.
Purpose-Driven Business #2: Costco
Lesson: Stick to Your Values, Even When It’s Hard
Costco is one of the largest retailers in the world, with hundreds of big-box warehouse club stores and a bustling online retail store. It has experienced steady growth and popularity for many years, much of which is owed to how it treats its employees and customers.
The company’s mission statement is “to continually provide our members with quality goods and services at the lowest possible prices,” and its Code of Ethics supports this mission with the following statements: “Obey the law. Take care of our members. Take care of our employees. Respect our suppliers.” All of this is centered on a clear overarching value: Treat people well.
But treating people well can feel trickier in harder economic times. With current global pressures like inflation and tariffs driving many businesses to raise their prices, it would only be natural for Costco to follow suit. However, because of Costco’s desire to truly live by its mission, the company’s leadership has worked to find creative ways to keep its products affordable for all of its customers.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the food court: Costco’s $1.50 hot dog and soda combo has remained the same price since the mid-80s, despite how inflation has made this a wholly unprofitable choice. At one point in time, Costco’s first CEO and cofounder, James Sinegal, purportedly told his successor Craig Jelinek that “If you raise (the price of the) effing hot dog, I will kill you.”
This may seem like an unwise business decision on the surface, but it has ultimately benefited Costco by driving continued customer loyalty. And when it comes to cultivating brand loyalty amongst key, returning customers, there is huge ROI potential. According to the 2025 Global Customer Loyalty Report from Antavo, 83% of surveyed business owners with loyalty programs saw a positive return on their loyalty investments, with loyalty programs generating more than five times their costs in revenue.
Here’s how it works for Costco: While many people may come for the cheap hot dog meal, they’re also likely to spend money and be a brand advocate for Costco to their friends and family members, all because Costco chooses to lose money on one product, on principle. This choice has also encouraged Costco’s leaders to be more creative in saving money. According to the current CEO, Ron Vachris, they have managed to maintain quality while cutting costs for both the $1.50 hot dog and the $4.99 rotisserie chicken by building their own, more efficient plants to produce these products.
Another lesson Costco teaches us is the importance of building up leaders from within. CEO Vachris started as a forklift driver in 1982 and has since risen through the ranks to the highest position in the company. This teaches business leaders that, when you give people the resources and opportunities necessary to grow, they’ll often appreciate it and bring their knowledge, their purpose, and their brand loyalty to the top of the organization in the years to come. People truly are a purpose-driven business’s most valuable asset when you invest in them consistently and authentically.
Purpose-Driven Business #3: Uncommon Goods
Lesson: Be Thoughtful About Your Partnerships
Uncommon Goods is a creative online marketplace and certified B Corp where customers can purchase unique gifts and household items. Some of these products are created in-house, but many of them are made by and sourced from independent craftspeople in varying fields and media. In the process of sourcing its products, the Uncommon Goods team focuses its search on products that:
- Serve a purpose
- Solve a problem
- Are beautiful
- Are skillfully handmade
- Are unique
- Are recycled
- Are made with ethical non-animal materials, or
- Are particularly unique and useful.
But to achieve the quality and ethical standards they strive for, Uncommon Goods has to be careful about which partners they work with. Thus, their sourcing and development team members spend extensive time researching prospective makers, looking at how their products are made, who the person is behind each product, and what processes and materials go into each product.
Achieving this level of traceability and transparency with makers is no small task, but this commitment ultimately benefits Uncommon Goods by building trust with its customers. The company puts in similar effort with other partners, including nonprofits that benefit from the company’s Better to Give program, which allows customers to donate $1-2 to a partner of their choice with each purchase they make.
Purpose-Driven Business #4: Beam Impact
Lesson: Find a Real Solution for a Real Problem
Beam Impact is a marketing and e-commerce-focused business that has built a purpose-driven e-commerce engine to benefit both sellers and customers. A problem that Beam Impact’s founders noticed across both of these groups is a feeling of powerlessness when it comes to making a difference in major global problems, especially with how capitalism works for profit over people.
But within the capitalist framework, they identified a possible solution: Creating a digital platform where sellers can gamify customers’ purchases with donations to meaningful causes, and customers can quickly identify brands that share their values and take action accordingly. Beam brands have made donations toward causes and nonprofits for eradicating food insecurity, decreasing global CO2 emissions, feeding and caring for shelter animals, and supporting mental health needs for marginalized groups of people. Through all of this, Beam Impact continues to grow its audience and its impact, all because it built a useful tool that addressed a big problem in a new, effective way. Moreover, it introduces a circular, mutually beneficial e-commerce workflow to the market, allowing both vendors and customers to gain value while also advancing Beam Impact’s interests.
Purpose-Driven Business #5: King Arthur Baking Company
Lesson: Keep Telling Your Story
King Arthur Baking Company is a US-based baking goods supplier that is also a certified B Corp and 100% employee-owned. One thing the brand has uniquely grasped is that nothing humanizes and connects customers to a brand quite like a good story. In King Arthur’s case, they’ve found unique ways to keep telling their purpose-driven story, sharing their impact from all different angles.
Their core impact areas are labeled as “For People,” “For Planet,” and “Food Justice.” In each of these subcategories, visitors to the King Arthur website will find various marketing assets like blogs, quotes, images, and videos that share customer stories and stories from people the brand has helped; how-to guides for making a difference with King Arthur products and methodologies; and more information about how the company’s founding story and history continues to inform its current and future impact goals.
Through all of this, customers get a closer look at what King Arthur cares about and the actions they’re taking to show they care. They also get useful resources to start contributing to similar causes on their own, with guides like “As a baker, here’s why you should care about soil,” and “How to donate baked goods for your community,” for example. These stories, as well as King Arthur’s comprehensive annual impact reports, help customers feel connected to the brand and like the brand is being transparent with its impact efforts.
Making It Work: Building a Purpose-Driven Brand Identity
Becoming a purpose-driven business can be a lot of work, even if you’ve already identified the purpose(s) that matter most to you. That’s because knowing your purpose is only the first step in putting it into action. From there, it’s necessary to develop a social-impact-driven marketing strategy that will align with your values while broadcasting to both partners and customers why they should work with you.
At Mane Impact, we specialize in social impact marketing, as a brand that also focuses on purpose-driven impact. If you’re interested in amping up your marketing strategy and plans to reflect an important purpose at your business’s core, contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve this goal.