5 Things You Didn’t Know About Mission Belts

Mission belt recently sent me out one of their belts, and it has been awesome and you should be seeing a full review of that here soon! However, I was curious to also learn a little bit more about them as a company! So I invited them to let me know 5 things you may not know about them!

This is a bit different than most of the articles in this series, as they chose to talk very heavily about what the “mission” in Mission Belt really stands for. It really seems they built this awesome belt company, to really help with their bigger cause, which is really cool.

So without anything more to say, here are the 5 Things You Didn’t Know About Mission Belts!

1. Why is it called “Mission” Belt? 

While you may think that Mission’s mission is an awesome no-holes belt that helps everyone that buys one stay looking great, the name is in fact not based off of that. Their true mission is to help fight world hunger and poverty. This is done through something called Micro-loans that help businesses get off the ground.

I am personally a big fan of helping businesses grow, and this is a big passion of mine. So having this mission in Mission Belts hits close to home for me. It is awesome to see that they have built a successful company with their belts, and are helping others do the same by offering micro loans.

On their packaging, they talk about how this allows them to not give handouts, rather a hand up, which is a really cool philosophy.

2. Who are you partnered with to carry out your “Mission?

So that we can focus on making our world-class belts, we searched around for a well known and respected organization to work with and found just that in Kiva.  Kiva is a non-profit, peer-to-peer ‘micro-lending’ organization that helps provide opportunities to support economic development and entrepreneurship, mostly in developing countries, as part of its efforts to alleviate poverty and create more economic opportunity. Before you think we’re loan sharks, Kiva doesn’t collect nor pay us any interest on our funds.  Rather, we help to increase the supply of credit for borrowers who might not have access to traditional banking services in their home countries.

I can’t personally speak to this, as it isn’t my arena, however it seems extremely smart to be finding an expert in what you are trying to do, rather than reinventing the wheel.

3. What got them into microloans? 

You can read much more in depth as to how they got started with these micro loans by reading this article on their website. However it basically all started when a friend of theirs was hurt on a job, and needed work. After tons of thinking, they all came up with an idea to help him start a bus route in his country. They were able to help him do this by using microloans, and since then they have never looked back.

This is such a cool idea, that I don’t think many people would ever even think about. As we will learn later they were on a popular TV show that really pushed their business forward. Now they are doing the same thing for people all over the world.

4. How many loans have been issued since inception? 

To date, we have issued more than 165,000 loans in 79 countries. That over $4.2 million in loans! Small loans really do make a huge difference.

Wow that is incredible. So many different people’s lives changed by a company that makes belts without holes in them. It is awesome that they stand for something, and have a “mission”.

5. Heard you were on a popular business TV show. Did you end up partnering with a shark? 

We can credit much of our early growth to successfully pitching and partnering with Daymond from that popular TV show where investors invest money in up and coming entrepreneurs. It’s been great to have Daymond in our corner supporting us as we grow our company!

This is actually where I first learned about Mission Belts! I thought it was such a great idea at the time, and I’m really excited to get to work with them now on this article, as well as my full review of their product that should be coming out soon. Such a great idea, and great quality.

Congratulations on getting a deal on the show!

Conclusion

It isn’t often I have a company that so specifically likes to have their mission talked about more than their product. Sure their belts are totally awesome, and I enjoy it a ton, however they truly do believe the most important thing they are doing is to help people grow their businesses.

I think this is something every business should look to be like!