A Virtual Tour of Badger
The first time I came into the Badger building, for my interview, the exposed timber frame looked so cool, and the whole place smelled of wood: welcoming and hopeful.
I have been working here now for two years in the Badger kitchen, and I recently trained to be a tour guide. Here is a virtual tour of our building, in case you can’t get to Badger to see for yourself!
Welcome to Badger!
We begin the tour of Badger in the dining room, where our mission statement is stenciled on the wall. It begins: Healing Products – Healthy Business. This sets the tone for the rest of the tour.
We stop at a mural of the grove in Spain where we source our organic extra virgin olive oil from. Did you know that Badger uses more than 10,000 gallons of organic extra virgin olive oil a year? Since a tree generally yields one gallon of oil per harvest, it’s like we’re sponsoring 10,000 ancient trees to continue growing organically. Directly across from the mural is a board featuring some of our healthy business initiatives: Babies at Work, Subsidized Childcare, Donating10% of pre-tax profits to charity, and our twice annual company-wide roadside clean-up days.
Production and Shipping
From there we walk through the hallway between our production rooms on one side, and the shipping/packaging area on the other. Our machines have been designed with workers in mind, so people are running the machines and not the other way around. The tin filling machine is run by two people and runs up to 10,000 tins a day.
We walk through the space where our warehouse used to be, a long room now filled with flow racks from which we gather product to fill orders in over 20 countries. It is a big space, but we outgrew it, and now have a larger warehouse (more on that later!).
Past and Future
We head up the back stairwell, aka our Hall of History. There are framed collages on the walls for almost every year we’ve been in business. The first is from 1995 when we had one product and two employees. As the years progress the numbers of employees and products grow Currently we have 100 products and 92 employees! At the top of the stairs is a poster about how Badger got its name. To learn more about this, we recommend watching this video with Badger Bill!
Next, we go through the upper section of the warehouse, with the yoga room, photo studio, offices, and our two new labs: one is for product development, and the other is for quality assurance.
This brings us to one of the most exciting parts of the tour of Badger: the new extension of our building that just opened this year! We nearly doubled the square feet of our facility to house new machinery and growing Badger business.
Just like our main building, the walls and ceiling are packed with energy-efficient high density, recycled cellulose insulation. The new loading dock has a radiant heating system to keep it efficient and safe in the snows of New Hampshire winters. There are efficient led lights as well, which compliment the natural light that streams in the windows and skylights. There is also an employee gym, a suite of offices, and a half stair leading up to a picture window.
Comfy Badger Dens
The tour of Badger finishes with a walk through our comfy Badger Dens – aka offices – which house sales, customer service, marketing, and administration. There are storyboards that show the development of the art that appears on our products, and displays of products like our sunscreens, lip balms, the Man Care Line and more.
Seeing is Believing
The best part about being a tour guide for me was seeing people’s faces light up as they heard about what we do here at Badger, and realizing how grateful I am to work for a company that is using business as a force for good in the world.
I hope you enjoyed this virtual tour of Badger. Come visit us in Gilsum New Hampshire soon to take the tour in person. You’ll learn a lot more about Badger and our products!
