B Corps and B Lab
How three friends turned the lessons of a sneaker company's sale into a global certification for business as a force for good.
From sneakers to a movement
B Lab began with a basketball-shoe company and a question about what happens to a mission when a company is sold.
Before B Lab there was AND 1, a basketball footwear and apparel brand with roughly US$250 million in revenue, known for treating its workers and supply chain unusually well. Jay Coen Gilbert co-founded it, Bart Houlahan ran it as president, and Andrew Kassoy — a private equity investor — backed it. The three had been friends and roommates at Stanford.
When AND 1 was sold in 2005, the three saw how quickly a company's values can unravel once it changes hands. The question of how a business can stay true to its purpose through growth and new owners led them to found the nonprofit B Lab in Berwyn, Pennsylvania in 2006, under the credo of business as a force for good.
- 2006
B Lab founded
Gilbert, Houlahan and Kassoy establish the nonprofit in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
- 2007
First 81 B Corps
The first cohort includes an employee-owned flour company founded in 1790, a cleaning-products startup, a clog maker, a yerba mate importer and a Philadelphia café.
- 2010
Maryland writes it into law
On 13 April, Governor Martin O'Malley signs SB 690, making Maryland the first US state with a benefit corporation statute.
- 2016
Società Benefit in Italy
Italy becomes the first European country — and the second worldwide after the US — to recognize benefit corporations in law.
- 2025
New standards
On 8 April, B Lab publishes its largest-ever overhaul of the certification, replacing the 80-point score with mandatory requirements.
- 2026
First certifications under the new bar
On 16 June, the first nine companies — including Ricola, Rituals, Lumene and Nativa — certify under the new standards; the global community passes 10,800 companies in 102 countries.
How certification works
A verified assessment, a legal commitment, and — since 2025 — mandatory requirements instead of a score.
Certification is granted company by company. Under the system used until 2025, an applicant completed the B Impact Assessment, had its answers verified, embedded stakeholder interests in its legal documents, and recertified every three years.
Certification vs. legislation
A Certified B Corp is not the same thing as a benefit corporation — one is a label, the other a legal form.
The two are constantly confused. Certification is granted by the private nonprofit B Lab after verified assessment; a benefit corporation is a corporate form written into state or national company law, with no performance test attached. A company can be either, both, or neither.
| Aspect | Certified B Corp | Benefit corporation |
|---|---|---|
| Nature | Third-party certification by the nonprofit B Lab | Corporate form under state or national company law |
| How obtained | Pass the verified BIA, pay fees, make the legal commitment | Register or amend articles under the statute; no performance verification |
| Performance bar | Yes — 80 points; mandatory requirements under the new standards | None; usually only an annual benefit report |
| Duration | Recertify every three years | Permanent unless the registration changes |
| Availability | Any company, anywhere | Only jurisdictions that have legislated |
| Jurisdiction | Year | Milestone |
|---|---|---|
| Maryland, US | 2010 | SB 690 makes Maryland the first US state to legislate; more than 40 US jurisdictions have since followed, with B Lab as the lead advocate. |
| Italy | 2016 | Società Benefit takes effect — first in Europe, second worldwide. |
| Colombia | 2018 | Law 1901 (18 June 2018) creates the BIC — the benefit and collective interest company. |
| France | 2019 | The PACTE law (May 2019) creates the société à mission, modeled on the US benefit corporation. |
| British Columbia, Canada | 2020 | A June 2020 Business Corporations Act amendment introduces the benefit company — Canada's first. |
| Others | — | Ecuador and Puerto Rico are among further jurisdictions with legislation. |
The movement in numbers
From 81 companies in 2007 to a community of more than 10,800.
Well-known B Corps
Six companies that show the certification's reach — and its stress points.
The roster spans a founder who gave his company to the planet, subsidiaries of the world's biggest food groups, and a certified brand that collapsed into administration.
Six companies
Controversies and criticism
The sharpest challenges to the label have come from inside the community.
Two flashpoints — Nespresso's certification and Dr. Bronner's exit — frame a broader argument about whether the standard is strict enough to mean anything.
- Nespresso open letter (2022): after Nespresso certified in April 2022, Fair World Project led an open letter signed by more than 20 B Corps, including Dr. Bronner's and specialty coffee roasters. It cited a 2020 investigation that found children as young as eight working on seven Guatemalan farms supplying Nespresso, wage-withholding cases uncovered in Brazil in 2021, and the environmental impact of single-use aluminium capsules — and demanded that human-rights abuses become automatically disqualifying, with a tougher BIA overall.
- Dr. Bronner's exits (2025): the organic soap maker — certified since 2015 and holder of the highest BIA score ever recorded, 206.7 — announced in February 2025 that it would not recertify, arguing that B Lab lets multinationals such as Unilever and Nespresso/Nestlé certify without third-party verification of their supply chains, turning the label into a marketing tool that contradicts its mission. UK pet-food brand Scrumbles dropped the certification the same year.
- Structural criticism: the certification has no legal standing, no mandatory due-diligence mechanism, and relies on company-reported data — leaving room for greenwashing. Researchers have also questioned how firmly certification links to sustainability outcomes.
- B Lab's answer: the 2025 standards — scrapping flexible scoring in favor of mandatory human-rights and climate requirements — are widely read as a direct response to these critiques and to EU rules such as the ECGT directive.
B Corps in Taiwan
A quick snapshot — the full ecosystem has its own page.
Taiwan counts 63 certified B Corps across wholesale, manufacturing, finance, education, technology and food service. DOMI Earth became the island's first in June 2014; O-Bank, certified in October 2017, was the first publicly listed bank in the world to earn the label.