Ecopreneurist

Part 1 in a series where Krates Ng (co-founder of Mokugift environmental rewards) interviews fellow ecopreneurs.  Today, Krates interviews Brendan Gill of PlentyWays.

1) Why did you start PlentyWays?

We’ve always wanted to create an environmentally focused organization and its really our first opportunity to do that.  At school and college we learned about the climate change issue and it became obvious that this issue is going to form a backdrop to our entire lives.  Its already a crucial matter, but it is only going to grow more and more important over the coming decades.  We wanted to be involved with this issue and to do our bit to help.

2) Is there a story about the name ‘PlentyWays’?

These days its very hard to come up with a name.  Finding something short, simple and with an available web address is difficult so when we finally came up with PlentyWays, we were really satisfied.  The idea behind it is that there are plenty of ways to make a difference.  That’s really our guiding philosophy: through the products we make available, the tips we provide, the services we review, we are trying to show people all the ways in which they can do their bit.

3) What was the toughest challenge in getting your company started and how you got over that?

There was a combination of challenges at the beginning.  It took us a long time to come up with our name, we even tried crowd sourcing it and put up a bounty of $200 we were so stumped, but even that proved fruitless.  The second big challenge was picking out the right products to offer our customers.  There are a lot of green products out there now and the number is increasing by the day.  We had to do a lot of research into what we thought were the most popular ones and would be most useful to our users.  Its a lot of work to then build relationships with the companies that make these products as well, which we are still working on.

4) If you had to pick one company in your lineup, which one would you showcase and why?

When people ask me what they can do to go green, the very first thing I ask them is if they have switched from incandescent bulbs to CFLs.  This is the most simple straightforward thing someone can do which is guaranteed to save both energy and money.  Sometimes it can be a challenge to convince people of a more expensive option that is more ecological, but using CFL bulbs is a complete no brainier.  Also people who are waiting for their current incandescent supply to run out before switching to CFLs – a quick calculation will show you that in almost all situations you should switch straight away.

5) How is PlentyWays going to grow in 2010? And how can other ecopreneurs help?

PlentyWays has huge plans!… We are working extremely hard on our blog, which we are going to focus on helping people to go green.  We will keep our ears to the ground on all the latest environmental apps, services and products and review them on our blog making it easy for budding ecopreneurs to take advantage of them.  We also want to provide some apps of our own.  The first we made was a very simple tool to stay on top of the latest green news, which pulls in news from some of the most popular green-focused websites out there e.g. TreeHugger and NY Times Environment.  We also want to work on a system that can monitor the energy and monetary savings people can make with various green goods.  For example, if someone purchases a few CFL bulbs from us, we would like to use the date they purchased to automatically calculate how much energy savings that has resulted in and the effect on their wallet.  It will probably use an average energy cost and an average figure for daily light usage as default, but would allow people to customize the calculation to their situation by entering their cost per KWHr and average light usage.  Stay tuned to our blog for details on all new features.

The internet makes knowledge accessible, but at the end of the day it is about communications and connecting.  Global Green Links came to Mokugift, signed up to our corporate rewards program and became an affiliate in less time that it takes took us to figure out where to go for lunch.

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Being small and focused helps us stay true to our mission in everything that we do.  When a company called kajeet approached us via Miller Strategic Marketing we did our homework and checked out their site, did a search on reviews and looked into the bios of the executive team.  We found out that kajeet is a mobile phone service that focuses on the needs of parents with young children.  This is consistent with the trend that companies that work with mokugift are focused on creating nurturing experiences or have developed nurturing cultures in their company.

Parenting brings out the pragmatic and resourceful skills in everyone.  kajeet approached us with the idea of Read the rest of this entry »

Planning a trip?

Concerned about your travel footprint?

Wallet a little thinner than you’re used to?

Whether planning to visit another state or country, house swapping is a great way to take a bite out of your travel plan footprint and save a wheelbarrow full of cash.

Ever wish you had a close friend living in every cool country you ever wanted to visit? Now you do, sort of. Home Exchange Now is a website that lets users temporarily swap their living quarters. Think of it as an international exchange program – minus the college coursework.

Users of the site pick a country, when they’d like to stay, and then search for like minded foreigners who’d like to swap houses for a spell.  Read the rest of this entry »

Are you like millions of others who assume that an online business, just by virtue of being online, translates to having a lower carbon footprint?  If so, then you are in for a shock. Although this is a fairly common assumption, the truth is that internet powered businesses often have a higher energy consumption requirements than offline businesses and so might have a long way to go before they can become green.

And the situation looks like it could get worse over the next few years. Get this….

• According to the EPA, over the next five years, power failures and limits on availability will stop operations at more than 90% of data centers
• Gartner predicts that early 50% of data centers worldwide will have trouble finding the electricity they need to cool and power their computing equipment
• 97% of respondents in a new survey conducted by the Business Performance Management Forum (BPM) said that it was important for internet and e-commerce businesses to reduce their carbon footprint.

But despite this, very little action is being taken by online businesses to reduce energy consumption.

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The purpose of mokugift is to make make tree planting easy and affordable.  Making that mission a reality isn’t as easy as the concept.

The last few months at mokugift have been a great learning experience.  Last year we received some great feedback from our users.  In October we were building a new version that enabled people to choose which country their trees are planted in.  We also changed the art from a cartoon style to a 3D graphic model style.  The impact was interesting.  When mokugift first launched, people thought it was targeted to kids.  With the new art and features we were being considered for general gifting.  This improvement also changed the number of trees sent per gift.

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In December, I wrote that energy efficiency is the business opportunity for 2009. However, we all know that businesses and consumers can’t buy many of the energy efficiency products and services without financing. So, where’s the money?

Government Help?

If you are a small business or want to sell energy efficiency products to a small business, you might think that a logical place to start is the US Small Business Association. However, I don’t think that the SBA has any special loan guaranty programs for renewable energy or energy efficiency purchases. Please comment below if you have had experience with any of the above financing programs or if you know of others!

Recently, the SBA did announce grants to specific small business development centers for energy efficiency programs. Although I don’t see any reference to financing, if you can qualify for a general SBA loan, energy efficiency improvements could be a good use of proceeds!

Another Federal government agency, the EPA, has a list of resources as part of its Energy Star for Small Business program. When I clicked on “California” I received this list, which includes some lenders.

If your business wants to sell energy efficiency products or services to homeowners, then you’ll be happy to see an increasing number of related loan products for homeowners. For a number of years there has been an Energy Efficient Mortgage program, but I’ve heard that is hasn’t been very popular with banks and homeowners. And now, In the northeast, there is a pilot program for a promising-sounding Energy Star Mortgage, which allows homeowners to finance energy efficiency retrofits with a tax-deductible interest payments.

Private Sector Financing Sources

Private banks are starting to innovate with “green loans”. One that was launched late last year is by Umpqua Bank and the Energy Trust for Oregon is the Greenstreet lending program is for installing solar energy systems or energy efficiency improvements. Businesses who are customers of Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural or Cascade Natural Gas can apply for loans of $5,000 to $100,000 with a fixed 6.5% interest rate. There is also a program for homeowners. Read the rest of this entry »

In 1953, almost 60 years ago, in his American Marketing Association presidential address, Professor Neil Borden of Harvard Business School, introduced the term “marketing mix” and in 1960 E. Jerome McCarthy supplemented that concept with the 4 P’s of Marketing. Ever since then, every student of marketing has learned the 4 P’s of marketing; Product, Pricing, Promotion, Placement. In recent years, and not for the first time, these once-seen as fundamental concepts are coming under scrutiny in the wake of a dramatically altered landscape.

The reality is that consumers shop differently than they did 50 years ago and expect different things from your brand. First, consumers want to learn about your product on their time. Traditional push, top-down, or inside-out oriented marketing from the marketing department that interrupts a consumer experience is ineffective. Think TiVo, iPod, pop-up blockers. Sure, they’ll consume your media – when they want to – not when it is pushed on them. Why don’t commercials get TiVo’d during the Super Bowl? It is part of the experience, for some it is the most important experience, of watching the Super Bowl.

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Maybe the title should instead read “How to Fail at ‘Greening’ Your Business”. Often times companies seem to approach “green” or eco-friendly as just another product attribute that can simply be added to packaging or website to reach the “green” consumer segment. In the rush to be eco-friendly, and due to the typical structure of many organizations, the marketing team will take the lead of the greening effort and, in the interest of time & energy, they’ll create a brilliant plan to communicate “green” to a target consumer group, but no internal alignment.

The sustainability and marketing strategies of a typical entrepreneur are often times based on the same model – the shotgun approach. Typically, entrepreneurs start to think about marketing after at least 6 months of hitting the pavement, and then sustainability appears as part of a new “marketing plan” or is seen as some kind of charitable giving / community relations campaign. Sustainable business is neither part of a marketing campaign nor a community relations effort. Neither is it about shifting revenue, but rather how revenue is generated.

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Ah, the internet, what an amazing tool you are for helping businesses grow. Or even exist. You allow so much more to happen for so many more people than in the past.  And yet, there’s only so much you can do online, if you deal in physical products. They need to be stored somewhere. Packed. Shipped. Returned. All necessary, and yet for most entrepreneurs, something they’d rather not deal with. You’ve come up with a product line that more and more people love, and it’s making you more and more hate what fulfilling on that demand has begun to entail.

You find yourself needing a warehouse, or needing a bigger one then you have. Maybe you don’t need a warehouse, but managing all the nittie gritties is extra hassle you’d rather not have. Or perhaps your customers aren’t just local anymore, and your carbon footprint is getting larger because of the shipping. What to do?

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