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.
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts - it’s the season after all. I wanted to write a couple of posts talking about items that have done well in the past for clients or that are new for this year and doing well so far.
I also wanted to break this blog into categories so I will start out with BAMBOO.
Top 3 Bamboo Ideas.
1) Flash Drives - Bamboo flash drives, along with their less green brethren in maple, cherry and walnut have been very popular as client gifts this year. At about $9.50 for a 1GB drive with your company or organization’s logo they are a low cost high perceived-value gift. Some clients have gotten very creative and recorded greetings or short videos to their customers and placed them directly on the drives. Again, no one ever throws away a flash drive, they are very useful for office and home, business and recreation. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
Both units come in a variety of colors, both are Prop 65 compliant, both are top rack dishwater safe, both are microwave safe, and both are packaged in eco-friendly packaging for shipment.
The Evolve line is also made in the US and is “designed to biodegrade within 1-5 years in a managed landfill” according to the Norwood website. With one color imprint the units both run under $2.75.
I wanted to write about the Norwood Evolve line because, if you look again at the bullet points offered in the sales material, it seems Norwood developed these mugs to specifically address issues that Ecopreneurist has raised regarding eco-friendly promotional items. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
These caps are great. The 8650 V is a casual unstructured cap made from 100% organic cotton with a Velcro closure and a 3.25″ crown.
The bonus is that they come in multiple colors - Green, Natural (as shown), Soft Blue, Soft Pink and Soft Yellow - and Vitronic can use a sustainable process for dyeing and finishing on these 100% organic cotton caps, so you can show your commitment to the environment.Read the rest of this entry »
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
Well recently in doing some research for Intrepid Travel - a very cool, very green client - I located these eco-friendly bar coasters made of a paper from recycled linen and embedded with flower seeds.
So in this instance the coasters are green to start with and the added flower seeds are a selling point. Anyway, I think these things are genius, I mean really what a great idea.
I think I am so taken with them because trying to get a green theme into a bar setting is normally a challenge, but these coasters are green, practical and cheap. Just perfect. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
Here is a neat idea for you Ecopreneurist trying to break into the organic food or other industries where grocery chains play a part in your marketing plan.
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
For the Ecopreneurist looking for an inexpensive but high quality green pen the Super Hit Opaque Eco by Senator - introduced at the Promotional Products Association International event in Fort Worth - now enters the eco pen market, coming in at an EQP price of $0.38 with one color imprint on the barrel.
The barrel of the Super Hit is 95% recycled and in a bold move Senator posts their certification of this claim right on their website.
On top of that these are true Senator pens so the ink is forgery proof, non-toxic in black or blue and refillable with standard X-20 refills.
They are also made in the U.S.A. with clips in a variety of colors.
The Superhit is one of three new eco pens from Senator. The other two are the Innovator Eco Opaque at $0.55 and the Innovator Eco Soft Grip Opaque at $0.60.
For more information on these pens visit the Senator website or contact us at info@proformagreen.com.
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
I have written before about the great eco-friendly products from Leed’s. Their EcoSmart brand covers a lot of territory from totes to notebooks using both post-consumer recycled materials and organics. It is very popular with green clients.
I have been after Leed’s and other manufactures to start offering eco-only catalogs as many of our clients only want to see eco-friendly items and it is a waste of paper and shipping costs to send them a 200+ page catalog if only 10-15% of the products are green.
Well yesterday I got the attached letter in the mail (click image on right to see full letter). Apparently Leed’s sees it as wasteful as well and is sending out letters to distributors to ask them if they wish to stop with catalog mailing entirely.
This works for me as our office generally works from the Leed’s website at www.leedsworld.com not from catalogs. Now I only wish they would supply us with .pdf versions of their green catalog pages Iike what we use for our green overview, and the transition away from bulky paper will be complete.
Of course I realize that a large driver of this change is likely the cost of printing and sending 100,000s of catalogs each year. Still it is a good change.
It will be interesting to see if the other industry leaders like Norwood and Logomark follow Leed’s in this offer of no more catalogs.
For more information on Leed’s green line visit their website or email us at info@proformagreen.com.
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
Well, I am certainly not a doomsayer. However it does look like the economy is going to slow down over the next few months if not longer.
Often it is marketing and giving that get hit first as companies focus on their core costs.
So Proforma Green is offering a challenge to other Ecopreneurists that read our column.
Starting now Proforma Green is offering a 20%-30% discount from End Quantity Pricing (EQP) on promotional items to 501(c)3, NGOs, charities, schools and other civic organizations, if they allow us to co-brand the products with our web address www.proformagreen.com in some small way. Not all items in our catalog are available with this discount, but most are, likely 85%. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
It is estimated that six billion pens are thrown away every year in the US. BIC, one of the largest pen producers in the United States seems to have decided to do something about that and has entered the eco market in a big way with their new line of BIC Ecoluctions pens.
Like other companies BIC is taking the designs they already have in house and pairing them with new materials to make pens like the Clic Stic Ecolutions which is an exact copy of the standard click pen seen in offices the world over, but now made with 67% pre-consumer recycled material. (BIC’s green website offers a lot of info on these item, though it is a little vague on what the pre-consumer materials are, also there is no mention if the pens themselves are recyclable).
For Ecopreneurist working within or with main street businesses that are not big on change, the ability to offer branded BIC eco-friendly pens is very helpful as it is so simple and painless a change to make.
One of the issues a lot of us have is gaining creditability for green products and green thinking. Sometimes when shopping going green ideas to established businesses - like banks for example - there is strong resistance to our ideas because it is assumed we want the CEO to start coming to work in a hemp suit and that green means throwing away common, accepted business practices.
Well the Ecoluctions pen is not going to rock the boat. It is just a pen, but it is also an example of the types of minor changes companies can make in an effort to go green. And as I have written before small changes add up. Read the rest of this entry »
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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. 
