GreenSmart Notebook - Tom Larsen

2009 - Our Year in Review

It's been  an amazing year. New relationships, new accomplishments, new products and new opportunities have all presented themselves some with great fanfare, some without, but, all, building on a strong foundation for continued success in 2010.

Three accomplishments for GreenSmart stand out for me this year. Leading that list is our certification by our local Keep the Sierra Green regional business recognition organization. To achieve this, our Company was put through an extensive questioning process which reviewed our resource consumption and waste practices. Being the first Company recognized in the local Grass Valley/Nevada city area that includes a lot of high tech and one of the highest rates of solar powered homes, feels pretty good, too.

GreenSmart this year brought to market Neogreene (tm) our proprietary replacement for neoprene for bag making. This was no small feat either, needing to learn all we needed about the material, the supplier, confirm the supplier's claims via third party lab testing, and of course, produce bags, in this case laptop sleeves. We did this while hiring a new marketing firm, Mighty Karma from Denver, and having new people involved in the design process thanks to our new investor relationship with Compass Partners.

We closed the year with our most ambitious product launch yet, the Food & Beverage collection of lunch, water and wine bags. Not willing to settle for yet another basic black collection, we chose to go for lots of colors, make it bright and make it fun, and from what we're hearing and seeing, we have hit that mark.

We have laid out an aggressive product development plan for 2010 that includes a new Neogreene laptop sleeve program and finally, the full development of our Bottles 2 Bags collection, which will include backpacks, messengers, shoulder and duffel bags. We're adding sales people to expand the network of retailers that sell GreenSmart and we're building internally as well, as the work of the sales people creates needs for infrastructure.

I expect 2010 to be a very exciting year. The outlook only 1 year ago for 2009 was pretty grim and very unstable. Looking forward from here, even market stability seems like a very good start. I'm very much looking forward to adding hundreds of retail locations, adding the many products we can so GreenSmart can displace  that much more eco-unconscious product from the marketplace.

We're still finding our way, moving forward deliberately and thoughtfully. To create a sustainable Green Brand is really no different than creating any other financially sustainable business, it just begins with a different underpinning that guides decision making in product design. Having that process set is the foundation for all the other elements, which are the typical competitive issues found in the marketplace. 2010 will layer on new accomplishments and hopefully, through our product development and design, a whole new set of opportunities for consumers delighted to have an eco-friendly, socially conscious choice when they need a bag.

And if the Golden Bears could create a victory in San Diego against the Utes in the Poinsettia Bowl, the year would end on an even higher note.

Inspiring evolution through eco design? What does that mean?

Last week, we finally selected a phrase that describes our Company; Inspring evolution through eco design. Knowing that this type of phrase has the ability to excite as well as turn-off, I thought I’d take a moment to help define what we mean.

Of course, any phrase like this needs to be rooted in a philosophy. We have one, people, product, planet, and we wrestled with how to convert the practices we utilize in operating our business, into a different statement that describes what that process means for the Brand and for the consumer.

Our Brand lives in a world of products that we think up, produce and sell. Through that process, we’ve created a certain set of “new” considerations as to what we are willing to create and what we are willing to produce. That process is what constitutes our whole people, product, planet philosophy. Adding this layer to our already long design consideration of what is possible, reasonable, realistic and sellable, makes the process somewhat more cumbersome. It also becomes more exhilarating, knowing we’re working harder to create even more deeply thoughtful products. This is the essence of eco design – design with an awareness of the eco consequences, both social and environmental, of the decisions inherent in the design.

We see this as the evolution of the process of design. This process is most vividly seen in LEED certifications of buildings. Take the concept of landscaped roofs as seen on the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Putting pots with plants on a roof is a wonderful idea and has been done for centuries. Integrating a full landscape on a roof for all the energy and other possible advantages is a very different story. Just accommodating the added weight, ongoing maintenance, overall roof access, is a significant change to standard considerations for a roof.

 

And if the design is strong, and the execution is done well, that building will serve to inspire people who visit or even see it. Not that they go home and re-think their roof, that’s extreme. But, maybe they come away with a greater appreciation of what is possible. Maybe a solar panel, maybe a rain barrel, maybe they think differently about storm drain runoff. Who knows, but, the point is, by stretching the boundaries of design, the building acts as a longstanding symbol of changing norms.

 

Changing norms are what evolution is all about. We do the same thing with our bags. Twenty years ago, who would have thought we could grind up plastic, make it into fabric and make great looking products? Twenty years ago, I bet there weren’t even enough plastic bottles to matter. Now, the volume of bottles staggers the mind, not just in the U.S. either.

 

Twenty years ago, who would have said Google (what started as a search engine only) would turn out to be part of an online evolution (and a verb, no less). They accomplished that task through design, not just what we see, but, the code they wrote to make it happen. GreenSmart is writing that same type of code, in the work that we do, for bags. We’re applying different thought processes to how we source and create, how we execute and manufacture and finally, how we tell our story. We sincerely hope our work inspires others. It inspires us, and maybe that’s all that matters.

 

GreenSmart defines Being Green, Starts with People

I promised to make this a series about how GreenSmart goes about it's business. If you've been to our website, you've seen that our first element is People, so that seems like the best place to start.

There are a number of different ways GreenSmart thinks about people. There are the people who make our products. There are the people that work for the Company. There are the people that buy our products. And lastly there are the people who finance the Company. All of these constituents" for lack of a better term, are integral to our ongoing practices.

At the beginning are the people who work for or on behalf of our Company. All of these folks have an enthusiasm for our Philosophy. We try to instill in this collection of folks a 360 degree view of their work; an upstream and downstream viewpoint with an awareness that every choice over the course of even a single day, has ramifications. Someone wants something “rush”. Does that really mean tomorrow (air shipment), or just ASAP (ground shipment)? Reuse an inbound carton from Staples for an outbound shipment means getting the carton from our office to the warehouse which are not contiguous. It’s not hard, it just has to be staged for a later transfer next time someone is headed to the warehouse.

These efforts are pretty classic reduce, reuse, recycle (to which we might add reconsider) and need to be instilled in folks whenever possible. Making no assumptions and asking questions to seek alternatives is all it really takes. All the folks connected to GreenSmart, we hope, have this mindset. To many it’s new. To others it’s natural. Being thoughtful with every action seems like a normal attitude, but, it’s really amazing how much of our day or our work is simply done by habit.

We've found that many people that become associated with GreenSmart wind up incorporating this vantage point into other areas of their life/work as well. An employee will become a home recycler. A supplier will phase out bubble wrap or reuse cartons. Each of these seemingly small steps are collectively very valuable and typically have a positive effect on the bottom line of their business, or their life.

The folks who make our products are another location where we pay very close attention to people. Every choice we make in product design has ramifications in the places where products are made. Every choice we make in factory selection has ramifications for those that work there. The choices we make here may have profound effects on people. Working conditions and overall employee morale have a great effect on quality. The higher the quality of production the fewer quality control rejects (waste) created. Working to ensure that our factories are operated in such a way as to provide for the needs of the workers is critical. Are housing, food and healthcare available onsite? We make sure our partners train their employees in safety, that everyone gets break time, that they are not working 6 days a week, that overtime is properly documented, paid for and not compulsory. Through a collective respect for the work and the people that do the work, along with our effort to ensure that the factory is properly paid for the work it does, we can monitor the positives and negatives and have an influence in ongoing improvements wherever we see opportunity.

We also work to consider what effect our choices have on the people who are entrusted to making them. Eliminating toxicities or even potential workplace hazards, reducing extraneous hardware, thoughtfully looking at executions, processes and practices helps us maintain a workplace sensitivity, not just for where we work, but, where those charged with producing what generates our incomes work as well.

Seeking "lowest prices" almost always means making a compromise somewhere. We all see it in the quality when we buy something "cheap". But, there are also other considerations involved that are not apparent on the surface. It costs money to properly dispose of waste. It costs money to provide housing and meals to workers. It costs money to take the time to establish these mutual benefits and then to do what is necessary to be sure that these standards are embedded. All of these become added “costs” to the product, but, I would argue they are real costs that are simply neglected or ignored in more typical vendor/customer relationships. We don’t neglect or ignore them and neither do our partners.

We think that it is worth the effort. I'd like to think gone are the days when denuding the forest for railroad ties is acceptable. I'd like to think gone are the days of dumping waste unconditioned in the river. Yet, in some parts of the world, these practices still exist. Hopefully waning. There are better alternatives. We just need to apply our heads to bring to light the alternatives, not just for their eco-consciousness benefit, but, for all the reasons that these choices are better for entire communities.

Next time, I'll get into the other two people constituents to GreenSmart, the consumer and the investors.