...was having dinner with Heather & Lindsey - two great Mums who are a part of our gMum program. We had a great feed at Customs House and got to know each other some. They had never met each other but they are both embarking on building a green home - quite the undertaking! So now they have one more thing in common. All up a great trip to a city that is way greener than I had expected.
Karen & Kelli on fire in Chicago. Three deep for two days. They did a sterling job!
Last Friday, right before Green Fest started, Josh Dorfman - the Lazy Environmentalist appeared on Martha Stewart to show her some new groovy green products. And he was good enought to give gDiapers a big plug which was just superb. With three of us in Chicago, the phones at gHQ lit up for most of the day keeping Sue, Kim and Schooey on their toes! Needless to say we broke a few web sales records. Josh did a great job of really showing how the product works. So we think the interest we receieved was well qualified. Josh's book is being launched next month. His other passion, is his furniture store Vivavi featuring beautiful, sustainably built pieces.
The conference organisers, Alisa Gravitz & Denise Hamler are brilliant at forcing networking upon the group. Somehow even the quietest wallflower ends up meeting a ton of people through speed networking and other activities. They are quite brilliant.
So in no time I had met and ate and partied with some great new people. All good friendships start at the bar (serving organic beer no less) Evan from Food for Thought was wearing a New Zealand America's Cup sweatshirt so I thought I better make sure he wasn't a kiwi, otherwise there wouldv'e been sauce on the floor...He wasn't and he is a mad sailor so instant mateship. He was with his colleague Tim and then there were three. Evan & Tim are in the jam business and have the first Fair Trade certified spreads. Then Craig joined us. He is launching an online affiliate program with a twist and he races cars, so we essentially had a blokes dream team - sailing, fast cars and beer (and sustainable business interests). Then Jody, Evan & Tim's organic coffee company mate joined. OK, so we lost the boys club but that's OK. Then Rebecca from Green Clean rocked up and now we were five. Then Tara decided to come over for a yarn. She is launching a new green business. We coached her a little and she has smartly decided to discard the URL "greenbizhub.com" and go for "gogreenordie.com" - it has a softer edge...
So with a crew of six, it was dinner time. We ended up at a great Japanese hole in the wall with four more ring -ins including Mimi and her son from Grocer's Daughter Chocolate (good rule of thumb, always hang close to chocolate makers at these conferences...) and Leif Utne who is the Publisher of World Changing and is the son of the Utne's of Utne Reader fame. So after some gyoza and edamame, we discovered that amongst us, there were no less than three folks who had adopted little ones - from the US, Guatemalas and Korea and a fourth writing a book about adoption. I felt like the third wheel. After beer and sake we were instant mates and it was nye nye time.
I am in the windy city for a terrific 3 day conference on green business. The luminaries of the industry are here - Michael Crooke - ex CEO of Patagonia, Jeffrey Hollender of 7th Gen, Ray Anderson the king of cradle to cradle with is innovative carpet business and many more. Also good talks from the folks at LOHAS, giving us a sense of the fast growth of the sustainable business sector. Joel Makower, a prolific green blogger and author gave a thought provoking presentation on the business of green business. The data he presented is indeed the data that has not budged a whole lot in 15+ years - US consumers are aware of organic and sustainable but the percentage of consumers who actually change their behaviour is still extraordinarily low. This was somewhat of a buzz kill after a rah rah day but there you have it. The very next day on the front page of USA Today was a piece supporting that thesis with the headline: "Doing right thing isn't easy, even for those who want to: Green living takes roots but habits die hard".
While our mates over at Seventh Generation had a party hard 3 days at Expo East last week (Jeffrey Hollender, their CEO is proposing to nix the booth next year and rent a party space for the duration), we at "g" had no less than 2 pregnant staffers on board, Kato and Schooner. On their feet for 24 hours talking gDiapers, they were absolute troopers. So at 6pm each day when it was time to pack up, while most went to the industry shin digs, we all happily headed back to Fawlty Towers for some R&R and the mandatory episode of McDreamy. Kato and Schooner are massive fans. But alas, we got the time wrong by an hour and not even multiple attempts to download the show from abc.com could save us. So tragically Neal and I - Grey's Anatomy virgins, still have no clue who McDreamy or McSteamy are.
We (wife, 2 sons, sans dog) are in LA this weekend with PR Kate and Customer Service Michelle for the very first Whole Children Whole Planet expo - an expo all about natural parenting. Something close to our hearts. Should be a good one: Parents who get what we are trying to do and a touch of Hollywood with some celebs doing stuff.
So sure our mission at Expo West is to interest buyers, write orders, get PR, make sure our brokers are all set to sell the product. But the real aim for me and the gCrew is to make a start on a blockbuster new doco - "Expo Uncovered". We are in Disneyland after all...
It's all about those pretty young things - the sales boys and girls who are uncommonly attractive but perhaps are not quite on message when it comes to all things "organic". They work with products like the 'Hollywood Diet" and protein powder. They are terrifyingly fit but maybe chemically enhanced.
They man the booth all day and then hit it hard all night with the industry parties on offer. They make some "sub optimal", alcohol fueled decisions in the mating stakes, awake in a Hotel 6 zip codes away from the convention center, quickly review the situation, possibly gnaw their own arm off and hurriedly head back to the Expo for a 10am kick off. They do the walk of shame straight to Starbucks and the freebie samples of every organic food ever made (a nice perk) before 8 hours of sell, sell, sell before the next big post match function. PR/ Marketing Kate and I witnessed it at Expo East 6 months ago. We started casting today but were simply overwhelmed with choice. Sad that we parents couldn't get past 9pm at tonight's Organic Trade Association dinner!
So after a year of arriving in the US and launching gDiapers, finally today I met someone else in the "green" diaper industry - Jeffrey Hollender, the CEO of Seventh Generation, the leader in non toxic products. A really interesting conversation. We are both involved in supporting the Blue Butterfly program. Great to speak with a like mind and someone who has travelled down a road we have just started on.
The buzz around here is all about Tom's of Maine's sale to Colgate. It is such a conundrum in the organic space and history is littered with disasters. Ben & Jery's sale to Unilever is probably the worst. All the triple bottom line value was lost in the space of 6 months by Unilever. Same when The Body Shop listed. While Profit remained the focus, the People and the Planet fell by the way side. The only exception seems to be Stoneyfield Farms who have actually managed to change the way their acquirer - the biggest yogurt maker in the world, Groupe Danone - does business. I think Colgate is smart enough to know that their $100 milion actually bought more than just a range of products. Time will tell. Here's another view. Be sure to read the trackbacks.
