Archive for February, 2009
An Old Company CAN Learn New Tricks
February 26th, 2009 by Bill Baren
Amazing customer experience every step of the process is becoming even more important in our current business environment. HEMA, a Dutch department store has taken this to the next level.
I’ve never seen anything like and have just emailed this out to all of my colleagues.
Take a look at HEMA’s product page. Make sure not to click on anything until the action begins on the page and turn up your computers speakers.
By the way, you don’t have to be a young company to be innovative. HEMA’s first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands.
How can you create an experience for your potential customers that will have people talking about you?
Big Impact from Seemingly Small Changes: How Multinationals Are Getting Started on the Sustainability Journey
February 5th, 2009 by Green Business Innovators
[Many thanks to Rachel Botsman of OZOlab for providing this insightful guest post showing how to make progress on the journey to being a more sustainable business]
We are awash in “green” articles that highlight examples and best-practices of companies such as Patagonia, Stonyfield Farm, and Timberland-businesses that have had sustainability as part of their DNA from the outset.
But for large multinational brands (especially suppliers of packaged goods) that are dependent on energy-intensive supply chains and high volumes of raw materials, a different approach is often required.
For such brands, the journey to a more sustainable business usually starts with the entry question of “where (or how) do we start?” - particularly in the case of those brands for which, to put it simply, “selling more stuff” (and more than their competitors) has been the prevailing internal mindset and the business priority, up until now.
This article focuses on leading global brands that are making the transition from treating sustainability as a hot “green topic” to embracing it as a true business strategy. It includes US and European companies that have identified “hotspots” in their supply chain where their environmental impact can be reduced, relatively quickly and inexpensively.
Viewed in isolation, some of these steps may seem minor. However, viewed against the total volume of transactions, their cumulative impact is undeniable.
These seemingly small changes are not quick fixes or marketing makeovers but true sustainable strides that have entered the mainstream marketplace. They also reflect successful collaboration between marketing and operations departments that have worked together to implement genuine environmental changes vs. marketing half-truths that consumers are starting not to believe. These brands recognize that sustainability should not be viewed just as a cost saver but also a sales driver, and that products and services embedded with sustainable practices are attracting more publicity and increased brand loyalty-and in many cases they are selling faster.
A common theme that emerges from the examples that follow is the need to challenge old assumptions around products and packaging, and the processes that link them, in order to deliver rule-bending innovation. While it is true that groundbreaking sustainable innovation that results in totally new business models is still rare, it’s also true that brands are starting to move along the eco-innovation spectrum and out of the obvious incremental changes such as carbon offsets and recycling programs-toward looking at the total picture and the rich opportunities environmental challenges can create.
The following six examples from M&S, Wal-Mart, UPS, Unilever, Boots the Chemist, and Whirlpool have been selected because each highlights an innovation across a different part of the sustainability spectrum, from design and packaging, to product formulation, to waste and transportation.
Interview with Xavier Helgesen, Co-Founder of Better World Books
February 2nd, 2009 by Amie Vaccaro
Buying Books with Heart and Soul
Next time you’re buying a book online – you may be able to help people around the world learn to read.
Better World Books is an online bookstore that supports nonprofit organizations with literacy programs such as Room To Read and Books For Africa ($3.1 million contributed so far) by donating a percentage of its revenues. In the process, Better World Books has saved 8,170 tons of books (millions of books) from landfills.
Co-Founder Xavier Helgesen explains how a business started by college students has thrived in the online marketplace ($21 million in revenue in 2007) while staying true to its triple bottom line mission of creating positive social and environmental impact in addition to financial value.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS
- Why Better World Books targets the mainstream audience, not just the “green” consumer
- How to decide whether your mission-led venture should be a for-profit or nonprofit
- An innovative strategy for offering books on numerous e-commerce web sites at the same time
- How Better World Books overcomes the challenges of a rapidly growing business
LISTEN NOW (press play below)
TRANSCRIPT
AMIE VACCARO, GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: This is Amie Vaccaro with Green Business Innovators. My guest today is Xavier Helgesen, co-founder of Better World Books. Glad you could be here, welcome.
XAVIER HELGESEN: Great to be here, Amie.
GREEN BUSINESS INNOVATORS: I was looking through some of your marketing materials, and I see that you describe your business as a self-sustaining, triple bottom line company that creates social, economic and environmental value for its stakeholders. And as far as I am concerned that is kind of the ultimate company, and I would love to hear you kind of explain that and explain your business model in that context.
XAVIER HELGESEN: Well, we are a stakeholder driven company; we are part of B-corporation actually, which is the network of about a 130 companies where management is obliged, not just to the shareholders to maximize profit but to the stakeholders to create social, environmental and economic value. So we focus on our triple bottom lines.
Our social mission, in particular, is to channel the book buying power of all of us out there. People will buy about $20 billion worth of books in the US alone this year. And if we can channel just part of that money to funding literacy programs, we can make a huge dent in the fact that 1 out of 7 people in the world cannot read, 1 out of 7 adults, and not to mention the next generation coming up.