January, 2009

Sustainable purchasing challenge - bathroom tissue

Submitted by saul on Wed, 01/28/2009 - 18:49

When asked to source bathroom tissue for one of my clients I thought it would be easy to find a great product made from 100% post consumer recycled content. I was wrong. Lots of products and leading brands have family pack sizes but for individually wrapped product the options are pretty much nil. Up to last fall there were a couple products on the market, Cascades, I believe Canada's largest recycled paper products companies, and Seventh Generation, our friends in Vermont who've been leaders in the green cleaning and household products industry. After talking with my suppliers and sales reps it seemed as though the single wrapped products had been discontinued.

Wausau - recycled paper products

I had a feeling that Wausau had a product that would fit the bill. With no info about it on their website I was a bit suspect but I started digging anyways, talked with their head office and send in some inquiries looking for distributors and info for this product. Yesterday I got a call from a Baywest sales rep, they apparently distribute Wausau products in Vancouver, and got all the info I needed. I found a couple local janitorial supply companies to buy it from as I I'd need to buy containers full of this stuff to meet the distributors minimums. Turns out this product is green to the core, literally. Even the paper core is made out of recycled fibres! It's green seal certified, made from, wrapped with and around 100% recycled paper.

Where to buy?

Janitor's Warehouse at 100 SW Marine Drive, Vancouver, BC - ph. 604.327.7708

SK Sanitary at 1841 Pandora St, Vancouver, BC - ph. 604.255.2727

Saul Good Gift Co - for green cleaning and new homeowners gifts - ph. 604.880.8398

Sustainable Packaging and Consumer Behaviour

Are you wondering why I had to source individually wrapped packages of bathroom tissue? Why couldn't I just source large multi packs and use the rolls from there, saving a bunch of packaging materials. The reason is consumer behaviour. When people receive products like this they want assurance that it's clean and safe for them to use. I do my best to use minimal and sustainable packaging in all our corporate gifts and promotions at Saul Good but understanding your market and consumer behaviour is all important to make it successful. If people don't use it, for whatever reason, it didn't work. Sometimes this means sacrifices but it's leading us in the right direction.

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Cocoawest Chocolatier – the best organic chocolate truffles

Submitted by saul on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 15:19

We’ve heard nothing but rave reviews from all our clients who give out our chocolate truffles. High quality hand made artisan organic chocolate truffles, fresh and made to order in Vancouver, BC. Joanne and Carlos are quite the working couple with Joanne’s masterful skills in the chocolate shop and Carlos’ friendly nature as the face on their deliveries to the city. Cocoawest has a really nice chocolate café and Bed & Breakfast on Bowen Island where they live and make their amazing products. Really popular this season were handmade wooden boxes, made from Mountain Pine Beetle and filled with Cocoawest truffles.

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Saul Good Top Five Rules of Business

Submitted by saul on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 15:11

business development

Over the last few years, living the dream of a start up business and working out of my home, I’ve come up with some rules and mantras that seem to be working.

Rule #1 – Don’t f*&# around

If you tell someone that you can do something for them, you better be confident that you can pull it off. Provide solutions for people when problems come up and deliver on your promises. Your word is your biggest asset so don’t fcuk around.

Rule #2 – If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it

Living in a start up is a constant struggle to keep up – if you’re swimming you’ve got to paddle hard to stay afloat and even harder if you want to succeed. There are lots of tasks that have to be done to make things happen and if you don’t do them there’s no one to pick up your mess. You should see my living room! Making light of any situation will keep a smile on your face and everyone happy.

Rule #3 – Like your customers

If you’re not sure what kind of business you want to create, start by figuring out what kind of people you like and want your customers to be. Liking your customers makes going to work fun because you get to interact with these people day in and day out. You create the culture and add value to the businesses of people you like. This is the kind of service people want to deal with.

Rule #4 – Don’t take yourself too seriously

It’s easy for the ego to get in the way. Although I’m right a lot of the time, I know that on occasion I’m wrong. Egg in the face is good, especially if you know how to take it, laugh, smile and learn.

Rule #5 – Put your pants on beeotch!

Saul Good started in my bedroom while I was juggling a 35 hour/week industrial ecology job, a part time MBA in sustainable business and a long distance girlfriend. Needless to say something had to give and as I woke up early every morning after a late night struggling to keep up. I’d get up, make a tea and bring breakfast to my desk. After being distracted checking emails and checking in with people and projects it would be 11am before I realized I was still in my pajamas and had yet to work on anything tangible, with a pile of work in front of me. My mantra was created, “Put your pants on beeotch!” and I posted it on the board above my desk. Every day from that day forward I’d wake up and get dressed to go to work, nice shirt, nice pants, sitting in style in my home office and make things happen.

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Tradeworks Custom Products

Submitted by saul on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 14:49

Helping women in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

When I started working with Tradeworks just over a year ago I have to admit, it was purely strategic. Concepts are like that. They make sense in your head but it’s not until one lives and experiences that one really feels in the heart. Let me explain, it was the fall of 2007 and with 2 ½ years until the Vancouver 2010 Olympics I was thinking about how my business could be a vendor for gifts and promotions. With sustainability high on VANOC’s agenda I knew I held a piece of the puzzle sorted and could see what I needed to fill the gap. Social responsibility and lasting benefits to the inner city, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Before long I was introduced to Tradeworks as a potential vendor for custom wooden packaging and that’s where the story started to get interesting.

Social Enterprise

Tradeworks is a social enterprise that trains and employs women in carpentry. They make a variety of wooden products like wine boxes, tool boxes, hand turned pens and desktop accessories. Besides providing trade skills and job experience the women build confidence and self esteem by working and learning as a team. It’s a culture of support and development that I am happy to be a part of. When I arrived all the products were being made from Baltic Birch plywood, a high quality woodworking material that’s imported from Northern Europe and filled with formaldehyde. Over the last year I’ve helped the social enterprise develop a supply chain that includes a variety of sustainable and local materials including FSC certified and reclaimed woods, Stanley Park storm salvage Douglas Fir, mountain pine beetle, formaldehyde free plywood/MDF and bamboo. It was the smile on the women’s faces that first led me to believe that my work was making a difference. Seeing them start to glow when their skills advanced and problems were solved. Empowered women working to improve their lives in a business that I was helping to build. Creating value where it’s needed. That’s what social enterprise is all about.

Moving forward

Tradeworks is at a pivotal moment in its existence. To date Saul Good and Tradeworks have been working cooperatively in a social enterprise/for profit hybrid model. Tradeworks provides training and employment opportunities for women and Saul Good provides sales, marketing, strategy, supply chain and business development. A commission sales agreement allows Tradeworks to benefit from my sweat without coming up with cash. This is incredibly important for an organization that relies on external funding to operate its programs. It’s my goal to see the woodshop so busy that the revenues it generates fully supports their training programs and allows for investment to grow and develop more training opportunities.

Tradeoffs

Quality can not be compromised in an age where dollar store products are on the verge of extinction. If the goal of Tradeworks as a social enterprise is to train women, improve their lives and give them a door to create better jobs and better livelihoods for themselves, they must be ready to see their brightest and most talented people move on to new opportunities after their stint in the woodshop. How can one run a profitable business when one continuously loses their best employees? Tradeworks needs to develop programs to allow their women to move up the ladder within the organization, to gain more responsibilities and income, training new women in the new skills and culture as well as manage operations and projects. Yes, some of the women will need to move on, possibly to go for apprenticeship and trades tickets, and this needs to be a celebration and not a curse.

You can find out more about tradeworks on their website: http://www.tradeworks.bc.ca

Sapadilla – nice little eco-cleaners

Submitted by saul on Fri, 01/02/2009 - 14:40

Sapadilla is a cool green cleaning product company based in Vancouver, BC that makes high quality all natural products that work and smell great. Jill and Steve are two of the friendliest people you’ll meet and I’ve really enjoyed working with and getting to know them over this past year. Premium locally made products are in demand and it’s been a pleasure getting these products into people’s homes. My favorite is their grapefruit & bergamot countertop cleanser as it smells really nice and keeps things clean without the use of nasty chemicals.

Sapadilla has truely made a great leap towards creating products that are sustainable to the core and attractive to use for all sorts of people. The ingredients are all plant based and biodegradable, made with naturally effective ingredients from sugar, coconut and palm oil. They use pure essential oils which have natural cleansing properties and smell amazing.

Their website is: http://www.sapadilla.com/

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