BIZ: Saving Green while Building Green

Robin Kay Levine, 2009 President, Eco-Me

2009 has been a very interesting year. At Eco-Me we brought our pre-mixed natural cleaners, our "Family" line, to market (Drugstore.com, Amazon.com...) launched our pet products into online mass stores (Petco.com) and worked smarter and leaner than ever before.

Now the last part is familiar to all business owners as they maneuver their way through surviving rough economic times, but for start up businesses this becomes part of your business plan, your day to day language and the only way to get the word out that your products/services are worth customers attention.

So how do we do it? Here are a few tips from the inside of our business that helped us cut costs, become more efficient and uncover some great marketing.

1. Get rid of postage machines. Buy stamps online, go to the post office at lunch and buy stamps (the fresh air and change of scenery is good for you). We saved $25-50/month. I met a potential client on line one day, who knew the USPS was a lead generator!

2. Look at your phone bill and messaging services. We're a small team, but we work at many locations from our offices to the infamous warehouse. Jenn our VP is in NY while our headquarters are in Pasadena, CA. I'm on the road a lot, sitting at home on a laptop at the craziest hours and soon Joyce will be e-telecommuting as shes gives birth to a baby boy early in 2010. With all of that, we manage to keep connected and have our phones and messages routed right to our emails. It's great, saves time and money too! We use 8x8 a great service that utilizes VOIP, internet phone services. Savings besides efficiency approximately $100/month.

3. Installed a water system in our kitchen for clean filtered water. Use your Kleen Kanteen steel water bottles, save money and the earth. Keep saying it, change comes slow, but we're now all on board with re-usable water bottles. Keeping hydrated is key to brain function!

4. Our future is bright and we continue to become efficient using effective sales tools like the Eco-Me CRM (our custom built Filemaker Pro CRM sales system which allows our team to log on where ever and when ever to track their customers, sales and marketing notes). Build it and they will come.... Filemaker is a great solution for growing your business. Cheaper than other online services and you build it to fit your specific needs. I love custom, it's the perfect fit everytime! We've left Sales Force, Appshore and more... While they are effective, they are costly and not CUSTOM! There I said it, again!

As a small family style business we work and act as a team. Listening, supporting and handing off the baton department to department. Our component based manufacturing system helps keep us flexible and avoid waste and high inventory volumes.

Stay tuned for my Component Based Blog! How to lego-ize your car parts!!!

-Robin

Emily, here!

My new vegie garden is bare, but has potential.

Checking on my strawberry plants, they are small and cute and barely showing any signs of fruit.

Will have to check back in a few days.

My one artichoke plant is showing signs of a baby.

Yeah, will have to find the perfect recipe for my main vegie.

If anyone has a great recipe for artichokes let me know!

Bill, here!

I'm on a mission to bike to work atleast one day a week. 

Challenge #1: review dusty old bike in garage and take inventory on what needs fixing!

Goal:  Start biking in time for National Bike to Work Week May 15th.

I'll keep you all posted.

Hi, My Name is Matt

It's Matt, from Eco-Me.  Blogging to you from my perspective which may be a bit different from the other folks since I'm seen as the "up-tight" one in the group. 

First off, I come from a business background and so all this "green" stuff is fairly new to me.  Heck, helping around the house is new to me since my wife went back to work and I've been testing out Eco-Me products at home....  let's say I can admit that vacuuming can be fun.  It's the chore that is the least disgusting and I like to pretend I'm in a rock back and sing old 8o's tunes while attacking our rugs.

It was almost a year ago when I asked my wife where she kept the cleaner.  She asked, "For what?"  I said, "the carpet! I'm gonna vacuum and help out."  Well, she almost fainted, but then shook it off and pointed at our vacuum.  "Yeah, but the stuff to clean the carpet?" I asked.  She shook her head and walked away.  Then it hit me, we needed a carpet cleaner.  We're not dirty people and our carpet is fairly new, but I thought everything needed a cleaners.

On Monday, back at work at Eco-Me, I asked if we had made a carpet cleaner.  "It's in the works." I was told.  No one was taking me seriously!!!!!!!

So I did my own research and came up with a basic carpet cleaner.  Of course then everyone wanted to be my best buddy.  I was even offered Dodger tickets for the recipe, which in the end I signed away to Eco-Me.  They were kind enough (well not sure if they had a choice) to name it after me.  Bill by Eco-Me, Carpet Deodorizer.

It's simple enough you can make it yourself, but Eco-Me does it for you so there is one less thing on the chore list!  Just baking soda, cornstarch and an essential oil mix that smells good, sweet and like adult candy I guess.  

So this one day of helping out my wife has left me with the never ending chore of vacuuming that I can't now ever escape, so I tap into my inner rock star and sing my heart out when I know no one can hear me!

Hi, My Name is Suzy

Hi Blog World,   This is Suzy.  

I'm not so much a neat freak as just hating dirty dishes.  Some people may call this a pet peeve, I call it gross.  Just don't like walking past a pile of dishes.  We take turns at my pad on this dirty chore, but more often than not I give in and do the deed.  

So when Eco-Me asked me to formulate a natural dish soap for their new line of premixed cleaners, I rolled up my sleeves and turned to Castile Soap.  Made from pure olive and coconut oils as well as aloe this pure soap is liquid gold!  It's a bit on the thin side, but works into a serious lather and washes away entirely with no residue.  I love the scent too!  Sweet Tea is a new essential oil blend by Eco-Me and it is awesome, smells like, well Sweet Tea (really reminds me of summer).

Really simple ingredients:  Castile soap, Sweet Tea Essential Oil Blend, Jojoba oil (for soft hands).  That's it, plain and simple with a twist of fresh and clean.

I'm trying to get the "higher-ups" at Eco-Me to come out with a bulk size of this dish soap so there is never an excuse at my house for leaving behind dirty dishes.  Oh and did I mention the best part is that I got my name on the bottle!  Suzy by Eco-Me, Dish Soap. Oh yeah!

Hi, My Name is Emma

Good Morning!  

That's me, Emma, a morning person with tons of AM energy.  

What else about me...  I love making smoothies, juicing, favorite chore is doing laundry and I'm a nut for organizing closets and getting rid of old stuff.  For some this is a chore they would rather not face, but for me, I am all over this.  

I even have friends who have invited me over to help clean their rooms (you know who you are) and have organized their layered lives with them.  Since I am super conscious about the environment and have become paranoid about throwing items into the trash (Eco-Me recently did a review on the effects of garbage on our earth....) I always look for cool ways to re-use, recycle or give away items.  This has become a fun new activity of sorts.  It's like an eco-craft of thriffiness (not really a word, but in blog space I think I can get away with it).

Stay posted for great smoothie recipes, juicing for good health and tips on cleaning the crap outta your closests and re-purposing!

Hi, My Name is Emily

Hi Everyone,  Let me introduce you to my spot on this blog.  

I'm a modern gal with not much time, but tons of green projects in the works.  I'm starting my own veggie patch in my backyard and will keep my findings and growings updated on my posts.  

What got me thinking was first putting my veggies from the market into baggies...STOP.  I use cloth baggies, but still it seemed  awkward.  Then I learned about the carbon footprint of veggies I bought from the market and started to shop locally at smaller shops and my favorite...  

THE FARMER'S MARKETS!  Love.  Supporting local growers is great, fun and a good date night or new type of brunch gathering on a weekend morning markets. 

Now although I love the farmers markets, they can get a bit pricey....  so looking over all the veggies and herbs and berries I thought that I could cut my bill in half by starting my own veggie patch right in my backyard.  It's not easy, but a great project and I've heard that urbanites are joining in the fun and growing lots of goodies from pots too!  

I've so far planted cherry tomatoes, thyme, basil, an artichoke plant, 2 brusel sprout plants, strawberries and soon to add zucchini, more herbs and we'll go from there.