Recently in Wholesale & Green Marketing Category

THE WAL-MART SUSTAINABILITY SCORECARD

It’s likely that you’ll soon have to comply with your customers’ sustainability initiatives as well as your own. That's the case if you provide products for the Wal-Mart chain of retail outlets.

Wal-Mart has taken a "lifecycle approach" to packaging with objectives covering reduction in waste and renewable energy. Nine weighted parameters of Wal-Mart's sustainability scorecard are measured for their prospective and current vendors.

Wal-Mart has told its buyers that, starting in 2008, they should consider the packaging scores when choosing among various products for its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores. Matt Kistler, Vice President - Package and Product Innovations, Sam's Club Wal-Mart

Part of the challenge in rolling out greener products is informing customers about changes that affect their perception of savings. Wal-Mart's April 2008 "Earth Month" promotion is highlighting its greener products and informing customers how making better choices, especially on a large scale, can cause a difference. Wal-Mart is featuring more than 50 products in stores and 500 online, from transitional cotton shirts to mulch made from rubber to Clorox Green Works products.

The majority of Wal-Mart's environmental footprint comes from suppliers. The company has direct control on about 8 percent of its footprint, with the remaining 92 percent coming from its supply chain.

To green its supply chain the company launched a it's "Wal-Mart Packaging Scorecard" in 2007 . By filling in information about products' packaging, suppliers are rated and find out their rank in relation to peers. Kistler said Wal-Mart works with suppliers, telling them what they can do to improve and let them know what other suppliers have done to reduce packaging.

Comparing marketing channels helps farmers determine how to use each channel, as well as which channel can be most profitable for their specific kinds of produce and time commitment.

Comparing Farmers Markets, CSAs and Wholesale Profits

Where's the core of farm produce profits?

While farmers' markets have become increasingly popular with consumers, farmers themselves are beginning to ask how profitable selling at a farmers market actually is.

UC Small Farm Program director Shermain Hardesty is finalizing a case study of three farms that each market their products three ways: farmers markets, wholesale and through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, in which subscribers regularly receive boxes of food from the farm.

Net Revenue for Farm Produce

Preliminary results of research found that

• Farmers markets generated the lowest net revenue return for all three growers
• Wholesale provided the highest net revenue return.
• The net rate of return for CSA revenues was in the middle.

Farmers markets can also provide an outlet for produce unmarketable to wholesale channels and can support new farmers developing new businesses.

To help growers determine the cost and return of their different marketing options, Hardesty and student researcher Penny Leff offered use of their formulaic spreadsheets to workshop participants and walked them through tabulation of their costs and returns. "We want to show farmers how they can determine their actual marketing costs themselves," Hardesty said.

For more information, contact Shermain Hardesty at (530) 752-7774, sfpdirector@ucdavis.edu.

RESOURCE: UC Agriculture and Natural Resources

Is "free shipping" an oxymoron?

In this day of climate change, asthma and cancer, is it realistic for a socially conscious company to offer "free shipping" as a marketing strategy?

I've been visiting with various leaders in the transportation chain -- from truckers to insurance salesmen to aerodynamics marketers to APU designers to state regulators to owner/operators...and retailers. And my takeaway is that we are overdosing on goods movement!

Addicted to oil? That's too simple. Addicted to cheap, invisible choice that depends on oil, distant manufacturing, cheap natural resources, localized environmental and health burdens...the list of effects from our 'cause' of runaway transportation seems endless.

No one WANTS to give anyone asthma. No one WANTS to have a plate of food travel 2,000 miles. No one WANTS to force companies to outsource manufacturing jobs. We hold our nose and just do it because everyone else is doing it. Because it is expected.

Identify your SYSTEM(s)

It's about the SYSTEM we have developed.

Refine Your Systems

So what's the 'solution'?

Reduce Your Footprint by 50%

That reduction requires sacrifice by each of us.

Some Green Marketing Solutions to Consider...and Implement 

Reduce transportation. Increase localization.

Reduce blindness to excesses. Increase truth in marketing.

Reduce stuff. Increase personal relationships.

Reduce loopholes and compliance. Increase personal responsibility.

Reduce footprints on the earth. Increase real life connections and solutions.

Everyone's system is different. Only you can design a better approach that is less wasteful, more respectful of this real, closed system world.

It's up to each of us -- and it's no longer an option. We're in an emergency. There is no "free shipping". Everything has a cost whether or not we know what it is. What will you and I do about it?

Read more details about green business practices...and green marketing  at CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com

What does Nintendo have to do with green marketing?  The same consumer behavior watershed!

TIP ONE: Raving fans matter!

In an interview, Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's EVP/sales and marketing, says that the largest part of the marketing campaign will be the public-relations effort because "consumers are increasingly turning to friends, family and news articles as credible sources of information about products." Consumers are getting smarter, she points out, because they have more information than in the past and are able to share it online. They are bombarded with advertising messages -- so they have more tools to avoid that advertising today. Wall Street Journal

Having worked in marketing and communications for several decades, I've seen the entrepreneurial dream many, many times.  "We want to leverage our sales and marketing by getting into the big stores...the big chains...the big distributors.  We don't want to waste our bit of capital on local markets...."  That's the dream.

The reality is that EVERY market is a LOCAL MARKET.  Think friends, family, neighbors, and the retailers you shop with.  First.

The most successful entrepreneurs in my experience all started locally.  They sold out of the trunk of their car. They knocked on doors.  They served those first small mom and pop customers with careful attention.  Did they get rich that way?  No.  But they learned the ropes of customer service.  They learned what customers prefer, what they need, and where they buy the REST of their products.  And they provide testimonials that are the vetting tool of distributors and their cousins who work in the "big stores". 

Today, those same "first customers" are increasingly individuals without stores.  They are raving fans of your product and your service.  They love what you deliver so much that they get on email and social network sites and tell their buddies about this great solution they've found.  And did you know....?

That's how Nintendo and green marketing are connected.  Those same people are just as likely to talk about the Nintendo WII as they are to talk about their brother's green shampoo, or their cousin's LED lights, or their neighbor's crazy compressed air car. 

And if you can supply them with some video on YouTube, or a web URL they can remember, they'll be able to pass the work around to even more people!

TIP TWO:  Follow through matters!

WSJ: It's no secret that many women jump into buying gym memberships or the latest weight-loss devices -- only to have them end up collecting dust under the bed. Could that mentality hurt future sales of Wii Fit games?

Ms. Dunaway: Hopefully not. One of the things I like about Wii Fit is it tracks your progress over time ... Seeing your progress is motivating. So I think Wii Fit will keep people involved because they will be excited about tracking their progress and their family's progress. The families will egg each other on.

Social connections are vital to humans -- that's why we crave family, friendships and community.  The church as gathering place and the general store pot bellied store are part of the American cultural heritage.  Both are "businesses" that created community through shared activities.  Businesses today can create that same kind of connection with their "members" by providing TOOLS for SHARING.  A  blog with comments, a buyers club, regular participation in Earth Day events...etc. all create bonding through community membership and sharing opportunities. 

Even the birds share information with one another in their flocks.  I chuckle every time I'm at the beach and see one gull find a scrap of bread.  Within seconds, a whole flock of gulls, and ducks, and mudhens descend on the location!  People behave the same way -- we SIGNAL each other by behaviors as well as words...and we WATCH each other to see what  is succeeding in the search for survival and thriving.

That's natural marketing!  And natural is naturally --- sustainable because it taps our deepest roots of behavior.