By John Chappell •
May 16, 2009
The folks behind Carrotmob continue to demonstrate the power of using your dollars to vote for environmental change, and they’re starting to get some press as well.
The first Carrotmob “reverse boycott” started with a convenience store in San Francisco. The store owner out-competed a few dozen other businesses by pledging to use 22% of the profits from one day to make his store greener (in this case by installing energy efficient lighting and other green improvements). Carrotmobbers flooded his store on the appointed day and left the store owner with $9,200, enough to make multiple energy efficient improvements as well as having the best sales day all year.
Carrotmob and their “reverse boycott” system works like this:
- Businesses are contacted and asked how much they would like to bid in order to win over consumers during one massive shopping day.
- Using social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, and other fancy technology, members are asked to vote which store they would like to select.
- One day is selected and the store is “mobbed” with consumers who show up and buy goods they would have purchased anyways - food, beverages, hardware, etc.
- The store is mobbed with consumers who in the process of flexing their food (or goods & services) dollars, bring the store lots of money.
- The store uses the percentage of those sales they pledged to make their business greener and more environmentally friendly, while helping their bottom line AND gaining significant goodwill in the community.
By Reenita Malhotra •
February 11, 2009
The English language has a wonderful way of evolving with major or minor events in the economic, social and political history of man. Following the release of words like “Mompreneur” and “Ecopreneur”, the latest buzzword that is floating around the business and economic sphere is “Obamapreneur.” While it is clear that all “Preneur” roads lead to a noble business mission but what the heck is an Obamapreneur?
By Natasha Mooney •
December 13, 2008
A Park Slope hardware store has pledged to spend 22% of Sunday’s revenue to make their store more energy efficient.
They have not made this pledge because of a mandate, a threat of punishment or an altrusitic love of the environment. Tarzian Hardware wants to make a direct profit.
This is because the Carrotmob is arriving in New York City. Started by Brent Schulkin in San Francisco, Carrotmob is a reverse boycott where similar businesses compete to see who will go the furthest to green themselves up. The winner is rewarded with a “mob”-hundreds of customers who arrive on the same day to buy up the store in order to support greener business.
Hold a sale on high-end vodka? Give away free samples of your latest bourbon shipment?
Yep, the Carrotmob has come to town… remember them? Started in San Francisco, Carrotmob is an activist organization dedicated to greening business. Rather than using traditional, “stick” tactics (protesting, street theater, etc.), Carrotmob offers a “carrot” to businesses that commit to greening themselves: as they put it, “Carrotmob organizes consumers to make purchases that give financial rewards to those businesses who agree to make socially beneficial choices.” Though the organization is new, they’ve already been quite successful: their first event resulted in about five times the normal revenue for K&D Market on 16th St. in San Francisco.
In Kansas City’s choice, this involved approaching fifteen Midtown businesses with a proposal: “We’ll bring a mob of paying customers, if you commit the highest percentage of revenue to going green.” A bidding war broke out, and World of Spirits won by committing 24% of the revenue from its “mob event” towards making the business more energy efficient. Take a look:
