Green Options

Why this matters to green and organic products, is that more and more, stores are offering their own brand of organic and green products. And so now green businesses face the same challenges and pressures with which major consumer package goods manufacturers have struggled for years - How to deal with private label.

As we walked into the San Francisco Green Business Conference 2008, our expectations rose just a tad when we spied not only the recycling, landfill and compost bins (with Biobags) but also fair trade coffee and organic tea which may seem insignificant but first impressions mean a lot. As is the case with many Green festivals, summits, etc in the Bay Area that a significant percentage of attendees hailed [...]

Not necessarily. Though consumer confidence is down, recessions are historically the time when emerging trends gain momentum – green is a fast growing trend.

But, if your business depends on retail distribution, now is the time to familiarize yourself with how the grocery channel operates in down markets…which you may not have been a part of until this time.

The effect at retail has more nuance than an upturn in staples sales, as people eat out less and turn to food stores more for their next meal components. Rattled consumers expressed their lowest confidence levels since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, and the lowest expectation levels since the oil embargo and Watergate of 1973, according to the Conference Board.

This means a focus on the consumer benefit for organic foods…not the term “organic” but the health benefit provided. Consumers may be more willing to spend the extra dollars to buy organic if they have the health benefit spelled out in front them at point of purchase.

Or perhaps, no certainly, this is the time to teach consumers how to stretch their menus. During tight times, providing recipes with which consumers may not be familiar is a great strategy. Coupons and selling a value message is paramount.

It’s back to basics for many consumers. Goodbye excess; batten down the hatches.

While it’s certainly not news that high prices and economic fears are causing consumers to cut back, a new study from Cramer-Krasselt finds that behaviors are shifting in ways few marketers may have expected.

As expected, in this downturn, consumers are pulling back and shopping less. They’re trading down, visiting Wal-Mart rather than Nordstrom’s. They’re substituting lower priced for higher priced items. But, in case you feared the economic situation would derail the green movement, think again.

… the current downturn has consumers building on trends that were already gathering momentum. Take the simplicity movement. While marketers such as Circuit City, Best Buy and Phillips have been tapping into consumers’ desire to streamline their possessions for several years now, the sagging economy is now providing an incentive to go one step further, with more people selling things on such sites as Craigslist and eBay. Ditto the move toward “locavorism,” once favored by environmentalists, and now embraced by anyone who may be looking to save on gas.

I’ve been carefully watching sales of green products during this current downturn; analyzing the double-whammy impact of inflation and unemployment. While, as I wrote in Worried About The High Cost Of Green Products? Inflation Will Help, the price differential between organic and natural products and their traditional counterparts, may narrow, falling consumer incomes may make that a moot point as consumers trade down.

“Frugality is now replacing frivolity,” wrote David Rosenberg, chief North American economist for Merrill Lynch, who suggests that the consumption patterns of the 1950s could be coming back. “Ozzie and Harriett” is in; “Sex in the City” is out.

Except for deep green consumers.

There’s been a lot of talk recently, as the country slides into recession, about the impact this will have on innovation.

Will companies pull back from risky projects? Or will they re-jigger their efforts to support products that thrive in a recession…new or not.

Suddenly, innovation has a bull’s-eye on its back. As the recession debate shifts from “what if” to “how long,” claims a recent article in Business Week on the world’s most innovative companies.

Green entrepreneurs have no choice. Innovation is why they are in business. But, what strategies make the most sense for eco-friendly businesses facing a not-so-friendly economy?