Friday 30 November 2007

The future of retail?

Evo launched this week in the US. The site looks fantastic check it out at www.evo.com. It does the ethical research for you, for instance it offers 5000 quality green toys from 50 retailers. It's the moneysupermarket of green an uber intermediary, educator, aggregator. They have altready evaluated 2 million products, in order to offer 100,000 on their site. categories include recycled (refashioned) gift ideas and solar, as well as all the more obvious. via treehugger.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds great... But do you have a link to it?

John Grant said...

it's www.evo.com

i am adding that to the post

Unknown said...

HI John,

I am so thrilled to be writing to you. I also must tell you that this is the first blog I have ever written; sorry if I am not following proper blog educate. Thank you for making yourself available through this. I am sure you are a busy guy and I appreciate your time.

I found your book in the Portland OR airport in the brink of time. Why in the brink of time? I have been given the gift of a HUGE task and I was feeling overwhelmed. I was hired a month and a half ago by a company called Eco-Products in Boulder CO. My job is to create a green retail store. The owner of Eco-Products created his business 17 years ago in his garage and is now a wholesaler for compost able food items. He is a great/smart boss and business man and I want to do his vision of “green” retail store justice.

So long storey short when I found and read your book “The Green Marketing Marifesto” I was relieved to know that I am entering uncharted territory. I am single handedly responsible for branding this new company. The funny thing is, my back ground is in retail, not branding or marketing. I have such passion for this project and I understand it importance therefore I feel like I absolutely have to do it right the first time.

While reading your book you touched on partnering. I have a conference call with EVO today for a possible partnership. I would like your feedback on their “green screen”. I am really excited to possibly partner with them. If they have created a “green screen” as affective as I think it is then this could be a beautiful marriage for the both of us.

I have a responsibility to my smart Boulder customers to offer an education and fresh shopping experience. This is retail with a purpose and I want to do it right for our future.

I can’t wait to see what you have to say about EVO. I would appreciate any additional guidance you would like to offer as well.

Thank you!!!

John Grant said...

Hi Carly, thrilled to hear all that, it sounds like such an adventure you are embarking on. I love the EVO model from a consumer point of view. As far as partnering with them goes it obviously depends on the terms. They opened with 1200 retail partners so they must have quite a convincing pitch. There are similar businesses in financial services that boast that they generate cost effective leads in very large volumes. If it is a pure affiliate model (you pay a small percentage per sale) there is obviously very little to lose.

My email is in the 'about me' section if you scroll down the right hand of the blog. Do drop me a line if/when you want a sounding board on some of your broader issues with creating the green retail store - it sounds like you have lots of retail experience, but a second opinion never hurts :J