Green Business for Dummies

The main points of the book focused on how to make a sustainable greener business.

I mainly focused on chapter 11: Revitalizing your Local Economy, as it focused on how to become a Buy-local Business.

The book is written from an north American perspective, but I thought that it had quite a lot of useful information and thoughts regarding buy-local businesses that can be applied to any market.


The key points I picked up from the book which I thought could benefit our project are:

The buy-local business:


✓ Define what “local” means. The definition may seem self-evident, but
it’s an important distinction. Many retailers are independently owned
and locally operated, but they don’t carry locally made items.


✓ Figure out what your initial focus will be. Identify how your buy-local
business will set you apart from the competition.

✓ Co-operation is key to succeed. Research who could be potential business partners, and how could the partnership best benefit both parties.

WARNING!

As in all collaborative efforts, circumstances can always go awry. Watch out
for these common co-op problems:

✓ Going into business with too many folks or people you don’t have strong
background knowledge of can sometimes yield nasty surprises. Protect
your business by doing your research on potential collaborators.

✓ Marketing and purchasing power sometimes don’t seem worth the time
and effort necessary to participate in the co-op. Be realistic about the
true volume-discount purchasing potential.



Attract and educate customers:

1. Identify consumers’ barriers to buying local.

You can’t get people to buy locally if you don’t understand why they
aren’t buying local in the first place. According to informal studies, many
consumers simply don’t know what buying local really means, which
leads them to perhaps mistakenly perceive “local” big-box stores to be
cheaper, have better selections, or be more convenient. But don’t just
take my word for it. Ask a random sampling of residents around your
community simple questions like

• What’s the number one reason you choose to shop at a particular
store? (Ask this question first so you don’t lead the person into the
buy-local answer!)
• Do you ever consider buying locally first?
• Would you consider buying locally first if I told you . . . ? (Rattle
off a few compelling statistics here, like the ones in the following
section.)

2. Develop a strategy that encourages customers to identify with “being
local.”

Information campaigns alone rarely bring about behavior change. Education is an important component, but community-based social marketing asks you to go beyond that and get your customers to identify with
“being” something and to proactively commit to taking action.

Knowledge about buy-local


✓ Local businesses are owned by people vested in the community.

✓ Hometown entrepreneurs contribute to the local economy.

✓ The unique shops and services available in your community are part of
what brings tourists and their checkbooks to your locale.