This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.
I now understand that my attempt at blogging from our convention was a little bit of a pipe dream. There were simply so many green products and conversations going on that I was nearly overwhelmed.
Two big take-aways:
1) The industry is certain that green is going to stick this time around. A few vendors placed green (by their use of the word at the time) at 8-12% of the business and with a growth to 20% in the next few years seeming very likely. Ash City is looking for 50% by 2010.
2) This is the interesting point for Ecopreneurs: suppliers are having trouble keeping up with demand in the marketplace, even at the low levels of current business. Problems are at every level of the supply chain, so if you have a green idea, GET IT OUT THERE.
And I can attest to the lack of supply.
One of my big wins at this meeting was I found a second vendor for printing t-shirts with vegetable or soy based inks. Our industry does upwards of 17 Billion in sales per year. I now know of two organic shirt printers (by this I mean printers that can run shirt in the 10,000+). Vantage Apparel and the new folks USA Docufinish (FYI Docufinish is coming to this from the print side of the business and does not even list this service on their website. But you can see their pitch on YouTube).
Two vendors? Now I know there must be more than two out there but the fact I don’t know who they are and I do this for a living, makes you realize how few of them are around.
So if you have a green business idea for our industry I would certainly say now is the time to get that idea out there because the market is hungry for ideas.
John Simonetta
www.proformagreen.com
Adventures in Green Marketing 
Cottage industry manufacturing is tough, have to be careful to not over develop demand and lose control of quality. We are entering our 4th year with the Kandle Heeter tm Candle Holder. A steel and ceramic radiator assembly suspended above a candle that collects and concentrates the heat of the flame converting it into dry radiant space heat. It really is a “candle heater”.
Not yet on our site is our newest product, the AirMaze tm Passive Solar Furnace. It is a window mounted solar space heater (20″x20″x4″) that has an internal matrix of 25 recycled bean cans mounted on a steel backing plate. This creates over 15 sq ft of thermal exchange surface for heat transfer to room air.
Coming up is the beta version of the re-design of the HEATSTICK th Thermal Fan.
Biggest problem is getting media coverage — the conglomeration of the media industry has made guerilla marketing a challenge.
Doyle
We have recently partnered with an advertising specialty company, and I have to admit that I am shocked at how limited the eco-friendly product line was while searching the database. It is nice to see that companies like yours are making that extra effort to accommodate and inform consumers of these green apparel options. I would like to see more with ASI.