Tag Archives: green

99% Recycled Material Bike Jerseys

31 Jan

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Here is a short story on the birth of a green promotional item and how a family-owned business became an Ecopreneurist in their own right.

Sublimation X, is the promotional product division of CL Activewear, an apparel manufacturer specializing in dye sublimation. (Sublimation is a technology which involves printing colors, logos and patterns directly into a cloth’s fiber.)

A family owned business and long time innovator in dye sublimation, CL Activewear started an effort to get away from strong chemical dyes and to develop products using earth-friendly materials and water-based dyes over 5 years ago. Their plant also began recycling all their waste material during this same period.

Continue reading →

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Avaline Corn Lanyards

8 Jan

The 2009 eco products are starting to show up. Avaline has improved their eco-friendly lanyard made from 100% PLA (a corn fabric that is biodegradable according to Avaline).

What can I say? It is a lanyard, not a lot of excitement here, but if you are doing an event it is a nice touch to have a lanyard that will break down once it reaches the landfill.

For green event companies these items or similar should be a no brainer. Organic cotton is also popular as are PET lanyards.

At EQP $1.40 for a 1inch wide lanyard pricing is still about your standard cotton units, but this product from Avaline has a clearer reproduction (screen printing) on the lanyard itself.

Continue reading →

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Debco's Virtual Catalogs

31 Dec

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

We wrote about Gemline’s online green site with its virtual catalog. Well Debco has gone one better (make that three better) and posted three vitual catalogs, their 2008 GIFT BOOK, MAIN CATALOGUE, and GREEN BOOK. Looks like this is the way things are head in 2009, less paper printing, less gas used in shipping, so good for Debco.

Of course of these virtual catalog Ecopreneurists will be most interested in the GREEN BOOK which contains 56 virtual pages of products and green information, including a much appreciated glossary of terms.

We especially like Debco’s organic and natural cotton bags, however the catalog covers promotional items from bags to bamboo cutting boards to solar powered items. Continue reading →

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World Famous RETREAD© Jar Openers

23 Dec

Do you need a cheap, green and useful tool to promote your eco-friendly business idea? Well look no further than the World Famous RETREAD© Jar Openers from Americanna.

These items could easily be our top seller for 2008 in terms of interest from clients. At EQP $0.41 per unit, the jar openers – also a great garlic peeler or coaster – come in over 150 shapes and provide likely the largest print area on a promotional item for your money.

As the name implies the World Famous RETREAD© Jar Openers are made from recycled tires. They come in many green theme shapes like suns, trees, water drops, homes, hearts, school houses, feet (as in lower your green footprint), you get the idea.

We love this item because it really, really works and people hang onto to them. They are cheap and light enough to use in mailings, great for handing out at events, and perfect as an easy to understand example of recycle and reuse thinking, i.e. this was a tire now it opens jars, ok. Got it.

If you are an ASI member Michelle Stiles is the contact to talk to at Americanna. If you are interested in these items to promote your own business contact your local promotional items vendor or email info@proformagreen.com for information and pricing.

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Virtual Catalogs? Green At What Cost?

7 Dec

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Gemline, Leeds and a few other vendors leading in the move to eco-friendly promotional items are now using a technology from a company called Technologo to produce virtual catalogs for their clients. The Gemline catalog is located here, Leed’s here.

It is an interesting platform and this solution from Technologo might be a good way for Ecopreneurists to market to clients of their own without the need for paper catalogs, but I see two main problems.

First, these files are large and reside on a server, so yes you can email the link to clients but I don’t understand how you can email the whole catalog. The system is designed to allow you to send individual pages from the catalog, but you already need to be on the site to do this. Second, how are these any better than a normal web page display?

I guess if you look at it as a living catalog, something that could be loaded onto a PC and taken out to clients, or loaded on a CD or flash drive and mailed, that might make more sense to me, at least that way the catalog is not tied to the PC. Continue reading →

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Green Gifts Ideas from an Ecopreneurist Part 2

6 Dec

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Ecopreneurist.com asked me to post a few more ideas on what an Ecopreneurist might give for the holidays.

I wanted to approach the idea from two points. First, I am in the promotional items business. For our industry the main purpose of gift giving is to say thank you to the clients you have done business with in the past year, and to keep your name in front of those clients so that they do business with you next year.

Second, as an Econpreneurist gift giving gives my business a chance to show off our green credentials but also – maybe – influence our clients, not all of whom are green, about becoming more green in their own businesses.

In this article I want to point out two everyday items your clients likely already use that are now being produced with eco-friendly materials and that would make great end of the year client gifts.

Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner – Did you know that Day-Timer now makes an eco version of their most popular portable planner? The Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner from Leed’s is an example of a very useful, very popular and well regarded brand that is now available in a new green formula.

The rich bonded leather cover is made from recycled leather fibers and natural latex and includes nickel-free rings and zipper pulls. Recycled paper used in the planner is certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. Other than that it is a standard Day-Timer® featuring two-page-per week format, with each day’s space including areas for to do list, appointments, diary, monthly tabbed calendar/dividers, loose-leaf address and phone directory, monthly planning pages, set of reference sheets, etc.

The usefulness of the Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner makes it a great gift because people will use it and hang on to it, plus in 2009 you can send your client a refill of the inside planner pages, giving you both an opportunity to touch your client again and promote a core green idea of reuse. Day-Timer® Eco Zippered Portable Planner runs about $39 including your organization or company logo. Continue reading →

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Holiday Stuff #3 – PET – Recycled Water Bottles for Christmas

28 Nov

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s posts are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts and I wanted to write a couple of posts talking about items that have done well in the past for clients or that are new for this year and doing well so far.

I also wanted to break these articles into categories so this blog will cover PET (yes items made from recycled water bottles for the holidays). PET may be a boring material but it is being used in some neat products.

1) Eco 100% Recycled Owl Laptop Sleeve – Made from 100% post-consumer recycled material (product label affirms this claim), holding a standard 15″ laptop and with a very clean line design, these bags have been very popular as both employee and customer gifts. At about $15 including a one color imprint of your logo or message, these bags are very popular with hip eco companies and road warriors. The gift is also practical, for one thing it makes accessing your laptop at the airport a heck of a lot easier, and of course it does provide basic protection from bumps, nicks and Continue reading →

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Debco Offering 3 Organic Cotton Totes to Meet All Budgets

23 Nov

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.

At the end of September Debco bag introduced the E4827 10oz Organic Cotton Shopper to round out their other offerings in this area of the 6oz and Econo 4oz Organic Cotton Shopping bags. It is good timing considering the end of the year Fall festiva Continue reading →

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Holiday Stuff #2 – Organic Cotton

20 Nov

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.

A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts and I wanted to write a couple of blogs talking about items that have done well in the past for clients or that are new for this year and doing well so far.

Our first blog was on BAMBOO. Now let us move to ORGANIC COTTON.

1) Organic Cotton Towels – Unbelievably soft and absorbent with natural colors like Stone Green, White and Natural Tan, these towels make great gifts. Embroidered with your company or organization’s logo expect to pay around $24 per unit. Towels work because they will end up in the home of your customer and likely be used for a long, long time. Organic cotton towels and robes also make good employee gifts.

2) Organic Market Bag Set – These heavy duty organic cotton bags look and feel great, so they have a high perceived-value but an honest price at $16 for the set, including placement of your logo.  Employees and customers will use the bags for a long, long time and they use them in public so each time your customer uses the bag in public your company or organization is on display. We also like the large print area on these bags. This is a lot of space to display your message and/or contact information. This market set helps the environment by reducing the need for plastic or paper shopping bags with this beautiful organic cotton set. The set includes a storage tote and 2 full-size grocery totes. Continue reading →

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Bad Economic News? Get Creative.

17 Nov

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see ProfromaGreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

It is becoming more and more obvious that an economic slowdown is coming.

As Ecopreneurists what does that mean to us? I think it means that we need to remember the entrepreneur part of our names as well as the Eco. Tough times are when fortunes are made. They are when more people are open to new ideas, because the old ideas no longer seem to work. Tough times are times to get creative.

Some ideas to make tough times work for you.

Money that is being spent will need to go farther as there may be less of it in your client’s or customer’s budgets. So add value by looking at the full spectrum of what you are selling. Can you offer more and make your client a better deal (i.e. you sell the stove, but what if you can sell the stove, the pots, the pans, and the power for the stove all together). By offering more you can lower your price on the complete bundle but you may make better, larger sales as you are solving more issues for the client).

Who is your competition? Take them to lunch, ask them some questions. Maybe you can serve your clients better if you team together. Or maybe your competition doesn’t have the fight for this coming slowdown and you can expand your business by taking over theirs.

Same idea one step removed. Who are your competitor’s sales leaders, their designers, their useful people? Take them to lunch. Are they scared for their jobs? Show them how they could benefit from being part of a stronger, better focused company. Fear is an amazing motivator, but it also locks people in place. If you can help someone better their position with a better job, now is the time to pitch it. Continue reading →

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