Starting a Turnkey Eco-Store

with OnlyGreen4Me

December 23, 2008

by Glenn Croston

Although the broader economy has soured enough to curdle milk, the green economy remains loaded with opportunities.  For all of the enormous growth of the $230 billion green economy, it has just scratched the surface and has huge growth ahead still.  All other factors being equal, an overwhelming 83% of consumers indicate that they will choose green products (DoubleClick Performics).  Among the wide range of opportunities for businesses to join the green economy, setting up an Eco-Store providing environmentally appeals to many entrepreneurs.  OnlyGreen4Me provides the means for these entrepreneurs to get their own Eco-Store up and running quickly. 

OnlyGreen4Me is making it easier for eco-entrepreneurs to create their own on-line Eco-Stores. “OnlyGreen4Me delivers a fully functional, fully loaded and dynamic e-commerce Eco-Store with over 6,600 3rd-party certified eco-products from nationally recognized companies, which continues to grow everyday,” said Pete Green, founder of OnlyGreen4Me.  They make it easy by eliminating inventory, shipping and handling, billing and collection concerns for the Eco-Store owner.  With such a broad range of products, focused largely in the office, and with the software for an on-line store ready to go, they provide a way to hit the ground running with a store months earlier than doing it all on your own.    

OnlyGreen4Me stores carry a wide range of products.  One example is Xerox printers using solid ink sticks instead of toner cartridges, avoiding a great deal of plastic waste.  Eco-Stores also carry: 

·        A complete line of remanufactured ink and toner products

·        Eco apparel

·        Eco-friendly office supplies from paper to furniture

·        Cleaning and break room supplies made from eco-friendly and recycled material

·        LED lighting

·        Bottle-free water systems for office and home use 

·        Paper products with recycled material 

Each OnlyGreen4Me dealer will have an exclusive territory, determined by zip codes in a metropolitan city or group of cities, which will include a minimum of 10,000 businesses.  You can sell across the country, yet have an exclusive geographic territory where no other Eco-Stores are based.  With the business just now starting to sign on dealers, there is still plenty of room to grow with the concept. 

If you have an existing website drawing visitors, you could easily integrate an Eco-Store into it, plugging in the OnlyGreen4Me system into your website.  Once you sign up, you have little else to worry about.  In addition to dealers having their own individual Eco-Store, they can market private label Eco-Stores to larger corporations, schools and non-profits.  Larger corporations are often working on improving their sustainability, and developing an Eco-Store internally can help.  The Eco-Store and the larger corporation can share in commissions and use them to fund internal operations or other sustainability initiatives.  “For example a school could have one of our Eco-Stores under their banner, said Green (see his example at www.onlygreen4me.com/greenschool), “and students could use it for a "Sally Foster" type fundraiser and the commissions they earned could be use to fund school sustainability projects”. 

When consumers and businesses are buying green, they increasingly look for those that are certified by a third party.  Although there aren’t yet any certification standards that cover all products, systems such as EnergyStar, EPEAT, and GreenSeal do increase confidence in purchasing decisions in specific product categories.  OnlyGreen4Me works to include products for Eco-Stores that are from large companies, and that have been certified where possible.  “You will notice on our site that our products for the most part come from national manufacturers and they have their significant reputations on the line with their claims,” said Green.  

One of the concerns consumers and businesses have about green products is that they believe they are more expensive than other products.  “We are finding that the cost of green products in general are coming down to traditional petro-based products rapidly and in some cases like remanufactured ink and toner, of course significantly below OEMs without sacrificing quality,” said Green.  “We believe pricing will continue to come down over time.  It’s important to note that our pricing is very competitive to the big power suppliers like Office Depot and Staples so that the end customers are getting great pricing.  We’re able to give that kind of pricing because we can offset the volume discounts that they get with a much lower cost structure, i.e. no inventory costs, no retail infrastructure costs and much lower employee costs.” 

The cost to get going with an Eco-Store with OnlyGreen4Me normally includes a setup fee of $2500 which includes the first year hosting and maintenance fee of $1800 and ongoing hosting and maintenance fees of $150/month (paid annually in the subsequent years). As an Eco-Store dealer you earn commissions on products sold, ranging from 10-30%. At present (Feb 2009), in response to the current economy, OnlyGreen4Me is helping out people by waiving the usual setup fee, and with a six month commitment getting people started for only a $150 per month hosting and maintenance fee.

There are hundreds of environmentally-friendly companies in existence today selling tens of thousands of worthwhile “green products” used in our everyday life whether at work or home, business or pleasure.  There really is no turning back as this grass roots movement started by a few progressive, forward thinking individuals and entities has now been accepted and adopted by so many—from families and small companies to large multi-national corporations—around the world. If an Eco-Store is for you and you want to get going quickly, OnlyGreen4Me might be the way to go.

To find out more visit:  OnlyGreen4Me