Environmental (and other) organizations would benefit from a cotton t-shirt
broker, who would collect orders from multiple groups, place one large order
with the manufacturer, qualify for volume discounts, and thereby minimize
the cost differential. The same would generally hold true for printing
cost.
Retail businesses (such as gift shops) are in a different boat, and would be
hard-pressed to offer the customer a choice, as Nathan suggests. There is
simply not enough incentive to justify the added work. Two reasons why a
business would invest the time and energy in merchandising organic cotton
products: philosophical and return.
One of our jobs has to be to continue developing the distribution channels
which will help mainstream organic products.
- Michael
++++++++++++++
Michael Straus
Beyond Organic - Innovative Marketing for Progressive Agriculture
22890 Highway 1, Marshall, CA 94940 USA
voice mail: 415-289-6958; fax: 415-663-8079
www.beyondorganic.com; info@beyondorganic.com
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu [mailto:owner-sanet-mg@ces.ncsu.edu]On
Behalf Of CTBull@aol.com
Sent: Monday, October 18, 1999 12:29 PM
To: sanet-mg-digest@ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Organic cotton and environemental organizations
Does anyone feel like I do? I am upset with environmental organizations who
still use conventional cotton T-Shirts in marketing even though their
mission
is to protect the environment. Here is a letter I received from one such
organization and I would like to know what you think of their excuse not to
use organic cotton.
SBreheney@mbayaq.org Is the return email address if you would also like to
send your comments to them.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Thank you for your interest in the Monterey Bay Aquarium Gift & Bookstore.
We appreciate the time you have taken to share your comments with us.
We also appreciate your comments regarding the need to carry organic cotton
T-shirts in our Gift & Bookstores. We regret that we have not yet been able
to add quite as ambitious an assortment of organic cotton merchandise as we
had planned when last we wrote you earlier this year, but we remain hopeful
that our plans will come to fruition in the coming months.
Again, as we stated in our letter of February 19, our Retail Buyers share
your environmental concerns regarding non-organic cotton, and we continue to
be frustrated in our efforts to offer more environmentally responsible
apparel because of the continuing cost difference between non-organic and
organic cotton. This higher cost necessitates a higher retail price for the
finished product, which limits its appeal to our visitors. Because the Gift
& Bookstore contributes a significant amount of the Aquarium's operating
revenue, we have had to balance revenue and environmental concerns.
However, we are pleased to be able to offer to our visitors at least some
eco-friendly apparel at this time, and we still plan to expand our selection
in the foreseeable future.
As a side note, we are still pleased to tell you that we do make a point of
ordering the majority of our shirts from vendors who use water-based inks
and who are aware of the Aquarium's environmental concerns.
Thank you again for your comments. We are constantly striving to make the
Aquarium the best it can be and our visitor comments help us in reaching
this goal.
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