Cole Hardware, my local purveyor of all things useful, publishes a newsletter every month, and the new issue has an article about its attitude on stocking earth-friendly products versus not-so-green goods. Here’s the gist: Cole carries and heavily promotes environmentally responsible items but doesn’t refuse to carry less-green products, since there’s still such a high demand for them.
Meanwhile, the store is doing what it can to showcase the “good” goods in its advertising, signage, and shelving policies. When it comes to garden chemicals, for example, “we do stock all of the usual poisons, but we don’t promote them and we keep them up high or down low on our shelves, giving the non- or less-toxic products the eye-level space.”
It’s also initiating its own in-store labeling campaigns: Green stickers with a “Cole Hardware Earth Friendly” logo are appearing on the price cards for responsible products throughout the shop. And, interestingly, another set of stickers will soon identify goods that are made domestically, a response to what Cole says is the number one request it receives: to minimize the number of products it carries that are not made in the U.S.A. (“If we did, unfortunately, our shelves would be near-empty,” the newsletter states.)
I think this is a good approach to take: Stock the necessary merchandise to meet customer demand and stay profitable, but encourage, educate, and inspire your shoppers to think before they buy, and to buy better.
