Clean and Green

When New Zealand-based ecostore USA was looking for stateside retailers to sell its line of green cleaning products, company executives interviewed all the big names.

Everyone, it seems, is adding or creating green lines these days, but after hearing the ecostore story — how sales in its home market are growing 50 percent a year, why founder Malcolm Rands is called "ecoman" in New Zealand and Australia, and how the organic gardener and environmental pioneer has taken ecostore from a mail-order business to a dynamic international company — many wanted to sell the products.

"We'd talk to the management of the big chains and they'd always say the same thing to us: ‘Well, I think you're too late. You're too small. Other players have taken the space,'" Rands says. "Half an hour later they say, ‘O.K., well, when can you ship?'"

In the end, ecostore chose Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Meijer as its first U.S. retail outlet because, Rands says, the superstore had a sense of "local community" and its brand values fit ecostore's visions. Rands appreciates the fact that Meijer is a middle-range supermarket targeting the everyday shopper, rather than one of the higher-end stores that the average person cannot afford to shop on a regular basis.

"I really am interested in going into the normal ma-and-pa, down-the-corner-of-your-block supermarket where 95 percent of the population shops," Rands says. "That's where I'd like for our product to be."

The roots of ecostore can be traced back nearly 20 years to the 150-acre eco village where Rands, his wife Melanie and a host of other like-minded folks lived. They challenged themselves to drink nearby water, grow their own food and help one another. While he says the project was "not a bunch of hippies in a commune," it was here that inspiration struck.

"Once we started looking at the everyday chemicals used inside your home, we were quite appalled because the chemicals were actually far worse than the chemicals we'd been campaigning against going onto the food," Rands says. "In those days not many people had thought about that."

Rands had begun researching household products as early as 1986, and determined that natural elements could be just as effective as the chemicals found in most of them. "If everyone made small little changes in their life, we actually wouldn't have the environmental crisis we have now," Rands says. "It actually is quite empowering for people to do that."

That's what Meijer is learning. Although the privately held 185-store chain would not divulge sales figures, spokesman Frank Gugliemi says the ecostore line has sold extremely well. Meijer carries laundry liquid composed of 100 percent certified organic eucalyptus oil and plant-based ingredients; a citrus spray cleaner; dishwasher liquid free of synthetic chemicals; Pure Oxygen Whitener, which contains oil of citrus, coconut and other plant-based ingredients; and a cream cleanser with all plant-based ingredients.